Dragon Issue 84: April 1984
part 1/2
100 pages. No april fools stuff this year. They are slacking rather. But then, with the serious changes they're making to the magazine, they just don't have the right mood, or the energy. The death of one of your sister magazines is not the kind of thing you laugh at. You never know when your own fortunes could decline suddenly and before you know it you're the next on the chopping block.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter pointing out that the peryton in the MM is described as having claws, while the one in the Ecology article has hooves. They reply that they did that diliberately just to annoy pedants like him.
They've learned from the gem dragon debacle. So canon be damned. Having hooves makes them even weirder, so why not.
A letter asking if the stuff from the dragonquest article could be adapted to D&D. They reply sure, you can convert anything from any system to another. Fundamental ideas generally retain their strength (or weakness) no matter what you do with them.
Some errata on sleep gas. It's still nasty, but less so now the error is removed.
A letter grumbling about how out on a limb ain't what it used ta be. Why make the forum? Things were fine before. grumble mutter grumble darn kids getoffa ma lawn.
Two letters pointing out errors in recent modules. Here we go again. An editors job is a thankless task. Ignored when you do things right, and yelled at when you do things wrong.
The forum: Edward R Masters pontificates about the nonsensibility of the various elemental planes. Oh, don't be such a pessimist. Yeah, if you change one bit of the physics, you have to keep changing other bits, until things all add up again. But that does not make them inherently unsolvable or unadventurable. Put a can do face on! And sing a happy song! You'll get nowhere if you never start because you think it'll always go wrong!
Peter Bregoli thinks the forum as it stands is all together too focused on grumbling about things that are wrong. We ought to talk about our cool ideas more. That's the spirit lad.
Ken Hughes thinks that the combat charts are unneccacary. We ought to just figure out what bonuses a character has, and roll against the enemy AC. Maybe we should even flip around the AC system so higher is always better, and the whole thing becomes more intuitive. Radical ideas man! They'll never catch on.
Bill Cavalier thinks Dragon ought to do more articles on the various conventions. They're the lifeblood of the hobby, after all. Yes, I do recall when they had extensive articles on the introduction of the giant modules to the conventions. Obviously, you can't innovate like that every year, but that doesn't stop you from talking about what it was like, the cool stuff you saw, and so forth. They've made interesting articles about that in the past, and they could do so again.
Jeff Naiman has some commentary and suggestions on the poison article from issue 81. What benefit is neutralize poison when the victim is dead straight away.
A cast of strange familiars: Yup, It's time for wizard's oft-neglected animal companions to get an article examining them. What creatures are suitable, how should they be statted out, what special powers and limitations should they have. We get a reiteration of the deadliness of housecats and other small animals in D&D, and an attempt to fix this. We also get a look at the problem of falling damage
for big and small creatures, and an attempt to fix that as well. In short this is an intelligent and considered article that would be dull if not for this wry eye toward the absurdities of the D&D system making it likable. It could definitely have done more to expand on the system, rather than just examining it, though. A rather mixed way to start off the issue.
The ecology of the trapper: Hmm, said Edward Greenwood. What shall I send in to Dragon this month? Time is a-passing, and Elminster hasn't shown up to disrupt things for a while. I know! Another ecology. That's always good for a sale, and I can whip them up in my sleep by now. Don't I just have the coolest job in the world. And so another of the strange creatures inhabiting D&D dungeons had it's lifecycle intimately probed in the name of Science! This of course involves questioning unsavory and cantankerous characters, as such monsters do not sit still to be investigated. But if he can wheedle usable information out of Elminster, everyone else should be child's play by comparison. ( I wonder if we will see an ecology of the doll golem at some point?
) This is another well-written article from the master of worldbuilding, with plenty of detail in both the flavour and the game information sections. The amount of footnotes continues to grow, this time they actually cover more space than the fiction itself. This always happens, doesn't it. When someone has a good idea, it expands rapidly until it outgrows it's welcome, and then has to be shrunk back down again until it reaches a good balance with everything else again. Funny to think the series has only been around for a year, and is in some ways still finding it's feet like that. It already seems like one of the indispensable parts of the magazine. Now we just have to worry about running out of monsters to cover.
Figure feature: This month's featured models are a bunch of atlantean guards, a sultan on a magic carpet, a naga, a bunch of orcs, Bast, a centaur, A knight riding a boar, a wizard riding a dragon, and some weird alien creatures. Nothing too out of the ordinary then.
Off the shelf: The sleeping dragon by Joel Rosenberg transports ordinary students into their own RPG game, where they have to master the skills of their characters if they want to survive. Not the most original idea, but executed well in this case.
The Aquiliad by Somtow Sucharitkul is another of his alternate history books. What would happen if rome conquered America? It probably wouldn't turn out quite like this, but it's still a punfully entertaining romp through all manner of fantastical occurrances. Caught between mad emperors, and an equally mad reality, the protagonist has to try and survive and carry out his mad orders, with a little help from his friends.
The war for eternity by Christopher Rowley is another "immortality drug is discovered, ugly resource wars happen" book. Moral issues are raised, humanity behaves in inhumane ways to itself and others, and the aliens get plenty of interesting characterization (which is probably more sympathetic than the humans get) as well.
The man in the tree by Damon Knight is a story of a man with the power to transport things from other dimensions, and how he reluctantly grows into the messiah he really doesn't want to be. Religion and social responsibility are funny things, and this looks at both of them with an insightful eye.
Escape Velocity by Christopher Stasheff is a prequel to his Warlock books. His tongue is firmly in cheek as his protagonists bounce from dimension to dimension, experiencing increasingly insane adventures.
The mirror of helen by Richard Purtill is a book about Helen of Troy. Sure, she might have been the most beautiful woman in ancient history, but what was the person behind the face like? This tells her story from the viewpoint of the people around her, throwing new angles on the myth in a way similar to Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling of arthurian legend. Which is neither a bad idea, or badly done.
Alanna: the first adventure by Tamora Pierce is a kid friendly fantasy adventure obviously aimed at hooking younger readers (get 'em young, and they're yours for life, as the smoking companies say. ) In that role, it serves perfectly well, with a fast paced plot, and simple but well defined characters. Give it to your kids for christmas or something.
The dragon waiting by John M Ford gets our token slating this month. A retelling of the story of Richard III from different perspectives, it jumps between it's characters in an abrupt manner, and the pretty descriptions don't really add up to much plotwise. You've gotta have a purpose beyond just writing for writings sake.
The wild shore by Kim Stanley Robinson is a story of postapocalypic america. They managed to piss of the rest of the world enough that they got bombed into the dark ages, and are now watched and prevented from developing new infrastructure. My, how topical that would have seemed a few months ago. And it will probably seem so again sometime, since these things tend to come in cycles.
