Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 1/8


124 pages. This month's cover looks almost CGI, with it's clean angles and mostly monochromatic design. It looks like it was probably really good in high resolution, but whatever they're doing to get it onto the magazine, and then back onto the computer has done it no favours, with the detail blurred and the contrast murky. Still, at least we have a proper theme this issue. Fantastic Architecture? Interesting, if not obviously festive. Still, let's make the most of it.


In this issue:


Letters: Another letter on how to get published by TSR when you're a complete n00b. Follow the procedures and don't get your hopes up. Financial troubles mean we're even less likely to speculate on a completely untried idea, even if we like it personally.

A letter requesting that they set up a sage advice hotline. Skip finds that most objectionable! Skip'd have to employ lackeys to keep up with that kind of demand, and they'd surely mess it up.

A letter congratulating the new editor, and enquiring about the presence and absence of various features in recent months. Some were merely skipped, while others are going going gone. Dragonlance, on the other hand, is going to be back with a vengeance next year. Look forward to it. Still slipping in promotion wherever possible then.


Editorial is really short this month, and padded out like a business letter. They've finally figured out what they're going to do with the magazine. Raise prices! It's only been 2 years since the last increase. Couldn't it at least have been a 50 cent one like last time rather than a full dollar? I suppose if their budget is directly linked to sales, they might be faced with the choice of a big price increase or layoffs. In return, they promise to give us more colour, more meat in their articles and more attitude. Hmm. So this is the point when the pendulum starts swinging back towards the crunchy side. I can't say I'm that surprised. When times get hard, you fall back on the proven sellers. Colour has always worked, this is the 90's, so attitude is very much in, maaan, and splatbooks are big perennial sellers. Oh, and the logo looks like it's been star warsified with that parallax slope. Hmm. If they're becoming more conservative, how will they find new topics to keep long-term readers interested? This all seems a bit ominous for me. As with the last crisis in 1986, it looks like they're going for up front shinys over balance and subtlety. Oh well, it'll give me plenty to bitch about. <^>


First quest: Steve Jackson! Now there's a big name to bring in, even if like the last few, he never worked for TSR. Still, when he started, D&D was pretty much the only game in town, so it's not surprising he started with that anyway. Also not surprising is that he rapidly started modding the game and writing his own stuff, moving from freelancing to full-time writing pretty quickly. More surprising though, is that his initial play experience was pretty rules light. Given the way GURPS developed, I find this rather interesting. I guess it was always modular, and you can dial the complexity up or down as you please. If Kevin Siembieda doesn't use all the rules from his game, and Gary went back to stripped down OD&D in his later years, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr Jackson doesn't use all his own rules either. Once again, he doesn't remember much about his first session, which goes to show, it's not such a big deal for some people, especially when it was over quickly, and the things they did after that are so much more impressive. Still, this was quite informative for it's size.

 

[jonesy]

First quest: Steve Jackson! Now there's a big name to bring in, even if like the last few, he never worked for TSR. Still, when he started, D&D was pretty much the only game in town, so it's not surprising he started with that anyway. Also not surprising is that he rapidly started modding the game and writing his own stuff, moving from freelancing to full-time writing pretty quickly. More surprising though, is that his initial play experience was pretty rules light.

Now that is interesting. I never knew that he started with D&D, and I never would have guessed that he played light. I wonder what made him go the other way. Lack of competition in the rules heavy category?

 

[LordVyreth]

Now that is interesting. I never knew that he started with D&D, and I never would have guessed that he played light. I wonder what made him go the other way. Lack of competition in the rules heavy category?

Of course, in my case it helps that I mostly know Steve Jackson games for my beloved Toon RPG, which is about as rules-light as a game gets.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Now that is interesting. I never knew that he started with D&D, and I never would have guessed that he played light. I wonder what made him go the other way. Lack of competition in the rules heavy category?

We played more Melee and Wizad than D&D back then, and they were rules light. So was In The Labyrinth, which became GURPS after Micro Games went under, but wouldn't sell the rights back to Steve. (Back then being the late 70s.)

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 2/8


The Castle designer's guide to coping with magic & the supernatural: Ah yes, let's bring back a topic that got a whole series of forum letters a few years ago, turn it into a full article. A fairly familiar path by now. So magic massively changes how sieges and the like work, on both sides of the conflict. Bypassing walls becomes simplicity itself with flight and teleportation, a single creature immune to nonmagical attacks can wade through a force of regular fighters and laugh. But spellcasters run out of stuff to do quickly in a protracted battle, and there are mundane tricks that still work surprisingly well. Archers are a great equaliser, taking out high level characters by sheer force of numbers. Lead always cramps the style of divinations and ethereal marauders. Well constructed domes on top of your towers allow you to shoot out while not leaving you vulnerable to flyers. A 6 pager with several illustrations of stuff described, this is definitely a case where they've tried to come out with all guns blazing. And it does a pretty good job, tackling most of the annoying things wizards can do to ruin your day, if not in as much depth as they could. A good engineer certainly isn't helpless, even if their services will cost rather a lot. And there's still plenty of room to expand on this, which hopefully we'll see in the forum again. Symmetries and patterns. As long as people have ingenuity, there'll be new tricks developed on both sides of this issue. I somehow doubt it'll ever get as filled in as their lists of monsters and spells.


Elven cities & settlement: A random elven settlement generation table?! Ok, that's definitely a new one, even if it's two constituent components are not. At less than half a page these tables are more to spark your imagination than provide a complete setup. And spark my imagination they do, partly because of the very odd demographics you'll get if you apply them strictly. So I'm not sure if this is a success or a failure, because it is pretty interesting, but I can't imagine using it regularly in my campaign. Maybe they didn't do the math. Maybe their conception of what elves do in their day-to-day lives is a bit different from mine. And what dice do you roll to get a result between 70-200? So mechanically, this is a bit of a fail. If you're going to be more specific, that gives people concrete things to analyse and find good or bad about your work. And let's face it, their mechanics editing still isn't great around here. Make changes without making the preparations to adapt, and you will have a hard time getting used to things.


Descent to undermountain: Another AD&D computer game, another promotional article. We've already seen undermountain get a rather large boxed set, and plenty of adventurers have visited, it's an obvious choice for an action focussed AD&D conversion. This time, they're using the Descent modelling engine and getting on the doom bandwagon, with a 1st person 3D adventure game full of action, puzzles, and mutiplayer competition. That's the theory anyway. Googling shows that this was shunted between development teams, arrived late, was unfinished, completely cut out the multiplayer element, had crap AI, and was generally a bit crap all round. And since it's still a good year before it's actually released, we may well see more promotional articles in the mean time, or maybe stuff in the rumour mill about how it's going (wrong). This definitely has potential for a little morbid amusement.

 

[Orius]

The Castle designer's guide to coping with magic & the supernatural: Ah yes, let's bring back a topic that got a whole series of forum letters a few years ago, turn it into a full article. A fairly familiar path by now. So magic massively changes how sieges and the like work, on both sides of the conflict. Bypassing walls becomes simplicity itself with flight and teleportation, a single creature immune to nonmagical attacks can wade through a force of regular fighters and laugh. But spellcasters run out of stuff to do quickly in a protracted battle, and there are mundane tricks that still work surprisingly well. Archers are a great equaliser, taking out high level characters by sheer force of numbers. Lead always cramps the style of divinations and ethereal marauders. Well constructed domes on top of your towers allow you to shoot out while not leaving you vulnerable to flyers. A 6 pager with several illustrations of stuff described, this is definitely a case where they've tried to come out with all guns blazing. And it does a pretty good job, tackling most of the annoying things wizards can do to ruin your day, if not in as much depth as they could.

I think it was a good article, it was the first exposure I had to these ideas anyway. And here, early in my D&D days, I got one of the first influences that eventually convinced me that D&D should not simply try to blindly ape medieval Europe.

Elven cities & settlement: A random elven settlement generation table?! Ok, that's definitely a new one, even if it's two constituent components are not. At less than half a page these tables are more to spark your imagination than provide a complete setup. And spark my imagination they do, partly because of the very odd demographics you'll get if you apply them strictly. So I'm not sure if this is a success or a failure, because it is pretty interesting, but I can't imagine using it regularly in my campaign.

It looks useful on the surface, but I can't say becuase I've never used it. But that's not from any failures in the article. In 15 years I have not bothered to develop any single elven community whatsoever. I've done several human cities and dwarven strongholds but elves? It's probably because I don't really like the pointy-eared tree-huggers.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 3/8


The sleep of ages: We're still in the Realms, but this is a good deal more solid than the last article, in several senses. After all, Dwarven tombs are built to stay the same through the centuries, while undermountain is always being restocked and rearranged by Halaster as adventurers go in, kill stuff, and then die or get out again. Course, they don't stay unplundered for long if they don't take precautions, and they're not very keen on putting undead or constructs in to guard them, so the traps and tricks need to be pretty brutal. So this is packed full of example traps and fakeouts. For a more important tomb, they'll have a fake one near the entrance, with all the real stuff through hidden doors, and several fake secret routes that only lead to more trouble for anyone trying them. It is quite inventive, and you could either use the layouts and traps as given here, or mine them for your own dungeon complexes. Which is exactly the kind of crunch I approve of, and the reason why the Realms has been leading the way in the magazine since the early 80's. Stuff that's generic enough to make your own, but also fits into a larger picture if you want it too. It's a formula that works all too well, hence it's longevity.


Role-playing reviews: Everway is WotC's first attempt at an RPG. Rick is rather surprised at how different the mechanics are. Mind you, making the random elements card based is probably the way to go if they want to get crossover from people who play M:tG, but haven't roleplayed before. Rick has a rather split opinion on this game. On one hand, it's a perfect fit for his GMing style, and on the other it may well be too vague for new players and rules lawyers. If you aren't a good improviser, steer well clear. Yeah, I think I'll pass then.

The Birthright campaign setting is also for experts, but for completely the opposite reason, as after all, there is a lot to keep track of. Plus the way the game is set up, it does rather encourage PvP actions. But the domain rules do seem to work and reward the actions they're supposed to. And let's face it, making them reward people who go out and attack others over those who turtle in their domain hoarding resources definitely makes sense if you want an interesting game in actual play.

In addition, Rick gives a good muahaha at labyrinth of madness, expresses amazment at T.W.E.R.P.S's longevity, and is very pleased that we can now go to Miskatonic University. This stuff may not be for newbies, but you should still consider supporting it, so they'll produce more in the same vein.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 4/8


Forum: Geordie Keefe has the problem that he knows a DM who was really mean to newbies, blatantly favouring the existing players. This drove him off, and probably other people as well. This kind of behaviour is another thing that's dreadfully bad for the hobby as a whole.

Allen Mixson points out just how prejudiced and provincial medieval people could actually be. Shakespeare supports him on this. Tribalising was a lot easier back then. Some people managed to succeed anyway, but they were very definite exceptions.

C. Joseph Walker suggests using subtle methods to deal with shop-robbing psychopaths. If they can't get a decent drink without killing someone, hopefully they'll get bored eventually.

Karen Remick has the old solution of merchants being semi-retired adventurers who decided to invest their money in business rather than becoming nobility. They'll keep their hand in by disintegrating anyone dumb enough to try robbing them. The company might even be a whole party of them sticking together. See what happens when they try and raid Bargle's magical item emporium and deal with his 27th level contingencied ass.

Roy Penrod thinks you ought to penalise people XP for killing shopkeepers and other stuff they shouldn't kill. It's horribly metagame, but it'll soon solve the problem one way or another, particularly when combined with IC legal consequences.

Douglas Porter points out that Bards are actually one of the best classes for a single class party, particularly when you add kits. (and if you're really cheesy, multiclass half-elves, as we've had flamewars about before) After all, a band of touring musicians is one of the closer things to the adventurer dynamic IRL. (And may well be part of the reason why I am a musician. ) Plus it'll really work if you want to play a social heavy game.

Linda Edwards proves that women can be idiotic twinks too. Or maybe this is ironic. In any case, not letting 50th level drow in your party seems entirely reasonable to me.

Anton J. Uselmann thinks that when it comes to descriptions, you need to make sure you show, not tell. You control all the information, it's up to you to give them enough to make interesting conclusions from.

Jason G Ward makes the statement that maybe gaming doesn't need women. There are plenty of other pastimes that have massive gender imbalances that don't seem too worried about correcting them, such as fishing. Is it really worth stressing about?

Jeremy Prada is another person who makes players hesitant to use wishes via sadistic interpretation. People have been doing that since the dawn of the hobby. It's not particularly worthy of comment.


A thousand and one words: Which isn't an Al Qadim article, surprisingly enough. instead, it's one of those short articles that tells us it's not the statistics, it's how you describe things. Even more than the castle design one, this is something they've said many many times, and this contributes very little if you're a regular reader. This feels like filler of the most obvious kind, with the layout manipulated in a odd way to pad things out to just the right size. Yawn. Time to hit skip again, I'm afraid.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 5/8


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another article complaining that druids don't have enough magic items focussed towards them? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like there's not enough continuity here. This is why compilations turn out handy after all. But why are monsters getting regular yearly ones while magic items aren't. Surely items are useful to both players and DM's, so they'd actually probably sell more. Oh well, basic logic errors may be another thing that's contributing to their sales slide.

Claws of the Bear are an idea they've already used in this column, goddamnit. So very bored right now.

Silver Branches shed moonlight, which lets you see, reveals fae, and enhances plant spells, curiously. Nicely idiosyncratic collection.

A Pouch of Trails protects you from tracking, and helps you follow trails made by others. Another one full of flavour and multiple uses.

Eyes of the Frentlin let you see through the eyes of a bird. Unless you have other powers to control it, this aint so great. But there are plenty of spells to solve this, particularly if you're a druid. Meh.

Bane Toadstools are evil fungi that corrupt you if you use their powers. They had to have a booby prize in there, didn't they. Most druids will of course try to uproot these buggers. But there's always one who thinks they can master the powers isn't there. Muahahaha. An entertaining end to a rather mixed bag here.


From the forge: Another column comes to it's end without being given a proper chance to say goodbye. Indeed, the writer is aware that this column has been delayed during the reorganisations, and even gets some formatting updates along with the rest of the magazine, which suggests that the guys in editing thought they'd keep this column, and then suddenly changed their mind, probably when the second changeover in quick succession happened and Pierce and Anthony came in. I guess minis are still a contentious topic for roleplayers. Some love them, while others find they actively impede their imagination. Now, the big question in my mind is: Was this the personal choice of the staff, or driven by the survey responses of the readers? This is one era where a little insider knowledge would help a lot, as the reality might be very different to what I'm inferring.

Once more to recap the actual minis then. Games Workshop release Warhammer Quest, their latest attempt to get new players on board. It seem a little more sophisticated than Heroquest, and is certainly more challenging and open-ended. They also release another pair of undead badasses to command your armies in the full game. The public appetite for them seems to be neverrending, and so why should they stop making them? Not that they're lacking in competition, with RAFM's skeleton war wagon, Ral Partha's official Dragolich, Crypt thing, and Lord Soth figurines, and Grenadier & Harlequin's respective skeleton forces. We've had so many skeleton armies over the years that no force should be reduced to a skeleton crew. :rimshot: There's also a demon and a dragonman, neither strangers to the modelling world. The only unusual creatures are two rather goopy looking Earthdawn monsters from Heartbreaker hobbies. Well, it's more diversity than some halloweens managed.

And finally, we have a best of year. It's like squeezing the contents of two articles into one. A lot of these are larger showcase pieces that you might not want to use on the battlefield too frequently. A scene of a Hippogriff taken from a poem. A new wizard figure from sculpting legend Julie Guthrie, who has apparently gone into retirement. A dracolich necro drake from RAFM, photographed with brooding clouds gathering behind it. A 16 inch living dragon, which I'm sure will terrorise nearly any scale of minis you have. A rather skinny demon named Kreegah the Spoiler. I'm betting he can still rip most wizards to shreds from his description, not that that's hard when they didn't bring the rest of the party along A High elf from Games Workshop, an Orc Shaman from Heartbreaker Hobbies, a Grim Reaper from Grenadier. They're sticking to the standards as well. A julie Guthrie sculpted Klingon from Rawcliffe, showing she's busier than it seems. A very brightly painted and menacing looking mecha from Global Games. A looming Balrog from Ral Partha. And yet another bloody skeletal legion. Just how many more of them do we really need? Maybe we could do with a break from minis after all. It is a shame though, because they actually appear to have improved the way they transfer photos into the magazine as part of their reorganisation. That's gone up and down so much over the years that it seems very silly to stop just as you got it working well.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 6/8


A history of the rod of seven parts: Ohh. Now this is something they foreshadowed ages ago, but never filled in. What exactly were the Wind Dukes from the description of the Rod of seven parts. Well, wonder no longer, because not only are they being detailed here, but there's a whole adventure featuring them coming out next year. That is interesting. It would make sense that if you make an adventure from an idea they've already mentioned in the books, it would sell more than one delivered cold. This is especially the case when it's appeared quite a few times, each with slightly different details, thus building up curiosity in the kind of people who like to analyse apocrypha. So this is as much as history of the Rod IRL as it is in game, particularly as this is a generic module, so you may have to adapt it to any world. Unfortunately, this is the kind of article that is rendered superfluous if you actually buy the book, which I do rather disapprove of. But at least it's interesting and the information excerpted is self-contained. Another case of the magazine being used primarily for self-promotion. :mutter grumble mutter:


The chronology of krynn: Or let's get round to doing for krynn what we did for the Realms in issue 196. Take a good look at all the novels and short stories, and figure out exactly where they all fit in the timeline. Of course, since Krynn started earlier, it has been several years since that, and Krynn has had more short story anthologies, we have a lot more ground to cover. It takes nearly two and a half pages of rather dense type and spans thousands of years, a far more impressive timescale than the Realms' mostly present based stories. Well, it's a smaller area, so they have to expand outward in the 4th dimension instead. A little dry, but this is invaluable for completists and continuity obsessives. I don't object to this, although it would work better in an online format. Have fun keeping it up to date with all the stuff they're planning to add next year.


Rumblings is cut down to fill the half a page left by the chronology, with only 4 news items. News regarding Winter fantasy and Gen Con. A collectible card game about Waterloo, obviously by wargamers trying to capture some of that CCG dollar without quite getting it. And a particularly silly licence. TSR making limited edition mobile phone sim cards? Buh. I am truly boggled as to how they thought that was a good idea. You do not think of your gaming company when you want to top up your talk time. Admittedly, it is a profitable and rapidly growing market at the moment, but you are not equipped logistically to take advantage of it. All I can do is shake my head in utter bemusement. Even Buck Rogers and Dragon Dice make more sense as company projects than this.


Fiction: The law of third power by Richard Parks. A sequel to the story in issue 209, this once again presents a very interesting lesson, that applies not only to fictional magic, but to real life as well. When it comes to authority, it matters not who you are or what you can do, but who other people believe you are, and how much esteem they give your credentials, and so much of social life is front and illusion. And if you can get into power and fake it well enough, then chances are you're actually doing the job anyway, particularly if it's not one that actually requires technical knowledge. Important life lessons aside, this also manages to juggle the tasks of maintaining continuity without making the story inaccessible to newcomers, and establishing atmosphere. It all seems ripe for a continuation of the story. Unfortunately, as with Slab's, a little looking ahead shows this isn't going to happen. So much for continuity. I have to wonder if that's an active decision by the editors, or merely a lack of suitable submissions.