Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 2/8


Forum: We already knew that the forum would be a major source of information for the next edition. What does surprise me is that here they spell this out explicitly. Send in your rules suggestions! What should stay, what should change. This'll make things even more interesting, as I get to see the rejected ideas as well.

Gary Sturgess shows us what happens when you make armor subtract damage rather than making you harder to hit. Interesting. I know most systems do it like that, but it looks like D&D'd need a bit of rejigging before that could work.

Chris Brucas objects to the idea that Dex is more important than Str as a real life martial artist. Both are pretty important, but strength moreso. Even fencing, the stereotypical finesse swashbuckler style, requires tons of arm strength to do quickly and stylishly. Don't you just hate it when people bring reality into your elegant models.

Chris DeRosa thinks that spells and items that change your capabilities are far more important than those that add plusses to your existing ones like magic weapons. Yeah, this is why wizards & clerics win at higher levels. It's not about the numbers, it's about the options. Making things too convenient is what really short-circuits adventures, not how hard you can hit.

Eric Morton thinks that nymphs consciously using their beauty as an offensive weapon seems rather out of character. Plus stripping is inherently humiliating, and what if they save? Plus the flavour could do with a little rejigging. Hey, whatever makes your campaign sparkle dude.


Sage advice: Who can use wearable magical items. (anyone of the race it's designed for. Magic can adjust it the rest of the way. )

When does a character wielding two weapons attack (Whenever the DM says. )
Does spellcasting trigger an attack of opportunity. (no)

How do proficiencies, abilities and hit points work for multiclassed characters (no-one agrees. It's most frustrating. Skip will give you skip's opinions, but skip will not pretend that other books won't contradict them in the future)

Is fireball a sphere, or a cubic volume (Both. If you cast it in an enclosed area, it pushes outward until it's used it's entire volume. This can have tragic and hilarious results. )

Can fireballs bounce (No. They go boom straight away.)

Does doing a touch attack spell trigger an attack of opportunity (No. The magic counts as a weapon.)

Does Choke mess up spellcasting automatically. (make an initiative check to get a spell off before you take the damage. )

What happens if you have a weapon that does 1d20, and upgrade your die type. D100 is too much (d30 should do the job. )

How does a thief know what spells are on a scroll (what do you think their failure chance is for? )

Does wall of force block locate object (no. The magic goes round.)

How do you determine what type of magic arrows your characters find ( Ahh, tables. Is there anything you can't do with them? )

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 3/8


Out of character: Ah yes, Peter Adkison gets his own regular column, just as Gary used too. Now there's something that has a chance to go amusingly wrong. But not this time. No outre opinions or vitriolic rants here, just an alternative system for awarding xp that's simpler and gives the DM more control than counting up goblins slaughtered and booty plundered. Set a target that reflects how quickly you want them to advance (in his case rather quicker than in standard D&D, as he likes high level play) and then give them a percentage of that based upon how well they complete the goals of the adventure. This is of course the kind of mathematical thinking that they'll apply when figuring out advancement for 3e, with the standardised XP table and 13.33 encounters of equal CR to your level to level up, resulting in a total campaign length of a bit over a year going from 1-20 if you have weekly sessions with 3-4 encounters per session. So yeah, this is very interesting indeed, and already shows how the boss will have a personal influence on the next edition, even if he isn't actually one of the writers. That makes this historically significant right away. The magazine feels relevant to the development of the game as a whole in a way it hasn't for a good decade. Plus it's becoming apparent that Peter's pleasantly breezy writing style in the annual is his natural voice. If he keeps this up, and doesn't get too caught up in his managerial work to talk to us and still play, I could really get to like him.


Destriers of the planes: A selection of extraplanar horses, one for each alignment? interesting. Reminds me of the similar work by Stephen Innis in issue 86 where he created imp variants for each alignment, plus several other little magical creatures for those bored with pseudodragon familiars, and number 149, where they gave us a bunch of generalised magical mounts for players to ride. This gives them plenty of room to come up with imaginatively quirky expressions of each moral point. Or they could just rely on the standard cliches. Let's hope not.

Trothspyre are superficially similar to unicorns, but slightly easier to catch, and a lot more expensive to keep. They can know alignment, heal stuff and keep out evil things, so they're a perfect match for a paladin. The main problem is that they don't deal well with the nighttime, so no riding out vampire hunting.

Gildmanes eat 200gp worth of gold every day. No resting on your laurels as an adventurer if you want to keep one of these babies. Fortunately, they can detect false gold magically, and also provide good luck. And talk to astral travellers, even though they aren't allowed to go astral themselves, weirdly enough. Yup, I think we're definitely going to get some non-cliche quirks here. I approve.

Favonian are slightly less expensive, but still take quite a bit of effort, as they eat stories. Better keep your voice in good shape. They have control over winds, and the more powerful ones can fly for short periods. I can see the thematic connection.

Lithicthil, by contrast are stony and persistent, as befits the LN alignment, and eat magical earths and metals. (although wild magic will make them unwell. Their powers follow these two themes pretty predictably.

Menthric have a human shadow rather than a horse one, and are good at spotting and exploiting weak spots in things. They eat magical papers, which means they'll be another really expensive one to keep. Probably the best way to handle this would be to go wizard hunting and take their spellbooks.

Potherrounce round off the neutral ones by drinking mixed magical potions. This is of course pretty hazardous to the mixer. Perhaps a crucible and tongs would be a good investment. They of course get to screw up magic and generally cause chaotic effects wherever they go. Muahahaha.

Banecoursers have forked tongues and lap up poison, and are vulnerable to silver. They of course love harsh but fair treatment, and look very proud and noble. They make a fine alternative to a Nightmare.

Rosinante are revolting hairless rat-horses that insist on being hand-fed rotten meat, and can summon vermin. Not so glamorous. But then, neutral evil is rarely presented as such in D&D, and certainly not in the Gray Waste, which epitomises banal, grubby depressing nastiness. They fit in there perfectly.

Charnalbalk are ferocious carnivorous warthog-horses, as befits a creature from the Abyss. They can't stand the day, just as their lawful good counterparts can't stand the night, and can strike fear into onlookers. So overall, I think this is a pretty cool and usable collection, with creatures that are powerful enough that even high level PC's want them, but also costly and quirky enough to not be a no-brainer, and well integrated into the existing planar setup. Fun fun fun.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 4/8


Holy swords of the Realms: You know, we've already had two articles on magical swords of the Forgotten Realms. (issues 74 and 188) Now we specialise even further and go for a collection specifically of holy and unholy swords. Well, just as clerics only get a fraction of the number of new spells wizards do around here, paladins don't actually get that much love. So I suppose this is a good example of them finding a still unfilled niche through hyperspecialisation. And hopefully they'll follow Ed's example and make them suitably quirky and individual.

True Slayer keeps anything killed by it from being raised or becoming undead. Not a particularly unusual power, really.

Soul Mate lets a paladin turn undead better. Once again, pretty straight really. Just because you're a goody goody doesn't mean you have to be this boring.

Captor makes it impossible for you to kill enemies with it, merely knocking them unconscious instead. Whether you use this for mercy or justice, that's another simple but valuable trick that makes being lawful good without compromising effectiveness a bit easier.

Illuminator makes the person hit glow with a faerie fire, making it easy to spot and follow them in the dark. This is particularly ironic when fighting Drow, since they have that as an innate ability too and make tricksy use of it. And let's face it, Irony is a form of humour good guys aren't restricted from appreciating at all.

Chanter sings to buff the party, and can even penetrate magical silence with it's voice. It has additional tricks that it may use at it's own discretion in an interestingly mythic manner.

Peacebringer casts Sanctuary, allowing a paladin who wants to avoid fighting to back up that desire a little better. Meh.

Raptor is our first unholy sword. It has a nasty habit of slicing clothing apart, making it perfect for the kind of villain who likes to leer menacingly at fair maidens. Aharharharharhar.

Mist Reaver blurs your location with great prejudice, making you a bugger to hit. So yeah, another pretty simplistic but effective effect. This collection certainly won't be making the hall of fame, I'm afraid, as it's a bit dull really. So much for making paladins more interesting.


He's got personality: Trying to make Charisma a slightly less neglected stat. Now there's something they've wrestled with before, (issues 63 & 107) and will do so again until they revise the rules and make it mechanically crucial for quite a few classes. And here we go with examining what high and low charisma means from both a mechanical and roleplaying perspective. It is actually longer than either of the previous attempts, and looks at both high and low Charisma as it related to various classes and personality types. It also introduces a whole bunch of new social proficiencies, which may or may not help, and some new rules on influencing crowds. Overall, I think it is an improvement on the previous tries, and is another of those articles that's laying the groundwork for the next edition. While not brilliant, it deserves credit.


Treasures of the fifth age: Or how to convert most of the old iconic magic items of Dragonlance to the new system, plus add a few new ones. I find it curious that despite the old spellcasting systems no longer working, old magic items still retain their powers. Grandfather clausing, convenience of writing, or is there a more significant metaphysical reason behind this? Maybe we'll find out in future novels. In any case, 15 items, most familiar, are detailed here and given pretty straight conversions. Which means I can't really get very worked up about this, for good or bad. Having tried something brave and seeing it fail, they're starting to slip back into old habits, relying on converting old stuff forward and new stuff back in an attempt to make a connection. Basically, they don't know what they want to do with this world. And to be honest, I wouldn't either. I'd rather start something completely new than keep trying to prop it up.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 5/8


Enchanting weapons: Mike Nystul contributes again. Man, word must be getting round that WotC are nicer than TSR were if more old writers are coming back. So here's an article on trying to make magic items seem more magical. And as usual for this advice, it's all about context. How they were made, where they were found, what they've done in the past, and what plotlines might be set in motion by finding it. I'm pretty sure we've seen most of this stuff before. Once again, it seems that their attempt to make a new start has ironically resulted in them going back to old subjects more. And so we have yet another case where the article isn't bad at all, but I am left feeling like I haven't learned anything new. It's just making the magazine feel like a grind again.


Wyrms of the north: Oh dear. With the number of dragons capable of assuming human shape around, it was only a matter of luck before one of them decided to form a more … personal connection with Volo when he went to research them. So yeah, he's been shagging a steel dragon. :facepalm: So much for objectivity. As with many steel dragons, she prefers spending much of her time in human form and living the urban lifestyle to sleeping for years and building impregnable lairs. And given her penchant for mischievous manipulation, she's probably going to bite off more than she can chew at some point. In the meantime, you have another tool for your DM to really get on your nerves with. I know a dragon that'll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves. Actually, I probably know dozens by now, and more than half of them are Ed's fault. Really, what has he wrought? Mixed feelings about this column, as usual.


Fiction: Honor and Guile by Margaret Weis. Hmm. Another Krynn story. Since the takeover, they seem to be doing a lot more fiction by their regular staff, in their regular settings. I suppose it's more evidence that the freelancer pool has dropped quite a bit. And oookay, it's a prequel. Raistlin & Caramon are 16. Raistlin's not a proper wizard yet, but is still bitter and snarky and living on his wits. Caramon and Sturm are still dumb boyscouts. And Tanis & Flint are still trying vainly to keep Tasslehoff from being annoying. Basically, they've hardly changed at all, so as to give the writers tons of room to write piddly little prequels like this one where not a lot happens and milk the setting a little more. The whole thing is just so small in scale as to be meaningless, and the new characters are nothing much to write home about either. Utterly pointless and vaguely irritating. This would probably not have got through under Barbara Young's watch.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 6/8


Bazaar of the Bizarre: More armor? Gimme a ing break. One or two new ones a year as part of other stuff and then three dedicated columns come along really quick. Bleah. Just another sign of their slide into banal repetition.

Black Mithril chain mail is even more indestructible than regular mithril. Only extreme violence will work. Magic, heat, cold, electricity, acid all slide off. Guess it's down to good old sonic damage to trump the bugger then.

Black Mithril Gauntlets are exactly the same. Not really worth a separate entry.

The Blood Shield of Dreen is actually a portal to a horrible demiplane of blood, and emits a tentacle to suck you in. Things like that aren't normally anchored to a mobile surface. Pretty evilly ingenious person who thought that one up. Just the thing for your servants of forbidden abominations.

The Gnomish Shield of Drago has a mechanical gnome engraved on it that comes to life and serves as a secondary combatant. This is decidedly funny yet exasperating to imagine, as with most gnome-made things.

Helms of the bat give you nightvision, and can shriek to terrify people. Unsurprisingly, they also look stereotypically villainous. You can bet that pushes up their selling power quite a bit.

Gingabar's Armor is dwarven armor with a nice heritage to go with it's powers. Fire resistance and bonuses to AC are pretty common, so you get this on mainly for the fluff.

The Helms of the Celestial Temple are a themed set of items, each with a different divination power. They'll make a good award for a sentai team of a ranger, diviner, priest of a god of knowledge and bard.

Leather of the Telereath Rangers are another one that's about the fluff rather than the powers. An extra plus really isn't worth talking about, but the social prestige you get from wearing them may be to some players.

Helmets of pure vision are another one that penetrate deceptive crap. Seen it before, likely will see it again in various degrees of effectiveness. Who doesn't want to cut through the crap, after all.

Largem's Cursed Armor is a strange one with both benefits and penalties. The bad points probably outweigh the good, but it's hard to say really. You could probably game it to your benefit it smart.

Missile Bane is very self-explanatory. Modest plus in hand to hand, kickass protection against all missiles, even magic ones. That increasingly loses it's old faithful quality as people specifically develop counters against it.

Silk of the Dred Shalen Guards is another excuse to have magical stuff that becomes useless soon after the players get it. Another thing that is very depressingly on the up these days.

Muckden's Miraculous Mechanized Buckler is a fun little device with several pseudoscientific tricks. Combine with a chainsword for real slice and dice fun.

The Shield of the Lion's heart is another one with powers that are themed, but not obviously. Strength, courage, and defeating evil. The owners of this and the bat helm will obviously have to fight.

Armor of the Silver Brigade is another nonmagical one that gives you social benefits due to prestige. This means you'll have to incorporate the setting stuff if you want to use it. This might be a problem.

The tower shield of McFlaggin has so many powers, and such a precise theme, it feels like it ought to be intelligent. But it isn't. Shields never get to be sentient. A bit disappointing really.


The dragon's bestiary: More various animal hybrids. Certainly seen plenty of these over the years. Roll on templates so we can cut down on the amount of page space stuff like this takes up. Oh well, let see if these ones are any good, as usual, or if only a truly mad wizard could ever be responsible.

Armidillephant combine the size of elephants with the toughness and digging ability of armadillos. This makes them excellent shock troops and fortification makers for an army, provided you can get enough food for them. Not a bad idea, really.

Dragonfly Turtles look utterly ridiculous, but since they're big enough to ride comfortably on, they're again not to be sneezed at. Hell, you could scale them up and build an entire castle on their back if you're powerful enough, and wouldn't that be a pretty thing to lead an armada with. I wuv the gargantua template. Dr Eggman & Bowser would both approve, and quite possibly fight over who gets to control it.

Duckbunny? Okay, now I know they're playing this for laughs for sure. Couldn't this have waited until april? I guess amateurs have to start somewhere. They're harmless enough, but could well wind up overrunning an ecosystem with their versatility. One to have swimming in the moat of castle Greyhawk.

Moat cats are crossed with newts, and make decent guardians. Couldn't you just keep alligators in the moat instead? They'd be tougher, and no more likely to turn on you. Silly wizards.

Spider-horses are definitely nightmare fuel if you aren't a drow. Like the Steeders used by Duergar, you'll need a special saddle to stay on this one while it's scuttling up walls. Still, it's a better idea than many, and has a mythic antecedent as well. Thank's for the idea Odin.

Venom dogs combine the loyalty of dogs with instadeath poison, which is quite the combination for a wizard. I think these definitely count as one of the more successful experiments in a decidedly mixed bag. What combinations will your own players try?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 7/8


In a class by themselves: A whole bunch of example classes using the class creation system from the DMG? Well, it's not something they've had before, so I'll give them that. On the other hand, when contrasted with the fact that they originally invented the idea in here, back in issue 109, and gave us a rather larger and quirkier selection of custom classes, this really isn't all that. I suppose it's much harder to innovate when the game is so much more filled in, and you need followers as well as leaders to really fill an idea in. But still, this has no emotional impact upon me, which contrasts very sharply to the original in issue 109. Really, all I have to say is meh. This is definitely on the mediocre side of their output.


Arcane Lore: Another trio of greyhawk spellbooks, as they try and bring it back to compete with the Realms. In a few months we'll see new books, but in the meantime you can see them once again apply the exactly the same fluff and crunch principles to two worlds that really need a little more differentiation.

The Ice-shard tome is yet another cold themed book. It has another tedious magic missile variant, a similarly standard magical chilling whip that inflicts penalties as well as damage, a nasty cold based slow torture spell, and a rather cool environment manipulation spell that lets you make a long-term freezer for all your storage needs.

The Incunabulum of the Forgotten City is one of those books of ancient lore from the fallen suel empire that lots of people'll want to get their claws upon. It lets you make a sadistic variant on mirror image that explodes when you hit the images, become able to monitor a place remotely with great precision, plus two very high level spells that strike directly at the opponent's magical abilities, causing them to misfire and get drained to decidedly unpleasant and somewhat unpredictable effect. The kind of stuff the Wizards Three would be very interested indeed in learning about, with their love of nested counter-counters.

The book of Darazell is the work of a wizard/assassin, and has lots of spells designed to bring subtle death, and a few nasty secrets above and beyond that. It's new spells include a sensory impairment one to help you stalk your victim, a telekinetic noose to bring about a slow dramatic death, which is pretty neat, immunity to nonmagical bladed weapons, which I'm pretty sure has been done before, and a magically conjured poisonous blade, which is actually a bit underpowered really. Wizards shouldn't be developing spells that require them to use their THAC0 to hit unless they're multiclassed. So another case of Sturgeon's law being fully in effect with a few neat ideas amongst the familiar and unwanted.


Dungeon Mastery: Margaret Weis's hubby makes his first contribution to the magazine. Co-incidence that they're appearing in the same issue? I think not. So here's a short, system free piece on real life knighthood. With a huuuuuuuuge bibliography. That's really the main attraction here, as trying to fit several centuries of stuff into two pages doesn't quite work. So yeah, he obviously knows his stuff, but you're better served going to those sources than sticking around here. Some people might be able to hook you and give you something useful for your game with half a page, but this is not one of those cases.


KotDT discover the joys of point buy. They may take a while to get playing. Dragonmirth discovers the joy of breath sweets. Swordplay discover what it really takes to motivate them. Floyd falls for the villain's threat. Honestly, even if they're threatening your friend's life, you keep fighting. Following their orders only makes things worse. Do they not realize this yet?


Role-playing reviews: Armageddon sees CJ Carella continue to build upon the unisystem. If Witchcraft was his WoD knockoff, this is his Rifts, upping the power level tremendously, and throwing stuff from every earthly mythology together to fight cthulhu. Power balance certainly isn't perfect, and there is some cruft in the skills and merits list, but the basic system is simple and effective, and the flavour text is pretty great. Really you can do a hell of a lot with the tools given here.

Fire, fusion and steel is for Traveller. It gives you guidance on how to build your own spaceship. Unfortunately for Rick, the complexity of the mathematics is beyond his ability to unpick. Which means he really can't judge the quality. It could be great, it could be crap. Either way, it's just too damn crunchy. What can you do?

Pocket empires, on the other hand, explains it's new systems in a clear and concise manner. As you might expect, this is their domain management supplement, showing you how to build entire planets and their political structures. Some bits aren't quite as big and comprehensive as they could be, but it's still a nifty bit of design that gives your traveller games rather more room for upward advancement.

Anomalies is a collection of 9 mini adventures. This gets 6 pips, with Rick loving every one, and the way they're put together. The presentation isn't actually that great by modern standards, but when the ideas are this good, like in our old skool favourites, who cares. You don't need hundreds of pages to create a great story.

First Survey is our clunker of the month, a regionbook falling prey to trying to cover too much ground, and so giving hardly any info on individual places and people. These days, we expect a little more than a list of planets and their general climates.

Lords of the expanse is a Star Wars supplement, continuing things in the darker vein they've been following for a while now. You get to play the scheming merchant lords of the Tampani Sector, doing all kinds of morally ambiguous things to advance yourself. Rick's main complaint is his increasingly common longing for an index. And of course, there's his amusing belief that the prequels are going to follow in this vein and be darker than the original trilogy. What is he going to make of the final result?

 

[Orius]

Floyd falls for the villain's threat. Honestly, even if they're threatening your friend's life, you keep fighting. Following their orders only makes things worse. Do they not realize this yet?

To be fair though, Floyd isn't exactly the smartest protagonist of all time. You don't need an idiot ball to force him into an idiot plot, he'll blunder into it all on his own.

And I found it! William's webpage has an archive of Floyd's run, but unfortunately, I couldn't find it when you got to the first strips. I managed to stumble onto it the other day though. Ah well, even though the run is almost over, I suppose it's better late than never:

Welcome to Floyd!

Here's the strip from this issue:

Gamespy Gallery

The scan isn't great, and the images for the previous and next buttons are missing (but the links still work).

Well, the upcoming Nodwick strips from Dragon are on his site too, so I suppose if you want to link to the or whatever, they're there.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 243: January 1998


part 8/8


Re:Views: A few years back, Rick and Lester shared the RPG reviews column from month to month. Now Lester's got his own, as it seems the public is demanding more reviews, but they don't want to bring back computer games, minis, proper book reviews, or anything else. So instead of variety in topic, we have variety in format, with this gimmicky attempt to seem modern by placing the review in the context of an email. (which it might actually be, if Lester doesn't work in the building with them) So this ironically looks more dated than the regular reviews, just like calling the letters column D-Mail. Still, let's see if the content is good despite the format. And really, it doesn't seem that different, although it is shorter. Description, good points, bad points, roundup.

Asylum sets the PC's within a city sized madhouse, in a postapocalyptic wasteland, where everyone, including them, is quite quite mad. It seems to be a textbook case of cool ideas, somewhat amateurish presentation. Take the setting, and convert it to another set of rules like GURPS. So really, this isn't that different from the regular reviews. I'm thoroughly underwhelmed.


TSR Previews: March sees another half a dozen new items and change for your enjoyment. The forgotten realms has finished looking at Netheril, and is off to Cormanthyr instead. The lost library of cormanthyr by Mel Odom is the novel. They may be gone, but their defenses against intruders are still very much alive. For those of you who want to travel back and play it for yourselves, buy Cormanthyr: Empire of elves. Can you change the present during your stay in the past? Let's hope they don't start ret-conning things via time travel in setting.

Dragonlance is really getting into the swing of the 5th age. Wings of fury gives us more info on dragons under the new ruleset. We've seen the novel characters stand up to the great dragons and suffer in the process, now you can see if your characters can run it any better. The novels continue to be a bit goofy, with The Doom Brigade by Margaret Weis and Don Perrin. Draconian and dwarf are forced to work together to survive. Monsters get humanized in the face of bigger, badder monsters.

Ravenloft gets Shadowborn, by William W Connors and Carrie A Bebris. Another story of heroism perverted within the domain of dread. Can the shadowborn family make a difference, or will they become monsters as well.

Planescape finally fills in the inner planes, with their 3rd monstrous compendium appendix. Have fun, try not to die too suddenly.


Profiles is back after ten and a half years. I guess the staff has changed enough that this'll be able to fill another year or two of articles. I wonder if we'll see any recurring faces, and if so, how they'll have changed in the interim?
Our first face is indeed a familiar one. Margaret Weis may have lost a little hair, and an agent since her last photo in issue 120 (cancer is a cruel mistress), but her writing has gone from strength to strength, producing multiple multimillion selling series, which has probably made her quite wealthy. She's now making sure that she gives back to the community, helping out young writers. Quite a sweet profile really, and definitely gives me a better picture of the person behind the profile than the old one. She's still pretty busy, with the Sovereign stone setting her next big project. Definitely interesting to see this series return, as it'll help me get some more perspective on the progression and turnover of the big faces in the hobby.


While there's a few interesting new things in this issue, there's also a quite ridiculous amount of repeated material, even more so than the last couple of years. I'm getting an idea why people don't talk about this period very much. Besides the reduced readership, the fact that they're really playing it safe leaves me wondering what there is to talk about. Well, apart from the stuff that's relevant to the next edition, but that's still over 2 years away. That's going to be a long, slow buildup, isn't it. I'm once again left quite eager to keep moving.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998


part 1/8


116 pages. Another flying special? Well, it has been over 10 years ago since the last one in issue 124. Just as with arctic or underwater adventuring, it's still a sufficiently uncommon topic that they can probably find something new to say. Plus it looks like we're seeing the return of Roger Raupp both on the cover and inside, and his art skills have definitely improved in the intervening decade. So at least there's some more evidence of them reconciling with the old guard. Which means even if the articles are dull we'll have more historical progress. So let's fly, but try not to get too high.


In this issue:


The wyrms turn: Dave Gross reveals that his personal favourite campaign setting was actually Al-Qadim. Exotic enough to be distinctive, but with enough real world sources to be instantly understandable to a layman. And the production values and writing were great. I find it hard to argue with that assessment even if it wasn't my personal preference. And of course, this is evidence that they are going to have more articles for specific worlds in the near future. That's not something I have a problem with. And his obvious enthusiasm makes this editorial more pleasing to read than many of his. Hopefully that enthusiasm'll carry on into the rest of the issue.


D-Mail: We start off with a good four letters in favour of the Mother NPC. This is the kind of humour the magazine needs, and is obviously done in a spirit of affection, not misogyny. How po-faced would you ned to be to think otherwise?

A letter praising the Greyhawk setting. This group has long since exhausted all the official adventures for the setting, so it's revival will be tremendously welcome to them.

Another letter praising greyhawk and ravenloft. Well, they did ask.

A third which complements planescape, dark sun and dragonlance, albeit in rather less detail. It does take all sorts, after all.

A letter from a new reader that proves their current article repertoire is indeed more exciting to someone who hasn't been exposed to the topics several times before and become a huge postmodern cynic. Maybe I shouldn't judge so harshly.

a letter asking for more ecologies. Well, they are still one of the strongest parts of the magazine. And they could fill decades without repeating monsters easily. One for every issue!

And we finish off with a long letter which shows exactly why the Realms is the biggest, most popular setting they have. It just has so many interesting characters. Even if some of them are cheesy and annoying, that just makes us think and talk about it more. And if you want prefab adventures, accept no substitute.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 244: February 1998


part 2/8


Forum's first big question is what races the next edition should contain. I wonder what kind of turnaround times these questions will have. In the meantime, let's enjoy the last few unfocussed fora.

Dan Cross gives some advice on preparing your game and keeping it running. Nice to see they can still do mini-articles as well as rules revisions here.

Harry Pratt points out that Lord Soth has powers beyond a regular Death Knight. The others should be powered up too. Um, that's like saying every wizard should be as twinked as Elminster. It'll remove all their specialness.

Chris Reeves is not at all keen on the SAGA system. It's simplistic, expects you to know most of the setting detail already, and has some seriously arbitrary crap. Not amused at all.

Chris Merritt actually prefers the SAGA system. It gives you more choice of actions and goes faster. It's definitely a better choice for introducing new players. Nice to see someone prefers it.

Simon Fung sings the high level blues. How many things did you kill to get there, and how many monsters must their be to maintain a decent number of high level characters in the world. The math is a bit iffy. Maybe that's another thing that needs adjusting.


Sage advice: Waaah! I still don't understand how the symbol spell works! (You're not the only one. In fact, we've had so many questions on this matter that we're gonna completely rewrite the spell to clear this up, covering nearly 2 full pages. There may be some nerfing involved, as we try to cover all the eventualities. )

Can spellcraft identify magical items. (Not very well, if at all. It's SPELLcraft, not ITEMcraft. )

Can you cook fish you caught (Yes. Everyone can do basic cooking in D&D. (Ha. That's like saying everyone in a modern setting can read, drive and use computers.))

How do you succeed at casting Nahal's reckless dweomer. (get 100 or better, or one of the results that shows cast x spell with y modifier )

What's the difference between the bladesong fighting style and the bladesinger kit. (Bladesong is something any elf can learn, bladesinger is for when they want to really specialize in it. )


Out of character: Mr Adkison once again reveals his enthusiasm for a system element that'll make it into the next edition. This time, it's having a universal resolution mechanic. Well, it is pretty fashionable these days, and is one of the things making AD&D look like a dinosaur compared to smaller, faster, more flexible systems. If you want to fix things, start from the bottom. But this isn't just long-term systems discussion, it's also blatant promotion of Alternity, their current hot new thing. Now that's more like something Gary would have done. It also reminds us that Alternity's mechanic was a good deal more swingy and unpredictable than the d20 one would eventually become, with the target number remaining the same, and the difficulty being represented by adding bigger dice. So this second column from him isn't quite as pleasing as the first one, but is still both interesting and historically relevant. Hopefully it'll take a while longer for him to settle into a routine and start to become formulaic, as happens to most of their columnists at some point. For now, his writing is still a breath of fresh air against the general backdrop of the magazine.