Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 7/8


Floyd continues to be snarky in response to events, but the people around him are not impressed.


Sage advice: Do krynnish bards have to take the test of high sorcery (There are no krynnish bards! The question is moot! ) Then why do so many of the races have bard level limits (Umm. Look! A shiny magic item! Quick! Retcon the books while they're not looking! )

Does shield proficiency replace or stack with the standard benefit (Depends if you're using players option or not. Are you gonna keep your edition locked down? You choose, you choose.)

When do you make sprinting checks (When you try and sprint. Surely that should be obvious)

How much does grand high mastery cost ( lots of points. But it's worth it.)

Do wizards who buy a combat bonus get a rogues or priests THAC0 (a priest's one Yayzo4)

What are polymorph's visuals? ( DM's choice. Drama is good.)

Isn't the long spear too good. (Skip thinks so. Skip remembers that Gary didn't like spears, and skip will carry on his vision in these hard times. You are free to nerf it :glances around nervously

What happens if you break a wand (nothing, except for a few specific cases.)
Do you have to save against poison every time a monster hits you (Usually. This can get really nasty if they have multiple attacks. )

What happens if you don't defend against a psionic attack (tough. You gotta spend the points, even if you don't want to. If you've got no points, they'll have an easy time.)

What happens when a high intelligence character sees through an illusion (They sneer. Or pretend to be fooled, if they're as wise as they are smart and trick the person trying to trick them.)

Are rakshasas immune to all priest spells (yes. They can be rather irritating, can't they.)

What happens if you try and raise an unconscious person. (You waste a spell. Nothing happens. Since these spells have expensive material components, this is a bad idea. )

What happens if a time shifted character puts themself in a perfect position for when time catches up (+4 bonus to hit at best. If you're a thief you might be able to finagle a backstab bonus as well, but that's yer lot)

My boyfriend banned me from the campaign, and said I can't play my characters anywhere else either. ( Sock it too him, sista. You don't need him. Dump his ass, and go find a new group. He can't stop you playing your characters there, no matter what he says. And if he shows up at your new group demanding you stop playing now, taser his ass, call the cops, and file a restraining order. All the ladies who independent, throw your hands up at me!)

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


part 8/8


Dragonmirth really ought to move to a better neighbourhood. Swordplay really can't get out of character properly. Yamara ends with a wedding, and a big bang. Curse you, renovators.


The ecology of the lammasu: Oh, we have a couple of pages left over at the last minute? Hmm. Let's dig another ecology out of the slush pile and fill it with that. That'll keep people happy. What do we have? Lammasu? The goody-goody lion guys? Well, it's not my first choice, but you've gotta have a few good creatures around. Otherwise players would be justified in attacking on sight, and killing everything that surrenders. So we have a little bit of drama, a load of pontification, a few twists involving their relationships with other creatures, a bit a tactics, a bit of eco-crap, and a happy ending. Ho hum. I see why they put this one so far back in the magazine.


TSR Previews: Once again, the new year hangover sees output drop to a fraction of last month. Ravenloft subjects your characters to railroading and body horror as they get captured and turned into animal hybrids by Lord Markov. A dark sense of humour is recommended because otherwise you'd get really mad.

Dark sun gives halflings some more screentime in Windriders of the jagged cliffs. There may be plenty of water for a change, but adventuring in an enormous vertical jungle full of cannibal halflings with tamed flying creatures is no picnic. Unless you have serious mobility magic prepared you'll lose out to things of considerably lower level.

The monstrous compendia get their second yearly update. This one is black and rather better bound than last year's. But the monsters are probably less interesting. Diminishing returns strike again. Similarly, the solo adventures cycle around a second time, with Cleric's Challenge II. Will they try for another scrape of this barrel? No? That's a relief.


There's certainly a lot to hate in this issue. Price raises, rehashed topics, laughable promotion, half-assed excerpts. It far outweighs the good bits, and generally leaves me feeling decidedly cranky, especially as many of the bad bits herald further developments that I know didn't work in hindsight. So it's with a pretty heavy heart I head into 1996, knowing that there's definitely worse to come. It's going to come to a head at some point, but we've still got a way to go, and even if it might not be pleasant, at least it'll probably be more interesting than this year was. Turn the pages with one hand, and hold your nose with the other, and let's take another step forward.

 

[LordVyreth]

Any chance you can give us your final thoughts on Yamara, now that the strip has reached is depressing conclusion?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996


part 1/8


124 pages. So, here we are then. At least they realised fairly quickly that the red triangle was a dumb idea and are pretending it was never a long-term plan in the first place. In it's place, we have a tilted logo, a whole bunch more promotional blurbs scattered across the cover, and a completely blank print of the cover image a few ages inside. Now they have one less page to worry about filling with actual content. And a whole bunch of new regular columns, one of which is misspelled on the contents page. Only a few pages in, and I'm already finding good reasons to be amusingly bitchy. This looks like it will be worryingly easy pickings.


In this issue:


The wyrm's turn: The editorial gets renamed and moved ahead of the contents page. Because what they have to say is just too important to wait. Yes, this year heralds big format changes. The last two issues had a few of these, but now they hit in full force. (the price also goes up a full dollar, to $4.95) It's time for the magazine to start focussing seriously on gaming. Computer game reviews are out, the old comics are out, there'll be less stuff on games other than D&D, (apart from CCG's) and the visuals are seriously altered. Welcome to the last gasp of TSR, before they collapse under the weight of their bad company policies and financial mismanagement. So it's out with the old, in with the ……. older? as they promise to give plenty of coverage to dead campaign worlds and bring back regular deliveries of specific NPC's. Y'know, I never much liked those back in the day. Guess that's probably going to be another sticking point. They say they're going to bring back miniatures, but they've changed their mind several times recently so who knows. And it's all change in the comics department, of which I'm still not sure what to think. So as with last month, this already seems like more bad news than good news, but we'll have to see for sure.


Letters becomes D-Mail for some reason. Probably trying to get down with the modern lingo and new developments in technology. Me'n ma homies are delvin this dungeon, an any punk-ass muthaa who gets in the way is gonna get capped. Word up. What's in this mailbag, dudes?

A request for more Drizzt books. Yeah, we're not going to let this one get away, when he's one of their biggest sellers. He will write until he drops! Ahahahahaha!

A letter wondering how much they can get for old issues of the magazine. A lot more than shops will offer you, that's for sure. You might even be able to get more than you paid for the really early stuff. So don't settle for less.

We've had letters asking how you get published by the magazine, or TSR as a whole recently. Now they ask how you can get them to publish your novels. Generally, you don't. They tell you what to write about if you want to be published, not the other way around. Look at poor Bob Salvadore. I'm sure he'd love to give them stuff set in a universe of his own invention, but you know what would happen if he did? Do you want to find out? Do you really?

A letter pointing out that you can trade old cars for new, and so they ought to do the same for the new Dark Sun campaign setting. I do wonder why everyone is suddenly getting all worked up about this one when the Realms, Ravenloft, Greyhawk and Mystara all made huge changes when they updated and didn't get anything like this fuss. It's not as if they were less popular than Athas. Or were they just not publishing it. After all, greyhawk & mystara died soon after being updated, so sales must not have been great.


Another development. They've been doing 12 issues a year for the past 16 years. Now it seems they've decided to push their limits a little further, and do a dragon annual every year as well. Which brings the total to 13. Unlucky for some? Quite possibly. More work for me? Definitely.

A LorR Collectible card game? I'm not that surprised really. The bandwagon jumping continues.

 

[(un)reason]

Any chance you can give us your final thoughts on Yamara, now that the strip has reached is depressing conclusion?

It was mostly highly entertaining, even if it did get strangled by continuity at the end. I also found it bore up to rereading quite well because there's quite a lot of detail crammed into each strip, with offhand comments and sight gags that are easy to miss. It's definitely one of the better comics they gave us over the years.

 

[LordVyreth]

It was mostly highly entertaining, even if it did get strangled by continuity at the end. I also found it bore up to rereading quite well because there's quite a lot of detail crammed into each strip, with offhand comments and sight gags that are easy to miss. It's definitely one of the better comics they gave us over the years.

I thought you mentioned some issues with the Hard Fun stuff specifically back in the 200 video review. I do agree that the strip ended up being one of the best ones Dragon did.

I can already tell you one thing I liked about this new era of the magazine: hard-backed spines. It makes the magazines much easier to use, and any magazine from here on is in much better shape in my collection than the ones before it for this reason. But yeah, I was annoyed at the loss of Yamara and the computer games reviews as well. The Internet was still too you for us to be able to just pop over and read gaming news from a popular, dedicated website for it.

 

[Orius]

Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996


part 1/8


124 pages. So, here we are then. At least they realised fairly quickly that the red triangle was a dumb idea and are pretending it was never a long-term plan in the first place. In it's place, we have a tilted logo, a whole bunch more promotional blurbs scattered across the cover, and a completely blank print of the cover image a few ages inside.

And thus begins the era of the magazine where I was reading it on a regular basis. I thought the changes in the issue were a marked improvement on the handful of previous issues I'd read, but then given the chaos going on in TSR's various departments at the time, it may be that those issues were similarly muddled. Who knows? I've always felt that the Dragons from this issue to to end of 2e with issue 273 were pretty good though, with plenty of useful content. The 1995 issues I have just feel very light on content, and it may be from lots and lots of differnet review columns and filler.

So it's out with the old, in with the ……. older? as they promise to give plenty of coverage to dead campaign worlds and bring back regular deliveries of specific NPC's. Y'know, I never much liked those back in the day. Guess that's probably going to be another sticking point.

The Rogue's Gallery might have been interesting with PCs from various campaigns, but the column soon just gave stats for characters appearing in various game novels at the time, and that felt like a cheap plug to me.

A LorR Collectible card game? I'm not that surprised really. The bandwagon jumping continues.

To be fair though, Middle-earth: The Wizards was one of the better early CCGs. It had a pretty nasty learning curve, but it did a decent job of capturing the flavor of Tolkien's source material. Unlike some popular games at the time, many of the main characters weren't super-rare and were readily available to players, and this didn't break the game. I've always liked it.

 

[Emirikol]

Dragon Magazine Issue 224: December 1995


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.

Penalize, yes. I usually fade to black and say ,"..so, you later find yourself in the stocks explaining yourself to the constabulary..what's your story?"

Still use that rule to this day.

jh

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996


part 2/8


Skills & Powers in 8 easy stages: Get your calculators out folks, it's time to do some serious character designing. AD&D has always been relatively simple to build a character in, especially if you start from 1st level. Even the wodges of complete splatbooks only add a couple of steps to each character, given the amount of resources you have to spend. Incorporate Skills & Powers stuff, though, and the number of options goes up by several orders of magnitude. Be prepared to spend a lot longer making characters, and to need a proper character concept before you start number crunching if you want to be optimal. This article aims to make it less daunting by spelling out exactly what you have to do, but still makes it clear that it will take a lot more work before you get to play, and there are a lot more opportunities to make one character more powerful than another based upon the skill of their players rather than the luck of the dice and the treasure they get. So this makes it clear that this is where one of the big changes in 3e started. People want more choice, and though not all of the ideas tried here worked (subabilities in particular needed to die with a vengeance) some of them did. So as with all the letters about Athas a few pages ago, this sees them recognising that some of the things they've done recently may be divisive, and trying to do damage control. Exactly what effect that will have I'm not sure. Does it win back people alienated by recent changes? Does it make things worse to admit fault, when many people wouldn't have noticed the problem anyway? In any case, this is a rather worrying way to kick off their features.


Secret origins and motivations of player characters: We may be starting to swing back towards the crunch side, but we're still right in the middle of 2e territory. Which means they follow up the mechanical advice with one on establishing your character's backstory. With particular emphasis on why they became an adventurer in the first place. Makes sense, really. As we've found before, taking a focussed approach on what we really need to know gets us playing sooner than writing several pages of fluff that may not ever come into play, particularly if you make it so long the DM can't be bothered to read it anyway. So this is quite decent advice that seems likely to speed up your game rather than slow it down, by getting you to fill in the right kind of details instead of the wrong kind.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996


part 3/8


Caste of characters: We've covered Africa and the orient pretty well. Now it's india's turn, with the first of several articles on this topic. First off, new kits. This is relatively easy to do, thanks to the caste system. Of course, that does mean people might be forced into roles they find impossible to fulfil, but that is the stuff stories are made of. Let's see how much they have to twist reality to get it to fit in a AD&D shaped mould.

Singh can roar like a lion as long as they never cut their hair. Ahh, mythology. That quirk aside, they're your fairly typical martial sorts. Disciplined, reliable, and subject to the orders of their bosses. How much of a disadvantage that'll be is up to the DM.

Kshatrya are technically paladins, but the way the caste system is divided up, they're forbidden from personally performing religious duties. This means they sacrifice lay on hands and cure disease, but get the ability to read people's karma, and a reaction bonus. Hmm. I think that definitely pushes them away from a full-on combat role as well. Might not make them popular amongst an adventuring party.

Shikari are indian Rangers. They get the ability to slow their bodily functions to feign death, but have a tendency to take on impossible challenges, which leaves them open to DM screwage, or an epic tale, as they choose. Know your DM, in other words.

Swami are wizards who learn from the spirits, although said spirits need rather a lot of persuading, since they don't have a great relationship with them. On the plus side, they don't need a normal spellbook, and can cast spells well beyond the usual range wizards can manage. On the negative side, they don't have a regular spellbook, which means they have the same kinds of compatibility issues as the more out-there variant wizards from the complete sha'ir's handbook, and breaking their focus doubly screws them over. I think their hindrances balance out their benefits adequately.

Brahmin are technically right on top of the caste system, but since they're supposed to be detached from worldly concerns, they don't get to enjoy it that much. A little graft, skimming off the money that's meant to go to the temple might take care of that, but then you have the usual problem with losing your powers. D&D just isn't well suited for tales realistic grey-shaded morality, is it. I suppose that's one thing 4e's changes have in in their favour.

Thugs go back to the root of the name, strangling for religious reasons and generally being superstitious and cowardly. It's not that they're not adventurer material, after all, going on journeys & killing everyone you meet is a perfect excuse for a bit of excitement in your life. It's just that other players may get tired of all this omen crap and decide to spend time with someone more reliable.

Fakirs may appear holy and magical, but they're primarily showmen who make a living from showing off their various tricks. They get the ability to learn spells by just watching them, and pretty much ignore the usual material component requirements, but they also lose a lot of the standard bard powers. Not sure how balanced that is, as both the benefits and penalties are pretty substantial here. Should be interesting to play though.

Yogi concentrate on the mind-over-matter thing and get incredible powers and flexibility as a result. Actually, it looks like they're inspired by Dhalsim from SFII as much as anything, with super-stretchiness being their main kit benefit. Their limitations are pretty substantial though. No ability to affect the minds of others, which is a pretty wide restriction for a psionicist, and the usual monastic aeseticism thing, which means they won't get to enjoy the fruits of their labor much. So overall, I think this collection is fairly balanced, maybe erring a bit on the conservative side, but better that than horribly overpowered. They're entirely usable, if a bit odd in places.


The Winter Fantasy Convention gets 3 pages of promotion and a pre-registration form. The conventions still have plenty of money to spend on advertising then.