(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Issue 288: October 2001
part 2/7
Previews: And again with the format changes, to a slightly more conventional appearance. The degree of color used is still massively up though. With the current software, it really is no bother to have it on every page.
First up is Oriental Adventures, another big release. James Wyatt follows in Zeb Cook's footsteps, and manages to imbue it with the same degree of compulsive readability, (at least IMO) despite the quite substantial differences. L5R continues to make it's mark in multiple ways. There's also Enemies and Allies. More stuff to save time, in creating characters, along with all the adventures they release. Money=Convenience.
One novel for each surviving gameline this time. Greyhawk draws upon their old modules again for Queen of the Demonweb pits by Paul Kidd. I don't think they've had an original thought in their heads since they brought back this gameline in '98. The Realms also continues to do what works with Sea of Swords, the latest instalment in the adventures of Drizzt and Wulfgar. Be ready for more cool action sequences, and quite possibly brooding. And Krynn shows us the sideways perspectives on the war of souls in The Search for Magic, another collection of short stories edited by Weis and Hickman. Yup. Formula formula formula.
Up on a soapbox: Even back in the old school era, Gary wasn't averse to a little PvP, and having them develop their own goals and challenges. After all, it'll take the pressure off a bit from constantly sketching newer, deeper levels to Castle Greyhawk, and get people into the roles of their characters. And using your spells creatively is to be encouraged as well. So this is a fairly amusing little actual play story that works in favor of the sandbox playstyle. You give them open-ended options, and they'll reward you by doing surprising things with them. And hopefully that'll give you good stories to tell to other people as well. And everybody's happy except the people who lose at PvP. Hopefully they'll learn to take the joke, and give as good as they got next time.
Dork tower has an attack of squarehead stretchmouth. Oy cherubima.
Ooh. An actual RPG advert. White wolf manages to get their Sword and sorcery books in, along with some good reviews. Flying the flag for d20, and creating a new campaign setting along the way.
Four faces of death: Last month, they showed us 4 different variants of the plane of dreams. This time, they start us off with 4 very different takes on gods of death from various real world cultures. India's Yama. China's Decemvirate of judges. Persia's Ahriman, and voodoo's Baron Samedi. Another good reminder how having one true answer to a question can be restricting, and certain concepts are big enough to be examined again and again from different angles, and reveal something fresh each time. Sex, death and dreams certainly qualify for this, (and they've never done a romance themed issue yet, have they. ) and it's very interesting to see how the culture a god comes from affects it's aspects. Still, the amount of new mechanical information here is tiny, and most of this stuff has turned up before in official D&D books, as well as being easily researchable elsewhere, so this isn't a particularly innovative article. It reinforces their current toolkitty attitude, but doesn't break new ground much. Guess Jesse hasn't had the chance to change things around yet. Still, this would definitely please a new reader more than it does me.
Plots & Schemes: Ah yes, murder mysteries and other detective stories. As last covered in issue 240, where they wound up mostly giving examples rather than advice. Guess it's time to try again, and see if we can do better. This time, the answer's a pretty definite yes, with a fairly long, nicely organised, and interestingly laid out article, that looks at common plot elements and ideas, and also goes into quite a bit of detail on what not to do if you want to create a mystery story that your players can actually solve, and feel they got a fair challenge while doing so. It's all too easy to make your puzzles impossible to solve if you don't give the right kind of descriptive detail, or make the players feel like they only managed to accomplish anything due to luck/railroading. So it's full of good advice for a roleplaying game where the rules are supposed to stay consistent enough for players to understand and exploit them, and have a good idea what would be possible and impossible in world, even if it wouldn't in reality. Which I suppose fits in with the 3e style, even if it isn't the best ruleset for detective games in many other ways. Surely there's a D20 variant out there that further supports this playstyle. Hell, even d20 modern would make it much harder to take the plot breaking divinations for granted. So I'm still not sure about the wisdom of doing detective stories in D&D, but this article is a definite improvement on previous attempts to get us to try it.
part 2/7
Previews: And again with the format changes, to a slightly more conventional appearance. The degree of color used is still massively up though. With the current software, it really is no bother to have it on every page.
First up is Oriental Adventures, another big release. James Wyatt follows in Zeb Cook's footsteps, and manages to imbue it with the same degree of compulsive readability, (at least IMO) despite the quite substantial differences. L5R continues to make it's mark in multiple ways. There's also Enemies and Allies. More stuff to save time, in creating characters, along with all the adventures they release. Money=Convenience.
One novel for each surviving gameline this time. Greyhawk draws upon their old modules again for Queen of the Demonweb pits by Paul Kidd. I don't think they've had an original thought in their heads since they brought back this gameline in '98. The Realms also continues to do what works with Sea of Swords, the latest instalment in the adventures of Drizzt and Wulfgar. Be ready for more cool action sequences, and quite possibly brooding. And Krynn shows us the sideways perspectives on the war of souls in The Search for Magic, another collection of short stories edited by Weis and Hickman. Yup. Formula formula formula.
Up on a soapbox: Even back in the old school era, Gary wasn't averse to a little PvP, and having them develop their own goals and challenges. After all, it'll take the pressure off a bit from constantly sketching newer, deeper levels to Castle Greyhawk, and get people into the roles of their characters. And using your spells creatively is to be encouraged as well. So this is a fairly amusing little actual play story that works in favor of the sandbox playstyle. You give them open-ended options, and they'll reward you by doing surprising things with them. And hopefully that'll give you good stories to tell to other people as well. And everybody's happy except the people who lose at PvP. Hopefully they'll learn to take the joke, and give as good as they got next time.
Dork tower has an attack of squarehead stretchmouth. Oy cherubima.
Ooh. An actual RPG advert. White wolf manages to get their Sword and sorcery books in, along with some good reviews. Flying the flag for d20, and creating a new campaign setting along the way.
Four faces of death: Last month, they showed us 4 different variants of the plane of dreams. This time, they start us off with 4 very different takes on gods of death from various real world cultures. India's Yama. China's Decemvirate of judges. Persia's Ahriman, and voodoo's Baron Samedi. Another good reminder how having one true answer to a question can be restricting, and certain concepts are big enough to be examined again and again from different angles, and reveal something fresh each time. Sex, death and dreams certainly qualify for this, (and they've never done a romance themed issue yet, have they. ) and it's very interesting to see how the culture a god comes from affects it's aspects. Still, the amount of new mechanical information here is tiny, and most of this stuff has turned up before in official D&D books, as well as being easily researchable elsewhere, so this isn't a particularly innovative article. It reinforces their current toolkitty attitude, but doesn't break new ground much. Guess Jesse hasn't had the chance to change things around yet. Still, this would definitely please a new reader more than it does me.
Plots & Schemes: Ah yes, murder mysteries and other detective stories. As last covered in issue 240, where they wound up mostly giving examples rather than advice. Guess it's time to try again, and see if we can do better. This time, the answer's a pretty definite yes, with a fairly long, nicely organised, and interestingly laid out article, that looks at common plot elements and ideas, and also goes into quite a bit of detail on what not to do if you want to create a mystery story that your players can actually solve, and feel they got a fair challenge while doing so. It's all too easy to make your puzzles impossible to solve if you don't give the right kind of descriptive detail, or make the players feel like they only managed to accomplish anything due to luck/railroading. So it's full of good advice for a roleplaying game where the rules are supposed to stay consistent enough for players to understand and exploit them, and have a good idea what would be possible and impossible in world, even if it wouldn't in reality. Which I suppose fits in with the 3e style, even if it isn't the best ruleset for detective games in many other ways. Surely there's a D20 variant out there that further supports this playstyle. Hell, even d20 modern would make it much harder to take the plot breaking divinations for granted. So I'm still not sure about the wisdom of doing detective stories in D&D, but this article is a definite improvement on previous attempts to get us to try it.