Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 1/8


128 pages. A spelljammer cover here for some reason, despite the line being long gone by now. I approve, since it both looks cool, and thumbs the nose at their marketing department. On the other hand, they've once again forgotten to tell us what theme their lead articles have. Straight away it looks like this is going to be another mixed bag in terms of quality. Let's see if the good outweighs the bad this time around.


In this issue:


Letters: A letter worrying that the new printings of the corebooks are a 3rd edition. Nope. They have no plans to do that anytime soon. No sir. Not at all. :shudders: All sounds like far too much work to us when we remember the last time round.

A letter pointing out the mistakes in their blood wars card list. Happens every time. No escaping it.

A request that they not put magazine articles online before they get published physically. Ahaha. Now that's a promise that can only be kept for so long.

And finally, we have an obituary for Nigel Findley. Damn shame. He managed one of the highest ratios of great articles of any writer, even better than Ed. (although he certainly wasn't as prolific) And as we saw last month, he was still producing thoroughly entertaining stuff recently. If he'd lived, he would probably have produced quite a few more great books.


Editorial: A farewell from Dale this month. He stepped into some pretty big shoes when he became the main editor, and he didn't quite manage to fill them. Still, as Roger didn't really get into the flow of things until about a year and a half in, this may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As usual, it's hard to say how history would have been different if someone else had been in the chair. So as is often the case for farewells, he looks back over his run on the magazine, and talks about the coolest things they printed in that time. Somewhat saddening. Sure, he wasn't one of the greats of roleplaying like Kim or Roger, but he certainly wasn't a bad guy, and he did make some interesting personal contributions as well as choosing other people's articles. So once again it's time to face the chaos of new people coming in, and having to figure out how to run everything all over again. Tough times are already here, and they're about to get tougher still.


First Quest: RPGA co-ordinator Jean Rabe takes a turn at this reminiscing thing. (just before she leaves the company. Everyone's jumping ship to go freelance it seems. ) A werehawk with exceedingly low mental stats was her first character, and she got into roleplaying because she wasn't keen on going out getting drunk. Wait, shouldn't that be the other way round? I guess starting in media res and then filling in the backstory later is an established narrative convention. Just wasn't expecting to see it in a 2 page article. There's plenty of info on the rest of her gaming career as well, and the benefits she's got from it. A job, a husband, friends and a whole cast-off campaign world. And probably cheaper than going out getting pissed on the weekends too. Who said gaming was bad for your social life?

 

[Orius]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995

And here we are. I've been following this thread since the beginning, and we finally reach the first issue of Dragon I ever bought. In retrospect, it probaby seems like a strange place to begin reading it, since we're at a point were people are leaving 2e for other games. I suppose that's not great for the magazine's readership.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 2/8


Boons & Benefits: We've had quite a few articles on unorthodox treasures before. Gems, books, maps, title deeds, plants, poisons, works of art. There's no shortage of things you can give your players beyond money and magic items that let them kick more ass. This pushes that idea a bit further, with the concept of treasures that are largely intangible. Titles, memberships in secret societies, medals, honorary degrees, a well paying sinecure of a job, huge discounts at the place saved, (or maybe just tax breaks) undefined favors to be called in at a future date. Here's 126 ideas, nicely divided into semirandom tables. Once again, we reinforce the fact that we have more ideas from the magazine than we can ever use. Still, there are a good deal wider ranging than most articles of this sort, and it's a good reminder to put different stuff into your game. I approve, even if I'm not blown away.


Behind enemy lines: Hmm. Another quite good and somewhat different idea here. And another one that might be tricky to implement. Just as many players will look at intangible rewards and thumb their noses at them, trying to run a campaign where you're right in the middle of the bad guys, and there's far too many to kill your way out of the problem may prove a problem for some groups. Be it because they don't have the tactical and roleplaying acumen, or they're now high enough level that instant teleportation or easy flight is in their reach, this might be tricky. Since D&D is more prone to both those problems than the average RPG, this is one that might be better suited to another system. Not a bad idea, though, and certainly easier to get a group into than the horrible A4 captured and stripped of all your stuff setup. So this is a second article I have mixed feeling about. I suppose we exhausted most of the easy adventure ideas a while ago, so I shouldn't be surprised we're getting into ones that are rather harder to run successfully.


Two heads are better than one: Now this is one of my personal favourite ideas, that I've used personally to great success. Sharing DM duties makes things a lot more fun. (provided you like the other person and have time to meet up with them outside the game to prepare for the next session) You can split the party, you can bounce ideas off each other and edit them better, you can divide labor in ways that play to both your strengths. Two heads are very frequently better than one. I have absolutely no reservations about recommending this article to everyone, whatever system or genre they're playing in. It may be short, but you can get a good deal of joy out of trying it, and may even find it becomes your default way of working if you can get a good enough partner. The smallest ideas can have the biggest repercussions, because they're most widely applicable.


Class action!: Oooh. Another idea that really should have got an article much sooner. They are stepping up their adventurousness in terms of rules and playstyles. Let's see what happens when you break D&D's usual niche protection, and have a party comprised largely or entirely of one class. While campaigns certainly won't be the same, they can still be entirely viable, and possibly even more interesting. And you can still find ways to differentiate them. Warriors can wield different weapons and work on their formation fighting skills. Wizards and rogues can really focus on getting good at their specialities. And bards can play different musical instruments. As white wolf games show, a game can thrive by focussing on one thing and doing it well, and then highlighting the more subtle subdivisions within that area. (savage vampire, imperious vampire, shadowy vampire, mad vampire, pretentious vampire ) You really will need to create adventures tailored to your party though, otherwise they may die horribly (apart from clerics. A good set of different speciality priests hardly needs other classes, as they admit here. ) With a sample adventure for each class group, this is both strong and fairly innovative. You could potentially get 4 whole campaigns off this one before rehash set in, so I'm definitely voicing my praise for this article.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 3/8


En-Psycho-Slade-ica: Or How compiling every magical item ever released for D&D into a set of tables drove slade quite quite mad. A sensation I can empathise with pretty well at this point, as the third anniversary of this thread draws ever closer. The sheer quantity of stuff just gets to be more than the human brain can comprehend at some point. To prove this, here's 21 pages of random tables, covering every item in the game via rolling d1000's. A fairly impressive special feature, made less so by the fact that it'll appear in volume 4 as well, so this basically fills up a 6th of the magazine with precycled promotion. So this was cool on first reading, but moderately annoying in retrospect, like so many promotional articles that no longer have any use once you have the actual product. Did you have a shortage of decent stuff to put in the magazine or something?


The new colour PHB & DMG get a centrefold spread. Four pages of teasing full of shiny new visuals. Considerably bigger, but not actually much more content. This means they cost more as well. Whether that gives them a bigger profit margin, on the other hand? Surely they weren't expecting to sell as many this time around as when 2e was first released.


Eye of the monitor: Looks like it's not just Lester who's rebutted Jay & Dee's review of Space Hulk. Indeed, they've got so many that they decide to give it another shot. They don't change their mind in the end, but that's not the point. The vigorous debate caused is still interesting, and writers do appreciate getting responses to what they write, even if it's not entirely positive. It's only when you're getting more flamers than you can even read that it really starts to bog your life down.

SimTower is the latest in the hugely successful sims series. You unlock new features to put in your towers as you go along, which helps give you a sense of accomplishment and keep you playing longer. Controlling your stairs, elevators, and eventually escalators is key to success, which is somewhat amusing. Their main complaint is that you can wind up waiting around for too long to make something happen or get more money in, which means it's best played while multitasking with something else. Nothing wrong with that playstyle. I must admit to doing that while also trying to write these reviews. But I can see why that would stop them from awarding too high a mark.

D!Zone is an unauthorised mod for Doom. It basically adds on a ton of mods and new levels, of decidedly dubious quality, and seems to expect anyone using it to be a computer programmer. It's definitely not for anyone but the most hardcore fanatic.

Heretic is another one for Doom fans, as it's essentially a fantasy themed Doom heartbreaker, with most weapons obviously analogues of Doom ones, and much the same gameplay. So if you liked that, get this. If not, don't bother.

Landstalker also seems fairly typical of it's genre, zelda-esque overhead fantasy adventure with lots of things to kill and puzzles to solve. There's less actual roleplaying than they'd like, but it does what it does well. No groundbreaking classics this month then.


The game wizards: Skills & Powers teaser part two. See us try and halfheartedly get in on the GURPS market by implementing point buy. And in the process, make the game considerably easier to break by not being very rigorous with the point cost balancing. As with several of their other rules experiments at this time, this really shows up the fundamental flaws in the system design. Developed in an organic evolutionary fashion, it's pretty good for some things, but exceedingly ill-suited to others. And like trying to tidy a filthy bedroom, a half-done job looks worse than not doing it at all, and just means the original owner now has more trouble finding things. So once again, this reads like a case of cool intentions gone wrong, and implemented poorly. Many of these options are just obviously better than other ones. And the choice between buying new stuff or using the points as one-off drama points to save your ass is very clunky. Given AD&D's advancement rate at higher levels, you're pretty much screwing yourself over if you don't upgrade yourself. Rip it up and start again. Chances are, you'll be wanting to respec characters built like this after a few levels.

 

[Orius]

En-Psycho-Slade-ica: Or How compiling every magical item ever released for D&D into a set of tables drove slade quite quite mad. A sensation I can empathise with pretty well at this point, as the third anniversary of this thread draws ever closer. The sheer quantity of stuff just gets to be more than the human brain can comprehend at some point. To prove this, here's 21 pages of random tables, covering every item in the game via rolling d1000's. A fairly impressive special feature, made less so by the fact that it'll appear in volume 4 as well, so this basically fills up a 6th of the magazine with precycled promotion. So this was cool on first reading, but moderately annoying in retrospect, like so many promotional articles that no longer have any use once you have the actual product. Did you have a shortage of decent stuff to put in the magazine or something?

And this is the reason I bought the magazine in the first place. At the time, the tables seemd like they'd be useful to have because at this point I was starting on my D&D library in ernest, and the encyclopedia was at the top of my list. I had at least one of the volumes in the set at this point. But you're right; six months later, this feature was basically useless. This issue usually spends most of its time at the bottom of my pile of Dragons, neglected. The article on rewards near the beginning is about the only piece that I'd likely make use of, and really there's not much content in the issue beyond what you covered in the second part.

Possibly because the EM was such a big project, they did an advance release of the tables here to spot any glaring mistakes early and correct them before the last volume went to press. This makes a lot of sense if you take into the infamous dawizard typo that struck the first volume with hilarous force. Though this is just a speculation, they maybe didn't have content and presented this as a special treat instead to cover. Who knows?

The game wizards: Skills & Powers teaser part two. See us try and halfheartedly get in on the GURPS market by implementing point buy. And in the process, make the game considerably easier to break by not being very rigorous with the point cost balancing. As with several of their other rules experiments at this time, this really shows up the fundamental flaws in the system design. Developed in an organic evolutionary fashion, it's pretty good for some things, but exceedingly ill-suited to others. And like trying to tidy a filthy bedroom, a half-done job looks worse than not doing it at all, and just means the original owner now has more trouble finding things. So once again, this reads like a case of cool intentions gone wrong, and implemented poorly. Many of these options are just obviously better than other ones. And the choice between buying new stuff or using the points as one-off drama points to save your ass is very clunky. Given AD&D's advancement rate at higher levels, you're pretty much screwing yourself over if you don't upgrade yourself. Rip it up and start again. Chances are, you'll be wanting to respec characters built like this after a few levels.

When I first read the article, my reaction was, "No way in HELL is this stuff going in MY game!!" I did eventually buy Skills and Powers, and used it a bit so I relented eventually, probably from the article in early '96 that did a much better job of pimping PO. Anyway, years later in retrospect, I feel that the PO wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but it's something that needs a lot of DM supervision or even editing to come out balanced. And there's the problems of being built on 2e's foundation which has some structural problems to begin with.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 4/8


Sage advice has finally wormed out of spellfire duty. Skip is most pleased. That'll teach em for leaving skip off last month's contents.

How does an amulet of life protection keep your psyche for 7 days (By trapping your Soooooouuuuuuullllll! )

How much does bariaur armor cost (same as for horses. How humiliating.)

How do bariaurs ride a bonded mount (Er, um. Ick. It'll just have to be a loyal companion, rather than an actual mount. )

Can psionicists improve already existing defense modes (sure. The choice between power and versatility is a hard one. )

What monsters can I summon with various levels (use their XP rating to see what can be considered fair. )

Can you clarify some specialty priest powers (is this still causing people problems. If you're gonna make skip explain every one, you'd better pay skip pretty damn well. )

How much can you fit in a backpack (Don't worry about it. Encumbrance is already inconvenient enough. If you enforce realistic storage space as well, you'll never get anything done)

Can you remove a creatures spellcasting power with dispel magic (no, only the spells they currently have active.)

Warhamer + Gauntlets + Girdle is totally broken. How could you allow that! (Skip only examines the rules. Skip doesn't make them (unless it's unclear and skip feels like it at the time) And there are plenty of ways to make a character even more broken. Skip will even show you some if you pay.)

What gets multiplied by buffs (usually, only the dice. The adding comes afterwards.)

What special powers do you gain with shapechange ( Some, but certainly not all. )

Isn't it easier for priests to make magical items (no, because they have to get their god on side. You know how busy gods are. )

How do you make magic items if you're a specialist without access to the enchantment school (you can't. You'll have to find a scroll or persuade someone who can to help. Oh wait, you can't use opposition scrolls, so I guess you'll need a friend. Solitary wizards in towers are screwed. )

Does a wall of force protect you from reading symbols (no)

When are you gonna do tome of magic spheres for monster mythology. (they're already in the book, dumbass. Have you even read it, or are you just kneejerking for the hell of it. Skip doesn't like kneejerkers. They're prime targets for bein' capped. Then their knees'll never jerk again. )

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 5/8


The role of books: The armless maiden, edited by Terri Windling is a collection of reframed fairy stories focussing on child abuse, edited by someone who suffered from it herself. This means it sometimes makes uncomfortable reading, and the preachiness may get in the way of the stories, but that doesn't mean that the craftsmanship is bad. Quite the opposite, if anything. It's just a question of if you can find something like this enjoyable or cathartic reading.

Cats paw by L. A. Taylor is a victorian flavoured mystery, low key but with good character development and excellent artwork. It's old fashioned air contrasts quite a bit with more irreverent modern attitudes of the other books being reviewed, and as is often the case, this contrast turns out to be a positive overall.

The book of earth by Marjorie R. Kellog is the start of an elemental themed quartet of books. That's already pretty overdone as an idea, and that the story is pretty standard makes this feel like just another cliche ridden fantasy book. Do we want to stick around and see if future books improve?

Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston is unsurprisingly a fantastical twist on Doc Savage. It hits pretty much the notes you'd expect, taking a guy from modern day earth as the viewpoint character and throwing him into this pulp fae realm with the Doc & his other companions. The sexism & racism of the originals is toned down, of course, and it maybe has too many supporting characters that don't get properly developed. John nevertheless finds it highly enjoyable. Pulp isn't dead, it's just a little diluted.

Voices by John Vornholt is a Babylon 5 novel. It focusses on just a few of the show's cast, and takes them places the show probably couldn't due to budget constraints, while keeping them consistent with established characters. That already puts it up on far too many books from tv series. That is also tells a pretty decent story and fills in a bit more of the setting makes it a quite good result for the series. Let's hope the editorial control stays good on this line.

No earthly sunne by Margaret Ball is another fae themed book, combining music based magic, computer programming and time manipulation in it's plot threads. All of these elements are handled quite convincingly, showing the author did her research, and the story is pretty well done as well and full of variety in moods. No objections there.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 6/8


Role-playing reviews is particularly strange and wide-ranging this month. A novel, a computer game, a card game? This isn't roleplaying! Very curious. On the other hand, a little variety does help to stave off the boredom, so I am interested in seeing how this shakes out.

Theatrix is one of those games that plays with the concept of what roleplaying is, moving it a lot closer to improv acting than wargaming. There's no dice, and the overall direction of the story is scripted in advance. The fun is in finding out exactly how you get from A to B. This takes quite a bit of adapting to for people used to lots of stats and dice rolls, but does make a fun game, and would be an excellent framing device for giving drama students a degree of narrative control within a play. Lester highly recommends it.

The empire of Elwolf, on the other hand, gets slated in amusing fashion. The days of Spawn of Fashan are not over. So proclaims King Blasteem Baltamax! Stupid names. Inane dialogue, delivered with all kinds of weird descriptives. And oh god, the terrible terrible riddles. Really, it's not a good example for your roleplaying at all. Avoid at all costs, unless you wish to do an MST3K reading.

HOL is technically a roleplaying game, but really, you can't exactly play it as written, and the primary entertainment is in reading it. The whole thing is hand-written and illustrated, and it's all deeply deeply twisted in an amusing manner. A home-spun gem that would be ruined by trying to treat it in a professional big budget manner.

Superhero league of Hoboken is a computer game putting you in charge of a team of misfit heroes with mostly useless powers, trying to fight crime in New Jersey. Shame Squirrel Girl isn't around to show them how it's done. Of course, this being a RPG, the odd powers and items all become crucial to solving at least one puzzle over the course of the game. The tricky puzzles, challenging combats and amusing bits all combine to create a rather neat package.

Whispering vault is another 6 pip groundbreaker of an RPG. The rough edges from issue 208's prerelease copy have been sorted out, it looks great, and the gameplay combines tremendous freedom in character creation with an easily understood formula for adventures. Horror does not have to be disempowering or bogged down by angst.

Dangerous prey is the first supplement for Whispering Vault. Not too surprisingly, it's a monster book. In any game that differs from the norm, a GM is going to want a little help defining the boundaries and conventions, and this has more than enough weird creatures and their lairs to keep PC's on their toes for a while. And they'd better get on it, for I get the impression normal people may have a hard time even affecting things like this.

On top of this, we have quick reviews of The Great Dalmuti and Battlebots. A card game and a tiny board game. Man, this is some pretty insane variety. That's one definite benefit of the editorial regime being in flux. You can get away with quite a bit if you pick your time right.


Rumblings: Ooh. TSR releases the cancelled Ivid the Undying as a free download. Greyhawk lives on over the Web! That's not bad news, is it. It certainly sets the stage for further internet support for lines that don't merit full books any more. Also very historically interesting is seeing WotC consuming various other companies IP with great gusto. The TSR takeover had plenty of precedents, and they certainly weren't shy about buying properties they liked, even if the companies weren't even in trouble.

The other two bits of news aren't quite so significant. A trio of fanzines get promoted, along with some talk about what's in them. And the guys behind Whispering Vault have a new project in the pipeline already. Given the positive reviews that got, the people in the magazine are interested to see more. I can't say I disagree with them.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 7/8


Changeling: the Dreaming gets teasered in here, as they do. Once again we see how their budget has increased, as they give us a 4 page, full colour piece giving us info on the kiths and noble houses. Much more visually appealing than TSR's revised corebook spread as well. Someone poach some new graphic designers from the competition while they still have the money.


Forum: Keith Bidwell needs help with his game, as it's houserules seem to be causing problems. Someone send out an all areas call for the Canon Police to reeducate this sucka.

Eric Shearer has a more prosaic problem. How much descriptive info on places should you give your players. I would incline towards initial conservatism, but encourage them to ask more specific questions, and let them deduce stuff from the answers to those.

Danny Walthall thinks you need to have some roleplaying for it to be a roleplaying game, but a certain amount of balance still needs to be struck. Remember, if they act like a pretentious self absorbed procrastinating idiot IC, nasty stuff is going to happen to them. That's just common sense.

Stefan Happ hasn't been in a gaming shop in ages, and is surprised the magazine is still going. The way the hobby has changed in recent years is strange and scary, so he's just going to accept that he's a grognard now and stay out of your way. Really not sure how to respond to that. Another sign of troubling times ahead, methinks.

Greg Howley shares his parrying houserule. Don't know if this one is going to stick any more than the last one.

Stephen Carter talks about issues of darkness and maturity in gaming. The two are not the same thing, no matter how much White Wolf may think they are. And weirdly enough the official adventures still seem to fall into the same mission based crap., putting the lie to those claims. Tricky one. True mature games seem to need to be tightly tailored to the specific campaign.

Jamie Nossal is annoyed by all this talk of one class being more powerful than another. They still all have valuable roles to play in a party. The game keeps on working unless you consciously try to break it. Plus variety is fun in itself, even if some of the options are suboptimal.

Jean H. Monday tries to balance the people claiming clerics are overpowered with the ones saying they suck. How did they end up like this? Social issues as much as anything. Gods need worshippers, so clerics have a much stronger need to be involved in the community than any class apart from Bards. There's a lot you can do without sinking into the background.


Swordplay has drama and betrayal in a life or death situation, as usual. Dragonmirth seems to have a castle theme this month. Yamara is saved. Er, maybe. We definitely have a musical episode. Even if it doesn't rhyme. Or scan. Or have a proper tune you can hum. That should drive off a big chunk of the enemies, anyway.

 

[Orius]

Swordplay has drama and betrayal in a life or death situation, as usual. Dragonmirth seems to have a castle theme this month. Yamara is saved. Er, maybe. We definitely have a musical episode.

Yay! Dragonmirth! My fav Dragon column, and the first one I saw. Yeah, all those castle ones are fun, but Yamara was a huge WTF for me. Never understood its appeal (but then I only saw a handful of the last strips, so).