Let's read the entire run

We interrupt your regularly scheduled viewing to bring you breaking news from the realms of actual play. Over the course of yesterday, I finally got the chance to start playtesting some of the ideas taken from the magazine, and you can find the writeup of the first actual play here. Hope you enjoy it. Hopefully, I will have more to report on this soon. Normal transmissions will resume tomorrow.

Dragon Issue 109: May 1986

part 4/4

Fiction: Valkyrie by W. J. Hodgeson. Love. It has caused much joy, and much suffering. Sometimes both at once, such as when a supernatural being falls in love with a human, and has to either watch them age and die while they stick around forever, or become mortal and suffer the ravages of time with them. A bittersweet result at best. On the other hand, if you're very lucky, the gods might show you mercy, and grant you an ironically happy ending such as this one. After all, they move in mysterious ways, and sometimes what they secretly want is someone to defy their word and prove their worth as a true hero. So this is an unusually happy ending to a story given the source material. I don't have any objection to this.

Fighting the good fight: Space Opera is our first stop this month in the Ares section, with a bunch of new tricks and variants for combat. Facing, parrying, and disarming. Three elementary matters that have been abstracted away in the game's combat system. Is it any wonder that some people want to insert them. Some will call that unneccacary crunch that misses the point of the game's design. Some will call that perfectly reasonable. I've been in both camps in the past, but this time I fall in the perfectly reasonable one. After all, without options like that, the game just becomes one of basic taking turns to attack, gradually wearing each other down. And where's the fun in that?

Patriots, terrorists and spies: Looks like metaplot has already snuck it's way into star frontiers, with cults suddenly increasing in frequency in FY 111 due to a supplement. This is an interesting development. And as ever, people will always want to introduce a few more, and this magazine is a good way to go about it. So here's 8 new cults which your players might theoretically join, but it's much more likely that they'll appear as adversaries. They include socialists, racists, religious fanatics, psychics, and those that fear them, and general self-advancing secret societies; and generally exist to provide plot hooks for players to investigate. Hey, you can always use a few more of those. Another one of those cases where due to the space limitations, they have to boil them down to their basic concepts, leaving out all the nuance and specifics. You'll still have to do a ton of developing if you want to use them in your game.

The double-helix connection: Mutants. A fairly familiar sight in here, thanks to gamma world. But they're not so common in traveller. Nor are they as powerful, with flaws almost as common as drawbacks. But then, Traveler is a lot more realistic than gamma world. That's not to say they have no place as PC's, as characters being exceptional in some way does help build interesting stories. So if you like, when generating a character, roll to see if they are a mutant, and then roll to see what powers they get. Your odds are around the same as your chances of getting psionics in D&D, and it's just as much of a crap shoot whether you'll get abilities that are useful and what you want, and learn how to control them properly. Still, that is the Traveller chargen way. If you don't like the way a particular character's developed, just roll up another one. Nothing hugely wrong with this article.

A change of diet: Speaking of gamma world mutants, they don't get neglected this month either. But they don't get too much either, as this is only a half page article. Seems like they're doing lots of short articles this month. So yeah, six awkward dietary restrictions your character could suffer from. What fun, everyone!!!! Anyone? No, I'm not enthralled either. Nuff said.

The Hero system makes a joke about it's own complexity in an advert. Pretty amusing.

The marvel-phile: Just as he did last year, Jeff provides an index of all the characters detailed by them so far, in every supplement, module and magazine article. And he intends to make this a yearly event, since this is an ongoing process for an active game line. So from Abomination to Zsaji, we're now at over 300 superheroes, creatures and organizations. Still plenty more to go though. Just don't ask us to do Transformers, Godzilla, GI Joe, or most of the other properties marvel does comics for, but don't actually own. They're not part of the license, no matter how we might wish otherwise. Onward! The advanced game is now out, and there's still tons of bits of this huge tangle of a universe we haven't filled in yet! Ahh, Jeff. You always know how to brighten my day.

The keys to good SF: Having made a visit to all their usual stops this month, they finish off this month's Ares section with some general role-playing advice. Sci-fi has the potential to allow quite different plots to fantasy, but often, the goals remain the same, with only the window dressing changed. Unfortunately, unlike the Top Secret article earlier, the writer fails to take her own advice, and gives us two and a half pages of yer usual world and character building advice. Because lets face it. Hard sci fi is hard, and of interest to a far smaller sunset of people that stuff that uses the ray guns and funny shaped people as merely backdrops to human drama. Once again, I am forced to say ho hum.

Dragonmirth gives apprentices some schooling. Snarf uses his anachronisms. Wormy continues setting up for the ultimate wargame, while others plot his downfall.

Despite the presence of several amazing articles in this issue, this has mostly been another long slow slog. Are they just not getting enough really good articles to justify their size? Are they deliberately playing it over-safe by rejecting weird stuff and publishing ones similar to the ones they've done before? Are they holding their A material back for the birthday issue again? Was the magazine losing it's sparkle around this time for you as well? Or is it just me, consuming too much as usual? I think I need a bit more exercise to work all this information off. Still, that's why I changed my schedule. Now I'd better make sure I make the most of those extra few free hours a week.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 1/4

108 pages. Welcome to the 10th anniversary issue. How are they going to deal with that. They've already covered tons of topics, many of them multiple times. What new things are there to discover? How can they improve on the general format? Well, they wouldn't have asked us if they didn't want to know. Because let's face it, they have been struggling for ideas of late. While they could probably go over the same old ideas again and carry on for the next 10 years, diminishing returns would set in, and they'd get as bored as we would. Kim certainly wants to keep both us and himself interested, so he's not going to take the easy option. Well, that's pleasing to hear. Lets hope he can justify those words over the next few issues.

In this issue:

Letters: A letter asking how the ranger's nature skills interact with the general skills system. Because of course, we have one now. Oh, how mathematically awkward. What shall we do?
A letter by someone who didn't understand the swarm rules in the pernicon ecology. Treating a swarm as a single creature is a nice abstraction that saves you lots of time. It does mean they don't count as lots of 1 HD monsters, but really, that's a plus, because it means they provide a challenge to a wider range of adventurers.
A letter asking if we'll ever see computer gaming return to the magazine. Funny you should say that. We were just about too The readers have spoken, and we have listened. Hope you like it.

The king arthur companion for pendragon now available. Who's who, what's where, and what do all those legendary items do? Read it for lots of extra setting info.

The forum: R. Zane Rutledge has recently reconsidered his subscription as a result of Daniel Myers complaints. Although he agrees with some of them, he has decided, on balance, that the magazine is still worth reading each month. A very considered letter here. Interesting.
Philip Winters has some thoughts about what happens to society when wizards are fairly common and willing to sell their powers for an affordable price. While continual light spells lighting every house is the biggest and easiest one, there are plenty of other cool ideas you can incorporate.
Daniel U Thibault engages in lots of nitpicking about the decay patterns of various radioactive isotopes. Elementary physics, my dear. This is the kind of thing the writer in issue 108 really should have researched better.

The cult of the dragon: Dracoliches! One of Ed's more impressive inventions, this gives us details on how you make one, the minutinae of the transformation process, and the special abilities they get once transformed. It also includes plenty of details on the social order that create and worship them. One of the early examples of template building, this definitely shows you how to spice up your dragons, making them distinctly more badass, both individually, and in terms of social support network. Before, if you killed a dragon, you could take their hoard, go home a hero, and that'd be the end of it. But now, you'll not only have to deal with the dragon again unless you can destroy their phylactery, but you might well have to face a whole load of powerful spellcasters and other dracoliches as well. Use with caution, because dragons are powerful enough already. But if you're in the upper teens or 20's in terms of levels, and even the biggest monsters are no longer a challenge for your team individually, these guys make great overarching adversaries for an epic game. Ed has once again looked at events happening in gaming in general, and figured out how to incorporate the ideas into the forgotten realms, while also making them just generic enough that you can insert them into your own game without too much trouble as well. He really is very good at this. A strong start that is very fitting for the anniversary issue.

Mekton. The game of giant killer robots! It's taken this long for someone to realize that transformers fans are a good crowd to target for gaming? Tch Tch. How do you expect to make money if you can't spot a gap in the market.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 2/4

For better or norse part 1: Ahh, the norse pantheon. Second only to the greeks in the popularity of their legends. See what being a fractious bunch who are basically just humans writ large gets you. They've already got plenty of airtime in D&D, with quite a few magical items based off them in the core rules, (hammer, gauntlets and girdle for the win) and a whole chapter in Deities and Demigods. But since they have whole sagas about them, there are people who want more. Unlike with the centaur papers, they've decided not to combine these two articles into one, despite them having some overlapping stuff. After all, there is no Canon beyond what you choose to include in your game.
This first article gives us stats for the Vanir. Not quite as famous as the Aesir, (probably because they aren't as loud and violent ) they're still an interesting bunch, and including them opens up more avenues for godly politics, with multiple factions competing for worship in the same area. We have a mixture of gods, demigods, and monsters which may not be gods, but are still mean enough to present a challenge to them. Angur-boda. Edger. Gerda. Grid. Gullveig. Hati Hrodvitnsson. Skoll. Hermod. Mimir. Nidhogg. Njord. Ran. The Tempests. Utgard-loki. Vafthrudnir. Volundr. (whew) This nearly doubles the size of the pantheon. Which is pretty useful, if you're playing a game in an appropriate milieu. And if you want to be god-slayers, this is one of the more appropriate pantheons, given the number of horrible monsters they have around them. Another fairly decent article.

For better or norse part 2: A rather different and more focussed article makes up our second norse offering. Where the first one was largely crunch, this one has more extensive essays on a few specific deities. Niord (curse you, inconsistent translations! ) shows up again, with different stats, and Frey, Freya and Loki get expanded on from their D&DG entries. Loki in particular gets altered quite a bit, as the writer disagrees with the official interpretation of his personality. Ahh, the annoyance of drawing from a mythos that is inconsistent in itself. How very tiresome.

All about Elminster: He's been telling us stories for nearly 5 years now, this mysterious sage. He spins tales of beasts and magic, spells, trickery, swords, shields and rings, histories and possible futures. But all things must change. He can't stay mysterious forever when so many people are curious about him. And so the 10th anniversary of the magazine is where Ed finally chooses to give us concrete details about the teller behind them. And this is one instance where the results are probably bigger than most suspected beforehand. A 26th level magic-user, with 3 18's in his attributes, and nothing below 12, he possesses vast magical and psionic powers, and travels universes with ease. He talks with the undead, sleeps with goddesses, and has developed some of the most twinky tricks you've ever encountered to keep his ass safe. But he still maintains a quiet little home in the Realms, and doesn't meddle in politics there openly, leaving that to others. We also get a bunch of new spells, and huge amounts of detail about the history and other big players in the realms. This really opens up the lid of the stew he's been cooking over the years, and it smells delicious. After this kind of showing, how can they not give Ed the chance to publish his world properly. People must be clamoring for more. Unless they're the sort who think there's too much mary-sue cheese in this mix, which is understandable. But as you can probably tell, I don't. At least not yet. When will it become too overcooked for me? We shall see.

The role of computers: As they said earlier, Dragon is opening up to review computer games again. How very pleasing. In the time they've been absent, computers have crashed, come back, developed massively, and are now far more common than ever before. Consoles are also just starting to make inroads into america. But let's not get ahead of ourselves and jabber on about stuff that falls outside this column.
Straight away, they recognize that if you just want to read computer game reviews, there are other magazines that specialize entirely in that, and can review far more games every month, probably in more depth. So to justify their place in Dragon magazine, they need to remember they're writing this as roleplayers, for roleplayers. A laudable statement. Let's hope they stick to it.
Their first big review is Wizardry. Wait a minute, I hear you say. Didn't this get reviewed in this magazine back in 1982 in issue 65? Why, yes it did! Don't worry. Not only is this a new set of reviewers offering a new perspective on things, it's also a new version of the game, on a different platform, with considerable improvements in the graphics, (although the specs are still pretty risible compared to modern computers. ) a massively improved save game feature, (saving mid adventure? Unheard of! ) use of the new Windows format of displaying multiple things at once, and lots of other awesomeness that will soon become common practice in programming design. It manages to improve on a game that they already have a nostalgic attachment too.
We also get 9 capsule synopses of other computer RPG's at the end, rounding off this column nicely. This is another case where it'll probably take them a few issues to really find their feet and strike a good balance of reviews, chatter and guides. Still, the magazine has taken another step outwards in the topics it covers, and towards the format it had when I started reading. Overall, this is a very pleasing addition to their roster.

Oh, who are the computer reviewers? Are the Lessers already there?

LordVyreth said:

Oh, who are the computer reviewers? Are the Lessers already there?

Click to expand...

Yup. It is indeed our indubitable husband and wife team.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 3/4

Dragon damage revisited: Leonard Carpenter returns to follow up on last year's article on dragon attacks and how they scale with age. I know more about how the 1st ed system quirks now, so this doesn't provoke the bemusement it did last time. We have new expanded scaling charts for the 5 Gem dragons from issue 37, the 8 oriental dragons from the Fiend folio and Oriental Adventures, plus the Cloud, Mist and Shadow dragons from the MMII. We also get some design notes to help you adapt this kind of thing for your own campaign. After all, one size doesn't fit all. Maybe you want different dragons to the generic D&D ones. I'm generally happy to see follow-up articles going into more depth, particularly when it's an idea I approved of in the first place. I do vaguely wonder why this wasn't put at the front with the other dragon article. Eh, not important. I'd enjoy it just as much if it was right at the back.

The house in the frozen lands: Looks like we're getting one of our last modules before Dungeon starts up and takes that job over. And they spill out a bit, going to 17 pages on this one. Curiously, it feels a lot like the Top Secret module set in the antarctic, with the same formula of troubles getting to the remote frozen location that's been taken over, and then dealing with enemies that are superficially polite, but really just want to get rid of you, and will kill you if you probe their secrets. Thankfully, there is no threat of nuclear apocalypse if you fail, but there is still the potential for wider political ramifications if you play this one right and tie it into your campaign. The maps are pretty good as well, (although the only toilet has a water weird in it, which may be a problem. ) A pretty solid adventure that could take up a good few sessions and play out in several different ways. Ok, It's no baba yaga or city beyond the gate, but it's still pretty decent. Once again, it looks like they've been saving their good stuff for the important issues.

TSR Previews is still the wrong way around.
AD&D is getting the dungeoneers survival guide. Further evidence of the acceleration of the supplement treadmill, this is lots of advice for your dungeon explorers and builders. Here we go again, into the breach.
Terrible swift sword and Barbarossa are finally out ...... or are they? Oh, the annoyance. We also have a whole bunch of goofy stuff. The Paramount Movie and Broadway stageshow board games. The Honeymooners. What is this? More attempts for them to tap completely unrelated markets, I guess.
Marvel super-heroes is going Advanced. More crunch, more maps, and a whole bunch of gimmicky crap in the box. If that's not enough little pieces to get lost, you can get the 4th set of miniatures, with a definite X-men theme to it.
Endless quest gets book 33: Knight of illusion. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Damn Illusionists. Proper wizards just blast you and have done with it. But no, you have to be given a chance and wind up facilitating your own demise in ironically amusing fashion.

Fiction: The wizard's boy by Nancy Varian Berberick. Oh, inscrutable wizards. What pains in the ass you are. Always concealing your motives and goals from the people you work with. Things'd be a lot simpler if you just explained upfront what you're up too (at least, the nontechnical aspects. ) then we could help you achieve your objectives more efficiently. Still, I suppose when looking for an apprentice, if you let them know what you want, power-hungry people who would abuse the knowledge would fake it. If you remain inscrutable, things may take a little longer to plot out, but you know they're real when you see them. Yeah, this is one of those tales of a young boy growing up into a powerful wizard, and not having a particularly easy time of it. Not the most original idea, but again, not badly done either, with pretty decent characterization and magic. Guess we're finally slipping back into the filler material then.

Knowledge is power: Seems like every new RPG that comes along these days has some kind of skill system, especially the ones that eschew classes and levels for a more ad hoc advancement where you only develop what you practice or choose to spend XP on. Games such as D&D and Gamma world are starting to seem rather outdated as a result of this. Just knowing what their players know or can describe them doing can result in huge imbalances in character effectiveness, even if they have the same stats. D&D has recently had a basic nonweapon proficiency system introduced in Oriental adventures, and in a few months that'll be rolled out for the regular classes in the Wilderness survival guide. But Gamma world is currently rather short on supplements. So here's a basic system for it. A very basic system indeed, as the skills are purely binary, most of their capabilities granted are handled narratively, and he neglects to give XP costs for learning new ones. Like the secondary skills in the original AD&D book, these rules are so vague as to be virtually useless. Frankly, you might as well just keep on using fiat, because you'll have to anyway if you try and incorporate this.

(un)reason said:

Yup. It is indeed our indubitable husband and wife team.

Click to expand...

Huh, I never knew their relation before. As a kid, I thought they were siblings for some reason.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 4/4

The marvel-phile: Having mostly been presenting minor heroes I've never heard of recently, Jeff decides to bring another big gun out for this issue. Ghost rider. The kind of name you'd have to be a fool not to use. And one of marvel's few legacy characters, (I wonder why DC wound up with more) where the person with the name changes, but the name remains in use, because it's a valuable bit of intellectual property. ( I have to wonder when we'll see a return of Shadowman, since that's another name that's too obvious for them to leave undefended for some other company to grab.) This is one case where the powers and style of the people possessing the name have varied wildly. Even what they ride varies, with one being a biker, and the others being horsemen. This is important, as it shows how you can progress the continuity of the universe without losing touch with the iconic bits. It's like monarchy. The person may change, even the family, but the state continues. The cycle of life and death goes on. All is well with the world. Or something. Another pretty pleasing contribution from Jeff. Lets hope he can keep that up when they transition to the Advanced game next month.

Going for a swim?: Looks like we have another case where the writer is filling in rules that you would think should be obvious. Star frontiers has no rules for swimming. I guess when you're in space most of the time, the idea doesn't come up. Fortunately, the gear needed to survive in space and underwater has quite a few similarities, only you don't need to carry your own oxygen supplies. Anyway, no great surprises here, as we get rules for movement, underwater combat, and the bends. The quirks of the various alien races are dealt with, as are those of equipment. One of those articles that falls under the solid but dull category.

Piece of the action: Hmm. Introducing the mafia to Paranoia games as a secret society? That's actually a pretty good idea. After all, using a bad italian accent for your character, having secret agendas conveyed by coded doubletalk, and wielding odd weapons is entirely within the spirit of the game, especially as most commonly played back then. Will you be loyal to the Family, make a profit for them, and work your way up the ranks, or will they be as prone to "retiring for health reasons" as the other members of your troubleshooting team? Either way, I find this quite an entertaining little article, that's useful in itself, and also reminds us that nearly any real-world organization or ideology can be converted to a paranoia one with hilarious results. It may require you to reduce the randomness of character generation, particularly if it's a player who came up with a cool idea for a society, but that's hardly a gamebreaker. This isn't WHFRP, after all.

Dragonmirth mocks polearms. Not hard to do. Snarf's little leech thing saves the day. Wormy features a very impressive giant showdown indeed.

Get subscriptions at a bargain price as a 10th anniversary gift! How generous of them. Not as generous as a lifetime subscription, but they wouldn't be so dumb as to offer them anymore.

Looks like Ed is the real star of this show, delivering a one-two punch that comes close to his classic work on the nine hells. Even if he stopped here, he'd already have more than won a place in the D&D halls of fame. But no, next decade is going to bring even bigger things for him, as his world becomes the biggest, most fleshed out campaign world in the entire AD&D multiverse. And this issue has several hints on how that's going to happen. The rest of the issue is considerably better than most of their recent offerings as well, with more big articles, stuff looking back on old things and building upon them, and stuff looking forward and trying out new ideas. I'm definitely coming to prefer the issues with several big articles that link into gaming's overall history to the ones with tons of tiny shallow unconnected bits and pieces. And I'm guessing at this point, plenty of other people will feel likewise, or we wouldn't see the rise in metaplot we do over the next decade. After all, it's not an inherently bad idea, it's just that like any idea, it can be done wrong. And if you link everything up, then one part being fouled up causes problems for everywhere else, while if you have independent replaceable bits with multiple redundancy in your design, you can keep the bits that work and ditch the ones that don't. But I digress. This is about gaming, not mechanical engineering, even if the lessons from one field can be transferred to another. Unless you guys actually want me to go off on tangental discussions and rants when they occur to me. Because that's certainly an option.

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 1/4

108 pages. Another month, and they continue their drive to regroup and reorganize their staff. Roger Moore has left the Ares section to become the head editor at Dungeon magazine. Meanwhile, they are encouraging their artists to make more money by reprinting cover art as posters. More money for the same amount of work. Hopefully this will mean they'll be amenable to reprinting the art in later D&D books

In this issue:

Letters: A letter asking if dust of appearance disrupts a displacer beast's displacement. The answer is a very definite yes.
A letter about sexism. Two actually. The first involves the barbarian cleric and if women can become one, due to it's exclusive use of masculine pronouns. The other is from a female reader who would prefer more equal opportunity cheesecake. Ahh, the perennial sexism problem. Still a long way to go to equality. Any time now we'll be getting another women in gaming article. Ho hum.

The forum: David M Axler has a bunch of quibbles about the weather article from issue 108. Everyone's an expert. It's almost as bad as the stats for gods arguments.
Andy Price talks about talks about the nature of magic. If the gods are really infinitely powerful, granting spells should be no problem for them, regardless of where in the universe they are. I think that's where the flaw in your logic is. You have read the current god rules for D&D.
Jaldhar Uyas thinks that locals aren't all yokels was a dumb and unsubtle article. There are better ways to encourage investment in the world than making every third NPC 15th level. Is that a strawman I see here? You exaggerate the position of your opponent.
Scott Paul Maykrantz thinks UA sucks and will not be buying it or allowing stuff from it in his games. From everything he's seen, the new additions are a bunch of crap. Take that, T$R! Charming.

Good stuff, for a spell: Hmm. Magical items that allow you to spontaneously convert your memorized spells into spell energy, which when channeled through the item, produces some other spell. What a novel idea. This is an exceedingly prescient article, presenting a whole different way of balancing your characters capabilities by making sure their items are linked to their own powers, rather than working constantly, a fixed number of times a day, or running out after a while. As a direct ancestor of both 3e cleric's spontaneous conversion, and weapons of legend, this is definitely one for the files. As the writer himself says, this idea is like inventing the wheel, once you've done it, you can apply it to all sorts of situations, and are amazed no-one thought of it before. And so design technology takes another step towards the present day. A pretty damn good way to start the issue.

Welcome to Malachi: They get hinted at occasionally, but you don't get to see inside them as often as I'd like. Other people's campaigns are a ripe source of articles, as they can be much more specific and take a definite stand on topics that a generic article is likely to end up sitting on the fence over. But only Ed has managed to go from articles sent in independently to a fully detailed published campaign world, and he's a massive outlier. Well it's a tricky route to take. Let me tell you about my campaign world is only one step up from let me tell you about my character. It takes a special kind of storyteller to keep tales like that interesting for long.
Anyway, this is an example of what you can do to a city when spellcasters are common, and fully integrated into the infrastructure of the world. Clerics take the lead, revolutionizing health and living standards, while magic-users provide all kinds of expensive (but hopefully long-lasting) luxury items. Spell component vendors make a tidy profit selling to both, and adventurers can make good money by offloading all those monster pieces to them. This is the kind of conceptualizing I am strongly in favour of, interlocking the rules and setting to create a world that runs off it's own internal logic, and develops and reacts accordingly. The writer has developed this place through several years of actual play, and has lots more data on it to send to the magazine if it's readers are interested. (hint hint) This is a pretty nice article, full of fun ideas and tips for you to steal and adapt to your own game. This is the kind of thing I'd definitely like to see more of in the magazine.

DUNGEON™. Adventures: Roger Moore talks about his new job, being the head editor of Dungeon magazine. A definite step up from running the Ares section. And what he wants from you guys who are thinking of sending in submissions. D&D modules only, no more than 16 pages, send a proposal first, typewriting and SASE essential, you must surrender all rights to us, we pay flat fees not royalties, absolutely NO greyhawk stuff will be considered (because Gary owns that, and we're currently in backstage wrangling with him, but we mustn't mention that) and tons of other regulations to wade through. The kind of deal that frankly, I wouldn't sign with an 11 foot pole unless it had the potential of making me millions, and in that case I'd be engaging in hardball negotiations to improve it. (plus if I could produce a legible signature writing with an 11 foot pole, I'd be using my amazing dexterity to other ends) Oh well, that was standard back then, and all I can do is try to avoid falling into the same trap. And I suppose money from any source is better than no money. You've gotta love the job to do it, because you're never getting rich from it. Man, I wonder why I bother sometimes. Sorry about the cynicism. Just another reminder that the underside of the creative process is an ugly business. Best just to enjoy the flowers produced instead of sniffing the manure it comes from.