General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
Dear God they were an exercise in tedium! They were a cruel torturous joke unleashed by savage proto-techno-programmers hell bent on grammatically twisting a certain 12 year old boys fragile mind at the time.
Umm, I totally disagree. I still enjoy playing the old Infocom classics (favorite: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I loved my Magnetic Scrolls adventures (favorite: Fish!) and was overjoyed when Legend Entertainment continued the tradition (favorite: Eric the Unready).
If it hadn't been for text-based adventures I'd probably never gotten involved with either computers or roleplaying games!
80 pages. The theme of this issue, if any, seems to be assessment and examination. Editing gets a good look at, as do DM styles, the latest conventions, and the rules of the game. Lets see if they come out of it with ideas on how games should be better done.
In this issue:
Dragon Rumbles: A very interesting introduction this month, as they talk about the editing and rejections process. Lots of people send in crap. And lots of people send in stuff that isn't crap, but they don't feel is appropriate to the remit of the magazine. Pay attention to this, and maybe you've get a slightly better chance of being published. And don't be discouraged if you get rejected. Just read the feedback, pick yourself up and try again. After all, we've got a big magazine to fill every month, plus we want to publish other stuff as well. Your odds aren't that bad (yet)
Out on a limb: Lots of stuff this issue. A letter of commentary, mostly positive, apart from some minor caveats on len lakofka's generous treasure awarding policy.
A letter questioning why the angels in issue 35 have no psionic ability detailed, which recieves a reply from the original author that promptly gives them plenty of extra abilities, plus takes the opportunity to get some supplemental roleplaying advice in.
A letter from Roger Moore questioning Len's decision to make cold magic work less well on the negative material plane. Which is replied with the question of whether something should be more or less effective in an area where it is common, and if immunities or vulnerabilities take precedence over one another. Ahh, philosophy. How abstract issues suddenly become deadly serious when it's a question of double-or nothing to damage, or somesuch.
A letter objecting to the characterization of anti-paladins as cowardly treacherous s, by someone who would prefer them as dark noble anti-heroes with their own twisted sense of honour and loyalty to their dark masters. (and soulfull eyes, impossibly huge swords, and long hair that flows in the wind, I'll wager :rolleyes: ) To which they reply meh, they aren't official anyway, do what you like.
A letter commenting on the misconceptions about the game that many gamers seem to have, and requesting that they make the game more friendly to newcomers. To which they reply that a new basic set is in the works, and hopefully it'll satisfy you. Remember, D&D and AD&D are different games, and should be treated as such.
A letter from Gary that is generaly positive about articles in recent issues, in diliberate contrast with his brutal snark a few issues ago.
Another letter of praise, this time from one of the playtesters at SPI, for giving them this wonderfull hobby.
And finally, a letter questioning Gary's refusal to allow angels into the game officially when he is quite happy to have devils, demons and hells, and his apparent contradictions on if you should change the game to suit your needs or not. To which he actually gives a good reply. D&D is the one you can house rule to suit your needs. AD&D is the one that must be played exactly as written, otherwise characters cannot be scored and given worldwide rankings in tournament modules fairly. And he doesn't want to stat up angels while being perfectly happy doing so to demons, because if you stat something up, then people can kill it. And while he is happy to facilitate people killing demons in their imagination, he doesn't want them killing angels in his game. Which I guess has a certain logic behind it. (I seem to remember he was a Jehovah's witness, or some such.) And I guess this is where the "if it has stats, it can be killed" meme gets it's first airing. Nice to be able to pinpoint another piece of history.
What? A third Witch class? :rolleyes: Well, it has been two years, and as they say, the last issue that covered this is long out of stock, but still, I find this bit of topic recycling tiresome. Particularly in the Old D&D mileu, I fail to see why you need to distinguish them from any other magic-user. And I think they realize that as well, as they've put a lot of effort into editing and refining this article. As with the anti-paladin, they do not recommend letting them be used as PC's, but they are mechanically robust enough to be used as such. Although they will overpower regular magic-users almost as much as rangers and paladins outclass regular fighters. Still, even if you don't use the class, they also have lots of new spells to pilfer for your game. At least they aren't printing overpowered classes every other issue like they did back in the strategic review days
The "real" witch: Tom Moldvay talks historical crap, and about his design goals in making this class. A very meh article that fails to give any insights we didn't know already.
Conventions 1980: Origins gets 5/10, hampered as it was by overcrowding and unofficial hawkers squatting outside. Gencon gets 8/10, while pacificon gets 7/10, as both were rather better organized. All once again suffered from the demand rather exceeding the supply, as the hobby grows rapidly. Nice to see them putting an actual scoring system in, instead of just descriptions. Hopefully that'll be repeated next year.
Survival tips for the slave pits: Another con tournament over, another set of classic modules gets unleashed upon the general public. The slaver series. (A) Oh yeah. This article gives some hints about them, and names the winners, as well as general tips on how to excell in a con gaming situation. Think fast, think smart, and work together well with your team to get as far as you can in the time limit. Remember, this is a competition, and there are winners and losers. And the GM shouldn't forget it either, he should be playing the monsters as smart as they should be, not pulling any punches. Yet another reminder that AD&D was originally designed to be played competitively, and this could easily spill over into full on antagonism. Maybe we should stick to normal D&D.
He's the top Dungeon Mentzer: A profile of Frank Mentzer, the winner of the 4th AD&D DM's tournament. Another name we'll be seeing again in the future. Good to see someone getting noticed and employed primarily through talent than because they know friends of friends.
Sage advice: Looks like they realized their mistake of last issue, and are now using surnames to differentiate who answered each question. Ha. Anyway. Ton's of questions this issue, so let's not waste time.
Is a paladins protection from evil aura 1 inch or 10 foot in radius? (Both. It's 1 inch in miniatures measurement, which equals 10 feet inside, or 10 yards outside in game. How does that happen? I dunno. Maybe the ambient evil of the dungeon is pushing against the aura and compressing it. )
Can lawful good characters use poisoned weapons? (it depends on your DM, but we reccommend if they do so regularly they cease to be lawful good.)
Issue 35 said that thieves cannot be neutral good, but the PHB says they can. What gives? (Yeah, Jean was wrong about that one. Bad Jean. I cast Drawmij's instant spanking on you.)
Do you get the same XP whether you kill something with a weapon, spell or psionics.(did we ever say anything that suggests otherwise?)
We had a bad adventure where one of the characters got level drained, and then next session he tried to pretend that adventure never happened. What should we do. (Enforce continuity properly. He know the risks when he started playing. No retcon's. He should count himself lucky he didn't get killed outright.)
Can magic-users take their spellbooks with them on adventures? (both a good and bad idea. They need them to recharge their spells, but they are also heavy and expensive, and if they get lost or damaged you're screwed. Decisions, decisions. )
Do giants get a save when you hit them with a hammer of thunderbolts. (no, but you still can't instakill giant gods with this trick)
Do you get a saves vs energy draining and arrows of slaying. (no on both counts. Surely the fact they have to roll to hit in the first place is enough of a chance for you. )
What happens if a 2nd level illusionist casts color spray at 2 bugbears. (read the spell again. This one is perfectly clear)
Is a cleric making a personal request to their deity every time they recharge a 3rd level+ spell (since they can withhold it, yes. Omnimultitasking is a pretty handy power deities have.)
Do I need to make multiple saving throws if hit by the same type of attack more than once in a round.(Yes. Yes, this makes carrion crawlers a pain in the ass with their 10 paralyzing tentacles. Attack them at range or something instead of trying to fight them head on.)
Can a paladin initiate a fight? (If the opponent is evil, yes. They are holy warriors, and good does not mean stupid. This is why they get detect evil as an innate power in the first place.)
If I get polymorphed into a human, can I surpass my level limits? (no, its only a temporary magic change, not a real change of species. You'd need to die and be reincarnated in a new race, or something else permanent for that to work.)
Can dispel magic dispel anti magic shell(no)
How can I optimize my characters to win in tournaments? (You can't. You get given pregens so everyone starts on an equal footing. We don't trust you enough to let you use your regular campaign characters. )
Can I become dual class if I find an item that raises my stats to meet the requirement? (no, it needs to be an innate boost.)
What level does the hand of vecna cast at (over niiine thouuusand!!!! Sorry, 21st actually)
Are multiple haste spells cumulative (hell no, neither additive or multiplacative. That would just be totally broken.)
Can I cast spells that only require a pointed finger as a somatic component while entangled (No. Stop trying to weasel your way around the general rules by using the specifics of flavour text. )
If you raise a baby dragon, will it have your alignment. (no. Nature is stronger than nurture when it comes to morals in D&D. )
What is the flying creature on the MM's cover ( a red dragon. Would we so dumb as to have a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual that didn't have a dragon on the cover?)
What are the stats of the snakes created by sticks to snakes (here you go. No, they don't get poisonous bites. No swarms of instakill monsters for you. That would be too powerfull for a 2nd level spell. )
Larva and su monsters have incomplete alignments. (oops. neutral evil, and chaotic neutral, respectively)
The text and statblock of the mind flayers entry contradict each other. (So they do. Looks like more bloody errata to sort out for the next printing. The text is the right one, by the way)
What is the difference in tracking ability between a 1st and 12th level ranger? (None. Ha ha.)
Do you always lose a level when you change alignment (Yes. Consistency in holding a wrong position will get you further than being a flip-flopper. Just like real world politics. )
D&D in Germany: A very interesting article, particularly as it's published entirely unedited, to keep all the original author's idiosyncratic phrasings. And it looks like roleplaying has a small but exceedingly enthusiastic following there. You ought to pay more attention to translating and promoting your games over there. Before you know it, they'll be producing their own games, so they don't have to deal so much with translations, import times and costs. And then one of their homegrown games'll overtake D&D in popularity. But that's enough smug hindsight for now.
How do you rate as a GM? Find out by letting your players fill out this feedback form. Very specific to the tropes of D&D, and quite comprehensive, this feels a bit anachronistic, but if you're dungeoncrawling, it should certainly give you plenty of feedback on your GM'ing style, and if you need to change anything. Just don't try and use it in a Vampire game.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len attempts to clear up the question of exactly how many and what types of actions are allowed each combat round. As he has done several times already, he overcomplicates things somewhat, putting in tons of dull clauses and clarifications, and the rules certainly don't have the elegance of the 3rd ed full/standard/move system. I guess someone's got to do the experimenting and find out what doesn't work, so the rest of us can benefit in the future. But unlike last month, this bit of work in progress fails to hold my interest.
Dragons bestiary: This month we have Amazons, which do exactly what you'd expect, with extra helpings of mysandry. Tolwar, trunkless elephants who instead use telekinetic powers to manipulate things. (and throw waterballs at you, just for fun.) and Lythlyx, another strange Ed Greenwood monster that will make it into the forgotten realms setting.
Now you see it...: Talk of illusions and D&D's disbelief rules. They point out phantasmal force was not the best name for an illusion spell, creating false expectations in the minds of some gamers of what it was capable of. And leaving making disbelief up to the declarations of the players is very subjective. And not really fair when it's NPC's being subjected to illusions. (one reason I love PvP) A reminder that there are some things that are pretty much impossible to balance against everything else in an open ended social system, and trying too hard to do so will only make the game horribly restrictive, as 4e shows.
A 12 page Traveller Adventure, Canard, put in the middle of the magazine. Unlike their usual custom, they do not interrupt their normal page numbering for this one. Which is vaguely awkward, but these things happen. A pretty standard location based dungeon crawl transplanted to a sci-fi setting.
Reviews: Azhanti high lightning, a Traveller supplement, looks pretty spiffy, with tons of colour foldout extras, and an improved system for shipboard combat.
Dragonquest, The first RPG from SPI arrives and gets reviewed, after being previewed a few months ago. Pretty favourable, albeit with a big editing error in the review where they lost the start of a sentence. They seem to think it's more refined than either D&D or runequest. But refinement does not equal long term commercial success. Oh, reviewers. How much influence do you really have on the commercial success of a product?
Hero, (not to be confused with the movie or the system that is currently in it's fifth edition) a mini-game where you brave a dungeon and rescue the princess, gets a short but sweet review. They seem to be putting more emphasis into making each review stand out this issue, with big captions and clearer divisions between each one. Not a bad idea.
Squad Leader: Another article that compresses a full scenario into half a page. Which is nice. But doesn't leave me with much more to say about it.
Up on a Soap box: Larry DiTillio replies to Doug Bachmanns reply to his article from issue 36 about morality in fantasy. Which is exactly the kind of thing this forum should be about. Unfortunately, the argument itself degenerates into didacticism and ends with the trite old "there's room for both playstyles as long as everyone has fun, no-ones really right or wrong" saying. Put some fire into your argument, ya damn dirty liberal. I started reading this magazine for the flamewars.
Hate orcs? You'll love this campaign: Advice on running a campaign where everyone is of the same race, in this case dwarves. You may want to loosen the racial class restrictions a little, and of course, tailoring the encounters and plot appropriately is a must. One of those bits of advice that seems rather sketchy and superfluous these days, as entire splatbooks have since been written on individual races and classes. Still, I guess that stuff had to start from somewhere.
The electric eye: Space games 3, one of those cassettes with 4 games on it, gets reviewed. With two star trek games, plus a star wars one, I wonder about if it was properly licensed. There did seem to be quite a bit more of that stuff happening then. But then, games were cheaper to produce then. An oddly large amount of attention is being paid to the average playing times of the various games. Not as good as tom's reviews a few issues ago.
Dragonmirth is here, and Znutar, Fineous fingers, Wormy, and Jasmine are all present and firing on all cylenders. How pleasing and unusual.
Another very bulky feeling issue indeed, with several more things that will be developed on and go on to bigger things in the future. Unfortunately, the interesting articles are broken up by quite a lot of tedious stuff, including lots of overcomplicated rules bloat. Still, I only have to read the crap once, and then I'll be able to look at the good bits as many times as I like.
110 pages. Holy crap, they've really pushed the envelope on this one. Now this is what a christmas special should be. Man, this is gonna take a while. We start off with another phil foglio cover (he is so instantly recognizable) which hints at the mayhem inside.
In this issue:
Iron crown enterprises starts advertising here, with arms law and the iron wind. Still hitching onto other peoples products, they have yet to create their own full system.
Out on a limb: Three more letters on the female dwarven beards debate. This is the absolute last word on it, they say (again) Will they stick to that promise this time, or will continued public pressure force them to bring it out again? We shall see.
A letter praising them, and asking them to keep on covering lots of different systems. To which they promise that they will never limit themselves to covering only one system. (Aww, how sweet. Ha :sneers: )
A letter calling out a bad GM at their school, and asking Dragon to publicly chastise him. Which, errr, they do. Take that, teenage fool. I hope you're sorry now.
And finally a letter from someone complaining that their DM doesn't allow them to read the magazine, because he's afraid it'll spoil the modules, monsters and stuff for their game. To which they tell him, change the stuff. Players shouldn't be able to memorize every detail of these things anyway, and if they do, you can still catch them out, because it's your game and you are god. But you are not god of this world, so stop trying to deprive us of revenue.
Niall's 8th story, The lure of the golden godling. And he's still an overmuscled dick with no discernable strategic thinking power. If it weren't for Emelkartha he'd have been dead long ago. I really don't know.
Oohh. An advert for a Logan's Run play by mail game. Intriguing.
The super spies: As they have done with boot hill and are continuing to do for D&D, this is a big load of stats of famous characters from the genre, such as James Bond, Emma Peel and Number 6. And what are the odds that they're also disgustingly twinked out? Pretty good, I'd say. You'll never get characters as awesome as these unless you cheat your dice rolls. Back to the 48 hour surveillance grinds in the back of a black (or disguised as a pizza one if you're more sensible.) van with you, lowly agents. (sigh)
King of the mountain, a strategy game by Mark Simmons, gets a fairly substantial promo piece. Hmm. I am reminded of the first episodes of Visionaries. Interspersing commentary of the rules with flavour vignettes, this does a pretty decent job of getting me interested in the game, if not the best job of explaining exactly how you actually play it. I suppose you'll have to buy it if you want to find that out. Hopefully there'll be a more objective review sometime soon.
Fantasy genetics I: Humanoids in review. Yay. A whole slew of articles on one of my favourite avenues of real life study. I'm gonna enjoy this. This first one simply lists most of the demihuman races, plus some of the more likely humanoids to be able to engage in a little cross breeding (although they forget halflings for no apparent reason) This includes bad latin names for each race (homofaber? really? :rolleyes: ) and some speculation on their ancestral relationships with one-another. I find myself surprisingly unenthralled. Maybe I'm just spoiled when it comes to this stuff, and these searchings towards a richer setting seem a bit primitive and obvious. They're still another important step forward towards the present in the overall scheme of things.
Fantasy genetics II: Half orcs in a variety of styles. Does exactly what it says on the tin, offering stats for orc hybrids with all the other types of goblinoid. Which in practice, just gives you an increasingly fine-grained set of statistics for when 1 hit die monsters are too weak, and 1+1 hit die monsters are too strong. It's amusing, in a way. That's what happens when you can't gain class levels. And it's another good bit of evidence of just how annoyingly fecund orcs are, even compared to other goblinoids. Nice to see that bit of D&D mythology gathering weight.
Fantasy genetics III: What do you get when you cross. Nerfed monsters with the worst abilities of both races, plus some additional disadvantages to boot, if you listen to this writer. Which is ..... not pleasing to me. You know the evolutionary drill. The good (or at least, empowering) articles get used in peoples games, while the bad ones get ignored. You just failed that test.
Fantasy genetics IV: half and half isn't always full. What happens when you cross two halfbreeds? Not always more halfbreeds. Lets pull out that old mendelian genetics example, that of pink roses. (frankly, I would prefer my genetics Lamarkian, thank you very much.) Which does make for more interesting families than the straight add and divide by two method, and reduces the problem quarter, eighth, etc breeds present in terms of rules. Probably the most interesting of these articles, as while it might be a little too based in real world science for some people, it does raise both questions and solutions that would be interesting to deal with in play. Which is nice.
Sage advice: A much shorter column this issue. It's christmas. Now is not the time for quibbling. Let us get the formalities over and get back to the celebration.
Can magic raise your abilities above their racial maximums?(yes, unless stated otherwise in the specific power)
Can you use your spellbook like a scroll and cast the spells without memorising them by reading them aloud? (no)
Is it OK for a lawful neutral character to sneak up and backstab someone(only if they know for certain they're an enemy and need to die)
How do you determine if a character is subdued?( if it's an npc you use the implied damage system, while PC's always get to choose if they're subdued or not. They shouldn't be slaves to dice rolls unless actually possessed or something.)
Do bards get bonus spells for high wisdom( Why yes. Isn't that nice of us)
Can you use bows underground (depends how narrow the corridors are. Your GM should use their common sense. If your GM has no common sense, I guess it sucks to be you then. )
If you're in a dungeon, but take a character out of action to do downtime stuff, does time pass as if they're not in a dungeon (no. Learning new languages and training to go up levels is not a good idea when wandering monsters could butt in any second. Unless you're stuck in the worlds largest dungeon, you should get out first.)
Giants in the earth: Your christmas twinkies this year are reepicheep, (surely I don't need to remind you where he comes from) a mouse with 18/01 strength; and Professor Challenger.
Leomunds tiny hut: The strength's of lots of monsters, and some talk of exactly where they come from, if they use weaponry, how likely they are to grapple you, and other things that add more depth to dealing with them. This is useful stuff, since it forces you to think more about creatures actions in battle, and what it really would be like fighting them. But it does involve some rather long and tedious tables, as it covers lots of creatures. File under mediocre, as it's neither as good as the planar stuff or as dull as the combat timing pontifications.
Simulation corner: Another article that throws into relief how much harder doing research was before the internet, as they talk about the difficulties involved in getting a good large scale picture of the history of wargaming, and how rules design has developed through the years. Which is ironic for a genre so devoted to historical recreations. How can the hobby advance and learn from it's mistakes if it doesn't know it's own history? A very good point really. Someone ought to write a book on it. Tell me, did they?
Food Fight! Another complete game occupying both the centre and the end of the magazine. This comes in basic and advanced versions. Like Ringside, this is primarily a bit of light entertainment. but has the potential for slipping some roleplaying in. A very customisable game, and therefore with plenty of replay potential. Plus some pretty good and amusing artwork. I think this works pretty well as our primary christmas present, and is obviously where most of the extra pages went. Their ambition on this front is definitely growing as well.
The reviews this month concentrate on judges guild products. Once again, we see a degree of joined-up thinking lacking in D&D, as they explicitly tie most of their products for a line into a single larger setting. They also talk about the history of the company as a whole, their magazines (as ever, anyone willing to tackle the archive of these would be given a warm welcome) and their relationships with other companies, that allow them to produce officially licensed products for them. Which include:
Modron: Nothing to do with the exemplars of law from mechanus, this is a town in the wilderlands near to tegel manor, and has lots of colorful NPC's.
Escape from Astigar's lair: A tournament module designed for a druid and ranger. Which makes a nice change from the usual fighter/mage/cleric/thief + hirelings team, but might make it a bit tricky to incorporate into a regular game without being too easy for the party.
The treasure vaults of lindoran is most notable for having the first mention of Kevin Siembida (on artwork) in the magazine. Yeah, we'll be seeing a lot more of him in the future.
Inferno is module set in a hell based on Dante's vision of it. This is obviously a very high level module, but also has lots of artifact level items to reward those of you who are up to the challenge. Sounds like my kind of game.
Portals of Torsh provides an entire planethopping setup for your adventuring fun, with an entire continent detailed. Without the 32 page limitation TSR set for themselves, they can really go to town with their settings.
Spies of lightelf and wilderlands of the fantastic reaches further build upon their main D&D setting with more places, plots, and maps.
Duck tower ..... Yeah. You know the drill. Abandoned city previously occupied by anthropomorphic ducks. Treasure and troubles aplenty for your players to explore.
City of Lei Tabor is another runequest module. Does a bad oriental analogue really have a place in glorantha. I don't remember seeing it in Heroquest. Did it get "Gregged"?
Minarian legends: The Black Knight. Yeah, you know you're reaching the end of the series, because they've finished off the countries, and moved on to the independent guys who have the potential to shift the balance of power in the game. The immortal tragedy of the black knight, geased to be unable to die until he completes a virtually impossible quest. Only it's not as tragic as you'd think as he tricked the high priests into giving him immortality in the first place. Which is a pretty cool spin on the trope. The high standard of most of this series is maintained. What will it's creators do next? Its getting pretty obvious they need to move on to new grounds sometime soon.
The electric eye: Three reviews in this column this issue, plus some miscalanea. Which includes errata for a program they gave us in a previous issue. Because patching computer games is a lot more urgent than fixing RPG's, where people can work around the problems themselves. Bah.
Dungeon of Death: Yeah, its a dungeon crawl. Get experience, penetrate the lower levels and find the holy grail. Seriously limited compared to what real RPG's are capable of.
Android Nim: A quick little multiplayer puzzle game. But at least it has sound, which most games of this era don't.
Time Traveller: An adventure game involving ..... guess what. As this is a beta copy, it has some serious bugs. But it still involves a pretty big set of adventures as you try and recover the 14 rings of whatever. As ever, there are complaints about the price of stuff.
Dragon's bestiary: This months monsters have an arctic theme, for some reason. (let it snow, let it snow, let it snow )The Koodjanuk, Cryoserpents and Ice golems all prefer colder climates, but are otherwise pretty different, in both personalities and roles. If you're characters are traveling up north, at least one of them should be useful.
Nothing but the Ho-ho-ho Truth: What exactly is Santa claus in D&D terms. Now there's a character who's not suitable for shoehorning into the roles and abilities PC's have. Their rough answer is that he's an exceedingly high level elf/halfling hybrid magic user/cleric with tons of followers. Which of course beaks several rules, but hey, that's standard for characters printed in the magazine. Has the feel of something put in at the last moment to make up page count. Well, they did have a lot of pages to fill this time. I guess it was inevitable that there would be some filler material.
Wormy and Jasmine are here. ZOMG implied raep. Oh noes. Fineous fingers and the rest of dragonmirth is not.
An advert for next years calendar. Well, they have been talking it up since the start of the year. It'd be just dumb if they were late releasing it.
This is what a christmas issue should be. A massive pushing of the envelope in size and ideas, hopefully giving us at least one thing that we'll continue to use well into the future. The decade seems to be going pretty well so far. Lets see what next year holds.
96 pages. A new year, new staff. Lots of new staff in fact. Roger Moore and Ed Greenwood both get official jobs with the company, having both had tons of articles published over the past year. Quality and quantity will have an impact, and be recognized. Circulation has once again increased around fourfold in the last year, and obviously they can now afford considerably more. Just how much bigger can they get? Hopefully quite a bit.
In this issue:
An advert for Fantasy Modelling magazine. Featuring Boris Vallejo. Snerk. Look at the muscles.
Out on a limb: Another letter complaining about the horrendous character inflation the GM's in his area practice, and asking the magazine to do more to sort them out.
A letter grumbling about Ringside, Traveller and other obscure games getting so much space in the magazine when they want more AD&D. To which they reply only catering to the most popular crowd and neglecting everyone else is how governments lose support and magazines descend into irrelevance. Which is not a good idea. Variety is important.
And someone's finally noticed the magazine losing its The. And they are not happy. They also have lots of other complaints about the recent "kiddiefication" of the magazine in general. The professor ludlow module sucked, the new cover format sucks, you're running too many adverts, and Kim Mohan sucks for trying to cater to a younger audience. Charming. Kim takes the ranting with good humour, and points out that the proportion of advertising they carry has not, in fact, increased, it's just kept pace with their page count expansion. This is accompanied by hard statistics on the percentages other magazines devoted to ads. Most of their rivals are around 20-30% ads, apart from White Dwarf, who are at over 40%, which is an interesting thing to know.
Ha. Look the part you play. Another amusing advert, this time for a costumes company. Well, it's appropriate, I guess. Lets just hope we don't get too many fat unwashed creepy guys dressing up as princesses.
Gas 'em up and smoke 'em out: Muahahaha. Another weapon that bypasses the combat scenario to great effectiveness, at least the first few times you face it. Players getting overcocky with their flaming oil? GM's get poison gas. Nothing to show them who's boss like having to save or die every single round while trying to escape, with no-one to fight (or possibly lots of level draining undead, if you want to be extra mean. ). Includes proper formulae for determining rates of dispersal and stuff. I like this, as it's a good reminder that life isn't fair, and you shouldn't make the game strictly fair all the time either. After all, what evil overlord worth their horns would intentionally leave a weakness in their defenses? (unless it was as a trap to lure the heroes into a false sense of security)
Dungeon ventilation clears the air: The complimentary article to the previous one. In a real underground setting, without any airflow system things get pretty manky pretty quickly. And yet players rarely encounter this little problem. Yet the solutions to it, such as chimneys and mechanical pumping systems, can add considerable tactical options to your game which are pretty fun to take advantage of. More fun stuff you usually forget, and which I would rather like to use in the future.
Two more NPC classes. The alchemist (Again. Honestly, they're like wizards useless kid brother who you just can't get rid of. Can I come on an adventure this time? No.) and the astrologer. Neither of them are very useful, really. If it weren't for D&D's artificial trade monopolies, they'd be screwed next to wizards and clerics.
Magic items for everyman (sic): Ahh, determining how many magic items characters of a particular level are supposed to have. Another persistent problem that 3rd edition just about managed to solve. This is a pretty reasonable stab at dealing with it, but doesn't have the simplicity of the final solution. Another think we'll probably be seeing several more tries at over the years.
Up on a soap box: Two smaller rants under this ageis this issue. The first involves creative use of real world principles to strategically counter monsters, such as pouring cold water down the throat of a red dragon. Not sure how much leeway you should give to stuff like that, as D&D shouldn't use real world physics too much. The second is about dealing with high level characters. Retirement, wish wars, way too many save or die effects, deity stalemate, and a constant influx of young guns trying to take on the guys with the big reputations are all ways to keep them from getting complacent. This is why keeping the party together is still useful when at high level. One high level character can still get splatted by a bad save, even if they have 2's in every category, while a team can raise each other and form a multiversal political bloc that keeps the dreaded stasis of competing powers from making things dull. Can't say I'm particularly enthused about either of these articles.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Bell of pavlov? Really. Someone in editing was too busy laughing to realize how dumb that is. Lots of other quirky and jokey items as well, including pet rocks, ruby slippers (a la wizard of oz) and the ring of oak, which is pretty useless to PC's, because all it does is allow dryads to roam beyond the usual distance from their trees. Still, I suppose it's better than only listing items and abilities with a direct combat application. That would get tedious even faster.
The write way to get published: Robert Plamondon and Kim Mohan provide a humorously illustrated example of the submission and editing process, following up on issue 43's Dragon Rumbles. Even experienced authors who've been professionally published regularly need an multiple drafts and an editor to produce work of truly great quality. And once again, the virtues of persistence, revision, and making sure you get paid are emphasized. Being a professional artist is no job for the undisciplined. Once again, this is pretty good advice, regardless of the job. I certainly intend to heed it.
The Rasmussen files: Merle gives us some feedback, rules clarifications, and new stuff on training characters up. Nothing particularly revolutionary here, just the usual sound of a developer chugging away, trying to keep his work growing and promoted.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len talks about missile fire, and includes a new sub-class specializing in them, the Archer. As ever, D&D does not accurately represent reality, and he would like to make it a bit closer. Ranges, cover, rates of fire and disruption of spellcasting all get mentions. And once again, once he starts discussing minutinae, I start zoning out. As you might expect, the new class is an excuse to give loads of bonuses that circumvent the penalties he's just introduced for everyone else. Which is not the kind of behaviour I approve of.
The Dragon Dungeon Design kit: Our big centrepiece this month is lots and lots of cardboard components that you are supposed to cut out and use to make dungeons with. Walls, stairs, treasure chests, tables, torches, lots of things that you'll use again and again. Plus both hex and grid paper for laying your new labyrinths out on. Another thing that's a bit problematic in .pdf, but if you can solve the sizing issues and need for cardstock, you can now print as many copies of this bit as you like, circumventing the limitations they had back then. Which is very nice indeed. More stuff that would still be rather useful today, and if I ever get to run a campaign based around stuff from the magazine, this'll be one of the things I'll use in it.
Minarian Legends: The spotlight this issue falls upon the Dwarves. Their history, their (not particularly nice ) deities, and their conquests and defeats. As ever from Glen, this is a pretty nuanced portrayal, which neither mary-sues them, nor villainises them, and gives their setting individuality without going too far from established fantasy tropes to be unrecognisable. So the usual good quality stuff then.
Simulation Corner: This time, the talk is on how a game can be objectively badly designed. Inconsistencies in the rules, poor organization, tedious and impenetrable legal speak, failure to explain technical terms, and outright errata can all make a game more problematic to play than another. And that even before we get into subjective stuff like catering to particular playstyles. The writer seems to have their head screwed on properly. Now, if they could just apply those principles to D&D
Squad Leader: The Germans invaded the Russian cities earlier on in these articles. Turnabout is fair play, as they push back in 1945. More close fighting fun.
Castles Castles Everywhere: Not just a medieval invention, there were tons of castles in roman and older periods too, including plenty of bibilical examples. This article goes into more detail on this matter. As with many things designed for war, they were often kludged designs started in a rush using whatever they had at the time, and then refined into lethally efficient forms. Which conflicts with the tendency of D&D worlds to be stuck in technological pseudo-stasis. Which raises more awkward world design issues you may or may not want to address in your game. Sorry, my mind seems to have drifted, as this is another not particularly good article.
The Electric Eye: More build it yourself programming fun, this time showing you how to create your own random number generator to take the place of physical dice. So long, being restricted to the standard range of platonic solids (and d10's) for your number ranges. If only more games had taken advantage of this. I would like to see more d13 rolls. But then, computer and RPG integration is still an iffy subject, 27 years later. What are we to do.
Hop Hop Hooray: Woo! An article for Bunnies and Burrows. You get an "I've been wondering if they'd mention this" Point, Mr Maxfield. Hmm. Some rather odd ideas here. Rabbits riding hares? Wouldn't that be like humans riding gorillas? With these extras, a well organised team has a good chance of taking on a human and winning. Was this really the intent of the designers? I know rabbits can be pretty vicious, but that may be taking player empowerment at the expense of emulation a little too far. Still, I guess imitating real rabbits too accurately wouldn't be fun.
How to have a good time being evil: Sometimes you don't want to be a hero, you just want to kill stuff and get treasure. Ok, so good adventurers do that as well, but this way you get to ride nightmares, torture your prisoners and stab each other in the back for bigger shares of the loot. Just watch out for hordes of angry villagers. Kill too many, and you won't be able to eat them all. Not a particularly great article of its type, but I'm sure we'll see plenty better as the years go by.
You can jump how far?: Rules for determining exactly how far and high you can jump. A percentile system with a whole load of modifiers, this is another classic D&D example of inventing a whole new subsystem for each special case. Not that it's a bad subsystem in this case, but that's not the point. It still means you have to look the damn thing up.
Reviews: Bloodtree rebellion is a game of guerilla warfare on a far planet. And a pretty good one. But of course, games of asymmetic warfare are not particularly popular, partially due to the shadow of vietnam over american society. Will it be able to overcome that? We shall see.
Space Marines: The second edition of this game is a substantial improvement over the first in terms of rules, but still hampered by uninspired fluff. It's certainly no WH40K, for good or bad.
Grail quest. Arthurian legend gets an adaption for the fantasy trip. Designed for solitare play, this seems to do a pretty good job of providing a thematically appropriate set of encounters for a group of questing knights. But as a solitare game it is a little too heavily dependent on random rolls to create a challenge over tactics.
Dragons bestiary: Last month it was arctic monsters, this time, all the creatures prefer more arid climes. Skyzorr'n are a race of giant anthromorph ants that would make good rivals to thri-kreen, Sand lizards and dust devils are pretty self explanatory. Being grappled by multi-tailed reptiles and suffocated by an annoying elemental that then takes your stuff should keep the characters busy for a while.
Dragonmirth is present. Fineous fingers is not only here, he also gets an advert for a big compilation of all his early issues, plus a new exclusive one. Jasmine's eponymous character finally reveals herself, and has to be rescued straight away.
While the overall product remains pretty well done, the average quality of articles this month doesn't seem to be very good. Maybe they blew all their energy on the christmas one, and so this was filled with the leftovers. Oh well. There's plenty more where this came from.
The Dragon Dungeon Design kit: Our big centrepiece this month is lots and lots of cardboard components that you are supposed to cut out and use to make dungeons with. Walls, stairs, treasure chests, tables, torches, lots of things that you'll use again and again. Plus both hex and grid paper for laying your new labyrinths out on. Another thing that's a bit problematic in .pdf, but if you can solve the sizing issues and need for cardstock, you can now print as many copies of this bit as you like, circumventing the limitations they had back then. Which is very nice indeed. More stuff that would still be rather useful today, and if I ever get to run a campaign based around stuff from the magazine, this'll be one of the things I'll use in it.
That sounds like a classic Dragon entry that would be just as useful today as it was nearly 30 years ago. Maybe moreso, for as you say, the stuff can just be copied and printed in large quantities.
I wonder how well the stuff works with the dungeon tiles released in the early 3e Dragons (which I didn't cut up so I could copy them as needed)?
__________________ "Y'know, I think my favorite thing about being a hero of destiny is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in your way." -- 8-bit Theater
"i did not serve with napolean in his artillery. but i did play wargames with him and his men." -- diaglo
That sounds like a classic Dragon entry that would be just as useful today as it was nearly 30 years ago. Maybe moreso, for as you say, the stuff can just be copied and printed in large quantities.
I wonder how well the stuff works with the dungeon tiles released in the early 3e Dragons (which I didn't cut up so I could copy them as needed)?
Do you have an issue number for the later stuff? If you can find them, I'll compare 'em.
80 pages. A very interesting cover this issue, as Steve Swentson creates an intriguing set of anthromorphs to grace the front pages. They also change their typeface and go from two to three columns per page. Not sure why. No more mapping the dungeons in here, because that job has been taken up by the RPGA and polyhedron. The second best of the dragon will be out soon. And their distribution is expanding again. Which should mean lots more new readers. All pretty positive, despite the rather bad weather.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: Is it ok to photocopy the DM evaluation form? The answer is yes. I know we don't normally allow stuff like that.
A letter correcting the top secret article in issue 44, saying that the name agent 99 gave was just another pseudonym. Hmm. Looks like their reaction time between publishings is getting shorter. You never used to see commentary on things less than 3 months ago.
A letter asking how dwarven paladins are possible, as they gave an example of one in GitE. Answer: they aren't in AD&D, if players were allowed to be one it would unbalance the game. But NPC's can break the rules that the PC's have to stick too. And another person misunderstands the term "The exception that proves the rule." Sigh.
A letter expressing appreciation for the anti-paladin article and asking for more of its type, in particular asking for a bounty hunter class, and mass combat rules. What are the odds someone'll follow up on those requests?
Two letters confirming that contrary to sage advice's statement in issue 42, holy water sprinklers were both maces and guns at times. So there, Mr Niebing. You're the one who needs to do better research. (You still can't have guns in D&D though.)
And finally a letter asking for more clarification on illusion spells, as it's still not clear just how effective belief in an illusion is.
Fiction: The Sorceror's jewel, by John Holmes. The unfortunately named Boinger gets another story. One of those stories that reads like the adaption of an actual play, being pretty faithful to the game rules, and using lots of classic D&D monsters like yellow mold and grey ooze. Fairly amusing, overall.
Crane is what you make of it: A rebuttal to the article in issue 40 on Tribes of Crane, saying that he would have enjoyed it more if he'd engaged in private correspondence with the other players, and done more fighting. Essentially, a case of I'm a satisfied customer, and if you didn't enjoy the game, It's because you were playing it wrong. Which is a refrain I've seen plenty of times on the internet as well, and I'm pretty sure I've used a few times myself. He probably has valid points. But still, $2.50 a move, plus whatever you spend in sending private letters. I'd be leery about that now, even before inflation is factored in. I'm really not convinced it's worth it, particularly compared to the cost of tabletop games.
Mightier than the pen: Magic swords shouldn't just be nameless bonuses, they ought to have proper histories and names, and unique abilities. This article is mostly a list of the usual legends, such as beowulf, arthurian legend, and the edda. Honestly, it's as if we haven't been reading the past issues and don't already know all this stuff. Oh well, I guess many of the new readers didn't. We can't all be high level cynics.
Minarian variants: 6 more optional rules for Divine Right. Sieges, Ambushes, Treasure, leadership skill, forced marches, and barbarian tribalism. Most are of pretty good quality. If you've been playing the game regularly over the past year, I'm sure they will come as a welcome way to spice up the game again. Will there be a new edition, and will they get incorporated into it? Or will they publish supplements to it. Because the writers certainly seem to have no shortage of further ideas for the game.
Minarian Legends: Speaking of more stuff for divine right. This month's setting elaboration focuses upon The black hand (probably no relation to the V:tM black hand), a powerful lich, and commander of undead armies. Really, he just wants to be left alone to continue his experiments. But for some reason, people have this ..... prejudice against the undead. Particularly when you turn people they used to know in life into one of them. So sometimes he has to fight the various countries of minaria. What a pain in the ass for him. Is any side presented as the bad guys in this game? I guess not. It's certainly a lot more progressive than D&D will ever be in that respect.
Dragons Bestiary: Just one creature this month, the reptilian gaund, another Ed Greenwood creation. Another one of those creatures with a quite extensive set of abilities, weaknesses and ecological stuff that far outstrips the stuff in the actual books.
This Here's Tyranosarus Tex: A scenario for boot hill that pits the characters against a recently freed carnivorous dinosaur. Er, ok then. A pretty cheesy bit of crossover. Can people not play these games without introducing supernatural (well, technically not, but you know what I mean) elements. Fantasy is not the be all and end all of roleplaying.
How to ease the boot hill identity crisis: Another one of those random generation tables to find out what your characters job is/was. Didn't they already have one of these for the game? Eh, doesn't matter. There's always room for more random tables.
Do you have an issue number for the later stuff? If you can find them, I'll compare 'em.
Yeah, they started in #280, which is so far ahead I didn't bother number dropping. My last subscription ended with #283, so I only have 4 sets, but I think I've read it only went that far anyway. I'm pretty sure they were 1 in = 5 ft scale tiles given that that was the scale for the 3e rules. Mostly vasic but useable stuff, some dungeons, wilderness, even a sewer with gators.
__________________ "Y'know, I think my favorite thing about being a hero of destiny is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in your way." -- 8-bit Theater
"i did not serve with napolean in his artillery. but i did play wargames with him and his men." -- diaglo
Yeah, they started in #280, which is so far ahead I didn't bother number dropping. My last subscription ended with #283, so I only have 4 sets, but I think I've read it only went that far anyway. I'm pretty sure they were 1 in = 5 ft scale tiles given that that was the scale for the 3e rules. Mostly vasic but useable stuff, some dungeons, wilderness, even a sewer with gators.
:checks: Son of a cockmonkey! Whoever scanned in these issues decided not to include the tiles. (this kind of thing is a persistent problem with the post Archive issues, and is definitely going to make doing them less fulfilling than the classic set.) How irksome.
The temple of poseidon: This month's module. Looks like leaving them in the middle, rather than interrupting the page count is the new standard for these things. I preferred the previous way, but oh well, its not a huge problem. This is a heavily lovecraft inspired work, with lots of water related stuff to deal with, designed for a large high level party (they recommend the team has at least 70 total levels between them.) So don't expect stopping the devil priests from unleashing the ancient monstrosity ythog-nthtei to be easy. But then again, you'd get more XP for letting him get unleashed then killing him, than stopping them before that point. What a dilemma for an ambitious group of adventurers.
Reviews: World of greyhawk. The long awaited new D&D book gets a pretty substantial bit of promotion, with two different reviews devoted to it. Both are fairly satisfied with it, apart from a few quibbles, such as map inaccuracies, an accusation of anthropological insensitivity, and lack of information on the gods. And it is still only 32 pages, not really enough to go into more than a few paragraphs of detail on each country. But I guess it still has a lot more setting stuff than the original Greyhawk supplement from 6 years ago. D&D's gradual steps towards a proper shared setting continue, even if they are still well behind Runequest and Tekumel. They'll get there in the end.
The complete book of wargames attempts to provide a newbie friendly introduction into the principles and tropes of the genre, along with an introductory game.
The nine doctrines of darkness,Temple to athena and Mountain of Mystery are a trio of system free RPG adventures by Dimension Six, designed to be adapted to whatever game you might be playing. Which of course means they don't have to bother developing their own system or liscencing fees. Seems like stuff like that was more common back then. I guess not so many people were willing to take on the challenge of designing their own system.
Giants in the earth is no longer Moldvay and Schick's private twinkfest, and is now accepting submissions from freelancers. Maybe new entries'll be a little less overpowered and more faithfull to the D&D rules. But I'm not going to bet on it.
Sage advice: If a wizard shapechanges into a dragon, does his breath weapon do damage equal to his own current hit points.( Yes, and he doesn't get any more hp either. )
Why can druids wear leather armor. You have to kill animals to make it. ( animals kill and eat each other normally. Druids can do the same True neutral + respect for nature =/= namby pamby ecopacifists.
Do you get experienced points for doing something you were geased/quested to do. (yes. Being forced to do it does not stop you from learning normally from the experience. )
What happens if turned undead can't escape you? (they cower in the corner, as far away as they can get. )
Who can have 18% strength? (only fighters, and not girls) Because boys are stronger than girls, so ner.
Does a luck blade give you a bonus to attack rolls? (not nececarily. The luck bonus is to your saving throws, and that's independent of any enhancement bonus to hit and damage it may have.
What happens if you put a bag of holding into another one. ( It probably shouldn't work properly, otherwise it would be horribly breakable. Not sure how to enforce that yet. (they obviously have yet to think of the rule that multiple nested extradimensional spaces cause a rip that sends all the contents to the astral plane. ))
The Quasit entry says they can be cleric's familiars. How do clerics get familiars? (ask their deity extra nicely. Do we have to give rules for everything?)
Do paladins and rangers need to pray to a special patron god to get their spells?(No, they can devote themselves to any god of an alignment that fits their class restrictions. )
What does vorpal mean? (nothing, really. It was a bit of nonsense from a poem. But in D&D it just means really really sharp. Mmm, severed heads. Pike 'em and roast 'em and put an apple in their mouth and serve 'em up for dinner. Its nutritious and delicious and you have good odds of being cursed to become a vampire when you die. Hey, immortality. A plan with no drawbacks.)
Simulation Corner: A look back at last year from a wargamers perspective. The recent trend towards microgames seems to be ebbing. There was quite a large number of civil war based games, for some reason. Sci fi and fantasy continue their gradual takeover of the market. West end games failed to release anything new this year, which can't be good for them. One of those cool historical perspective articles that helps me see what things were like back then.
Pinsom: May I just say WTF? Oh, they're Elves. Certainly an interesting artistic take on them. Reminds me of the Raccoons cartoon. (Run with us. We've got everything you need. Run with us, we are free. Great, now I've got that song stuck in my head.) Which is no bad thing, once the shock faded. How will this little story progress in future issues? I look forward to seeing.
The electric eye: An assessment of the current top companies in the market, Radio shack, Apple, and Commodore, and their respective products, plus honorable mentions for Atari and APF. As this gives me a good idea of how much power computers had then, and how expensive they were, this is another neat historical footnote that I rather enjoyed reading.
Jasmine's plot thickens. Another stereotypical female character type is introduced, that of the witch queen who'll do anything to remain young and beautiful looking forever. Fineous and Wormy are not present.
Slightly more interesting than last issue, with several interesting new developments and historical footnotes. Still quite a few dull moments, but not enough to ruin the whole thing. They're still covering a wide range of topics for many different systems and styles of play.
:checks: Son of a cockmonkey! Whoever scanned in these issues decided not to include the tiles. (this kind of thing is a persistent problem with the post Archive issues, and is definitely going to make doing them less fulfilling than the classic set.) How irksome.
Hmm, interesting. You might still be able to find them, I thought that they were released for download on Dragon or WotC's website some time after the issues were circulated (they were early 2001, so around 2002 or 2003). At least I think I read they were going to make them available for download, and if they did, I'm not sure if they're still around.
__________________ "Y'know, I think my favorite thing about being a hero of destiny is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in your way." -- 8-bit Theater
"i did not serve with napolean in his artillery. but i did play wargames with him and his men." -- diaglo
80 pages. Once again, the D&D setting takes several steps forward this issue, with both planar and torillian stuff featured within. We also get another complete game, plenty of different topics covered. Oh, and a particularly blatant bit of cheesecake on the front cover. You might want to put some chaps on luv. Those scales'll chafe your legs something fierce if you ride at any speed. And you don't want to back up onto those spines.
In this issue:
Dragon rumbles: The editing stuff from issues 43 & 45 gets another followup, with bit of mock bickering between Robert Plamodon and Kim Mohan about Kim's savage editing job. Highly amusing and rather meta stuff. He does have a point though, that by doing things like this, Kim is setting himself up as a frontline performer who everyone reading knows about in his own right, rather than just a backstage worker who helps the writers shine brighter. (did I ever tell you you're my heeeero. Oh god, another song stuck in my head.) Still, If it gets him a better paid job and more chicks at cons, I guess it's a good strategy.
Out on a limb: A letter expressing outrage at the Gm who doesn't let his players buy the magazine, telling him to go kiss an otyugh.
A letter praising Gary for encouraging people to play monsters intelligently.
A letter complaining about several flaws in some recent reviews.
A letter encouraging the retirement of high level characters so you can start again with something new.
Another letter complaining about GM's running horrifically overpowered games in their area, encouraging people to boycott games like that.
A letter complaining about the Top Secret stats of various fictional characters in issue 44, quibbling about perceived inaccuracies. Yawn.
A reply from the author of said article to the quibbling on it from last issue. Whch is amusing.
And a letter defending the Professor Ludlow Module from the roasting it recieved a couple of months ago, saying it was a nice change of pace from standard gaming, and a good roleplaying challenge.
Take the AD&D exam: A big questionaire on the AD&D rules, to see how good your mastery of their finer details is. Which of course involves some stupid and somewhat subjective questions, as many of the puzzles have more than one solution. FWIW, I got 43 out of 50. Which isn't bad, particularly as I don't own AD&D 1st ed, and was working off my memory of BECMI and 2nd edition.
Elemental ideas for elemental adventuring: Like GitE last month, they've decided to accept stuff from freelancers on the nature of the planes. Which hey, means dilution of concept. Lets hope they keep editorial control over this stuff, otherwise there's going to be lots of articles that have inconsistencies with one another. The first article seems to promote a slightly more hostile view of the elemental planes than Len's, making them all innately harmful to creatures from the prime material and each other, and being far more restrictive on elemental spells from elsewhere. It does, however, include some cool ideas on the nature of the native flora and fauna of the planes, and how they will interact with adventurers. The second article doesn't actually have much to do with planar travel, but is actually about the probablity of finding someone with astral scanning and the time taken, given the size of the area scanned. Which involves some mildly complex mathematical formulae. Neither are particularly brilliant, overall.
Creatures from elsewhere: The extraplanar theme continues with a load of new monsters. Wirchler are from gehenna, look like mouths with arms coming out their sides, and have a nasty no save power that's an instawin against anyone who can hear. Take them out hard and fast, or you'll watch your characters slowly die, and even if they're rescued, their ability scores'll be permanently reduced.
Aruchai are from Limbo, and have a lot in common with chaos beasts, but are way way cooler, having an awesome plot hook that makes being killed by one both better and far worse than just dying, while not taking the characters out of play they way being undeadified would. These guys are worth the whole magazine.
The Pheonix is .... You know what it is. Bloody immortal mary-sue bird with the favor of the gods. Virtually impossible to kill, and if you do, you get tortured by the gods, then geased to go back in time and make sure you don't kill it after all. Thankfully they got rid of that bit in the 2nd ed MM entry.
Again, you ought to know what the furies are. They live in tartarus, and torture people who pissed off the olympian gods. They're pretty powerful too, so careful when you mess with them.
Mapmakers are surprisingly adorable. Reptilian creatures from pandemonum, they have a fetish for maps, and their whole existance revolves around making and obtaining them. Which means they can be useful for trading with, but also might nick your stuff showing the way out if you aren't careful. And they are from pandemonium, so chances are the maps they make are oddly designed and filled with elaborations that may not be strictly accurate. Another really cool creature that I wish had made it into future books.
Flard are from nirvana, and exist only to answer questions. Ahh, the omniscient monolith, such an overused archetype.
Sugo were originally created by jubilex, but rebelled and now live in acheron, and show that the conception of this plane still hadn't reach its current state, still being much closer to it's original greek source. Essentially malevolent flumphs, they live in marshy areas, and try and eat passers by. Meh.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: The planar theme continues here. The flute of dismissing gets rid of summoned gribleys, which can be pretty darn usefull.
The staff of ethereal action allows you to hit ethereal creatures, and use Blink as well for some reason. Good for getting rid of those pesky phase spiders.
Horeseshoes of hades turn a normal mount into a Nightmare. Which is not a good thing, unless you have some means of subduing the nasty bugger quickly.
Syrar's silver sword (another Ed Greenwood mage gets a namecheck.) is another weapon for dealing with those pesky creatures who lurk on co-existant planes and attack you while you can't hit them back. Because everyone hates them, don't they. All in all, this has been a well above average set of items.
Leomunds tiny hut: Len takes a closer look at thief abilities, and their proper application. Thieves should be able to make traps as well as disarm them, sneaking into place is a good way to make maps, so when the full party comes in, they can have more effective plans on how to clear place out. The rest of the stuff isn't very useful, but those two cool bits make up for it.
Giants in the earth: Two women from greek myth get the twinktastic treatment this issue. Camilla from the Aeneid, and Medea from Jason & the argonauts. Although they do both have several abilities at average or below, so I guess opening this series up to the floor has helped a little.
Hmm, interesting. You might still be able to find them, I thought that they were released for download on Dragon or WotC's website some time after the issues were circulated (they were early 2001, so around 2002 or 2003). At least I think I read they were going to make them available for download, and if they did, I'm not sure if they're still around.
I'm not really sure what you guys are missing, but Paizo are selling Dragon (and Dungeon) magazine odds and ends on their website.
Oh, and a particularly blatant bit of cheesecake on the front cover.
And you post lizard boy and not this?
Quote:
Out on a limb: A letter expressing outrage at the Gm who doesn't let his players buy the magazine, telling him to go kiss an otyugh.
I bet that DM just hated the player tips in later Dragon magazines, particularly the 3e ones with monster fighting tips, build advice, etc. If he was even still reading it at that point.
Quote:
Mapmakers are surprisingly adorable. Reptilian creatures from pandemonum, they have a fetish for maps, and their whole existance revolves around making and obtaining them. Which means they can be useful for trading with, but also might nick your stuff showing the way out if you aren't careful. And they are from pandemonium, so chances are the maps they make are oddly designed and filled with elaborations that may not be strictly accurate. Another really cool creature that I wish had made it into future books.
If Shemeska's been following this, I think these guys sound like they'd work pretty well in the Planescape setting. Especially with all the Pandemonium madness intact.
__________________ "Y'know, I think my favorite thing about being a hero of destiny is that it gives you all kinds of narrative justification to just slay any ol' jerk who gets in your way." -- 8-bit Theater
"i did not serve with napolean in his artillery. but i did play wargames with him and his men." -- diaglo
The merry month of mirtul? The Forgotten Realms gets it's first proper named mention as Ed Greenwood talks about the calendar in his own game. He also talks about tailoring the setting in general to be more suitable for creating opportunity for adventures, by making the weather more extreme than on earth, with periods of rapid growth, technological/magical advancement and prosperity, regularly interrupted by freezing winters that cut off any large scale communication or travel for several months a year, and frequent (not so) natural disasters that kill off entire towns or even civilisations, leaving plenty of ruins to investigate. Looks like something close to points of light was part of the Realm's original design. So much for that being a new idea. Now this is a very interesting article, both in its own right and from a historical point of view. And it shows that despite becoming a full setting later, FR had a considerably longer history in the pages of the magazine than dragonlance did. We'll be seeing considerably more on this in the future.
The rasmussen files: Multiclass characters and their titles and positions in a group. Get levels in all 4 roles, and you can become an Administrator, and start setting missions for other groups. As this offers advice on how to design and run a team of characters as a proper team, this is another article that feels fairly familiar in light of recent events.
Crimefighters: A complete game by David Cook, this is based upon pulp comics and novels, with a particular emphasis on detective stuff. A rather fast and loose system, as you would expect given the theme and space available, with some big rules holes. But still, it's more suited to being bent to various situations than Ringside and Food Fight. At 21 pages, counting the introductory adventure, this is another pretty cool special feature, taking up more than a quarter of the magazine. I suspect we may see a few complaints about this, but I have to applaud them for pushing the envelope again.
The pulps - Paper heroes: Bryce Knorr defends the often shallow and two dimensional characterization in pulp magazines. They may have been mass produced, primarily commercial products, that imitated one another quite a lot, but they still managed to produce lots of cool stuff along the way. And there are substantial cultural parallels betwen the 1930's, and the start of the 80's. Which may explain Indiana Jones' success. A bit of an anticlimax after the last article.
Sage advice: Can paladins associate with neutral goods? (yes, they have good in the description, don't they, ya twit)
How does the range of stuff in inches translate to real distances (1 inch = 10 foot inside or 10 yards outside. But spell areas of effect should stay the same inside or out.)
Is everything in the monster manual a monster, and therefore you can't use speak to animals on it. (No. But giant versions of animals don't count as normal. )
Do PC gnomes get the poison resistance mentioned in the MM? (yes)
I don't understand how shields interact with the armor/to hit table (headdesk headdesk headdesk. How do these people remember to breathe?!)
Can PC's be grey elves or drow? (if your DM allows it. )
Is torture ok for chaotic good characters? (No. If you've got a good reason, (such as if they killed the pheonix :rolleyes: damn deities and their double standards) you might get away with it once or twice, but doing so with any regularity will stop you being good pretty damn quick. )
Reviews: The tendency to put more emphasis on each individual review continues. Robots! is a game of resource management and combat set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of earth, and gets a pretty positive review.
Fast attack boats is a game of er, the 1973 arab-israli naval war, and gets a rather less positive review, with the reviewer critisizing it's dull counters and small play field.
Starfire gets a new edition, which builds nicely on the previous one.
Across the bright face and mission on mithril are a paired set of traveller adventures, set in the spinward marches. One is a planet based trek, while the other is a scout ship based mission. Which gives you a nice set of choices for directions to take your game in.
Research station gamma is another traveller supplement. (they did seem to be releasing quite a lot of them at this point) It's basically a location based module, as was common in this era. Of course, a space station is somewhat different from a dungeon, but I'm sure the overall experience won't be that different.
Figuratively speaking: A new column covering miniatures to replace the fantasysmiths workshop, with more emphasis on reviews, and less on customisation. Unfortunately, the bad contrast on the scanning makes most of the photos virtually illegible, which sucks. This month, we get some stuff from Martian metals, a whole load of arthurian models, some dungeon walls, and an evil wizard carried on a litter. Afraid I can't really comment more than that. Hopefully they'll move to colour soon, so I can get decent looks in.
Simulation corner: More on the history of SPI. This focusses on the managerial changes they went through in the past year, and the changes in direction that resulted from that. As in previous articles, they try their best to put a positive spin on everything. Yes, they've cut the number of products they're making in half, but they intend to develop and playtest each one more thoroughly. Whatever you say. I'll be here in pessimist land, because I know you haven't survived to the present day. It's just a question of when you go under. And I won't spoil myself on that just yet.
Squad leader: The 1945 scenarios continue on from last issue, as the russians rape and pillage berlin. Pull out the stops and invoke a whole bunch of special rules, because this is gonna be an epic one. Yet it still fits on half a page. Which is nice for the editors when they need a little something to complete the issue.
The electric eye: This month, they focus on sports video games. Real time joystick controlled games, and strategic simulations both get examined, and several specific examples and companies get mentioned. Not my personal cup of tea, but still quite a well written article. I don't have a problem with this.
Pinsom and jasmine continue to develop. Wormy returns after quite a bit with a fantasy sequence thing unconnected to the main storyline.
A particularly cool back cover this month from Martian Metals, a mini's company, disguised as a newspaper cover. I am quite amused.
This one's pretty good, although not in the articles I was expecting. Funny that, the ones I most enjoyed were the ones they didn't hype so much. Likes and dislikes are subjective things, and obviously I'm not entirely in tune with Kim's mind. But would you want that, anyway? Probably not. If I didn't have my own opinions, this would be a duller series.
If Shemeska's been following this, I think these guys sound like they'd work pretty well in the Planescape setting. Especially with all the Pandemonium madness intact.
Yeah, apart from the Sugo, they can all be used with subsequent planar stuff with little problem. It's like all the forgotten realms stuff from this era. You couldn't use it very easily then without filling a load of stuff in yourself, but you can now.
96 pages. Another april, another load of comic stuff in issue 48+1/2. Phil foglio does another tremendously entertaining cover piece. Meanwhile, the serious special topic this issue is underwater adventuring. But it only has three articles on it. You'd think they could have kept the adventure from number 46 for later, as it would have fit in better here. I guess long term planning is tricky when you've got to make pagecount for a deadline every month. We also see more signs of kim's growing dominance in the editing department, as Jake starts deferring to him, even if it is in jest. Verrry interesting.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: We start with a letter of generalised praise, with particular emphasis on the value for money of getting a whole module, plus loads of other stuff in each issue, especially when compared to the cost of most of the modules currently out there.
A letter criticising the fact that the scale in the Dungeon design kit is not the same as the 1 inch = 10 foot scale that most of the miniatures and game rules use, hurting it's compatibility.
A letter by someone bemoaning the over $400 they've spend on gaming over only 6 months. And that's even before the supplement treadmill became standard. Silly person. You need more willpower.
A letter offering a balanced view on the power gaming debate, saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with high level characters, but they ought to work up to it properly, otherwise they won't be able to use their powers to full efficiency, or have well rounded personalities to match. And in his experience, maturity has surprisingly little correlation with age.
Watery words to the wise: Lots of cool stuff on running coastal and underwater campaigns, and the challenges and opportunities that these present. 3d combat, a fun but tricky business. But for those monsters used to it, land combat would seem horribly constricting tactically, previously easy obstacles becoming insurmountable problems. Which is why sahuguin haven't scoured every coastal village clean. A pretty cool article, well deserving of being this months lead-in one, that reminds you that you don't have to go to other planes to have a very different adventuring experience.
Dragons bestiary continues the underwater theme, with the water horse, (arthurian stickybacked breed) Golden ammonite (no relation to gold dragons, I hope) and sea demons, which aren't actualy demons, just intelligent malevolent giant octopi. No spectacular standout monsters here.
Bazaar of the Bizarre also provides lots of water focused items as well, with 5 boring weapons with extra pluses against some water creature or other, the necklace of air breathing (don't put this on if you can already breathe air, because death by drowning often offends.) and the periapt of protection against vampiric Ixitachital (now how often are you going to encounter one of those) Oh and spongestone, which adds quite a few quirks to the real world item. A decidedly low interest article this time round, given the amount of recycled adaptions in it compared to actual ideas.
Issue 48+1/2
Dragon mumbles: Our joke articles begin with some incomprehensible gibberish from the editor. Some of it I can translate, but some of it is just stupid for stupids sake. Meh.
Out in limbo: 4 comedy letters. There are no saving throws in school. And someone's found the wand of orcus and would like to return it to its proper owner. Yeah, that'll go well.
Red dragon blues: The filking returns. Please don't sue us, Johnny Cash.
A class that really counts: The accountant. Be very afraid. Thankfully, the rules for it aren't complete, or indeed entirely legitimate, so your players can't ask to play one. Which means you can relax, sorta.
Real life: A minigame. I think the rules for this just about hold together. But you don't want to play it, because it's a very depressing game indeed. Everyone loses. Its just a matter of how long you can keep playing for.
Saturday morning monsters: Bugs bunny and daffy duck, Popeye, Rocky and bullwinkle, and dudley do-right. Just about statistically legitimate, you still don't want to use these guys in your game unless you want your players to hate you forever. Because they're bigger pains in the ass to defeat than the denebian slime devil.
The various Dragon comics crossover in puntacular fashion.
The druid and the DM: Back to the serious stuff. This discusses the various abilities of druids, and how they can be applied. It also trys to dispel misconceptions. Druids are not all misanthropes, in fact, with their high charisma and powers useful to everyday life they can be quite politically powerful. And there are plenty of molds and oozes and other creatures in dungeons that stop them from being useless down there. It also includes some optional rules and abilities, that amazingly enough, spice things up without making the class more overpowered. Which makes it a pretty good article, overall.
The druid and the dungeon: More druid stuff, this concentrates on how to optimize them for dungeoneering. Make sure you pack plenty of mistletoe, and pick up some hirelings and befriended animals, because you'll need all the help you can get. Work as part of a well oiled team that can cover your weaknesses, and you should be fine, after all, you have a decent weapon selection, attack rolls and hit points, plus quite a few spells that are still applicable down there. You're hardly a sitting duck. (unless you choose to shapechange into one) And they haven't even realized how effective a swiss army knife shapechanging is, even when you don't have feats, and therefore have to stick strictly to mundane animals. Useless in dungeons, I think not.
Still, even if you don't use the class, they also have lots of new spells to pilfer for your game. At least they aren't printing overpowered classes every other issue like they did back in the strategic review days 
My last subscription ended with #283, so I only have 4 sets, but I think I've read it only went that far anyway. I'm pretty sure they were 1 in = 5 ft scale tiles given that that was the scale for the 3e rules. Mostly vasic but useable stuff, some dungeons, wilderness, even a sewer with gators. 
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