Dragon Magazine Issue 147: July 1989

part 2/3


Getting familiar: P. N. Elrod! This is an interesting turnup for the books. Nice to see another author who'll go on to pretty substantial things getting their start in the magazine. We have had a few articles on the subject of familiars before, but this does not follow in their footsteps. It's all about roleplaying your familiars. After all, in the era of 80's cartoons, most action adventure shows have an intelligent animal (or possibly robot) sidekick to supply a little comic relief and give voice actors a chance to talk in silly pidgin voices and squawks. It's no surprise that many people would think that is a desirable thing to emulate in your own games. So, um, yeah, each of the standard animals gets discussed, with lots of notes on their ecologies, racial capabilities and personalities. Toads get no love at all, as usual. It's all so second edition it hurts. And actually, it's the first article to specifically reference the 2nd ed rulebooks, so kudos to her for being quick off the mark. So this is a significant and entertaining article, that is also more than a little cheesy. Oh well, lots of good points, lots of bad points is a hell of a lot more interesting than a no score draw.


As I thought. We got the subtle teaser last month, now we get the full-on shadowrun logo with the goats skull and scantily clad elven chicks. That'll get people's attention.


Variety, the spice of magic: So you don't have the right spell component? What are you to do? You could just give up and cast some other spell. Or you could try substituting some other component. Now this gives the DM two options. They could say that nothing happens, it simply fails. Or they could use it as carte blanche to imaginatively sadistic in the way that the spell goes wrong.  Can you guess which one I'd prefer? So here's a few tables to lend a little more legitimacy to that idea. See just how likely they are to go wrong if you use cheap knock-off substitutes. Course, if you deploy some rare monster pieces, the spell might even work better than normal, but don't count on it. I can definitely see the story potential in this, so even though there might be some tedious tableage, this is another one for bookmarking to pull out when it becomes appropriate.


Gaze into my crystal ball: More table heavy elaboration on a tiny part of the game. Magical viewing devices can have quite a number of different shapes and additional powers. In addition, there's plenty of other little factors that could be included, such as making your scrying ability partially dependent on your level and ability scores. As with the last article, this is a fairly neat little one to bust out when you roll the appropriate results on the magic item tables, flesh things out further.


Space hulk. Another warhammer variant bursts messily out of the designer's heads and onto our tables. Don't let those genestealers sneak up and infect your worlds.


Spelling it out: Hmm. Another article that could be fascinating or very dull indeed, depending on your current mood. An examination of the finer detail of spell memorization and casting, for the rules lawyers to peruse. Mainly notable because it has also been annotated by Roger with the changes 2nd edition has made to the spellcasting process. Which may seem small, but are actually fairly significant, closing up several exploitable tricks that used to be a problem, and drastically increasing the amount of downtime magic-users need to copy spells into their books. Looks like they have actually been nerfed a little if you remember to strictly follow the RAW. This is definitely worthy of note, and may provoke a few letters in the near future. When things superficially stay the same, nitpickers have a field day.  I'm very interested to hear what other people made of this.


WoW your players: Ahh, the wand of wonder. (not world of warcraft, sorry to disappoint. )  Few things are more feared than a wizard wielding one. You never know what's going to happen. At least, untill they've used it a few hundred times. Then you might start to see a pattern. Which is what these alternate tables are good for. The larger the selection you have to roll in, the more truly wondrous your wand will be. And the more utterly twinked a wild mage with one will become. Muahahaha. I do rather enjoy these, but it does seem a bit odd that they give us 4 different tables, each with 19 results, many of which require you to roll again for subresults. Surely combining them into one big table, possibly using a d1000, would be a more elegant way of handling this kind of thing.  Silly chaos mages. Not terrible, but certainly not the best example of random screwage fun.


Through the looking glass: Back to the reviews this month. A pair of dragons from grenadier are reviewed, and he also gives substantial tips on how best to assemble them. Good to see him taking a leaf from our computer game reviewers, and helping us as well as informing. We also get a five pack of fairly decent superhero figures for Villains and vigilantes, but adaptable to other games. Robert then decides it's time for a change, and switches from models to games systems

Aedeptus Titanicus sees games workshop get in on the giant robot fighting market, giving you a bunch of mechs and foam buildings. This means they are easily damaged, which would be a plus if you want to represent the extreme collateral damage your machines inflict, but it would be exceedingly expensive to do this and keep buying new ones. Indeed, the cost in general is the main gripe with this, which otherwise seems fairly awesome, and entirely integratable with their other 40k mass wargaming products.

And then it's back to reviews, with a chariot pulled by lions. Fairly customisable, this is nonetheless expensive enough to be a tricky decision to buy. And least, but not last, we get the response to another vitriolic letter accusing him of americacentricism. Well, yes. They don't sell many foreign models round these parts. One of those reviews that's all the more entertaining for it's fairly scattershot approach.  


Two no SASE ogres? (look more like norkers to me) My, they must be busy rejecting people at the moment. Om nom nom.


Magus!: Looks like we have a board game as our centrepiece. They don't do enough of those these days. Rob Kuntz delivers a game of wizardly war. It looks like one of those ones where both skill and luck are important in winning, with a whole bunch of positional effects, and the ability to make alliances with other players to help you win. Annoyingly, the actual board and pieces are missing, (again) so I can't do a full judgement of it, but it seems pretty decent. Interestingly, both Gary Gygax and Dave Trampier are given credits at the end, so this has obviously been knocking about the office for quite some time. Even though certain people may be gone, they're certainly not forgotten, and some of the staff still stay in touch with them. Politics, politics. Almost as interesting as the stuff they show us.


TSR Previews: You've got the players, you've got the dungeon master, now, you need monsters for them to face. So welcome to the AD&D second edition monstrous compendium, volume one. The first batch of loose leaf sheets, plus a big binder designed to accomodate stuff from future volumes. How long before they realize this little experiment has serious problems, and go back to regular books?

Dragonlance gets DLE2: Dragon magic. Save the celestial dragon of neutrality. You'd think a cosmic force like that could take care of itself, but apparently not. Oh well, it's a chance to become a big hero, and that's what counts.

The Forgotten Realms continues it's metaplot madness, with FR2: Tantras. Elminster's dead? Surely not. It's all a big misunderstanding. Oh well, it looks like the trouble you get in fortuitously helps you solve the main problem anyway. If you'd prefer to stay out of the edition change teething troubles you can buy FR8: Cities of mystery. Build an entire city block out of the pieces within. Sounds like it would synergise well with the waterdeep city system, another FR product that can be used genericly fairly easily.

D&D goes back to basics for the first time in a few years, with B11: Kings festival. Unsurprisingly, the new, more plot based module style intrudes even here, with plenty of role-playing advice as well. A sequel is coming shortly. Just be glad it's not another trilogy.

Marvel Superheroes is still time traveling, in MT2: Weird weird west. Six-guns and the kitchen sink as rifts to the 1870's open up all through history. Guess you'd better close them up, before things lose even more continuity than even a comic book universe can take.

Novelwise, we have Monkey Station by Aradath Mayhar and Ron Fortier. Hyperevolved monkeys! Taking over the world! Sounds pulpilicious.

And finally, we have a whole host of board games. Europe aflame! High Rise! Web of gold! War, business or exploration, the choice is yours. Good to see that department is still busy buzzing away as well.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;357351Yeah, this was definitely in the "lose" category. The Ghostbusters II revision of the game stripped away a lot of the charm of the original game, particularly the stuff that featured the characters from the movie. Then it larded it down with more detailed yet less fun rules. I have both editions, and I find the original very inspiring in that I want to run it. Even the adventures are more fun.

I actually like GBI a lot.  Its really maybe 10 pages more rules than GB.  Its not as charming a read as GB, but its a little more in depth if you actually want to try to run a campaign with it as opposed to the odd 1 shot.

Most of the rules are the same.  I read both rulesets like the same month.  Got the GB books sans equipment cards and right after winning it on the bay a GBI set sealed popped up and I got it for a reasonable price.

Characters still fit on index cards, most of the gear seems to be the same, and so on.

The worst you can say is the adventure modules are a bit too silly and punny.  A shame they never did a Real Ghostbusters sourcebook for it.  Tobin's Spirit Guide is WAAAY overpriced for what it is, though its much subtler than the adventures in its puns and silly bits.  Thank goodness I got it for less than a third the going rate.

Honestly the way to look at GB and GBI is like Original D&D (if you could make sense of it on your own anyhow!), and OD&D with Greyhawk rules.

Really the feel of GB in a game is up to the group.  Do you want it more mature humor ala the movies or more family friendly ala the cartoon, or more goofy with a little of the subversive movie bits ala either game edition, or darker like the 00s era comic books done by 88 MPH and IDW?

Every single way is an interesting way to do a Ghostbusters campaign.

Dragon Magazine Issue 147: July 1989

part 3/3


Role-playing reviews is in theme, as is often the case, examining the spellcasting of several different systems. Everyone thinks they can improve upon D&D's old method of throwing cool stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. In many cases, they can, even if the resulting games haven't managed the same kind of commercial success.

GURPS magic gets a very context heavy review indeed. Ken's initial skepticism with the line has faded as the supplement mill has kicked up, filling all kinds of odd niches with well written books. Now they're revisiting their fantasy gaming roots, with typical attention to detail and modularity. Course, as usual, this genericness is a flaw as well as a benefit, and you'll have to create your own world. He reserves final judgement until he's seen the rules in action. I do hope we'll see a follow up on that statement.

ARS Magica contrasts sharply with this, creating a game with a very distinctive setting, and a system focussed around playing not just wizards, but a very specific variety of wizards. The similarities to Pendragon are spotted immediately, as are many of the other system and style elements that would be crucial in the success of the storyteller system games later. He's also pleased with the strong emphasis on troupe play, making sure the players work together, treating the group as more important than any one character. The envelope is being pushed here, and people are definitely noticing already.

The magister is a AD&D forgotten realms supplement. D&D's magic system may be a messy business, but he loves it anyway. Elminster narrates, and his tone is as fun to read as ever. Lots of new spells and items, some amusing lampshading, it adds both usable material and colour to the game. Sounds like the kind of thing the magazine has been doing for ages.

Talislanta sorcerers guide gets a rather more mixed review. While there are some cool features, they aren't as well presented as the previous books, and you'll have to fill them out yourself. So it goes.

The spell book sees Ken's enthusiasm fizzle out. He hasn't really had the time to properly digest the HERO system, and lots of dry discussion on how to properly balance a magic system doesn't hold his interest. One primarily for system tinkerers and heavy crunch lovers.


Fiction: Lord of the keep by Brenda K Ward. Another excellent example of the old maxim. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Offend one while working with them, and you may well face an ending worse than death, that also serves to advance some other goal of theirs, while technically getting exactly what you asked for. Which is what happens here. An excellent example for your more machiavellian characters to follow. Hone that sense of dramatic irony, and get plotting your inventive revenges. MuahaHAHAHAAA!!!!!


The role of computers: J R R Tolkien's War in Middle-earth has had almost as lengthy a gestation period as the book it's based upon. It only gets 3 stars, but the text seems rather more positive than that, painting a picture of an epic game requiring you to juggle multiple characters to achieve the objectives from the book and get used to flipping between the macro and character level perspectives. Hmm. Seems like people do try and put their best feet forward when tackling this property.

Hillsfar is the second of our computer based AD&D adventures. Explore said area of the forgotten realms, fight in the arena, deal with the tyranical ruler and his lackeys, and generally play in the sandbox. Fun, but not a hugely deep game, and marred slightly by saving being rather limited and no pausing. A bit of a filler game between the previous and upcoming epics.

Abrams battle tank is a high crunch simulation of driving said bit of heavy military ordinance. You have to flick between controlling the 4 different stations, drive, load, target and fire. And try and actually get some battle missions done. Sounds like a lot of keypress memorization required.

Sim City Terrain editor takes the still fledgeling program mentioned in passing last issue, and makes it into the supremely customizable timewaster we know and love. Now there's a nostalgia hit for me. Sim city was included on my first PC, and I spent ages playing around in it. The number of familiar names should increase quite considerably in the near future.


The role of books: The eight by Katherine Nevile is a playful espionage novel interleaving stories set in 1973 and the french revolution. It avoids the danger of involving the famous historical characters too closely, and develops it's own quirky cast and plot twists. The reviewer rather enjoys it.

Gamearth by Kevin J Anderson is an interestingly meta story which alternates between the viewpoint of a fantasy world, and the gaming group that plays those characters, as they try and stop the GM from ending the world. You know, you can just stop and walk away. It's not as if your players will chain you to the chair to force you to keep playing. Anyway, the question of whether the game universe is real or not, and it's relation to earth is left hanging, as is the final fate of the game, which frustrates the reviewer, but may be the point the author was trying to make. How very tricky to make a judgement on.  

Starfarers by Vonda N McIntyre sees a would be space exploration ship under attack from global politicking. Lots of subplots delve into the lives of various crewmembers, and how they got to be in their current position, keeping the high concept from becoming too overbearing.

Lord of cragsclaw by Bill Fawcett and Neil Randall is a well built shared world story. It features anthropomorphic felines, but don't let that put you off. It definitely looks like there's plenty more room for worldbuilding and stories here.

The earth lords by Gordon R Dickinson gets a moderately negative review. The plotting and worldbuilding don't hang together brilliantly, and he isn't sure if it's fantasy or science fiction. Either way, he's produced better books.

Burning water by Mercedes Lackey has one of those omnicompetent protagonists who would be annoying if they weren't so likable. It runs the gamut of occult traditions in the course of it's plot, treating them all with respect and a decent amount of research. It looks like the start of another book series.

Who's afraid of beowulf by Tom Halt puts ancient characters in a modern day situation, and lets the humour flow naturally from there. The characters react logically to the strange situations, and it still manages to be a fairly dramatic story.


Dragonmith gets lost again. Yamara is saved by the debt collection. It's so hard to be a world threatening villain and stay under budget.


Three monstrous compendia planned already? Why not just release one big book. That would be far more convenient.


A fairly interesting issue, and one that I got through quite quickly. As second edition finally starts to hit the magazine, even topics that they've covered before become fresh again, to be tackled from a different angle, with new rules. We're really getting somewhere now, and things are going to become more familiar, once again. Now the main thing they have to do is survive the controversies, and convert people over to the new way of doing things. Will they lose people in the process? Lets hope if they do, they'll at least send in vitriolic letters to say why they're leaving.

Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989

part 1/3


116 pages. From one repeated topic to another. Last issue it was spellcasting, now it's warriors turn again. Will they be able to deliver a fresh spin on the theme, or will it be the same old ideas? Roger's editorial shows he's very much aware of this problem, and it would probably be worse if he didn't reject lots of the most obvious ideas, that people seem to come up with independently again and again. And let's not even get into the massive hassles of active plagiarism, which we have to spot before publishing or face the legal consequences. This is one reason a good index is damn handy, so you don't have to rely on fallible memory, and can just flip through and say Done that, done that, done that, ooooh, shiny, haven't done that yet, and get on with things.

In this issue:

Peh. The columbia tape and music club? So much for the adverts in here being at least vaguely themed. This is crap. Oh well, I suppose their money is as good as anyone's. This is your fault for mentioning filking, Mr Bunnell.


Letters: A letter asking for more characters in the Marvel-Phile. Unfortunately, we've become a victim of our own comprehensiveness, and are running short of characters that haven't been covered yet. And we wouldn't want to go around engaging in mindless rehash there as well, would we?

Three letters pointing out errata on the various dragon entries from issue 146. Two are minor, but one would be very nasty if missed. Extra levels all round!

A rather amusingly phrased letter about a mistake in issue 144's minis review. This is what happens when you have several units with very similar names, and the product itself has errata.  


Forum: Robert Benson thinks that completely glossing over religion and social order is removing a big chunk of the fun of playing clerics. Looks like this argument is going to run and run.
 
Hammad Hussain is also very much in favour of a rich mythological underpinning for your characters to riff off. If that means stealing from the real world, so be it. It's not as if D&D hasn't done plenty of that already. Plus, there ought to be more monotheistic religions in fantasy worlds. Where's the fun if all the faiths get along anyway.  

Allen Wessels, on the other hand, is continuing to stir the pot when it comes to illusion adjudication. Damn this stuff gets tiresome after a while. How does Roger cope, reading hundreds of these things every month?

Eric Ehlers has lots of points to make, primarily about ability scores, race/class selections, and the sometimes irritating ways his players behave involving them. Munchkins.

Bryan Penney notes that the demon lords and similar singular beings are actually pretty weedy when compared to their good outerplanar counterparts and powerful PC's. Their magical versatility in particular ought to be increased to make them a credible threat. Well, most of them were created well before UA, and the later power creep, in days where even the founders of the game had never seen a party get much above name level. Don't you worry, many of them will get quite substantial upgrades next edition.

Valerie A Valusek thinks that fighters can be properly distinguished from one another, especially if you use nonweapon proficiencies. If you don't roleplay them at all, then of course they'll be boring to play. In the process, she also demonstrates that women can enjoy playing cheesecake characters of the opposite gender and stirring up trouble via titilation too.

Howard J Nenno has a rather more pragmatic set of ideas for how to make a  straight fighter useful out of combat. People may fear the wizard, but they respect a guy who knows how to use a sword more. Fudge it all to hell.

Ann Dupuis proves that when you combine horse lovers and roleplayers, you get some of the most ludicrous attention to detail ever put down on a page, as she discusses some more coat patterns that didn't get mentioned in our painting guide a few months ago. Correlations between coat and hoof colour, the way their coats change as they age, it throws our own obsessive behaviour into sharp relief.  


Sage advice moves officially to 2nd edition. The whole set is out now, so people can play games by the book without having to refer back to the old edition. And they've had it long enough to send questions in. But because the new edition is actually pretty similar to the old one, people are more likely to be caught out by the small differences. Which means nit-picking. Yay for us.

How much fire can a fire-producer produce when a fire producer produces fire ( 1 per level. Quantity /=/ quality. )

What is the surface area of the average man. (Skip cannot be bothered to calculate this. Get some cling-film and find out at home kids. (TSR is not responsible for any suffocations caused by being wrapped in cling film. ))

Can halflings become clerics (couldn't they anyway. Why do you ask?)

Does taking mountaineering boost your climb walls chance (yes. Fear the synergy)

Are strength bonuses multiplied when backstabbing. (Still no, despite what page 40 says)

How much does chain penalize your thieving skills 5% worse than elven (note the name change from 1st ed) in all respects)

Are multiclassed bards allowed (Finally. No more stupid lockstep class switching)

Do paladins and rangers need more than one stat at 16+ to get xp bonuses or not (I'm afraid so. )

What happened to double specialization. (Too broken, man. Go play BD&D if you want to get really really good with one weapon. )

Can you specialize in more than one weapon. No, but you don't have to pick your speciality right at the start, unlike last edition. )

Do demihuman fighters get extraordinary strength (yes)

Does armour affect animal empathy (Man what? No. Some people ask the dumbest things.)

Ranger's spellcasting sucks now! (Only by comparison. Be thankful they still have it at all. They won't forever.)

Can rangers use elven chain mail without penalty (No)

What do favoured enemy bonuses apply to (only attack rolls)

Can paladins dual class (as long as they don't violate their principles. If they do, they become fighters anyway, so the point is moot)

Why can't wizards learn all the spells around (because that would make them even more powerful compared to other classes. We don't want that. )

What's the minimum intelligence for specialist wizards (Same as for any other )

What happened to Write ( It was wrong for the game. Nothing personal, you understand. So we parted amicably)

What's the material component for spectral hand ( Don't ask. If we forgot to require one, you don't need one. )

Does enchanting your weapons break invisibility (Buffs are not attacks. Take advantage of this fact.)

Does delayed blast fireball have a limit ( same as regular one. Yes, that means you're already at the cap long before you can cast it. Not good game design)

Spells are missing from appendix 5. (And you are surprised about this why?)

Can any race be a diviner (any race that can be a wizard. This will not continue to be the case as more races are added. )

What happened to cantrips. (They were folded up. Now you can use them spontaneously. It's not quite sorcerer level yet, but it's a start. )

Can mages automatically read and write common (no)

Fireballs can detonate early and backfire (no change there. That's the thing about artillery. It isn't very discriminate. )

A ring of three wishes only radiates faint magic? Surely shome mishtake! (Nope. It's judging on criteria of quantity of powers, not quality. )


Always wear your best suit: Ahh, yes. This is fitting given some of the stuff they just discussed in the forum. One of the primary ways you can distinguish one fighter from another is what they're wearing. In the real world, people spend substantially more on one thing over another due to their cosmetic appearance, rather than their pure capabilities. Putting jewelery, odd ruffles, extra large shoulderpads, spikes, various colours, etc, is another way you can customize your character. Course, unless you actually have some kind of visual representation of your characters, people are unlikely to bother with this, so they also give another set of ideas for special materials, so you can pay loads extra for minor mechanical benefits. All in all, it's pretty dull. They'd need to get in someone like Ed to keep me awake through this bit of the syllabus.

Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989

part 2/3


Tracking down the barbarian: Looks like they aren't abandoning the old edition straight away. The barbarian may have been probably the most problematic of the UA classes (not being allowed to associate with spellcasters is probably more harmful to a D&D party than the cavalier's moral code.) but plenty of people still like the archetype, and want to see it done justice in AD&D. David Howery, one of our more frequent forumites, is amongst them. So he gives them a mild nerfing, massaging away their more egregious powers, while also making them more integrated into their native variety of wilderness, with better designed skills. I'm generally not very keen on nerfings, but I do like this one, which seems rather better thought out than the original version. Definitely worth considering, although if this brings them in line with the likes of the paladin and ranger, you might want to drop their XP requirements similarly.


Good does not mean boring: Ahh, the old paladin problem. Just what is proper behaviour for someone who has to be a fairly unswerving exemplar of law and good. Like far too many moral dilemmas, it can only be truly solved by ignoring it, as 4e demonstrates. Fortunately, Scott Bennie does not fall into the one size fits all camp, nor does he forget that they're holy warriors, and killing evil things is an objectively good act in D&D (at least, as long as it isn't done in an evil manner) Similarly, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best you can be, and recognized for that fact. It's when the publicity seeking becomes more important to you than the actual heroic deeds, you put others down instead of improving yourself to keep your place, or you get into ends justify the means crap that you're headed for a fall. A pretty decent set of guidelines. This also fixes another problem, that of the retroactive making all paladins also cavaliers, separating them out again, so you can have cavaliers, paladins, and cavalier-paladins running around in the same campaign. It could probably have done more to make paladins that aren't so bound up in western medieval cultural mores, but it's a quite decent article for it's size. Looks like they're really trying to get 1st ed sorted out before they say goodbye to it.


Space 1889 tells us what supplements they have coming up. Sweet.


The corrected Cavalier: Once again it looks like they're trying to fix the classes that didn't make the cut for the new edition. David Howery is rather more brutal in his cuts here than he was with the barbarian, getting rid of both powers and restrictions aplenty. Hmm. While once again, I quite approve of his objectives, he might be going a bit too far this time. Wouldn't want them to wind up underpowered, would we. This is the kind of thing that would definitely require playtesting to see for sure. And whether it's a mechanical improvement or not, all these articles in quick succession feels like a conscious rejection of Gary's old work and design style, and an attempt to homogenize everything. These three articles are definite fuel for the edition wars, and it'll be interesting to see what responses they get. Your opinions and actual play experiences would be especially welcome in this matter.


Arcane Lore: Healing is just about the only thing clerics can do, that wizards can't. There are a few spells that break that rule, but they're pretty high level, and do so indirectly. (Ed Greenwood, and his sneaky synostodweomer aside) But even if they can't break the laws of magic, wizards will always be pushing at their limits, and that's what this is about. First, there's an examination of D&D physics, looking at the spells that do offer some limited restorative properties, and trying to figure out the rules and limitations of wizardly magic from those, so as to not produce results that break the current niche protection. I note we're still missing vampiric touch, which would be a staple spell for many magic users in later editions. Secondly, we have 7 new spells which work from these principles. Quite interesting ones, too.

Arnvid's unseen limb gives you an invisible, selectively insubstantial limb to do stuff with. This is incredibly handy even if you aren't actually missing any limbs, and even more so if you are. Oh, the tricks you could pull with something like this. :rubs hands together: I may have to read up on Larry Niven's Gil Hamilton books.

Empath lets you transfer damage to yourself. Since it has a long casting time, and at the same level, clerics'll be curing serious wounds left, right and centre, It's rather a last resort spell.

Life force transfer also lets you transfer damage. Slightly less, but a lot faster, so it's useful in a combat situation. Given how weedy magic-users are, this seems rather risky, unless they value your life above their own. Don't want to lose your secondary medic as well.

Dispel exhaustion is just the illusionist spell at a level higher, to reflect that wizards aren't as good at that deception stuff. Meh. Another bit of niche protection is nibbled at, but since illusionists are being merged, it doesn't matter any longer.

Accelerated metabolism lets you heal at the rate of a day's rest per turn. Awesome. Course, like haste, this plays hell with your lifespan, and you have to spend the whole time eating and sleeping to keep your body functional, so it won't be kind to your provisions either. (and lets not think about the toilet arrangements) Could probably be twisted to other inventive uses on unwilling creatures. It also has an amusingly appropriate material component. Burning the candle at both ends indeed.

Vampire dagger is like vampiric touch, only it spreads it's draining over multiple hits, and lasts quite a while. This'll definitely extend your wizard's close combat time  by quite a bit. (if you can hit) If you have the stuff, (which will cost a lot) combine with Tenser's transformation for great brutality.

Exchange lets you transfer HP from one character to another. This can be done unwillingly, but the amount is still fairly small, and since this is an 8th level spell with a slow casting, it's not going to be killing any equivalent level challenges or saving your friends asses mid battle.

Overall, it's a fairly well balanced set. Even a wizard in their teens will be hard pressed to match a low level cleric in terms of recovery power. As it feels like the kind of research wizards would logically do in game when confronted with their limitations, and most of them are not even as good at healing as common wizard spells of the next edition, I'm inclined to be generous with this one. You can come in if you like.


TSR previews: D&D almost entirely takes over this month, in one form or another. They decide that using the little grey box to denote the most important release is going to continue, even though the corebooks are out. This time, it's the dungeon master's screen that gets the special attention. Since 4 bits of card isn't a very impressive product, they also include a mini adventure. Anyone play this one?

The Forgotten Realms is still proving ridiculously popular, and getting the support to match. You saw the adventure last month, now read the novelisation of Tantras, part 2 of the Avatar Trilogy. See the people who will soon become gods do their stuff.  Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Kara-Tur, we have OA6: Ronin Challenge. The setting is much more filled out than it used to be, and this module certainly intends to take advantage of this.

Greyhawk gets a boxed set covering its eponymously named city. Greater detail than ever before! You still won't be able to match the insane level of detail the FR'll build up in a few years.

D&D is also reaping the rewards of all that effort creating boxed sets, with Dawn of the Emperors. Thyatis vs Alphatia! For great justice! With Airships! Oh yes, that reminds me, the princess ark series should be along sometime soon. I'm definitely looking forward to that. We're also getting TM1: The western Countries. See the known world mapped out in a style imitating real world hiking maps. A typically amusing conceit that probably springs from Bruce Heard's mind.

Our token unrelated product this month is the Deluxe city campaign set for Marvel Superheroes. New york, new york. What a great place to adventure in. Can you make sure it doesn't get destroyed and rebuilt as often as Tokyo?

Quote from: (un)reason;357746Ann Dupuis proves that when you combine horse lovers and roleplayers, you get some of the most ludicrous attention to detail ever put down on a page, as she discusses some more coat patterns that didn't get mentioned in our painting guide a few months ago. Correlations between coat and hoof colour, the way their coats change as they age, it throws our own obsessive behaviour into sharp relief.  

Yeah, but that letter accomplished 2 things:

It once came back to me in a stack of things I'd written that a fan wanted me to sign (when I saw it, I said "I've never been published in Dragon Magazine!" and he promptly opened it to the letters page)...

... and it was one of the reasons that Bruce Heard recognized my name as we were shopping at the same booth at Origins. (He'd also seen Dragon Magazine article proposal I'd submitted that was rejected, about how to string all the D&D modules then available into a vast uber-campaign...)  Bruce was looking for a writer with attention to detail and knowledge of animals for the Night Howlers product for D&D. :-)


Ann Dupuis
Grey Ghost Press, Inc.
http://fudgerpg.com

I think that demonstrates again how interconnected tiny seeming things can be, and the ways they can come back and have consequences years later, for better or worse. The vast number of details you have to take into account are why we can't predict the future, yet what happens can seem obvious in retrospect.

Dragon Magazine Issue 148: August 1989

part 3/3


Luck of the draw: Interesting. This article is essentially the equivalent of an ecology of for this magical item, presenting us with some fiction of a group encountering them, trying to find out more, and having a little drama along the way. The writer answers the question of what happens if you try various rules exploits, and some cosmological questions that could be used as further plot hooks. He also demonstrates a delightfully cruel sense of humour, as the characters act in a very PC like manner. Yeah, this is pretty sweet. Yet more encouragement for me to include this kind of thing into my own games, sit back, and watch the group do it all to themselves for a while. I think I shall put the LP of maniacal laughter on the gramophone and let it run for a while while I go make a cup of tea.


The game wizards: The Sniper! games obviously can't be doing too terribly, because it looks like they've got a computer game conversion. What's more, they're multiplayer internet ones as well. Looks like they use ascii visuals, which is rather amusing, but is probably needed for bandwidth saving reasons. As is usual for this column, this is a promotional piece, making people aware of their shiny new stuff, and talking about how it works, the changes that needed to be made for the new medium. Real time gaming is quite a different experience to taking turns, but the fact that you can stack orders should allow you to run to the loo and not die horribly straight away. As with Kesmai, we see that they're still trailblazing in their developments, and having to figure out the best way to handle different genres from scratch. Better pray your connection doesn't lag. Fairly interesting.


Role-playing reviews: Looks like monsters are this month's theme here. In particular books concentrating on one or two specific ones. Another sign of the increase in fine detail in modern books, we've gone from statblocks of a few lines, to pages of ecology, to entire elaborate studies. But of course, detail is no indicator of quality. Let's see what Jim makes of this crop.

Ents of fangorn is of course for MERP. Remember, they might have been on the hobbit's side, but these are scary guys when roused, and have some decidedly alien cousins. If your players play things wrong, they could easily wind up their bad side. But the book doesn't present that brilliantly, with the actual adventures being more orc infested dungeons than bosky shifting woods. Looks like the writers are sneaking D&Disms back into a property that inspired it.
 
Into the troll realms is for runequest. Like the previous one, it's more about the adventures than a detailed examination of the creatures, but that's because there already was a supplement on that (Reviewed in issue 67, and with a revision coming soon) But this time the adventures are pretty good, with inventive plots that aren't all hack and slash. Looks like Runequest is still fairly popular.

GAZ10 The orcs of Thar takes a lighthearted, Paranoia inspired look at it's subject, giving the various humanoids a distinctive voice, as we saw in the Orcwars game a few months ago. Life may be cheap, but they still know how to have fun, looting, pillaging, and smashing their way through the nearby hooman countries. The various races all get 36 level progressions with optional spellcasting, and are balanced by the bigger ones being tougher at the start, but requiring more xp to advance, so they'll eventually fall behind. All are certainly a lot more effective than the optional rules given in this magazine for AD&D humanoids. It's all good whimsical fun, useful for both players and DM's.  

AC10 bestiary of giants and dragons takes a rather different tack, being more a bunch of adventures than a detailed ecological examination. It does have some interesting visual aids and tables though. Overall, it seems like something to dip into, rather than use all in one go.


The role of computers: Prophecy is a fairly decent action-adventure game. Save the  land from the latest villain trying to take it over. The review section of this is fairly short, with lots of direct hints on how to get past certain obstacles and win the game. Seems like the clue corner is proving very popular, so they've decided to apply that approach to the actual reviews. Curious.  

The magic candle gets a more conventional review, for a slightly less conventional game. Create a party, and send them off to save another kingdom. What's different is the way that play is handled, with party splitting, formalized training, and actions consuming energy, which then needs to be carefully managed. Does seem like it'll require quite a bit of character switching and learning to complete.

Pool of radiance and Ultima V are our main subjects in the clue corner. Amusingly, they advise us to sleep spam low level creatures. Ahh, the joys of older editions. Overall, this one feels a bit shorter than usual. Oh well, plenty more stuff to see.


Around the world in 36 levels: Basic D&D gets a straight promotional piece. Seems like far too many people look down on it, and are ignoring it in favour of going straight to AD&D. That's certainly the way it seems from the articles in the magazine. But recently, they have been doing some pretty extensive worldbuilding, filling in the various countries in ways that make them quite different from the base assumptions (apart from Karameikos of course, which is designed to satisfy them as no other) but still fun places to adventure in. This makes it much easier for you to get a campaign going, and keep it interesting, whatever your level. There's plenty of information, while at the same time not filling in so much that the DM has no freedom to fill things in further. There is a faint hint of desperation to this, and it does make me wonder just what the current state of affairs is in terms of sales, and the office politics surrounding it. Is it being kept on as a sinecure, is it in danger of being cancelled? In any case, I do find this a little worrying, as well as largely being a waste of space for me, as it's not introducing any new material. Let's hope this works, and brings round some new players, because it's not the kind of thing I'm very keen on seeing.


Through the looking glass: Another battle report this issue. The old classic turnaround of the humanoids attacking the village sees a whole bunch of creatures, from kobolds to an umber hulk, teaming up to bring the devastation. Still, the good guys assemble fast, and thanks to a bit of wizardly artillery, the battle is nowhere near one sided. The battle is recounted in a very close to the ground way, with individual figures given lots of characterization. Using minis does not have to mean a lack of roleplaying. A rather quirky little entry here, that's interesting to read, but not particularly useful. I guess, like the fiction, it doesn't have to be, it just needs to be inspirational.


Watch your step!: Top Secret gets it's first article this year. That really does illustrate just how much they've dropped the non D&D stuff recently, usually only having one token article on another TSR gameline per issue. And this little piece on landmines shows that they're continuing their focus on more military matters, and are unlikely to reverse either trend any time soon. With plenty of talk about the trigger mechanisms of these delightful little lumps of potential death, this is easily convertible to other games, including the making of D&D traps. If you want to play things tomb of horrors style, where player ingenuity is paramount over rolls, and one wrong step spells doom, this is a good one to incorporate. If not, well, you probably won't want to use these regularly. Still, either way, it's another pretty decent choice for you to take as a GM.


Dragonmirth runs up against bureaucracy again. Yamara looks for a new job. We really need another comic to fill out this section.


Ooh, pretty. Connecting with the deck of many things article earlier this issue, we have a selection of cards for you to cut out and use when your players encounter this item. Course, this is another thing that'll be somewhat inconvenient to construct from .pdf, because you'll need to print out both sides, and then stick them to cardstock, but that's not an insurmountable problem. The biggest danger is the artifacts from your assembly process allowing them to figure out which card is which and only pick the good ones. Guess I'll just have to be extra careful. Or use the tarot of many things from issue 77 instead. Now that was a nifty article.


A rather quirky issue. With the combination of an unusually high level of whimsy, and the extensive look back on the old classes, it does stand out, although I'm not entirely sure if it's in a good or bad way. As usual when there's plenty of both good and bad elements, I shall have to return a cautious positive. It's certainly not a load of rehashed crap, despite drawing heavily from existing material.

Dragon Magazine Issue 149: September 1989

part 1/3


108 pages. Another classic cover graces this issue. They're really having a good run of those lately. Guess the work of the art director, and the rest of the team working under Roger deserves credit. Speaking of which, Roger decides to let the assistant editor do this month's editorial. How's that for delegation. Let them handle the tedious stuff about what we're currently looking for, and how to format it in such a way that it has the best chance of being accepted. How very tempting for him. One of those things I know will become more common later, especially once Dale A Donovan joins the team. Definitely worth noting. Increasingly, they become a corporation rather than a collection of individuals.

In this issue:


Mutazoids! Feel the allegory, or just enjoy the gonzo and ultraviolence.


Letters: There is no escaping Waldorf! They tried to shut down discussion of him in issue 141, but people keep sending letters in. Must be the most popular topic they've had in a long time. This is absolutely hilarious, but does get a little repetitive, since it mostly involves even more powerful characters engaging in revenge fanfic upon him. Can't we just call it quits and rebuild Greyhawk like it never happened? Of course we can. But this isn't over yet. Waldorf will be back! :shakes fist:


Forum: Toby Myers thinks that wishes should be the province of found objects, not PC spellcasters. He also thinks they shouldn't be able to directly grant you metagame stats like XP and levels. No escaping this crowd.

Peter M Wilbur thinks that artificially dividing low and high fantasy when D&D is designed to progress naturally from one to the other is a bit silly. It's also a bit of a waste to miss out those first few levels. They go by awfully fast, and if you miss them your characterization won't be the same.

Matt Richardson thinks that people are having problems with low level magic-users not because the class is weak, but because they're playing them stupidly. They need high intelligence for a reason.

R. J. Wenzel thinks that even if wizards did wear armour, and use weapons, their low attack probabilities and hit points would result in them getting trounced in short order. Course, even in an all fighter team, bombarding the enemy from a safe position is vastly preferable to toe to toe fighting anyway. Surely winning without being in danger is a good thing?

Jeremy Gilliam rebutts Bob Tarantino (while misspelling his name, dear oh dear) simply saying that he prefers the greater detail and character options in AD&D.

Ilya Taytslin once again demonstrates that you've gotta actually play smart creatures smart if you want to challenge powerful adventurers. Anything that just charges into hand to hand combat deserves everything it gets. Even if they don't have magic, allies, traps, items, environmental stuff can all be put to great use.

Aaron Goldblatt is another person who thinks that evil characters should be entirely capable of working together as long as it seems more beneficial for them to do so than betraying or stealing from their allies. Just leave the assassins out of it please.

David G Rathbun also thinks evil PC's can make sense, as long as they aren't chaotic evil, and they have some reason to stick around and work together with the other characters. If they act like complete idiots, enforce logical consequences upon them and things should sort themselves out pretty quickly, probably by killing the character or removing them from play.

Tarun Nagpal also gives his experiences with evil PC's. They'll certainly face more than their share of obstacles. But that does not mean the game won't be fun to play. It'll just be different to the shiny heroic ones. And variety is a good thing. If your players can predict you too well, it's hard to challenge them.

   
Sage advice: Do you need to learn how to use bastard swords one handed and two handed separately (Your DM's decision. )

   Why would anyone use anything else if slings are so cheap and effective. ( Clearance, mostly. That and point blank shots. Why use swords if polearms are more damaging and have greater reach. )

   If system shock rolls are used when being raised, what are resurrection survival rolls for (AWOOGA AWOOGA! Eratta alert! Please fix immediately!)

   How much do staves cost. (find one yourself. It's far more rewarding than getting one from the shops. )

   Can you use missile weapons in melee (not easily)

   How much damage do short bows do (Same as it ever was. not fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better)

   Why can't spears be set to do double damage against charges anymore (yes they can. )

   Can you attack while withdrawing. (yes, but the rhythm method isn't very reliable.)

   Where are nets, lassos and mauls (cut for space at the last minute. They'll be back in a few supplements time. )

   What are the stats for a broad sword. (barely different from a long sword. I don't know why you would want to differentiate them)

   Can you fire an arquebus faster at high level (not unless you specialize. Note that you'll need regular supplies of gunpowder to practice enough for this.)  

   Can you wield a longsword in both hands at once ( Not unless you're drizzt. And you really don't want that.)

   Can you specialize in two weapons and then attack with full bonuses for both( no, doubly. So very illegal. )

   What happened to space requirements (they were relegated to the realms of common sense. You may want to go there some time. )

    Why can't you use blunt weapons nonlethally (Lack of finesse. This is why you don't get flail duels. Get some flail snails and make them duel instead. That should be a good little earner. )

   The table of save priority and the example contradict one-another (the table's right, the examples wrong. Rip it out and throw it in the bin. )

   What's the conversion rate between 1st and 2nd ed. (They're the same, apart from some specific attacks of inflation. )

   What's the conversion rate between GP and dollars (approximately 1 gp = $20. Not  that you could spend them straight away)

   Can you multiclass subclasses (not unless we say you can)

   Do you divide Xp between classses when multiclassed (nothing has changed here. Move along. )

   Does temporary con damage temporarily reduce HP (yes)

   What happened to alignment languages  (They're gone. And we shall pretend they never existed. No one could ever agree what they were anyway. )

   Do drow and svirfneblin still have all their 1st ed special powers (not until they get books for 2nd ed. It's like the disappearance and reappearance of monks and assassins and half-orcs. )

   What are PC race's size classes ( You should be able to figure this one out no trouble )

   What use is the healing proficiency (Do you decry the medical profession. Unlike gods, It'll never abandon you just because you break some stupid rule. Skip pitys da foo who underestimates it's use. )   

The math on mountaineering doesn't add up ( Oh dear. That's not good. )

   Why is it impossible to climb a dry ice wall, when you can climb a slippery one (all ice walls are slippery. At least until they get so cold that layers of your skin stick to them when you touch them. And you don't want to climb like that. You'd be a skeleton before you were halfway up the cliff face. )

   Can you disbelieve an illusion at any time (as long as you can justify it)

   Does plate still reduce damage (No. Skip streamlines. )

   What good is a helmet (Skip will cap a muthafucka in the back of the head. Then you'll see what good a helmet does.)

   Why are you killing baby dragons. Isn't this a family friendly magazine (because if you don't get them now, they become near impossible to stop. )

   Do demihumans have to spend a slot to learn common (Probably best to give it to them for free. PC's can't really work together unless they can all understand each other. )

   Are running and jogging cumulative (No. Man, that takes the cake for stupid questions. )

   What's the correct procedure for dual class characters losing levels (whatever would be most inconvenient. We are still sadists, and awkward characters like this are a prime target to pick on. )

   What happened to falling damage being geometric (Like so many of Gary's mid period contributions, we chucked it. We are our own people now. )
   
Do you take falling damage if you diliberately jump (yes)

   Which way do proficiency modifiers go (High good, Low bad. Napster still irrelevant.)


Magic for beginners: Greg Detwiler continues to prove himself a fairly reliable contributer, with this article on how to keep magical weapons from becoming too crucial too soon. If you do things wrong, then you either end up with a situation where everyone can always affect the enemy, and there's no mystery and tension to a battle, or one where no-one can do anything, and they're in deep shit. Finding the right balance between those extremes can be tricky. Here's plenty of suggestions to solve this. Charged weapons that you need to save for when it's needed. Ones made out of special materials that only penetrate DR on specific types of creatures. Illusory items that'll hurt things vulnerable to magic, as long as they believe in them. When you consider that you need 16th level spellcasters for the most basic of permanent magical items, it's vaguely surprising that tricks like this aren't more common. Another example of how the D&D demographics and economy doesn't add up. In a similar vein, although obviously less extreme than dark sun's making metal scarce, this seems like a good way to up the level of grittiness in your campaign, and encourage players to be cautious and tactical in picking their fights. Not a terrible design goal to have, really. Definitely one I'll be considering.


The Envelope, Please!: Convention season is drawing to a close. So let's do a little looking back, at some of the more important events. Such as the Origins awards. They've been going for quite a while, but obviously, as TSR sided with Gen con during the feuding years, we've seen little on them in this magazine. A fairly balanced set of awards this year, with no one product obviously sweeping the board. GURPS, Sky Galleons of mars, and F-19 Stealth fighter each get two awards. TSR isn't completely ignored, but D&D is, with their minis line, and The hunt for Red October boardgame winning awards, along with Pool of Radiance featuring in their computer game awards. And Rick Loomis gets inducted into the hall of fame, having been working here right from the start. Make of that what you will.

Dragon Magazine Issue 149: September 1989

part 2/3


The dragon's bestiary: This month's theme is variant horses. We've had a few of those before, plus a good few articles on regular horses, but it looks like this is the first time we've got a whole bestiary full of them. Let's hope at least a few of them show some imagination.

Av are, as the description says, the greyhounds of the horse world. Slim, very fast, and good at dealing with desert heat and terrain, they aren't good for combat, but make excellent mounts for messengers and scouts.

Bahtel, on the other hand, are rather stronger and more aggressive than normal horses, and make very good fighting mounts, able to kick, bite and headbutt all in the same round. Not that it's easy to stay on their back while they do so, but you can't expect power without work. And they aren't hugely loyal either. Better have a good ranger or barbarian handy to establish dominance over the buggers.

Kiita are intelligent quadropeds that choose you rather than being chosen, and depart just as abruptly when you no longer hold their curiosity. How very folklorish. With their minor magical powers, they seem like they have a good story in them.

Vor are not unicorns, but you might mistake them for one if you aren't an anthropologist. They aren't intelligent or magical, but they do have a little horn, and are very good at smelling poisons. This may annoy players at first if you introduce them, but what's wrong with that?

Wandega are another quirky intelligent horse variant. They have minor magic learning powers, and like to team up with spellcasters so they can properly take advantage of this fact. They do tend to be a bit clingy, and have a number of other personality traits that they encourage you to play out, that could be amusing or annoying, depending on the group. Plenty of tools here for both PC's and adversaries to take advantage. Overall, I think this has been a solid, but not brilliant collection of creatures.


Advice for all mutants: Skip gets another Q&A column to answer gamma world questions with. He is becoming important of late. How did they ever manage without him.
   
Where in the modules are the things depicted on the covers (Nowhere! We do not constrain our artists imagination by forcing them to pay attention to what they're illustrating. )

   What happened to module GW5 (Something went wrong in production. Skip will not reveal what. Can anyone out there in reader land enlighten us? )

   How many more gamma world modules will we see. (None! As with star frontiers, it has proved insufficiently popular for continued support)

   How do the maps in the modules fit together (Imperfectly! )

   Where are the descriptions for the loot tables (GW6. We didn't want to waste space reprinting it in later ones. Gotta collect 'em all! )

   How do you calculate service costs ( Skill of the workers multiplied by time it's gonna take to make the item. )

   What does the endurance skill do ( Lets you fight on through the pain! Let's you fight on, through the darkness and the rain! Dreaming of the day we'll be together again! [/power ballad] )

   Does high con let you avoid radiation (no, only lessen it)

   I want vehicle stats (pay for the appropriate supplement then. Remember, you can mail order if the shops are being bastards. )

   What's a pneumo-jack (Same as a regular car jack, only futuristic!)

   Where are expanded rules for robots (GW10. Cyborgariffic!)

   How often can you use telekinetic arm (3/day)

   What protects you from black rays ( Light shields. Even black is a colour.)

   How long does invisibility last (As in D&D, until you do something that breaks it)

   What happens if you attempt to disrupt too many molecules at once (Hnnnnnnnrrrrrg! Ohh, you might bust a brain lobe doing that. )

   Why don't plant mutations have modifiers (because they aren't dependent on ability scores)

   Do mutant animals get their regular species abilities free (ayup)

   How often can you use regeneration (5/day. Not enough really.)

    How good is physical reflection really? (it's a fairly specific lifesaver, not a godmod)

   What's the range of life leech (twice the rating. In what? Skip will not say)

   How often can you use telekinesis (Same as telekinetic arm. Skip wonders why they have two powers that do the same thing)

   Are clips full when you buy them (Usually)

   How do you power a black ray pistol (propietary power source. Not easy to find.)

   How much does a grenade hurt. (A lot, if you're nearby. )

   What is a bu'daan protected against (Electricity)

   Does pyrokinesis protect you from lasers (no)

   Can a PC ultraborg have a stage V ID (yes)

   Does genius capability boost your results no matter how good they are (yes)

   Can a paralyzed character use mental mutations (Usually. Apply common sense liberally)

   Do you automatically have clothes? (Easiest that way)

   {Question obscured due to badly formatted advert} (No, I refuse point-blank to answer this! )

   Can defence screens result in hits without damage (no, they make things miss)

   Can you overcome tech level differences with training (sure)

   There's a mistake in the equipment lists. (Only a few weights. It's hardly a system breaker )

   When are the combat results tables used (When attacks do more than just hurt)

   Is there an overall reference to the weapons and stuff (No. Once again, gotta collect 'em all. )


Orcs in space: Well, you took your time getting here. I guess orcs never were as technologically skilled as dwarves (see issue 70. ) Not actually related to the earlier one, this is still a very interesting article indeed, talking about adapting the Warhammer 40k Rogue trader rules into a full roleplaying game. The setting is not the most conductive to wandering groups of adventurers, it has to be said, with it's hypertotalitarian government and rampant xenophobia. Still, there are ways to do it, with the Rogue Traders themselves being one of the best options for semi-independent traveling. And there's certainly a rich range of places for you to explore, and challenges to face. The biggest alteration that needs to be made is reducing the lethality slightly, giving characters multiple wound points and rolling on a critical system similar to WHFRP's instead of simply dying when hit, and some basic provisions for resolving noncombat actions. Pretty cool. This reminds me of the time I modded the old Heroquest rules to allow for point buy character generation rather than being stuck with the same 4 pregens. That was pretty conductive for evolving into a roleplaying game as well. This has been refreshing, both tackling a system they haven't mentioned in here before, and taking a distinctive approach to doing so. I strongly approve.


The dragon magazine subsciption page recycles some earlier cover art.


Kesmai and beyond: It's been nearly two years since we heard about this early MMORPG. (see issue 128) Good to see it's still going and even growing, despite the costs of playing. (over $6 an hour. Nowadays people bitch about subscriptions costing $20 a month. You don't know how good you have things. ) Here we see them experimenting with new rules, new levels, new powers, and all that cool stuff. Once again, there are many elements that will seem familiar, but a few that didn't get picked up in later games, such as the way they handle upgrading to the advanced game. Grinding random drops and taking them to craftsmen to get upgraded equipment, boss monsters that are way too tough for any one person, no matter how experienced, they seem to be getting the hang of this medium's quirks. And despite the cost, there always seems to enough people online to have someone to play with. Another cool marker of how far we've come, and how far we still have to go. Makes me curious how long this particular game lasted as a vital developing world before being reduced to a sinecure and eventually shut down. I think it's googling time.


From freighters to flying boats: Star frontiers getting an article as well? This is rather more non D&D stuff in an issue than they've had for quite a while. This is a fairly long article as well, covering boats in the system. This should synergise well with the underwater stuff in issue 110. So here's 9 new vehicles, plus lots of notes on adapting the combat system to water based escapades. Ramming, surface to underwater fights, explosives, specific damage results, escaping sinking ships, (a lot easier than surviving a spaceship's destruction) this all seems pretty servicable. Remember, under the ocean is still almost as mysterious as outer space. The oceans of other planets can be even more so.


Getting it right first time: Oop. A (fourth, fifth? Something like that) guide to the handling of running convention adventures. Surely it would have been better to put this a bit before convention season, so it'd be fresh in the minds of the people about to try that grueling task for the first time. Perhaps Richard W Emerich just went though this crap himself, and that's why it's showing up now. Still, this takes you though in a sensible step by step manner, from the first preparations for your adventure, to the play itself; figuring out what works, what doesn't, what will speed up getting to the fun parts (extra important given tight time considerations.) communicating important details clearly to the players, running the adventure in a fair manner, and just as importantly, a whole bunch of things not to do. One of those articles that definitely shows the hallmarks of the years of refinement, as people have been creating and running adventures like this for over a decade now, and stress testing these ideas in reality rather than just theorizing about what ought to work, or not. And since many of these idea are also pretty beneficial when applied to standard home campaigns, and our writer has a fast-paced entertaining writing style, this is one time I have no problem with them repeating a topic. See you again in another 3-4 years, probably.

Dragon Magazine Issue 149: September 1989

part 3/3


TSR previews: Not one, but two products get the grey box treatment this month. The second monstrous compendium follows hot on the heels of the first one, doubling your selections of officially converted stuff to throw at the players. We're also getting the official packs of character sheets, for those of you who really want to waste money.  

The second two trail maps are out this month TM2 covers the eastern countries of the Known world, while TM3 is for Krynn. Well, Ansalon is a pretty tiny continent. It doesn't need multiple maps like the others would.

Greyhawk isn't being neglected either. On the module side, we have WG10: Child's play. Intended to introduce beginning players and characters to the brutality of RPGA play. Will there be evil dolls, or would that just be too obvious? On the books side, we get The eyes have it, another Rose Estes production. A flying ship drawn by pegasi? Methinks you may be confusing your Mystara and Oerth thematics.

The novels continue, with two second books in trilogies. Kendermore is the second book in the dragonlance prequels. Tasslehoff gets to be the star. Do you want him to get married or not? Buck Rogers gets Hammer of Mars by M S Murdock. Things look bleak for Buck, as RAM squeeze him into a corner. Always darkest before the dawn, even in space.


Spelljammer gets properly advertised. It's out of this world! :groan: I guess that fits the general tone of things in the setting.


The role of books: Child of saturn by Teresa Edgerton is a pretty strong debut, mixing worldbuilding, intrigue, and strong visual descriptions. Now what she needs is some key gimmick to set her apart from all the other fantasy writers.

Light raid by Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice gets a fail result due to taking too many unexplained liberties with the political situation and not engaging in future history worldbuilding in a logical manner. The result feels like a fanfic that has the characters act completely out of character.

Wizard's bane by Rick Cook has one very clever twist that livens up an otherwise somewhat subpar fantasy novel. Still, strong research needs technical skill to turn into gripping stories.

Faerie tale by Raymond E Feist also gets a mixed review. It has lots of cool elements, too many in fact, and tries to cram them all in, cluttering the story up and keeping the characters from getting the development time they deserve. Needs a good editor to streamline and focus things.  

A study in sorcery by Michael Kurland is a fantasy/detective story, seeing him playing with characters and a world created by Randall Garrett. It doesn't do too badly at capturing the personalities of the existing characters, and sets up and demolishes the mystery elements quite well. Still a good idea to have read the earlier books though, as it doesn't explain all the laws of magic it references.

The further adventures of batman, edited by Martin H Greenberg doesn't quite work, partly due to the editing, which fails to give them a consistent tone or any kind of continuity, and partly due to the change in medium from comics to prose, which hurts the character more than expected. Some of the individual stories are cool, particularly Issac Asimov's take on the setting, but as a whole, it's less than the sum of it's parts.

Nightside city by Lawrence Watt-Evans is another sci-fi/private eye story. However it stands out, both due to the worldbuilding, the protagonist, and the ending, which refuses to settle into a status quo like so many of these series. Whether it'll get followed up and continue progressing is another matter altogether, of course.


The role of computers: Curse of the Azure bonds gets 5 star review. Unlike the previous AD&D games, you start off at mid-level straight away, so you won't have to grind through 1st level yet again. You can transfer characters from the previous games, but it'll still be a challenge if you rush through things. It all seems fairly familiar, with the whole range of conversation options, spells directly derived from the game, and elements you'll recognize from the book and module. However, the devil's in the details, and with a plotline that allows you to take plenty of meaningful options and do things in a nonlinear manner, they think it scores highly in this respect. Are the shilling the home company, or was it really that good?

Space quest III is also an adventure game, with a sci-fi twist. With plenty of humour, cut scenes, lots of different activities in the course of completing the adventure, and excellent visuals, it also gets pretty decent marks. Now, if only it were a bit longer and harder, so they didn't finish it so quickly.

Several other interesting tidbits. A boy and his blob gets mentioned. Now there's a nostalgia triggering name. Atari try and get into the handheld console market. I don't remember that at all. It must have done pretty badly. Anyone remember why? Always amusing to see the future that wasn't.


Spock endorses the american cancer society. Eating right is highly logical. At least they're trying to fit in. But it's still bollocks I'd rather not see in this magazine. Man, they'll let anyone in these days if they're wearing a funny hat.


Role-playing reviews:
Cyberpunk is exactly what it sounds like, Mike Pondsmith's game of the dystopian near future, where the corporations are more powerful than the government, and cybernetic augmentation separates the rich from the poor in a very intrinsic way. Build a character, define their past, gear them up, and try and build a future in the harsh urban environments where life is cheap, and knowledge of computer networking is vital. Fun little business, even if it seems a bit dated now, with the internet even more ubiquitous than imagined. Future shock's a bitch. Still, this is another pleasing reminder of how far I've come now.

GURPS autoduel is the roleplaying game version of Car Wars. Seems like evolving board games into full RPG's is a current in thing. This is a relatively grotty future, where things might be a bit run down and resources running out, but there's still more than enough stuff to create finely tuned vehicles and engage in some serious asskicking. With plenty of ongoing support, GURPS is becoming one of Jim's go to systems, as it allows you to easily mix various genres without changing characters.

F.R.E.E Lancers mixes near future tech with relatively gritty superheroics using the Top Secret/S.I system. It seems to be rather a toolkit, as while it's default assumptions involve working with the eponymous organisation, you can strip out either the espionage or superheroic elements without too much trouble. It also avoids one of the other problems this kind of game can suffer, that of making the PC's small fry who can never have any influence on their organization or the big picture. Once again, it gets a pretty positive result. Looks like you're spoiled for choice in this area. Unless it's the usual whitewash problem, which is always a possibility.


DC heroes gets a new edition. Well, all the cool kids are doing it. D&D, top secret, gamma world, ghostbusters, traveler, runequest. Seems you can't move for all the revisions.


Through the looking glass: Some fairly standard miniatures reviews here this month. Unfortunately, for the first time in a while, the photos aren't very well shaded, making some of the bits tricky to make out. I suspect this may be the fault of the people who scanned in the magazines, rather than the original photographers. In any case, it's an irritating lapse in professionalism in a run that's been rather good at that.

Anyway, Thunderbolt mountain miniatures give us a trio of elven kings (on hexagonal bases, curiously) and a swan ship for them to ride in. Both have pretty good construction and detail.

Scotia micro models contribute a load of marines with pulse rifles. They do have some design problems though, with quite a few of them coming to the reviewer with cracks, and the detail not being brilliant. Still useful if you don't have enough variety in your space marines.

Games Workshop have a Blood Bowl pack featured. Star players for each of the 5 main races appear in it. A dwarf with a proton cannon. A cyborg orc. A heavily padded human (he's gonna need it) A high fiving snotling. A spiked shoulder padded halfling. The usual touches of humour are obviously well present and correct.

Ral Patha contribute a fairly bog-standard selection of 12 different fighter models. A variety of eras and weaponry are covered, but nothing is exceptionally good or bad. Not a hugely interesting column here.


Time marches on: Even a strong issue like this runs out of steam eventually. You always have to pay attention to matters of format, page count, structure. And whenever you have to fit in a strict set of numbers, there's either going to be good stuff cut that people would want to see, or filler that they'd rather skip. So it is here, with one of those little single pagers which says little, simply telling you that one of the biggest plot drivers for a game is giving your world a history. One event leads to another, and next thing you know, it's thousands of years later, and you can follow a (not so) logical chain of action and revenge all the way through, such as in LotR. Not a terrible article, but one of those that says nothing new at all to me. I think it's time for a snooze.


Dragonmirth gets disneyfied. Yamara discovers a disturbing fact.

A strong issue, with plenty of good articles, and a higher than usual variety in them as well, that doesn't quite sustain it's momentum all the way through. And while the ratio of good stuff to bad seems pretty high at the moment, they don't seem to be producing the truly classic articles like they used too. Are they in danger of losing people through sheer reliability and lack of drama? Tricky to adventure in overpacified lands. Oh well, it's the big one five oh next issue. Maybe they'll have something special saved up to celebrate. For now, toodle-pipski from me.

Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989

part 1/3


108 pages. Larry Elmore gives us another character who looks very familiar. What diabolical plots does she have for that scarecrow? Since it's october, you can bet horror'll be involved. But there's plenty of different spins to be put on that idea. In 1980, they focussed more on the fiendish side of things. This time, it's mind flayers and other mind-bending alien horrors that'll be exerting their will on your players. Mmm. Mind control and tentacles. Two great tastes that taste great together, especially if you can't get girls the normal way Will it be well crafted oppressive tension and violation, or cheap schlocky scares? Let's crack open this particular musty tome from ages long gone.

In this issue:


Letters: A letter pointing out that the info for the vampire in the new MC is borked. Roger replies that they are already well aware of that, have fixed it in the new printing, and just to be extra generous, are also including this bit of errata later in this issue. Can't leave a monster as popular as that messed up.

A letter with a ton of questions, that require even more lengthy replies. Boiled down, they are Sorta, thanks, role of computers, no, no. Next!

Two rather astute suggestions on getting hold of stuff, and dealing with errata. Roger is suitably chastened, but that doesn't mean he's going to use them. We have our creative independence to consider.


Forum: The forum has both an unusually large number of contributors, and the individual letters are longer than usual. They also spread it over lots of pages throughout the magazine. Guess they had a load of awkwardly sized advertising that they needed to format around. That and the responses to the edition changes are starting to hit. This should be interesting.

David Cody & Ed Kramer writes in in their official role as runners of the Origins convention to rebutt Bryan A Walker's letter from issue 145. Your worries about cancellations and gaming being seen as a negative influence are unfounded. We provide both quality and quantity. Nice to see them paying attention to stuff said in here.

Toby Myers has yet more ideas on how a smartly played dragon could kick the ass of any party it likes, probably without ever even meeting them face-to-face. You know, even really smart bad guys have to sleep too. And a few years napping can really erode your trap setup and support network. Playing them as omniscient creatures with infinite resources and a contingency for everything that means you always play into some xanatos gambit and advance some other plan is just as unrealistic as the other extreme, and probably more unfun for players. As ever, balance please.

S. D. Anderson has some advice on just how common commercially available magic scrolls should be. Once wizards get to name level, they've got better ways to make lots of money than setting up a shop for any peons and adventurers that come along. That's where the cutoff should be.

Ted Collins rebutts S. D. Anderson's little piece on how untouchable characters with ridiculously buffed magic items are. Again, this boils down to how intelligently the characters are played to shift the statistics around. Mobs can beat a single character that is vastly more powerful, especially if they play it smart. So put the smart party against the smart dragon, and watch the fireworks fly. (albeit slowly, given the time both sides spend machinating and preparing their buffs and traps)

Stephen Jorgensen thinks much the same as Ted, and would also like to factor in realistic penalties that people facing multiple enemies at once suffer. Don't forget the fatigue rolls either. Even mook-mowers will start to fade after a few hours. And then you are in trouble. A nice reminder of how cinematic D&D can be, and how little some people like that fact.

Tom Foottit also thinks that S. D. is massively exaggerating how it would turn out in a real situation, rather than a white room simulation. You don't get to 5th level while thinking like a mook. This is going to be like Alycia and Scud all over again, isn't it.

Dennis Rudolph gives his own rather idiosyncratic take on the ideas of cheating and getting more XP for high ability scores. Or less, in his case. Very interesting and worth consideration.

Matt Foster freely admits that he's pretty messed up, and D&D is his main avenue of escape from the loneliness. Spare a thought for the people who don't actually get to play regularly.

Lee Loftis has players who are getting tired of the modules with plotlines, and just want to go back to delving dungeons, killing things and taking their stuff. Please make more modules like that, TSR. Good luck with that one.

Bill McCullough talks about his rather twinked current game, and how it was gradually forced into that state by player pressure, while he wanted something more down-to-earth, but players kept leaving. This is how power creep from edition to edition happens. You pursue the commercial agenda to keep your game from dying, and before you know it, you're a complete sellout.

Anthony N Emmel is also interested in the gradual evolution of the game, and thinks that you can have both hack and slashing and complex roleplaying in the same game, and it'll be all the more fun for the variety. He also points out that the Dragonlance Chronicles, one of the biggest D&D series ever, shows good and evil characters co-existing in the same party. If they can do it, you certainly can.


Who will be the new gods of the forgotten realms? Buy the avatar trilogy to find out. Remember, all the events of the novels are canon, and change the game world accordingly. If you skip anything, you'll be confused when the world in future supplements is different. Welcome to the start of metaplot becoming a big issue, used to encourage you to buy everything for a line, and annoying people who don't want to or can't afford to do that. We'll be seeing loads more of this over the next decade. You have been warned.


Sage advice forgets to format properly this episode, Roger must have been too busy writing to edit properly.

   Why haven't you answered my 1119 questions (because you asked 1119 questions. Skip only has a few pages a month to answer questions in, so he gets to choose his cases. You ain't a beautiful dame with a knack for getting Skip into trouble or a mysterious billionaire, so you get low priority.

   Why are you still answering 1st ed questions (Because so many people haven't switched over yet. And because we genuinely care. We aren't some heartless machine on a constant battle to push the new and shiny at the expense of our previous product. )

   How do you handle fighting a hydra. (it does involve quite a bit of bookkeeping, doesn't it. I'm sure you'll work out a way. )

   What happens if a magic user tries to wield a sword (nonproficiency penalty. Thank god this isn't like that Craaaaazy last edition with it's magical weapon prohibition curses and alignment languages. )

   What does sensory impairment do to your spellcasting. (Lets just say it aint pretty. This is why magic-users become liches. Going blind and deaf when your powers should be at their peak really gets on your nerves. )

   What's with weapon speed factors (oh, no-one uses those. Don't worry your pretty little head. )

   What about the to hit adjustment tables ( Again, you might as well ignore those. They'll just slow us down. Remember your encumbrance rules. Don't tell me you ignore those. Ok, now you've crossed the line. Skip is Not Down with ignoring encumbrance. Don't make me have to cap yo ass. )

   What do polearms look like (What don't they look like. Those craaaazy medieval fighters, favoring ugly but effective over pretty instruments like swords. It's as if they were actually fighting for real, instead of to show off )

   What's a morning star. (What skip shows the laydees the morning after. Yeeeeeaaaaah, baby. )

   Why did unearthed arcana take shields away from assassins (I've already answered this one. Go away)

   Does a girdle of giant strength let you throw a polearm (not effectively)

   What does darkness do to combat. ( -4. Not just for normal invisibility.)

   What's with space requirements for weapons (You don't want to hit your buddies, do you? )

   Can you use an at will power and attack and move in the same round (Oh yes. This is one of the things that makes extraplanar monsters so badass)

   Can magic-users move and cast as well (No. That's what you get for being human and meddling in forces you weren't born too. )

   Can you back off from melee (slowly)

   Can you attack more than one creature if you have multiple attacks (Yes.)

   How long does paralyzation last (Generally a lot less than last edition. We're still not at the point where you get to save again every round though. We haven't completely pussified our game in response to all the wussy whiners yet. )

   Is there any proficiency crossover between weapons (Still no. Not until the complete fighters handbook comes out. Then you can twink out to your hearts content. )

   Does bastard sword's size and speed change when it's used one handed (no)

   Do multipurpose weapons also grant proficiency in the weapons that make them up (no)

   What does charging do (this one is clearly in the book. Why the hell are you wasting Skip's valuable time with this crap )

   What does high dex do for initiative (nothing. zip. nada.)

   Can missile weapons be used in melee. Can I shoot into melee without hitting my buds (more recycling? Have you people learned nothing from Skip. Does Skip struggle in vain? Is Skip's battle against ignorance and stupidity in the big city destined to be never-ending, concluding only when a particularly intractable case finally wears down the last of Skip's sanity. Look, Skip is already referring to Skip in the third person! Only mad people do that. )

   Can you use a random object for nonlethal combat (Depends what it is)

   How far can you throw improvised weapons (not very far, usually)

   How do you handle gaze attacks ( See Lew Pulsipher's great article back in issue 50 :teeth ting: )

   Do you suffer a penalty for attacking more than once in a round (if you attack two-handed)

   Can vorpal weapons sever giant creatures heads ( depends on your position)
   
Does unholy water hurt paladins (yup. It burnsses)

   Can you turn undead and attack (another reused question? The answer has not changed since last time, so bog off)

   Can creatures that can hit magical creatures resist quivering palm automatically (no. That's some pretty torturous logic you're trying there. )

   Can torches be used as melee or missile weapons (Oh yes. As the movies show, this is actually quite effective )

   How quickly can you draw a weapon (fast enough for it to be irrelevant )

   Why do you only get one attack a minute (our abstraction. Let us remind you of it)

   How do you determine if a sap hits the enemies head properly (flip a coin. Then hit them on the head while they're watching it. )

   Can you hit sleeping opponents automatically (no, just with a +4 bonus. Don't think you're likely to take them out in one hit)

Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989

part 2/3


The dragon's bestiary gives us tons of cool information on illithids and their relations. As creatures from another world, even when they've evolved to fill niches analogous to our own, the under the hood means of doing so and physiology is quite different. As well as talking about the existing monsters that are native to those lands, they give us a rough template to convert earthly creatures into their gruesome sunset analogues. So high level adventurers now have a whole new environment to venture too when mundane wilderness encounters no longer offer any challenge at all. This is very pleasing indeed. They've already had an ecology, but this really builds them up quite a bit more than the old one did. And they include a bunch of new monsters as well.

Cessrid are essentially Illithid dogs. They have hairless slimy bodies, webbed feet, and sharp beaks surrounded by tentacles, but the hunting principle is the same. They're as smart as the average person, so their tactics'll likely be pretty advanced as they stalk you and rip you up. They remember to reference the Gith dogs from issue 117 and their relationships, which adds to the awesome quotient another little bit.

Embrac are slow moving carnivorous trapper creatures. They may not actually be plants, but they definitely make me think of Audrey II. Like everything else here, they're smart and psionic enough that you have a chance of negotiating with them.

Kigrid are the illithid eqivalent of pigs, large omnivorous scavengers that'll rip you up and eat you, and probably much of your gear as well. They might be smarter than you, but their perpetual hunger means they don't get much time for philosophising or scheming.

Saltor are the illithids equivilent of baboons. Knuckle walking slimy skinned, tentacle mouthed monstrosities, they too like to eat brains if at all possible, and implant their young in your head. They can read minds and levitate. They'll also stoop to throwing rocks at you, and are often capable of dimensional travel, so don't think you can outmaneuver them easily and pick them off from a distance. Seems like you'll be challenged well into the teens if you venture to these realms.


The sunset world: Stephen Inniss continues what he started in the last article, extensively detailing a possible homeworld for the mind flayers and similar dungeon based abberations. Actually, it seems like he probably intended them to be the other way round, with this giving the elaborate descriptions, then that filling in more crunch, but so it goes. Silly Roger. He starts from a fairly solid scientific base, that of a tidally locked world orbiting an ancient red star, and then starts building up the fantastical elements, all the highly evolved and psionically capable creatures that are perfectly adapted to this brutal environment, and pretty effective when invading the underdark of your home world. They may not be able to stand the yellow sun, but with minds like theirs, you can bet they have some scheme to extend their dominance over the entire world, enslave us like they did the gith all those years ago. Only this time, they ain't gonna screw it up. Combining a fictional account with some complex and well thought out biological details, this has both useful information and drama in spades, massively surpassing their original ecology in depth and inventiveness, if not humour. Between the two articles, this is probably the best contribution he's ever made, avoiding the dryness he is often prone too, while retaining his skill at detail creation, and a classic pair who's influence is still seen in mind flayers today. If the rest of the issue can live up to these standards, it'll be another top tenner to celebrate.


Fangs alot: As they mentioned earlier, the proper revised vampire stats. Woo. Not much to say here. Extensive collection of powers and weaknesses, horribly unfair energy draining, eastern variant able to become invisible, you know the drill. Now let's chill for a bit. Or maybe not. We must be eternally vigilant against further errata attacks! Errata attacks, errata attacks. We must defeat those errata attacks. Great. That's going to be stuck in my head all day now.


Palladium fantasy takes us to the frozen northern wilderness


The well-rounded monster hunter: Call of Cthulhu once again makes an incursion into the magazine. Seems fitting, as illithids and their slowly dying world do have a definite lovecraftian influence. On the other hand, the subject isn't particularly connected, since it's just adding and clarifying a bunch of skills. Like far too many systems with lots of finely granulated skills, BRP is prone to having skills added in modules with little explanation, that would often seem to overlap with existing ones.  The more of these are added, the less competent existing characters become, and the more scope for confusion, with characters being useless at something they really would need for their job, and some being simply better than others, because they picked the broader sounding names for their skills. Man, what a headache. There's also the problem that in roll-under systems, people tend to stick with the fixed difficulty level determined by the stat, rather than properly scaling the DC's. Both issues many more recent games successfuly avoid. With mathematical analyses and ideas to fix these problems, this is a quite well done, but not hugely interesting article. You'll need a bit more humour or genuine inventiveness to get above solid.


TSR Previews: Our big release this month, slightly late, is the first campaign setting for 2nd edition. Spelljammer! Get up there, and get ready for crossovers.

D&D is also trying something new, with PC1: Tall tales of the wee folk. Orcs of Thar seems to have proved popular enough to create a spin-off line focussed on making various races available as PC's. Very neat. Will they be horribly unbalanced?

Confusingly, we have three books called Waterdeep this month. The avatar trilogy comes to an end, with Richard Awlinson completing this tale of gods losing their powers, dying, and being replaced. The module of the same events, FR3, also sees Midnight becoming the new god of magic, while you don't. Are you going to get off the train at this stop? And the trail map of the same name actually covers the whole of the western side of the Realms. Surely you can find somewhere nice to stay for a while until all the gods stop tromping around the place.

And finally, we have the Art of the AD&D fantasy game. Hello again Mr Rehash. Enjoy your time on the coffee table. So this is the first month where every single one of their products are directly D&D focussed. Curious that this should happen just after the edition change. Wonder who made that managemental decision.


Nobody lasts forever: Or do they? Superman and Batman certainly show no sign of dying for good, despite a few big plotlines putting them out of action temporarily. Even lesser superheroes have amazing capacities for making comebacks, through incredibly implausible plot twists. Any superhero RPG that wants to properly emulate it's source material needs to take account of that. This tackles that in a fairly oblique way though, trying to keep things purely in setting, rather than offering metagame manipulation methods. The way that they die, the things that happen if they do, and exactly how long people with enhanced lifespans live. Another solid bit of cataloguing, with a few amusing touches, but nothing that blows me away. Plus there's some more editing sloppiness that detracts a bit from it, although I can work out what's missing. Ho hum.  


Fiction: the serpent of aledorn by John P Buentello. An evil wizard has cursed a village. The place needs a hero to save them! A typical scenario. But as is often the case, there is a twist. Two connected twists, in this case. The villagers are entirely deserving of their punishment, and the person called upon to rescue them figures this out and has some suitably ironic insurance to ensure their attempt to pull the same treachery on him gets what it deserves. Ok, so it's not quite in the same league as the pied piper of hamelin, but it's very much in the same spirit. Pretty neat, and another one with a strong scientific edge. They do seem to be doing that quite a bit this issue.

Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989

part 3/3


Role-playing reviews: Ken takes HARN to task over it's lengthy hesitation about publishing modules. As a busy writer, he wants his adventures ready to run. Just having loads of setting details without a direction is akin to the kind of GM who has hundreds of pages on their game world but never lets people play it, because it's "not ready yet" Oookay then :backs off: But anyway, they've finally caved to public pressure and produced published prefab modules for peons like you. And since despite his gripes, he does like the line, he's going to give them a good reviewing.

Araka-kalai is a fairly sketchy little book, halfway between an area supplement and a traditional D&D style module. Venture into the caverns of the spawner of monsters, and deal with the cult that worships him. With seven different scenarios in a 26 page book, it isn't going to win any awards for pure depth, but they do include plenty of background material applicable to all of them, and any other adventures set in the area you may concoct. And the adventures included do have some neat twists. Seems a fairly decent place to put a starting party in, their equivalent of keep on the borderlands.

100 bushels of rye is a rather more narrative focussed adventure. While the path of the adventure is fairly linear, the direction of the final resolution is very much in the players hands. Generic enough to be easily adaptable to other gritty medieval type systems, and the setting details can be used repeatedly. Once again, Ken recommends it.

The staff of fanon (now that would be a scary power. Making fanfics into official parts of the continuity. The horrors that you could inflict on literature. ) is a rather more high magic, fantastical adventure. Still, it doesn't skimp on the detail or the integration into the game world, and the strange things the players will encounter along the way do have a reason and rhyme to them.

The broken covenant of Calebais is an ARS Magica game. Mark Rein·Hagen's pretentious talk about roleplaying as art is already well in force, making Ken roll his eyes. But their talk about pushing the boundaries of gaming is more than backed up in the scenario, with the world, plot and character building being exemplary. On the other hand, the visual presentation, section organisation and editing are a bit slipshod. (no surprise there ) Still, it's very distinctive indeed when compared to the current set of adventures. And we know what the future has in store for their ideas.

Flight 13 is a GURPS module, combining the horror and space supplements to create a goofy 1950's style retro-futuristic adventure in which the PC's are captured by creatures from beyond the stars and put through a bunch of weird tests. It can be used in any vaguely modern game, but take care, for it may disrupt the tone of some.


The role of computers: Populous! Simulating godly machinations since 1989. Now there's a game for you. Empower your followers, get more worshippers, kick the butt of the other gods followers and take over the world. Can be played against the computer, or online against a real person. Muahaha. A direct ancestor of Black and White, this is one I remember. They give it a five star review too. Now that's why God would actually hate RPG's if he were real and anything like the old testament god. Puny mortals pretending to have my station? Hubris! Smite them!

Axe of Rage is an arcade fighter/platformer. Take the role of a male or female barbarian, and hack and slash your way through all sorts of beasties real and fantastical. Enjoy the gore, and collect items so you can hack and slash even better. Sounds rather familiar, really.

Hidden Agenda is a game of political management in a fictional south american country. Pick your ministers, and try and balance the interests of the ridiculous number of power blocs to stay popular, while dealing with unexpected crises. Tricky, but probably a lot easier than real politics, especially if you read the guidebook.

Gauntlet's mac version only allows for two players at a time, not the 4 player dungeon-crawling extravaganza certain other platforms support. Still, most of the other elements seem to be in place, including the endlessly respawning monsters. We're really getting into familiar territory now.
 
Interestingly, they start a new section, Dragon Bytes, featuring mini reviews sent in by Joe Q Public. Well, they've been doing it in the clue corner for a while. And it does mean less work for them.

Trust and betrayal, the legacy of Sibot is another very different game of diplomacy and second guessing your opponents. You play a psychic, and have to use various mental powers with rock-paper-scissors relationships to one-another to beat them. The talks before the battle, where you try and figure out their capabilities and preferred tactics are a crucial part of the game.  Sounds like poker players would do well with this one.
 
Barbarian gets a rather sketchy review. Sure you've got to kill the monsters and save the kingdom, but is it top down? side scroller? first person? Arcade, roleplaying? I am not feeling very informed. Makes me wonder if this little experiment is worth it and going to catch on.


Darkest secrets: Top Secret's article this month is about the idea of PC's having hidden advantages and flaws. One of those things that has become fairly well known since then, with BESM being probably their most notable user. But this is the first time I've seen them in the magazine, so it's another fairly innovative bit of design tech at this point. And the idea of getting greater power in exchange for enabling some interesting plot surprises along the line can seem like a win-win situation for many people. So this is a rather cool article, in an issue that is proving to be full of good ideas, pushing things forward. And Roger sneaks in another amusing reference to the fact he has the same name as a certain film star. If they keep this up, this issue will well live up to it's big number.


A final frontier of our own: An article for star trek as well? We haven't seen this many non D&D articles in a single issue since the ARES section ended. This is a rather long one too, bringing the usual campaign building advice to the rather specific future and tropes of the Star Trek universe and narrative conventions. You don't want to end up like some of the so-called official books, which mangle the characterizations and don't follow the tone. You need a strong ensemble, but you also need an actual chain of command, with the other PC's (usually) deferring to the person playing the captain. Unlike the shows, you can have your characters not being the big people in charge, at least at first, and advancing through the ranks as the campaign progresses. You can also change the ship as well, upgrading as they become more experienced, or giving them a tricky mission using something smaller to shake them from complacency. Advice on handling death (ah, the redshirts and officers distinction. ) the various races, the prime directive, roleplaying  in the star trek universe, and lots of other stuff is examined in plenty of depth, and several examples from the writer's own campaign as well, which earns him a few extra marks. One of the freshest and most in depth articles of this sort in a long time.       Once again, a very pleasing read.


Unspeakable secrets made easy: Dean Shomshak gets a second CoC article published in the same issue. He is doing well for himself and the game. This is about the proper application of eldritch sanity imperiling texts in your game. If you make up a new one every session, then players don't have a chance to develop the proper dread of them, because they can't even keep track of them. Far better to have a few new ones, plus the old familiars that the players can really get their dread on over, and dole them out conservatively. It keeps the players from getting jaded, and their characters from going mad too quickly. He also gives his own examples, quite possibly from his own campaign. Yet another solid birdie, this is a good reminder that pacing is crucial to a campaign. You can't be all shiny, top volume and full speed the whole time or people will get fatigued and bored, and quit. The music industry is learning it to their chagrin, and gaming needs to remember it too.


Dragonmirth mocks flumphs. Well, all the cool kids are doing it. Poor flumphs. Yamara takes on a commission from some decidedly mysterious and dubious patrons, to retrieve a decidedly dubious looking device.

Although not as big a step outwards in scope or spectacular in terms of celebrations as issue 100, this has managed to be a very good issue, with both the classic D&D articles, and the far greater than normal number of non D&D ones. After a year that has been very short on both of those, this has been nicely refreshing. Chances are, like that issue, it'll be an outlier rather than an indicator of future directions, but it was still fun. Let's press onward. Issue 200 is waiting, and I know that's an even more spectacular one than this. The big question is just how long and rocky the road between will be.

Dragon Magazine Issue 151: November 1989

part 1/3


108 pages. Looks like we have yet another oriental special this month. Even though they haven't updated it to the new edition, it's still a popular topic, with a huge slush pile of articles for them to mine. They're still far from scraping the barrel on this one, although depending on how many of their submissions are badly written and incredibly twinked, Roger might be sick of reading them. Still, that doesn't compare with how sick he is of the ZOMG D&D is satanic and causes serial killers/suicides hoopla. His editorial is devoted to that business yet again, this time in response to a kid who was obsessed with a Stephen King book and did this. :facepalm: Some people will go nuts regardless of their cultural surroundings. All they do is influence the directions their neuroses and aggressions go in. Let it die, people. Yawn.

In this issue:

Grenadier resorts to serious cheesecake to sell their wares.


Letters: A letter asking them to go twice monthly. Hey, didn't I have that idea too. Roger responds to that concept with terror. He's already spent some time editing two magazines at once, and has no desire to repeat the experience. That treads too close to those recent memories of 60 hour a week workdays. You know, you could cut the size of each issue in half. Then you'd only have to fill the same amount each month, maybe less if you formatted it right.

A letter full of questions about where stuff has gone. The daily planet gaming supplement was an advert. The world gamers guide was a victim of it's own success. The Dragon magazine best of's were probably canned because upper management :rumble of thunder: don't want to pay any more royalties to certain people who were forced out in 1986, and shall remain unmentioned as much as possible. Similarly, reprinting the Fineous treasury would involve giving money to people no longer in favour with the company.

Another letter suggesting that people use BBS's for roleplaying. Roger has no objection to the idea, as long as people don't charge to play anything derived from TSR properties. He points out that Steve Jackson Games are even more progressive on this front, with their own official Illuminati boards. He may have change his tune sometime in the near future.


Forum: John Wommer tells his own fun tale of playing evil characters. Or rather, how he put them off the idea by sending them to a parallel world where evil (including dark counterparts of the PC's ) was in the ascedant, and good characters were rare outlaws who really had to struggle to survive. That more than satisfied their transgressive urges.

Toby Myers has his own contributions on the endless alignment debate, albeit not very good ones. There are plenty of personality traits not connected with morality you know, and even true neutral characters can exhibit complex combinations of them. Don't get all compartmental on us.

Steve Williams shows how you can get a gaming group together without having to interact directly with people. Flyers and adverts on shop boards! Still far more useful when thinking locally than the internet.

A nameless letter (didn't they say they wouldn't publish those? ) gives some rather lengthy information on the history of castles in reality, and their problems in keeping people with magic powers out. There is a very good reason why they aren't built anymore, and they quite possibly wouldn't exist in the same form in fantasy games. Rather a persistent problem, isn't it.

Michael Hents, Eric M Paulson and Gregory H Graham get a combined letter, expressing their contempt for wimpy AD&D players, their overpowered characters, and their stuff must be done by the book attitude. Still, it looks like the new edition is more friendly to you changing the rules to make the game your own, like the old D&D rules. They phrase it in a rather amusing manner too. This is definite flamebait. Aligning AD&D 2nd ed and Basic D&D vs AD&D 1st edition? Muahaha. I look forward to seeing if this gets responses.

Joseph D'Amico is on the other side of the D&D vs AD&D debate. AD&D is far more logical and has far more options, so it's the better game. Hnah. What do you say to that?

Robert Morrison, on the other hand prefers D&D, going into considerable detail on how the weapon mastery system in the Master set is both more flavourful and better balanced than AD&D weapon specialisation. And it encourages roleplaying more as well. Oh, the controversy.

Alan Grimes thinks that computer RPG's aren't true roleplaying games, and will never replace the thrill of actual interaction with real people around a table, and a DM who can just make stuff up in response to your trying something not covered by the rules. Let's hope the day never comes when they supplant tabletop gaming completely.

Jason Dunn agrees with this in fewer words, although he does admit also enjoying Pool of Radiance. You can't play a computer in the car. Yes, but many people can't read in the car either, because nausea quickly results. I'm afraid I have to ooze envy at you.

Thomas M Kane thinks that a D&D group is no more tricky to organize than, say, a football team. If we can keep spreading the word, it has an entirely reasonable chance of becoming a commonly known and accepted pastime in a few decades.
 
Derek K Lechman also thinks it's the human factor that makes RPG's genuinely satisfying. Plus it's a lot cheaper than buying a new computer game each time you finish one. Looks like people are pretty much in agreement here. But how many of them will have drifted away from RPG's in 20 years time, while computers still play a huge part in their lives. It's easy to be cynical when you have the aid of hindsight.


Sage advice goes back to tackle oriental adventures stuff again. Guess there's still plenty of people confused about it's rules.

   What do birth ranks mean (mo money mo prestige mo problems)

   What do the birthright tables mean (depends how many siblings you have )

   How often do you encounter animal generals (only when it's plot relevant. Random generation has no place when dealing with creatures like this. )

   Can samurai become daimyos ( If they're badass enough. )

   Can oriental characters be psionic (oh yes)

   How much are gems worth in oriental games (no change)

   Why aren't there oriental adventures character sheets (what's wrong with the regular ones. They all work in the same way.)

   How many slots does calligraphy cost (2)

   How many proficiencies do monks and yakuza get (like everyone else, never enough )

   Can you use the wu jen's spell learning method elsewhere (er, it's the same as regular wizards anyway, you dumbass. Didn't you notice you were already using it )

   Do oriental characters have to train like western ones (You've asked this one before.)

   Why aren't battle axes two handed (because we say they aren't)

   Can gajin characters learn oriental languages. (Yes. Note that Skip does not approve of you using the G word. Skip won't cap yo ass this time, but there'd better not be a next time. And don't even think of using the N word. )

   How many martial arts styles can you learn (as many as you have the slots for. Remember, specialization gets you more badass moves than dabbling though. )

   Why is kara-tur's calendar missing two weeks (Oops. we forgot that the forgotten realms year is different to earth's. Awooga awooga! Emergency Retcon! Emergency Retcon! There. All better. Now let us never speak of this again. )

   What's the random encounter table for dungeons (A different one for each dungeon. See our great hordes of modules for plenty of examples. If you make your own dungeon, part of the fun is making up your own.)

   Can gajin (BANG! Don't say you weren't warned, bitches. Skip is not in a merciful mood today.)

   What level can wu jen research spells (Any level. Note this does not let them gain spells more powerful than they have. )

   I still don't understand the difference between style sequences and power groups ( Still? Skip sighs. )

   Can ninja use all their other classes powers (yes)

   Are chain and scale mail metallic armours (are you blind? Have you no sense of touch? Yes. )

   What maneuvers can you use with a new MA style (your choice. Try not to mix them up too much)

   How long are turns, rounds and segments in the orient (same as ever. We may have messed up the calendar, but we're not going to change these. It's still the same basic game. )

   I don't understand the proficiency rules (Yeah yeah. Just ignore them )

   How much damage do needles do (Not much, especially in D&D. This is why you poison them. )

   What domain do samurai get at name level (none automatically. They have to go to the effort of building it themselves. Still, they probably have an easier time than bushi or kensai.)

   How much does oriental equipment weigh (same as western stuff. Did Skip not say last time that everything not specifically said to be different is the same. Don't make Skip say it again.)

   I lose an ancestral weapon, do I have to die trying to get it back or commit suicide. (no, but your honor score won't be happy. Social pressure's a bitch.)

   Is weapon catch made against AC10 like Leap (no, as it's opposed by an enemies skill.)

   Is there a honor penalty simply for revealing that you are a ninja (no)

   What's up with page 50. (inverted formatting. Barely worth mentioning. )

   Are lajatang two-handed (yes)

   What's the conversion rate between west and east (Unpredictable! You'll have to roll and hope. Haggling never hurts.)

   How much can fit in a sword's secret compartment. (Several teaspoons worth. If it's a really big weapon you might be able to manage as much as a beer can. :waggles eyebrows: )

   What are the rules for oriental characters two weapon fighting (Same as it ever was. We're wicked and we're lazy.)

   Can you spend slots on two weapon fighting (no. Once again, stop badgering me with your twinkedness)

   Do ninja get XP bonuses for high dex (No, that's a boner. Maybe the joker put it in to catch out batman. Having fewer levels than you think you do can be a shock, after all.)

   What happens when a high level ninja knows all ninja weapons (they can learn any other weapon. Ninja are versatile. )

   What are the stats for badgers.( Use the stats for racoon dog. Do not use the stats for aurumvorax. )

   What's the initiative bonus for knowing iaijutsu (That power doesn't work like that. Do you even read the descriptions at all.)