(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Issue 291: January 2002
part 8/10
Demogorgon's champions: Lots more death knights detailed this month, showing just how different you can make them now they advance using the same class levels as players. Straight fighters, fighter/mages, a fighter/rogue, fighter/bard, cleric, and of course the iconic fallen paladin/blackguard choice that everyone thinks of when you say Death Knight. Of course, all of them are complete bastards, but not all of them are comfortable with that fact, not all of them have any loyalty to demogorgon, their nominal creator, and their levels of competence and sanity vary hugely. Still, none of them are really suitable challenges for a starting level party, and most have a decent amount of magic items and followers on top of that, so killing them all off for good will be the climax of a long and challenging campaign. This article looks like it could provide you with lots of adventures, and be reskinned for other campaigns fairly easily, so it's been a pretty decent ride. All you need to do is provide the locations.
Chainmail: Unfortunately, we've already covered the Gnomes story in the Chainmail wargame, so they decide to shine the spotlight on the dwarves instead. Amusingly enough, they've wound up with a communist state, after a long unpleasant stint under a tyrant king. As with most dwarves, they have a long-standing rivalry with the elves of the setting, which started through a stupid lack of communication, and now mainly carries on just because. To supplement their natural mining talents, they also have alliances with earth elementals, which gives them an excuse to put bigger, more interestingly shaped troops on their teams, just as Gnolls have their demons, and Humans have their Gnomish war machines. So this is a mix of the stereotypical with the quirky, showing once again that they put a decent amount of effort into the setting-building for this game, not all of which was just justification for more fights. There may not be an unambiguous good guy in this game, but this team comes closer than most, should that matter to you. This column is still making pretty good reading as well, even if it's not in theme.
Command points: A second Chainmail article? Well, the minis column was pretty heavy on it for the last few months, but they've decided to kill that now, so I guess this is the replacement. And while breezily written, this is basically just a promotional piece about their upcoming additions to their armies, that won't be of any use once you have them. And in depressingly traditional form for supplements, there's power creep used as a selling point, with particular units having higher ratings in certain abilities than anything from the core set. This makes me sigh a bit. It's going to be Dragon Dice all over again isn't it? A strong start, marred by lack of quality control in the follow-ups and too high expectations. Oh well, it was fun for a while.
part 8/10
Demogorgon's champions: Lots more death knights detailed this month, showing just how different you can make them now they advance using the same class levels as players. Straight fighters, fighter/mages, a fighter/rogue, fighter/bard, cleric, and of course the iconic fallen paladin/blackguard choice that everyone thinks of when you say Death Knight. Of course, all of them are complete bastards, but not all of them are comfortable with that fact, not all of them have any loyalty to demogorgon, their nominal creator, and their levels of competence and sanity vary hugely. Still, none of them are really suitable challenges for a starting level party, and most have a decent amount of magic items and followers on top of that, so killing them all off for good will be the climax of a long and challenging campaign. This article looks like it could provide you with lots of adventures, and be reskinned for other campaigns fairly easily, so it's been a pretty decent ride. All you need to do is provide the locations.
Chainmail: Unfortunately, we've already covered the Gnomes story in the Chainmail wargame, so they decide to shine the spotlight on the dwarves instead. Amusingly enough, they've wound up with a communist state, after a long unpleasant stint under a tyrant king. As with most dwarves, they have a long-standing rivalry with the elves of the setting, which started through a stupid lack of communication, and now mainly carries on just because. To supplement their natural mining talents, they also have alliances with earth elementals, which gives them an excuse to put bigger, more interestingly shaped troops on their teams, just as Gnolls have their demons, and Humans have their Gnomish war machines. So this is a mix of the stereotypical with the quirky, showing once again that they put a decent amount of effort into the setting-building for this game, not all of which was just justification for more fights. There may not be an unambiguous good guy in this game, but this team comes closer than most, should that matter to you. This column is still making pretty good reading as well, even if it's not in theme.
Command points: A second Chainmail article? Well, the minis column was pretty heavy on it for the last few months, but they've decided to kill that now, so I guess this is the replacement. And while breezily written, this is basically just a promotional piece about their upcoming additions to their armies, that won't be of any use once you have them. And in depressingly traditional form for supplements, there's power creep used as a selling point, with particular units having higher ratings in certain abilities than anything from the core set. This makes me sigh a bit. It's going to be Dragon Dice all over again isn't it? A strong start, marred by lack of quality control in the follow-ups and too high expectations. Oh well, it was fun for a while.