Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 122: June 1987

part 3/5

Sage advice is quite short this month.
How much do oriental structures cost to make (Same as western stuff using the same material. The peasant labour process is pretty much the same anyway. Apart from paper walls, those are expensive and useless. )
What are art objects and how much are they worth? (egads man, have you no life ourtside gaming? They're paintings and sculptures and caligraphy and pottery and stuff. Like jewelery, their value is largely in the eye of the beholder, and you can use the same tables to determine their worth. (Pickled bulls heads in an unmade bed, with names of all your lovers scrawled in your own menstrual blood on the sheets probably won't sell well around here.))
What are the movement rates for oriental vehicles (Again, same as for western ones. In fact, just take that as written. Everything not specifically mentioned as different is the same! If We examined every aspect of their society in the detail you want the book'd be over a thousand pages long. This is D&D, not Advanced Physics simulator 1987. )
Will you publish an oriental suplement for greyhawk (no. Canonically, it's all set in the forgotten realms now, despite the old references to Kara-tur being on Oerth. If you want to transplant them, it's not hard. Continent shuffling is an established D&D tradition, going right back to Blackmoor. )
When can you use MA Maneuvers (whenever it's physically reasonable for them to do so. We still expect you to have common sense, y'know)
Is there a duration for the iron fist maneuver (Irrelevant. It's an action, not a magic power. It lasts as long as you're doing it. What is the duration of a punch or a kick. What is the sound of one fist typing pointless questions.)
How does the form of a style affect it? (not much. Method is far more important. )
The martial arts styles break the rules (No, you just don't understand them. Order of maneuvers in style is not the same as order of maneuvers of group. It's perfectly clear to me. )
What AC do you roll against when using Leap (AC10, unless there are special circumstances. Give us a proper DC system, pleeease. )
Can you use a riding horse in a joust (no. They'd panic and run away. You'd be a laughingstock amongst all the other knights)
How do you make a Drolem ( Oooh. Sgonna cost you at least 25,000gp. Plus research costs. And lets not forget you need a set of dragon bones. It'll take quite an adventure to build one. )
How do you make illusory walls. ( Cast permanency on Phantasmal force. Or if you don't want to wait until 18th level, develop a custom spell. It should only be around 4th level or so. )

The GM's ten commandments: Pff. We've seen this one plenty of times before. Don't be adversarial. Always give them a chance unless what they want to do is blatantly impossible. Don't overplan. Don't go over the top too quickly. Description description description. Consistent worlds make for better games. Stick to your rulings and don't let the game get disrupted by rules lawyers. No takebackseys. Encourage roleplaying. If the players try cool and clever stuff, reward it, don't punish it. No great surprises here. One for our new readers.

Marshalling the martial arts: A third OA article? Plus sage advice being mostly oriental. Man, at this rate this'll effectively be another special issue. Psionics never got it this good. Anyway, here's 12 new martial arts styles made using the OA rules, allowing even nonmonks to become quite capable and versatile unarmed combatants. I recommend you go for Escrima, as it has top AC, damage, no of attacks, and a decent weapon selection, plus tons of special moves. Yeah, these aren't remotely balanced. But then, MA in AD&D wasn't well designed anyway, the tiny number of flexible resource slots you got meant power always outweighed flexibility for fighter types. This fails to fix that in any way. Ho hum.

Operation Zondraker: Merle's epic series on Top Secret in spaaace gets it's third, but not final installment. Having covered the rules for operating in space, they now take us to the moon, and show us how the rules handle it's low gravity, airless plains. Previous articles from the magazine are referenced freely to help build up the big picture, and we get plenty more cool toys to use, offensive, defensive, transport and utility. Still a very crunchy business, but that's no surprise really. I'm rather enjoying this, as it's one of the few extended, in depth articles that they're doing at the moment, and look forward to seeing how they finish this one off.

Ellery Queen's mystery magazine game. How cute. It's a murder mystery game advertising in Dragon. Now that's the kind of thing I could stand to see more of.

 

[(un)reason]

So why is it that no one remembers that Egypt is in Africa whenever they talk about Africa? Unless talking about Egypt specifically you'd think there was nothing there but desert nomads and jungle tribesmen.

Yeah, culturally, egypt is always lumped in with the mediterranean and middle eastern countries rather than the african ones. I blame a dirty great desert called the sahara, making overland travel south rather inconvenient.

Speaking of which, that makes me think of something. How are you planning to cover the Annual issues when you get to them? Not like you need to decide quickly, since there's still another 9 years to go. They were released between the November and December issues originally, but in my collection, I just put them at the end of their respective years.

Probably at the end of the year. That's where I've already put their index positions.

 

[amysrevenge]

Marshalling the martial arts: A third OA article? Plus sage advice being mostly oriental. Man, at this rate this'll effectively be another special issue. Psionics never got it this good. Anyway, here's 12 new martial arts styles made using the OA rules, allowing even nonmonks to become quite capable and versatile unarmed combatants. I recommend you go for Escrima, as it has top AC, damage, no of attacks, and a decent weapon selection, plus tons of special moves. Yeah, these aren't remotely balanced. But then, MA in AD&D wasn't well designed anyway, the tiny number of flexible resource slots you got meant power always outweighed flexibility for fighter types. This fails to fix that in any way. Ho hum.

Here's another article we had photocopied (I started playing in October 1990, and reading current issues of Dragon some time late in 1991). And we did indeed always go with Escrima (we plugged all the OA crunch into our vanilla Western setting - if you can call roaming around killing things and taking their stuff without further purpose a "setting").

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 122: June 1987

part 4/5

The leader of the pack: This month's Star frontiers article is a quick one on the nature of the two social stats, and the difference between then. Persuasion is about your charm and skill at social repartee, while leadership measures your ability to boss people around and impart critical information in crisis situations. A perfectly valid way to divide things up, if one that can probably be picked apart by rules lawyers looking for edge cases. Definitely a filler article here, with the amount of text and illustration here finely formatted to fit around the adverts. It does have the neat idea of aiding others with your advice, and actually allowing mechanical benefits from doing so, so it's not a complete waste of time. That is, after all, an idea that would go on to be much more popular in the future.

TSR Previews: A decidedly short list of new products this month. Don't worry though, because it looks like there's considerably more in the month after.
D&D is getting B1-9: In search of adventure. Another attack of rehash, this ties all these earlier adventures more closely into the Known Worlds setting, giving you a nice little sandbox to level up your characters in with plenty of choices on where to go. It's also getting DA4: The dutchy of ten. Dave Arneson's been back less than a year, and now he's buggered off again, leaving the writing of the final Blackmoor module to his collaborator. Not a very impressive run, really. What was the backstage reason behind things turning out this way?
AD&D is getting the Manual of the Planes! One of Jeff Grubb's crowning achievements, this might not have quite the style of the later planescape stuff, but it certainly makes the planes playable and then some. This opens up a lot of campaign options and is pretty fun to read as well. If you don't want to go that far afield, but have still made it to high level, you can instead try H3: Bloodstone wars. Use the mass combat system to forge an army and rid a city of marauding bandits. Must be a lot of bandits. No wonder they're a nightmare to get rid of.

Fiction: The Prince's Birthday by Keith Minnion. A question often asked of genius inventors. If you're so smart, then why are you not in charge. Why are you taking commissions from a tyrannical sadistic maniac who's likely to kill you if you fail to amuse, and almost as likely to kill you if you succeed, so no-one else can have a copy of the cool stuff you've made for them. A very valid question. Interestingly, this one has read the legend of Dadaelus and Icarus, and isn't going to make the same mistake. Not only is he smart enough to get out of dodge at the right time, but he's also smart enough to leave something behind that'll really get him out of trouble. I won't spoiler you as to the details, but I did find this pretty enjoyable, and hope that if I have to resign from some big tyrannical corporation, I can go out with half as much style.

Profiles: Jeff Butler may look like a jock, play sports like a jock, and wound up marrying a cheerleader, but he's also a skilled artist, growing up on a diet of comic books and swords and sorcery. (with lurid covers, of course) He did all sorts of freelance drawing work before joining a small comics company. When that ran into financial trouble and it all went a bit pear shaped, he was clued in to TSR's job opening, and of course got to draw the big names, as the Marvel super heroes game took off. As a sideline, he's also started creating live action superhero costumes. Seems like he's definitely living the dream.
Jane Cooper is one of our book editors. She's gone from minnesota, to wisconsin, to taiwan, and back, picking up a husband while out there. As another of the surprisingly large contingent of staff who never gamed before coming to work there, she's had a lot to learn, but if you can learn other languages, you can probably adapt to most corporate structures.
Patrick McGilligan is yet another of our editors. They sure do have a lot of them. (well, I suppose it's better than White Wolf's only having two editors in the entire company, who give the impression they'd much rather be writers, and farming out the scutwork to Scribendi) He's written plays, biographies, edited Playgirl, (yeah, Suuuuuure you only edited it for the articles.) interviewed tons of famous people, and then decided that he'd prefer a slightly duller life, so he'd work as a book editor for TSR. He's played a big part in the making of the new Windwalker, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels. What writers will he sucker in with promises of fame and fortune next?

 

[(un)reason]

I'd just like to mention that I think I've probably stitched together enough bits and pieces to kick off play in my game world based off my readings of the magazine, and am now actively looking for players. If you're in the southwest of the UK, have been enjoying reading this and would like to game with me, check the actual play thread, and PM me. Let's start applying all this built up theory, and have some fun.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 122: June 1987

part 5/5

The enemy within! Shadows over Bogenhafen. The first supplement for warhammer fantasy. Oh yeah. They're gonna sink your boat, bitches. Feel the grit.

The marvel-phile: A quick venturing into the realms of hyperpower again this month, with stats for the High Evolutionary. A medieval scientist who turned himself into an immortal advanced being, he created a duplicate of the earth, engaged in all kinds of god-playing, then went mad and committed suicide by hulk when he didn't get the respect he felt he deserved from other cosmic races. Sounds like a bit of a dick, really. As this is just a cut statblock from the corebook, this is another bit of filler that won't be of use to most groups, since high power adversaries like this can be a problem. Seems like we're getting quite a bit of that this issue.

A big book of little heroes: A single book review is separated from the crowd this month. Heroes for wargames by Stuart Parkinson is a rather strangely written book. Part introduction to wargaming and roleplaying, part coffee table book of pretty minis and guide to painting them, part collectors guide, it doesn't seem at all sure what it wants to be. It's also very britishly written, throwing off the reviewer with it's idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation. facepalm: None of you have problems with my englishness, do you?) This is a problematic review of what is probably a problematic book, and if it tried to tie into the specifics of what was just coming out then, probably has not aged well. Definitely not one I want to chase down.

The role of computers: As they said 2 months ago, this month's main review is the massive Might and Magic, an epic RPG. It seems fairly typical for games of it's time. Create a party from the usual selection of races and classes, generate their ability scores, equip them, and explore a world with the intent of saving it. However, the devil is in the details, and there's certainly plenty of those. (as ever, they advise to go back and save often, for losing several hours work sucks) Even after playing for three months, they're only a third of the way through it, and still eager to push on and discover what tricks and secrets the rest of it contains. Oh what a shame for them, for they have to constantly move on and try new games as part of their job. Still, they'll continue playing it just for pleasure, and stealing cool bits for their own rpg'ing. If I were inclined to download ROM's, I would definitely be tempted by this review. Also notable is their talking about many manufacturers not converting their games to the Atari because it's the most pirated system. Same as it ever was .

The ultimate addenda: Errata, errata. Don't try and spread it on your bread without butter. Or it'll stick in your throat, make you choke and splutter. And if you're dead, the rules won't matter. Yup, it's this time again. Advanced Marvel Superheroes has stuff missing, and stuff that needs fixing, and it's up to this humble scribe to go back to it and fix this. 9 new powers, plus some definition of terms that are mentioned in the book, but not explained. So many superheroes. There's always going to be something you failed to design for. Yet another not very exciting article.

Hmm. Leaves from The inn of the last home. Aka cooking and singsongs with Tika and Caramon. This smells like the kind of thing that gives fluff a bad name, and does nothing to make the game more fun to play. Am I wrong?

Dragonmirth features the scariest gruumsh evar. The Snarfquest crew gets cabin fever as they travel through space. Wormy's standoff turns into another incredibly dramatic battle.

One of the worst issues in a long time, if not ever, for several reasons. Obviously, there's the official announcement of Gary's departure, treated in a decidedly shoddy way, but there's also a painful amount of articles that are rehashed, overly shallow, poorly organized, leftovers from other recent issue's themes, and just plain dull. It feels like a dumping ground for a whole load of the crap they've been building up over the past year. Not pleasant reading, with a few exceptions. Lets hope they've cleared out their blockage, and they'll be back to their reliable selves next issue. It's been a new era for a while, but this really marks the ending of the old ways, and the beginning of a new regime in a way that's hard to miss. This is gonna result in flamewars.

 

[Stoat]

I own Heroes for Wargames. It's been years since I opened it, but I don't recall it being that problematic. It's full of pretty pictures, and IIRC contains a fairly standard tutorial for miniatures painting. I really enjoyed reading it these many years ago.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Actually, you write pretty good American, with just the right amount of British spice.

 

[Doug Sundseth]

I have Heroes for Wargames; it does have something of a problem with being neither fish nor fowl. It's about half advertisement for GW and about half miniatures-painting tutorial. The former is a bit tedious and the latter is a bit dated now. (At the time, it wasn't a bad tutorial.)

 

[LordVyreth]

Actually, you write pretty good American, with just the right amount of British spice.

Honestly, until you mentioned your game's location, I had no idea you were British. I might have just missed earlier references, though.