Let's read the entire run

Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990

part 4/6


Pages from the mages, part VI: It's been over 5 years since Ed published one of these. What a welcome returnee. Once again, 4 new spellbooks, each of them as filled with both flavour and nifty new spells as ever. Just like new classes, new spells are a perennial favourite of players and GM's. Just the thing to keep people happy for christmas.

The book of Shangalar the Black is, unsurprisingly, a nice bit of necromancy courtesy of one of your paranoid liches. Two offensive spells based on manipulating bone, and two defensive spells, which are essentially just conversions of cleric's undead elimination toolkits. Not nearly as fun as the hordes of crawling claws power he hints at in the fluff description though. Guess you'll have to do that one manually.

The Glandar's Grimoire also has some fairly effective necromantic capabilities, including one spell that's exceedingly scary and will cause PC's a lot of annoyance if put up against it. Vampiric touch eat your heart out.

The Tome of the Wyvernwater Circle is a druidic tome, lost when they were attacked by expansionistic beholders. It's new spells are relatively straightforward offensive, defensive and warding ones, using nature in practical ways to kick butt (although mold touch is a bit underpowered for it's level. )

The Hand of Helm is a spellbook by clerics of said god. It's also pretty heavily inclined towards direct offence, defence and buffing effects, as befits the god's aggressive nature. Ed does seem to be a bit lower than normal on the whimsy this year. Still, I guess that means players are more likely to grab these spells and put them into regular rotation. Whether that's a good thing or not s definitely a matter of opinion.


Role-playing reviews: New classes may be popular, but new races are almost as much so. They also fill the craving of players for crunch, and allow for interesting new roleplaying challenges as well. I'm certainly guilty of having my decision to buy a book based on if it has new splats to add to the game, particularly where White Wolf are involved. That trend still hasn't reached it's zenith, but it's definitely well on the path. And as usual, some are good, and some are bad. Which of this recent batch will win Jim's approval?

Trollpak is of course an updated version of the classic Runequest supplement, originally reviewed in issue 67. Since it was so popular first time round, this time it's been split into 4 expanded products for maximum milking of profit from their fanbase. Still, the production values have been improved, and they retain their interesting history and characterisation from the original. It's certainly not a waste of money, especially if you're a newer Runequest player.

Troll gods adds some of the other stuff from the original Trollpak, plus a bunch of new deities. Much of this is straight rehash, however, making it not particularly great value for money if you have the related products already. One mainly for completists then.

PC1 Tall tales of the wee folk does for the fae what Orcs of Thar did for goblinoids, opening up both an area and it's inhabitants. This of course involves things with a wide range of HD and special powers, which can be tricky to balance. There are a few mechanical issues, but a little fudge solves those quickly enough. Adding these guys as PC's or antagonists can spice up your D&D games quite adequately.

PC2 Top Ballista moves things into decidedly goofy territory, a flying city filled with techno-gnomes and a bunch of other weird creatures, most of which can also fly. Along with the gnomes, things such as Pegataurs, sphinxes and harpies are made available as PC's. Unfortunately, the slapdash and often rather wonky attempts to balance them continue, with some creatures virtually crippled by their XP progressions. The adventures show a similar degree of mechanical issues, and the whole thing shows signs of not having been taken very seriously. Bleah.

GURPS fantasy folk gets a relatively ambivalent review. It's the usual generic stuff, designed to help you build your world rather than put any distinctive spins on the creature. This means it has the usual high quality mechanics with more than a hint of dullness. Don't know why they bother reviewing these when they nearly always say the same thing.

Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990

part 5/6


The mechanics of the iron cobra: Another ecology by any other name here, as we cover a creature which makes the word inappropriate. One of the more sophisticated, if not the most powerful of constructs, iron cobra's powers of detection, and ability to be programmed with relatively complex orders makes them more desirable servants than smelly brainless or treacherous undead, and they're cheap enough to mass produce. For the first time in a while, we have a strong showing on both the fiction and the footnotes fronts. Plus, since this is a 1st ed monster that hasn't been officially updated yet, the writer is kind enough to reprint the actual stats here as well. How very nice of them. That really puts the cherry on this sweet little christmas cake.


What has he got in his pocketses anyway?: Ed Greenwood finds the time to deliver a second article for us this christmas. This is actually a rehash of one from issue 104 (they even reuse exactly the same artwork, which is a bit cheeky. Ed decides to go for fewer options, but greater detail on each one than the pervious iteration. The spirit of sadistic fun is still there though, with many of these results showing his sheer genius at coming up with twists on the usual plot ideas and odd items. Many could provide several sessions of adventure if deployed well. Looks like he's still very much got it, despite his workload keeping him from checking in here more often.


TSR Previews: An even lighter set of releases coming next month. Post christmas slump or something. The Forgotten realms continues to bounce from east to west with great enthusiasm. FROA1: Ninja wars sees Kara-Tur integrate further into the Realms, and Ninjas worm their way into all sorts of organizations. Who's really in control? Meanwhile, Crusade, by James Lowder sees the Horde trilogy come to an end in the novel department as well. King Azoun gets to kick ass and suffer indignities and compromises. They're really having fun with this world.

Greyhawk sees WGA4: Vecna Lives! Heeee's baaaaack! And he wants his hand, eye, and dominion over the whole ing Oerth! Hmm. Someone really ought to do some foiling before we spend an eternity as undead slaves. Watch out for the railroaded prelude extraordinare.

D&D continues filling in it's alternate setting, in HWA2: Nightrage. See the Nithians, and find their feathered serpent. What other strangeness will we encounter along the way?

Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990

part 6/6


Novel ideas: Looks like these guys are in theme this month, as they decide to talk about the Horde series of novels. Zeb Cook, Troy Denning, and James Lowder have all been immersing themselves in Oriental culture, to varying degrees and levels of ease. As usual, we get some interesting behind the scenes info. Zeb really isn't a natural fiction writer, despite having tons of info to draw upon. Troy on the other hand, does seem to be, producing more work in an hour than I usually manage in a day. But even he had to hone his craft and get over his insecurities about the quality of his ideas. Another article that helps to hammer in what a production treadmill TSR has become, with deadlines mapped out well in advance, and writers put under considerable stress to achieve them. If you want to work for them, you've got to jump on board the running train and hang on like hell until you find your balance, then keep going until you burn out. Not a very tempting option, really.


Dragonmirth reveals how you get lawn gnomes. Replica artifacts become fashion statements in yamara. The characters fight in miserable weather in twilight empire.


Through the looking glass: Ooh. Another very interesting topical event from the realms beyond gaming in here as well. The great attempt to ban lead from miniatures (and lots of other stuff as well, but that's not important .) Robert is not happy about this at all, and encourages you to stand up, organize, and complain vocally. This is a spurious ban, and one that will do huge amounts of damage to the hobby for minute environmental benefits. How very alarming. I seem to recall this one dragging out for years before ending with a whimper, and it should be another interesting little subplot to track month-by-month.

The usual bunch of reviews for figures of all sizes are here as well. Witches, sorceresses, anti-paladins, chimera, firbolg, to fill your general fantasy cravings. Blue Ardua from Talislanta for those of you who want something more specific. Jabba the Hut and his entourage, if you're feeling a little sci-fi. The HMS Victory, if you want to go historical. And some more textured terrain for if you want to represent the hassles your miniatures are going through to get to the battle. Until the ban actually takes place, they aren't going to let it spoil their fun.


With diversions into psychology, composition and law this issue, this has been an unusually wide ranging and interesting collection, even if the themed section isn't that great. The writers are full of cool ideas, even if some of them are rather goofy, and not all are very mechanically rigorous. But even so, there's plenty of usable stuff to pick out this time round. I think this is a fairly positive end to the year. Let's see if next year can top it.

I know it's when I started actually subscribing instead of just picking them up at the library. So expect my comments to increase soon.

Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991

part 1/6


116 pages. For a 4th issue in a row, they do a special topic that they've done previously. Albeit in this case, the previous is a little further back than the last few, as underwater adventuring last got a special in issue 48, where it was kinda overshadowed by the april fools silliness anyway. I think this is a sufficient gap that revisiting isn't too egregious. Let's hope they've got some good material to fill this in with.


In this issue:


Letters: A rather amusing letter about Roger's distrust of letting his kids practice martial arts. When he said practice MA, he really meant flailing about hyperactively and jumping on the bed. No artistry and very little martialness is employed at all. Tee hee. This sounds very familiar. I was doing that kinda stuff around this time as well.

Another letter asking for another index. It's been on the internet for some time, responds Roger. Do not hesitate to download it.

A letter promoting the Gen Con art show. It's not just games and miniatures that have tons of stuff on them happening there. Gotta keep building things up, diversifying and spreading, so we can make money from the greatest number of people.


Editorial: Bah. Some people are never satisfied. The soviet union has just broken up, bringing an end to the paranoia of nuclear apocalypse. We're closer to global peace than ever before in history. But we've still got quite a way to go, and it is the nature of many people to always look at the negatives and cry doom. Really, if we can avoid ecological disaster, and survive the potential collapse of civilisation when we exhaust the fossil fuel supply, things don't look too bad for the next few million years. Eventually an asteroid will hit, or the sun will burn out, and we'd better hope we've got the hang of space travel before then, but really, we would be a lot happier if we didn't keep making problems for ourselves beyond the real inevitable ones. On the other hand, without that urge to fantasize about potential problems when we don't have enough pressing real ones, we probably wouldn't have gaming as we know it. Human nature is weird. If only there was something we could do. Fraid I'll have to leave the transhumanist propaganda for another time.


Anchors & Arrows: Another out-of date article kicks things off. You know, the 2nd ed battlesystem has been out for over a year now, you really could have converted this one over. It's not as if 2nd ed is less friendly to the idea of naval battles. But they still think 5 pages of add-ons to the old mass combat system is a good way to start things, for some reason. I must confess to a degree of bemusement at that choice. Still, our regular forumite Thomas M. Kane attacks the idea with gusto, with rules for movement, artillery, boarding, ramming, fires on board and weather. Some of them are a bit vague, but I think that on the whole, this is useful stuff. It may be rather a niche market, but if it won't merit a whole supplement, then the magazine is the best place for it. I do question it's getting first place though. If they can't produce something more relevant to the wider population, they may be in trouble.


The dragon's bestiary: Giant archerfish shoot you into the water, just like their real world counterparts do to bugs. Just the thing to use as a random encounter for overconfident players on a boating trip. Staying out of the water will not protect you.

Giant damselfish turn the tables on fishers by using bait that looks like a drowning person, encouraging you to jump in and become dinner. Once again, compassion is rewarded by screwage by sadistic DM's. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Just kill everything and get the xp. That policy never really goes out of style. Not a brilliantly inventive pair, but another good reminder that reality is full of cool ideas ready for the conversion. These should be easy to slip in any time your players run across a river.


Undersea priests: Hmm. This is much more like it. The logistical problems underwater spellcasters experience, and the adaptations to the regular spell lists and paraphernalia that need to be made to accommodate this. Holy water is replaced by holy silt. Spells are written on seashells and bits of carved bone. And there's tons of reskinning that needs to be done on specific spells. A few years ago, they were trying to force all the monsters to fit the humancentric mold if they wanted any class capabilities. Now they've started down the path that'll lead us to using your own body as a spellbook via tattoos, Staves replacing books, Dragons becoming invaluable sources of unique magical lore, and all manner of boundary stretching experimentations with the nature and form of magic. One size does not fit all, and there's a lot of changes you can make, many developed due to necessity. With a decent number of new spells as well, this is very handy for DM's, and quite possibly for players as well. If your campaign spends any extended period underwater, you'll want to pick up some of these tricks. Looks like this issue is picking up pace.

(un)reason said:

Another article that helps to hammer in what a production treadmill TSR has become, with deadlines mapped out well in advance, and writers put under considerable stress to achieve them. If you want to work for them, you've got to jump on board the running train and hang on like hell until you find your balance, then keep going until you burn out.

Click to expand...

I hadn't looked at the Empires Trilogy Novel Ideas column since it was first published, but your comments prompted me to dig out my copy of Dragon #164. Your notes, and the original article, are worth a reply.

Unless you're working on a book "on spec" -- that is, without a contract -- you're working with a deadline, one that is mapped out months or years in advance. That's true of every publishing house and magazine. Deadlines can be good. They can help a writer focus. Really short deadlines are not good, but the Empires books did not have really short deadlines. Not that you'd get that impression from the Novel Ideas column.

At this point in TSR's history, changes were underway in the book division that gave writers more time to write and more input on content. This was a direct result of the mistakes made in the creation of the original Avatar Trilogy, which had unreasonably short deadlines and was placed on the schedule without a clear idea of just how complicated it was going to be to coordinate all the various tie-ins between books, games, and licensed comics or computer games. (As Avatar coordinator, I still suffer from flashbacks on bad days....)

The Horde game material/Empires Trilogy fiction was generated in a manner that was a specific response to the top-down approach of Avatar. Zeb Cook provided the individual vision for the core of the Horde project; he wasn't brought on to write the material after a management group decided this would be the next Realms "event." Troy and I entered the picture early, and the three of us wrote almost all the game and fiction material. We were given a great deal of creative freedom. In short, the Horde/Empires project was far more individual-driven than Avatar. While there was a fair bit of PR built up around the project, this reflected sane deadlines and a better corporate grasp of project roll-outs, not corporate control of the actual content. Big roll-outs and tight corporate control of content can often be tied, but they are not necessarily tied.

From a book division perspective, Empires was an attempt to find a more creator-friendly approach to a process that can (and did) chew up writers. It reflected a swing of the constantly moving pendulum toward more authorial control and creator-generated ideas and characters. This is reflected in the content of the Horde/Empires products and in the marketing -- e.g. the novels are credited to individual writers and not a house name like Avatar's "Richard Awlinson," and the Novel Ideas PR piece is focused on the writers even more than the content or the line. This is a big deal for a company that, just a couple years earlier, refused to put the names of authors on the spines of the novels.

The Empires Trilogy Novel Ideas column caused no small amount of consternation to management when it ran because it cast a project that was consciously intended to be more open, more creator friendly, as just the opposite. Looking back at the article now, it's clear from the quotes that Zeb, Troy, and I were not all that used to giving interviews. (This may have been my first interview, and, wow, does that show.) It's also worth noting that the person who wrote the column was not very fond of shared-world books. Theresa was a book department editorial assistant who, I recall, left the company shortly before or just after the article was published. During her brief tenure, she and I had several discussions about shared-world books; it's safe to say that she wasn't a fan of a lot of the novels TSR had published.

Combined, subjects and author produced an article with lots of awkward quotes and an emphasis on how crushing all the deadlines were, how stressful the shared-world process could be. (While deadlines are often helpful to writers and are necessary for publishing, they are also stressful. That does not make them unreasonable or bad, though it's easy to frame them as such.) So the article is an inaccurate characterization of this particular project. It's also bad PR.

The fact that the article ran in this flawed form highlights two things about TSR in 1990. First, communication between the departments was still tentative. Coordination between books and games and magazines was often a bit haphazard. Second, fully coordinated marketing -- particularly internal crosspromotion -- was not considered a high priority. It was something that you tried to do, but it was not given a lot of attention by higher-ups. So the Novel Ideas columns were not coordinated with other possible PR pushes, or controlled tightly by one office. This article probably ran without review from the head of books or anyone in marketing.

Subsequent Novel Ideas columns would be reviewed by the head of the book division before they went to Dragon, to prevent another PR article from actively countering a product's intent. I was going to say that marketing might have gotten formally into the loop, too, but in 1990 the marketing department at TSR was still very small. Editors in the various departments were often tasked with writing ad copy and doing PR things that other staffers would handle in just a few years. (The book division, for example, was still directly setting up author signings at Waldenbooks....) I don't recall marketing having formal, systematized and rigid "sign off" on PR articles, let alone covers or any sort of product content, until late 1993 or 1994. If they reviewed the Novel Ideas columns before then, it was probably still informally.

In any case, this particular Novel Ideas column -- and the Horde/Empires project as a whole -- reflects the constant struggle within TSR between corporate control of products and PR and the recognition or empowerment of individual creators, particularly those outside the company. The tension between the two philosophies is one that goes back to TSR's origins and continues to this day at Hasbro/WotC. How this tension is reflected in the pages of the magazine is not always going to be clear, though, and assumptions -- particularly about intent or the creative process going on behind the scenes -- can sometimes prove very wrong.

Cheers,
James Lowder

Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991

part 2/6


The role of books: In the net of dreams by Wm Mark Simmons looks like another holodeck gone wrong story, as people get trapped in a computer game. (heavily based upon D&D) It's not perfect technically, but the reviewer finds it a lot more fun than Kevin Anderson's similar efforts.

Fire on the border by Kevin O'Donnel Jr takes us to the 24th century, to deal with some rather awkward politics, with the fate of planets in the balance. The destruction of worlds is handled with a bit more seriousness than, say, the Hitchhikers guide, and it all seems pretty positive, even if it doesn't quite manage to capture the galactic scope it sets up. Thousands of worlds is a tricky thing to manage, isn't it.

The black throne by Roger Zelazny & Fred Saberhagen draws upon the works of Edgar Allen Poe to make a rather strange bit of sci-fi. Maybe it's a bit pastichey, but it's a lot more interesting than another straight fantasy story.

Voyage of the star wolf by David Gerrold also gets a less than perfect review due to it's use of in-jokes and name-dropping from other sci-fi series. That caveat aside, it is a pretty entertaining bit of sci-fi, mixing drama and humour pretty well as the characters respond to the strange things that happen. Sounds pretty familiar.

Most ancient song by Casey Flynn gets picked apart by the pedant in the reviewer for being a butchering of mythology. This does not mean it's a bad book, merely that it triggers his personal buttons. Ahh, yes, often interesting when that happens.

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay is a shakespearian flavoured bit of fantasy. While not written in iambic pentameter like another novel reviewed in here, it still has both story, character-building and symbolism in spades. If you're looking for a world to base your game off, you could do a lot worse.

Scorpio rising by Alex McDonough is much more episodic than most of the books reviewed, with the uncontrolled time travel device serving as a good way to keep things focussed on the current plot. This makes for a refreshing change for him after multi-volume doorstops with cliffhangers at the end of each one.


TSR Previews: Well, you didn't hold out long. First out the gate this month is MC8: outer planes appendix. Welcome back to our unpronouncably renamed summon cascading pains in the ass. Please don't overuse them. Also in the generic side, we have PHBR5: The complete psionics handbook. We've filled in the core 4. Now lets introduce a new class, and a seriously reworked system for their powers. Issue 78 gets a little more vindication.

For the first time in a while, the forgotten realms gets nothing this month. Instead, it's spelljammer that gets a double bill of sourcebooks. SJR2: Realmspace, and SJR3: Dungeon master reference screen. Oops. Looks like I spoke too soon. Welcome to crossover central. See yet more areas surrounding the ones we know well, albeit rather larger areas covered more sketchily. Oh, and Elminster's hidden moonbase. He just gets more and more cheesy, doesn't he.

Dragonlance starts a new year with another trilogy. 3 3 3. This is why they wound up mocking this stuff in planescape. Anyway, it's another historical one. See the rise and fall of the silvanesti nation, in Firstborn. Even with their enormous lifespans, elves still have squabbles over inheritance. Weak.

Our evil overmistress tells the staff to stop abbreviating the XXVc game. It's Buck Rogers, damnit! :roll of thunder: You will respect my authority and pay the licencing money into my coffers! 25CS1: Deimos mandate! 25CREF1: Character record sheets! You will pay for the official ones of these as well, not use some scrawled bits of paper! Ahahahahaha!!!

Another wargame for you this month. A line in the sand is a game of middle eastern conflict over oil. How very topical. Who will control the resources that power civilization itself?!

And unsurprisingly, another standalone book is put at the end. Jeff Swycaffer continues to be a quirky contributor, with Web of Futures. A man is plucked from his normal life by a strange alien to be a cosmic saviour. As is often the case, he seems completely unsuited to the job, and therein lies the fun.

Lots of interesting stuff here.

JLowder said:

Unless you're working on a book "on spec" -- that is, without a contract -- you're working with a deadline, one that is mapped out months or years in advance. That's true of every publishing house and magazine. Deadlines can be good. They can help a writer focus. Really short deadlines are not good.

Click to expand...

I wonder if there's been a scientific study that figures out the optimum length of a deadline for maximum productivity. I know that in school, nearly 90% of kids would leave even major projects 'til the last minute and then rush them out overnight when they had months to work on them. And even some pro writers (Douglas Adams, for example) still fall into that trap as adults.

At this point in TSR's history, changes were underway in the book division that gave writers more time to write and more input on content. This was a direct result of the mistakes made in the creation of the original Avatar Trilogy, which had unreasonably short deadlines and was placed on the schedule without a clear idea of just how complicated it was going to be to coordinate all the various tie-ins between books, games, and licensed comics or computer games.

While there was a fair bit of PR built up around the project, this reflected sane deadlines and a better corporate grasp of project roll-outs, not corporate control of the actual content.

From a book division perspective, Empires was an attempt to find a more creator-friendly approach to a process that can (and did) chew up writers. It reflected a swing of the constantly moving pendulum toward more authorial control and creator-generated ideas and characters.

Click to expand...

Can you reveal which of the future series of big event books were more or less troublesome to work on?

This is reflected in the content of the Horde/Empires products and in the marketing -- e.g. the novels are credited to individual writers and not a house name like Avatar's "Richard Awlinson," This is a big deal for a company that, just a couple years earlier, refused to put the names of authors on the spines of the novels.

The Empires Trilogy Novel Ideas column caused no small amount of consternation to management when it ran because it cast a project that was consciously intended to be more open, more creator friendly, as just the opposite. It's also worth noting that the person who wrote the column was not very fond of shared-world books. Theresa was a book department editorial assistant who, I recall, left the company shortly before or just after the article was published. During her brief tenure, she and I had several discussions about shared-world books; it's safe to say that she wasn't a fan of a lot of the novels TSR had published.

Click to expand...

Sounds like this may have been the interviewing equivalent of countries fighting the last war they had, rather than the current one. After all, we didn't hear anything about the stresses of making the Avatar stuff at the time.

Combined, subjects and author produced an article with lots of awkward quotes and an emphasis on how crushing all the deadlines were, how stressful the shared-world process could be.

The fact that the article ran in this flawed form highlights two things about TSR in 1990. First, communication between the departments was still tentative. Coordination between books and games and magazines was often a bit haphazard. Second, fully coordinated marketing -- particularly internal crosspromotion -- was not considered a high priority. It was something that you tried to do, but it was not given a lot of attention by higher-ups.

Subsequent Novel Ideas columns would be reviewed by the head of the book division before they went to Dragon, to prevent another PR article from actively countering a product's intent.

Click to expand...

That is good to hear.

I was going to say that marketing might have gotten formally into the loop, too, but in 1990 the marketing department at TSR was still very small. I don't recall marketing having formal, systematized and rigid "sign off" on PR articles, let alone covers or any sort of product content, until late 1993 or 1994.

Click to expand...

Now that is slightly surprising. From outside the company, the T$R stereotype was already fully in force. It's easy to forget just how small the gap between amateur and professional can be.

In any case, this particular Novel Ideas column -- and the Horde/Empires project as a whole -- reflects the constant struggle within TSR between corporate control of products and PR and the recognition or empowerment of individual creators, particularly those outside the company. How this tension is reflected in the pages of the magazine is not always going to be clear, though, and assumptions -- particularly about intent or the creative process going on behind the scenes -- can sometimes prove very wrong.

Cheers,
James Lowder

Click to expand...

That does seem to be a persistent issue. The areas that are most controlled are also most likely to get PR whitewash. This is why I'm doing this on multiple forums, to get other perspectives and misconceptions corrected. Thanks for your time.

Dragon Magazine Issue 165: January 1991

part 3/6


Forum: Carol McGarril has found romance crops up quite naturally in her games, without the GM needing to contrive things. Well, lucky you. The rest of us do not have that luxury and have to really work at these things.

Jason Williams voices his skepticism at some of the tactics deployed in The Enemy at the Gates. Once again the conflicts over exactly how much magic to have in game become an issue.

S. D. Anderson has rather harsher words to say about the same article, picking apart flaws in the rules, and pointing out that D&D magic very much favours the attacker. All it takes is one strategically placed fireball to cause mass devastation, and you can't have wizards ready to dispel everywhere in the city.

Dirk Waters shows that the idea of reskinning thieves as scouts has been had by more than one group independently. And yeah, this solves them quite a few problems. Funny how big a difference a name change can make.

John Stanton Jr has a scattershot collection of gripes and solutions, which I do not find particularly helpful.

Bonnie Patterson has a DM who preserves her kender character in the face of recklessness and dickery. The other players may well want to murder them as a result of this, but the game is made more fun. Is this really something you want to tell everyone?

Robert T. Wahl grumbles about a player who quit because she didn't get any cool new items in the last adventure. He then goes into his own craptacular monty haul experiences. Huge rewards without effort just turn the game into a joke.

Ron Dippel faced the awkward problem of a player who dominated the game to such an extent that the other players tried to kill him, and failed because he was just that twinked. Now that takes a special variety of annoying player to pull off. I suppose that's actually a good benchmark for proving you're a master of mathematical twinkery, since a DM can always beat the players if they really want too.

Michael Repka finds that DM's who also have PC's in the same campaign are cheating bastards who use their inside knowledge to twink out horrifically. This is definitely a problem, but he can't get them to stop. No gaming is better than bad gaming, you know.

Rick Maffei points out a few of the many ways magic items can be taken away from players if they're becoming a problem. Don't think you have to completely reset the game just because things are getting a little out of hand.


Chill gets revamped. You're still not gonna be able to compete when the world of darkness comes a-knockin.


The voyage of the princess ark: The princess ark sets off again, once again heading southwest, but not as far this time. They end up in Thothia, Mystara's egypt analogue, where surprise surprise, they face a greater mummy, (technically, a lich, but it's how they present themselves that matters.) who is pissed off at their appropriation of his magic. They win, but the bad guy gets away again, adding to the growing list of people with a serious vendetta against them. Haldemar remains pretty unfazed by this, being more interested in the ramifications for the Ark. Is it really intelligent? Just how would it be upgraded if they use their new discoveries on it. Unfortunately, no time to fix that right now, as it's cliffhanger time again. Gotta keep the story dramatic.

This month's crunch is stats for several more of our regulars. Myojo, the rakasta samurai. Raman, the chief engineer, and his amazing portable magical library. And Lady Abovombe, the ambassador from Cestia who's had a rather tough time of the last 34 years, but has had her youth restored thanks to Haldemar's magic. We see once again that the Ark has a wide range of different level characters adventuring on the same team, and they have a complicated relationship map between them. Goes to show just what you can do with a party, and still keep it functional. You don't have to use the 4 or 5 characters of roughly equal power model if you don't want to.

We also have lots more letters. The usual collection of questions and quibbles. Most notable here is that Bruce reveals that the Rules Cyclopedia is coming. No longer will you have to look up rules between 5 different boxed sets. Plus, it has a whole bunch of extras the originals lack. This is good news. They've certainly kicked this year off well. Lets hope they can keep the momentum up.

(un)reason said:

I wonder if there's been a scientific study that figures out the optimum length of a deadline for maximum productivity. I know that in school, nearly 90% of kids would leave even major projects 'til the last minute and then rush them out overnight when they had months to work on them. And even some pro writers (Douglas Adams, for example) still fall into that trap as adults.

Click to expand...

I know of very few writers who do not end up battered by deadlines, no matter how long those deadlines are. Some writers do much better work with a lot of pressure. It forces them to stop dithering, to stop tinkering with every sentence, and just write. Many, many writers still operate on the college deadline model.

(un)reason said:

Can you reveal which of the future series of big event books were more or less troublesome to work on?

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From 1990 to about 1993/1994, there weren't a lot of problems. Post-Avatar, I pushed for projects like the Harpers and the Realms anthology series, which didn't feature world-shaking stories. We actively avoided those sorts of epics, in fact, and ran calls for submissions where the writers proposed plots and created characters. The initial Ravenloft books were mostly stand-alones. Even the bigger roll-outs during that time, like Dark Sun, were creator-centered. I edited the first five Dark Sun novels, and they were easy because Troy Denning had been involved in the world's creation. In fact, the Dark Sun fiction had been conceived in tandem with the setting, not as an add on. The content wasn't dictated by marketing or some other office unconnected to the creative aspects, though; the people who were going to write and edit the material generated the core concepts and crafted the line's identity.

There were individual novels during that time that were problems, and the Buck line had its own issues (like any license), but overall, things ran pretty smoothly for the first couple years of the 1990s.

Around 1992/1993, there were changes in management -- both in books and at the VP level. The book department staffing changes led to a weird, almost schizophrenic approach to fiction. Some novels were totally creator driven, even to the point where they openly contradicted the game material, while others were corporate concepts to the point of being little more than overt marketing or copyright/trademark protection. (The creator-owned TSR Books line also vanished in the mid-1990s and there was even a return to the Avatar-style house name with the "T.H. Lain" books, both of which are pretty clear indications of the corporate mindset about creator control.)

I left the company as a fulltime employee in 1992 and continued as a satellite/contract employee working mostly on TSR projects until 1994. I left in 1994 in large part because of the ways in which the changes in corporate philosophy were negatively impacting what I was writing and editing. (My last work for the company until after WotC bought it would be a "First Quest" column for Dragon -- #208, I believe. The title I chose for the column was more than a little ironic. For a while, "First Quest" columns seemed to be the last thing longtime TSR employees did on their way out the door.)

(un)reason said:

Sounds like this may have been the interviewing equivalent of countries fighting the last war they had, rather than the current one. After all, we didn't hear anything about the stresses of making the Avatar stuff at the time.

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Avatar's success completely surprised the company, particularly when the third book hit the New York Times bestseller list. (In fact, it was only around 1990 that TSR realized just how much the fiction releases were contributing to the bottom line -- and just how thoroughly the books were dominating the trade bestseller lists. The increase in book ads and book-related content in Dragon at this time reflects the realization that the fiction was an integral part of the company's success.) There wasn't a lot of thought put into detailed crosspromotion for Avatar ahead of time, and what was done once the series started selling well was usually cobbled together on the fly. So it's no surprise that PR in the magazines lagged on Avatar.

As for the Empires interview, I was certainly stressed when I gave it. That wasn't because of unreasonable deadlines. (It had more to do with fact that the book lines were exploding in popularity and I was putting in a lot of very long days.) I have never written a novel where I did not just want to type "...and the bus jumped the curb and killed them all. The End." at some point, usually about a month before the deadline. As I said, I think the piece is colored by the writer's dislike of shared world fiction and the Realms in particular.

(un)reason said:

Now that is slightly surprising. From outside the company, the T stereotype was already fully in force. It's easy to forget just how small the gap between amateur and professional can be.

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TSR certainly went through phases where it was more deserving of the T$R tag than others, and for different reasons, depending upon your perspective and interests. In the mid-80s, for example, the moniker seemed to be used most often by people unhappy with Gary's departure. It was more about personalities than specific products or business practices.

When I started in '88, we got very little interference from the higher ups in day-to-day projects. In the book department in particular, we had a very small staff compared to the number of books we were publishing and we did a wide range of jobs. It was a fantastic learning experience, and I got a lot of opportunities because I could work with both games and fiction. Yes, there were times when a project would draw the attention of Lorraine and everyone would have to react accordingly, but, really, we were largely left to do our jobs as we saw fit. With rare exception, the people who worked at the company understood the games pretty well and liked working for a hobby game company.

Around 1992 or 1993, TSR started seeing more VPs who thought of the products as widgets, who couldn't tell the difference between the Realms and Ravenloft and Dragonlance, and didn't really care about that sort of nuance. Middle managers started gearing up to pursue MBAs (a trend that would culminate in many mid- to late-90s panels at Gen Con with TSR managers talking about product "synergies" to fans whose eyes were glazing over and rolling back in their sockets). The creative staff started seeing a lot more interference in things like book covers from marketing and sales, and sign-off sheets got longer and longer, with more and more names in the loop. Shortly, this would begin impacting everything from the shelf life of product lines (which got shorter and shorter, as the company became more desperate for an immediate hit) to the way in which the legal office would recommend the company deal with fans online and even its employees. (If your legal staff understands the hobby market at all, they know that ham-fisted bullying is counterproductive; if they are familiar only with standard corporate legal practice in other industries, they fire off threatening letters at the slightest hint of a problem.)

The difference between TSR and T$R -- for me anyway -- can be found in the identity of the people making the majority of the decisions about the products published, their connection to the hobby and the products themselves, and the way in which the company structure and the contracts it offers promote or denigrate individual creative vision. And even in the incarnations most deserving the T$R tag, there are individuals within the company fighting the good fight and published products that somehow manage to reflect a personal vision.

In any case, thanks for all your efforts for this series. It's been very interesting reading your comments and your perspectives.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder