Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999


part 4/8


Dark Ages: Whoa. A 21 page special feature. Now that's not something they do very often. In fact, wasn't the last one about this time last year, and also featuring Roger Raupp's material. He brings the old school vibe back to the magazine, or something. As befits their current editorial direction though, this is quite crunch heavy, assuming that you're at least moderately familiar with the idea of dark ages history, and showing us how to implement it in a mechanical sense, with new races and kits taking up well over half of the page count. Since this is an epic feature, I think I should break it up into subcategories to give it it's due.

The setting information includes a map and a timeline, taking us from the departure of the romans to 1066 and the arrival of the Normans. It includes details of the various kingdoms within the british isles, which generally aren't actually that big. But then, when you don't have fast communication or travel, it's a lot easier to feel like a big fish who rules all he surveys. So this is a good reminder that even at name level when you get your own domain, it doesn't have to be that big or populous by modern standards to feel like a real handful to manage. Still, you'll have to refer to the bibliography if you really want in depth information on how real world dark ages kingdoms turned out, and what life in one was like.

The races information not only covers demihumans, but also gives racial modifiers to the celts and picts, while leaving the anglo-saxons as the "base" human race. While this might be slightly dubious from a political correctness PoV, it will allow you to differentiate your characters more without relying on the supernatural elements. The new races are erkling and trow, forest goblins and dwarf-troll hybrids, both of which tend to be sneaky and rather good as thieves, but poor to mediocre at other class options. They definitely fall into the category of creatures that will be unpopular in human settlements and have to work hard to escape their heritage. So yeah, if you're not comfortable with both real world and fantasy racism and incorporating it into your game, (while preferably separating it from your own personal beliefs) you may want to think hard about this bit.

And we not only get 8 new kits, but also extensive reference to the existing complete handbook series and historical sourcebooks, ensuring that they aren't repeating material from those. Most of these are of the concrete benefits for social hindrances kind though, tying you into the setting, and making it a pain to just go off on adventures for extended periods of time. So I think this is one that put a bit more effort into research than adapting it for the game. While extensive, I don't think it counts as a classic one. But don't let that put you off trying a few more of these.


Fighting with flair: Or yet another attempt to give warriors cool things to do. Which to be fair, they are gradually getting better at, even if they continue to fall behind spellcasters by comparison. Skills and powers is good for something, and that's helping you really figure out if a particular kit is over or underpowered, and ensuring the character overall is balanced despite this. At least, that's presuming the individual powers and drawbacks are accurately priced and don't have game breaking combos that are way more than the sum of their parts. Since nearly all of these have costs in multiples of 5, fine-tuning does not appear to be on the agenda. Still, this does have a lot of detail in other respects, including referencing many books. So it looks like after several issues which I've criticised for being too disconnected, this one is going the other way, with articles that demand you have lots of supplements to fully use them. That's a pleasant change, at least until they overdo it. Still, plenty of room for the other articles to balance it out.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999


part 5/8


101 Paladin quests: Practical example solutions to the problems paladin's unique powers and requirements sometimes present? Well, it's a much more productive contribution than bitching about them in the forum or saying they should get rid of them altogether. Yay for Johnathan M Richards again. He's at his best when examining already existing elements of the game, and expanding massively upon them while injecting a bit of humour. Split evenly between bonded mount quests, holy sword quests, and atonement quests, (ya think they should have done more atonement ones? ) this encompasses multiple stages of their adventuring life, and like most 101 lists, a single campaign is unlikely to use it up. Most are quite challenging, and some are amusing and inventive as well, making them good for a session or two of solo adventure. They can definitely produce a few more in this line of articles before they start to run out of topics and have to move on.


Fiction: Charger by Ben Bova. Once again Orion changes the path of history via using not only his combat skill, but also his brains. This time, it's by introducing stirrups to Arthur and co, allowing them to ride their horses in true knightly fashion centuries early and kick Saxon butt. Which of course also allow the author to show off his general knowledge of history and science in general. Even more than last time, the contrast between Orion's omnipotence in physical combat, and helplessness in the social arena is played up, with him getting plenty of mockery from the ordinary people for his odd ideas and ways. Well, that's all too realistic. It happens to almost everyone who's different or visionary. So this rings pretty true in all it's non supernatural elements, although Ben takes pretty heavy liberties with the arthurian mythos as usual. My main complaint is the amount of time it spends explaining the premise yet again to those who haven't read the previous stories. That could surely have been done in less time.


Wyrms of the north: Continuity time! In issue 236 we saw a silver dragon who was mated with a Gold dragon. Now it's time for us to get info on said gold dragon. Like most gold dragons, she holds herself to moral standards that most creatures would find a real struggle. (except when shapeshifted, where staying in character may supersede short-term good deeds. ) And she uses her power to engage in actual temporal rulership, and generally make things better for those in her domain, which is certainly unusual. With a flying mountain for a lair, and a magical artifact that gives her tons of earth and environmental control magic, she's pretty obvious, and it's testament to her number of powerful allies and the inability of evil to co-operate that she stays in charge. So this article reinforces the picture of the Realms as a magic heavy world, where the supernatural creatures and powerful wizards are the real players in geopolitics, with cards up their sleeves no fighter or thief can come close too, however high level they might be. That's the natural result of running the world on AD&D physics, and no amount of disincentivising can counteract basic logic.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999


part 6/8


PC Portraits: Roger Raupp takes this column too this month, with some knightly characters, duh. This does mean they slant slightly more towards the white male human than the average one of these, but there are also samurai, indian and mayan looking ones in there. The real common factor is the protective headgear, which is often quite flashy. Well, when you're heavily armored, you can get away with a little peacocking. Sticks and stones will hurt your bones considerably less, so you can feel freer ignoring mocking words. And an elaborate codpiece will only provide more protection. Go on, platemail and a horse already costs tons, you can spare a little extra to look good with it.


AD&D game aliens: The T'sa get a conversion from Alternity this month. Little fast, smart lizard people, they don't fit the stereotype of reptiles, despite there being real world examples where they move at quite scary speeds, run on water and whatnot. So statistically, they're of the high dex & int, low str & con ilk that mess around with techy stuff, and skitter around the place being enthusiastic about everything. With short lifespans, but a fast learning rate, they adapt to new situations fast, and their societies go through regular upheavals as they discover new technologies. They get unlimited advancement as rogues, but aren't that great at spellcasting, oddly enough. Chalk it up to lack of focus, or maybe being from a technology based universe. They still have more technological artifacts than most races round here, which also get statted up for AD&D. So they do fill a niche that the current races don't, and could make an interesting addition to a party. And they also have obvious potential for being played in an irritating manner and disrupting the party, so um, yaaay. The kender and fishmalk crowd can feel happy too.


The ecology of the firenewt & Giant strider: Oooh. A paired ecology. Haven't seen one of those in a while. We also see the return of our protagonist from the Bird Maiden ecology. So that's three sets of recurring characters (plus Elminster of course, who gets everywhere) that this series has built up over the years. Anyway, firenewts are one of those quirky creatures that appeared first in the Fiend Folio, and haven't got a huge amount of attention since then, since low level marauding humanoid is such an overfilled ecological niche. This does it's best to differentiate them from the crowd. Obviously, they already have the distinguishing factor of their flame related powers, and using mounts a lot of the time. So we build on that, and add a load of details on their lifecycle, culture, religion, fighting tactics, and a new spell. That'll do nicely, making sure players won't take them too lightly. Another fairly good ecology that gains an extra mark for the recurring characters. This series is really building up a bit of continuity now.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999


part 7/8


Role models: The minis column is still tackling the basics of getting everything together for a campaign. Pay extra attention to the PC's minis, because unless you're running a meatgrinder, they'll be stuck with them for a while, and the minis they choose will influence the way they perceive the characters in the long run. Meanwhile, the monsters don't need to have the same kind of attention paid to them, especially as painting takes quite a while, and you do want to have a decent variety in most campaigns. Although using unpainted ones as mooks and painted ones to represent named creatures is a clever idea, this is still pretty elementary, and the improved visuals don't really mitigate that. This once again disappoints compared to older articles on this topic.


Shop Keep: John Kovalic delivers us a new comic. Looks like running a game store is almost as exhausting and poor paying as being a professional games designer. You've got to laugh, or you'd go mad.


Battlezone: While Alternity stuff is getting converted to AD&D elsewhere in the issue, computer game stuff is getting converted to Alternity in the Ares column this issue. Since Battlezone was a game where you controlled giant mechanised vehicles, that means lots of stats for cool things that you can drive, fly or walk around the place, and the various weaponry they can be equipped with. And some images of how they appear in game, which are a bit too small for my tastes, but look pretty nice. So if you want more powerful toys for your players to pilot, this is quite a valuable little article. If not, oh well, better luck next time, I'm fully aware that giant vehicles with powerful weaponry are a niche market, although maybe more due to expense and legal restrictions than desire.


The competitions series asks you to design a 1st level character this month.

Dragonmirth can't draw proper tetrahedrons. Swordplay can't be bothered with this MTV crap. KotDT get into pedantic antagonistic playing again.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 257: March 1999


part 8/8


TSR Previews: Greyhawk continues to resurge, courtesy of our new owners. This time, they reverse another thing that was removed in the 2nd ed changeover by bringing back Monks and Assassins. The Scarlet Brotherhood have tons of both, and they're on the rise again. Will you let them back in your country? Can you keep them out, given how sneaky they are.

The Realms continues to rehash, on the other hand. Evermeet by Elaine Cunningham gets reprinted. Meanwhile R. A. Salvadore actually writes an adventure for a change. It still involves his usual locations, but at least he's pushing himself a bit. The Accursed tower takes you to Icewind Dale to have fun with another dungeon crawl.

Dragonlance gets The Rose and the Skull. The Knights of Takhisis have to figure out their new place without their goddess. Back and forth. I hope someone is keeping track of exactly when all these different novels and short stories take place.

Ravenloft gets Spectre of the Black Rose. Lord Soth is still brooding as things suck in Ravenloft. What an unlife. Give it a rest.

The RPGA releases a compilation of their last year's adventures. More pickup meatgrinders for your delectation, along with other weirdness. Hmm. Worth considering. We could do with a few more single session adventures.

Alternity enjoys a supplement and a novel. They're really competing with the big boys at the moment. Outbound: An Explorers Guide gives you a ton of solar systems to drop into your game. Storm at Edala by Diane Duane is the second book in her trilogy here. Woo.

Marvel Super Heroes does for the fantastic 4 what they did for the avengers. Up to date descriptions and stats. Getcha up to date stats and histories heeeere. 4 for a dollar, maybe even 5!


Profiles: J Robert King is one of our fiction writers. Like a lot of people, he started reading voraciously because he was stuck at home for ages with nothing much to do, so books were a way to escape the boredom. Starting from the slightly less glamorous job of editor, he's become most well known for his Ravenloft work, but has also contributed to the Dragonlance, Planescape, First Quest, and Magic: the Gathering game worlds, and like every writer, also dreams of creating his own world, where he doesn't have to worry about line developers and continuity people interfering with your creativity. It is important to avoid getting typecast, and he certainly seems to be trying to do that. Let's hope his attempts didn't disappoint you.


Well, this issue has certainly been much higher on the continuity front than any issue in ages. Which has definitely been a pleasant change, even if as usual, not all the individual articles were great. I've now got more than enough D&D lore mastery that all the outside references were familiar to me, and everything within here is usable. I think I can return an overall positive verdict on this one. Now let's see if they've got their sense of humour back after skipping that last year.

 

[jonesy]

Dragonlance gets The Rose and the Skull. The Knights of Takhisis have to figure out their new place without their goddess. Back and forth. I hope someone is keeping track of exactly when all these different novels and short stories take place.

There was a fan timeline bouncing around back then by Granak. And as he discovered some of the novels didn't exactly fit together. The whole thing was surprisingly consistent, but that still meant a lot of irregularities (there's a lot of books).

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999


part 1/7


100 pages. This issue marks the end of the era of regular as clockwork 124 pagers. From here on out, the page count goes up and down (mostly down) from issue to issue unpredictably. Their comfortable early adulthood is over, where you can get drunk every weekend, live on Ramen for months on end and still get up and go next morning, and now it's time for all the aches and pains of middle age to set in. Still, at least that means I should be able to get through these last few years more quickly. Let's hit that accelerator.

Connecting with that is a rather amusing cover by Todd Lockwood, which features the hordes of belts, buckles & stupid adornments style that would become de rigeur throughout 3rd edition. A belly button ring, an eyebrow ring. A stud through the lip. Earrings that look like they'd slit her throat if she shook her head too hard. Lets not forget the belts. I count at least 29 on her. Really, who ever thought stuff like this was cool or practical for adventuring in? Even Alias would look askance at wearing this. At least trenchcoats are practical, weather resistant and have plenty of room for holding equipment. Of course, it could be an april fool that got taken seriously by the WotC art department. But somehow I doubt it. Welcome to D&D's first mid-life crisis. You'll never be a hip young thing again. Accept it.


Scan quality: Generally good, colours slightly faded.


In this issue:


The wyrms turn: Once again they get neurotic about the amount of humour they should have in their april issues. You've been doing this over 20 years now. It isn't exactly rocket science. You need at least one leftfield one that people will talk about and remember, but maybe won't get any game use out of, and then you can mix serious and funny ones around the rest of the issue how you want. How hard is that? Well, I guess if you're not getting the submissions, it might be a bit tricky, but they certainly seemed to have no shortage of them in Roger's day. Don't tell me the whole gaming population has suddenly gone boring. Or maybe they've just intimidated the interestingly weird ones away with their dogmatic submission guidelines. In any case, this says nothing they haven't done before. They could have skipped this and had another much needed page for articles.


The complete dragon ball Z boxed set on VHS?! That'll eat up a LOT of shelf space. Tenchi miyo, on the other hand, is down with modern technology. Hooray for DVD's.

 

[LordVyreth]

See, I liked this lovely lady's style, but then I go for the goth and punk looks in real life. I guess, hey, if you're a wizard and aren't expected to wear armor anyway, plus you have magic for all your environmental protection needs, why not go crazy with the clothes?

Edit: That said, upon further examination, yeah, those earrings are a mistake.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 258: April 1999


part 2/7


D-Mail: We start off with a request for more articles with house rules and adventure hooks. We have enough standard stuff by now. Let's present a few more easy to use options.

Another request for more Campaign Classics. It's one case where demand seems to outstrip supply. If only all creators stuck with their children like Ed does.

Yet another letter about the possibility of a dragonlance movie, although they mention that a cartoon might be a better idea. Special effects are so annoyingly expensive to do well.

And finally a letter from someone who regularly uses minis in their game and is pleased to see a column back in the magazine. As with people who are fans of settings, there's plenty of them out there, not entirely satisfied with the amount they're being catered too.


Nodwick tries to get through to his employers, only to find they're well aware of what s they are. Apart from Pyffany. I though clerics were supposed to have a high wisdom.


Forum: Paul D. Thomson thinks mages are one of the most powerful classes, even at low level, because of the many many noncombat things they can do. Yeah, that's going to be the rub many times throughout the next edition too.

Derek Groen wants 4 base classes, plus good rules for creating your own. Then they can sell tons of examples while having a consistent base for keeping them balanced. A boy can dream, can't he.

Neil Palmquist wants the monk back, along with all the other 1st ed classes that got dropped, including the UA & OA ones. And all the old proficiencies incorporated too. BloAT!

Peter Donis-Forster defends alignment. It has very specific effects on your game, and characters should have restrictions on how they act. It helps define them as a character rather than just an extension of you.

Ken Butler dislikes the idea of a real time based combat system, but does want psionics as core. Hey Ho. Another mixed bag, as must be where opinions contradict.


Dungeoncraft: Ah yes, religion. An integral element in worldbuilding, and one that has the most potential to go horribly wrong or just get glossed over. We've been here before. Fortunately, this is one element where Ray improves on previous articles, spelling things out in a clear, step by step fashion, with examples, and referencing the principles he established in previous columns. The specific example of a supreme nature goddess with a broad enough umbrella to cover clerics & druids, including the darker side of nature; is rather generic, but I suppose you don't want anything too leftfield here. More interesting is the continued emphasis on making sure that for everything you design, there is a secret associated with it. Of all the advice he gives, that seems most unusual, but also likely to have good long-term payoffs. And the twist at the end, that Mind flayers were created by the moon goddess and are intended to eventually replace humans and other creatures from the nature one as the dominant lifeform, is positively inspired as a long-term campaign hook. So this is one of his stronger entries, and shows the continuity of this column building up nicely. If he gets several years to do this, and continues to improve, then I should miss him when this ends, as all things must eventually do.

 

[(un)reason]

See, I liked this lovely lady's style, but then I go for the goth and punk looks in real life. I guess, hey, if you're a wizard and aren't expected to wear armor anyway, plus you have magic for all your environmental protection needs, why not go crazy with the clothes?

Edit: That said, upon further examination, yeah, those earrings are a mistake.

Hey, have you forgotten the issue 200 videos. I'm not averse to a little fetish gear. Which is why I know exactly how long that stuff takes to put on and how uncomfortable it can be to wear for extended periods of time, and wouldn't dream of wearing it when trekking across the wilderness for months. That's a sure path to windchill, blisters and bunions aplenty.