Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Let's read the entire run
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4582654" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Dragon Issue 65: September 1982</u></strong></p><p></p><p>part 2/2</p><p></p><p>Monsters of the Midway: Football. Of the american variety, just to ensure no confusion amongst our international readers. Played by D&D monsters, each with their own stats and special powers. I seem to remember Games Workshop doing something similar. Unfortunately, contrary to the (rather good) illustration, hydra is not one of the character choices. And we seem to be missing the stats for satyrs. I'm a bit iffy on this one. The rules don't quite seem to add up, and I can't really visualize how the game plays. It could definitely have been better written and edited. </p><p></p><p>Tuatha de Danaan: Sigh. It's another article quibbling over the precise stats of a pantheon of deities, based on different sources, readings and translations. Experts in a field are like watches. If you have one, you know what's going on. If you have several, you're never sure. (and disagreeing experts are considerably more annoying than watches that are out by a few minutes.) I might prefer my deities statted, but if I'd had to deal with 10 years of this, I'd throw my hands up and say "Fine, you can't agree on deities stats? They have no stats. They are all beyond mortal reckoning! Are you happy now?!" as well. It might not completely stop the whining, but at least that'd save hours trying to figure out what they ought to have and add up all the math. </p><p></p><p>Law of the Land: Ed Greenwood gives more setting building advice, once again using examples from the forgotten realms. Shadowdale is now ruled by a PC in his game, and so that means he has to defend his teritory. This is another sortie in his battle to get everyone building their own worlds full of depth and constant evolution, that feel like living places that don't just exist for adventurers to kill and loot. A war as unwinnable as the war against drugs. Anyway, this is about laws, customs, and punishments for breaking them. Differentiating between places in this respect is a good way to make them all distinctive, not just the same old pseudomedieval mishmash. You can even put a few utterly ridiculous laws in there. It's not as if you can think of any more stupid than the ones you can find in real life. As ever, he cites plenty of sources, and writes in an entertaining manner. I can't really fault him on this. </p><p></p><p>War!: Lew gets a second article published in one magazine. He is pretty prolific. This is about creating in-game justification for conflicts. These things don't just happen for no reason, and discovering and dealing with these can create a whole load of plot hooks above and beyond those simply caused by the fighting and destruction itself. Economics, ambition, religion, race can be complex issues, and solving them a protracted problem. Or it could be as simple as the groups being of opposing alignment and therefore conflict being inevitable and eternal. Either way, it not only keeps the PC's busy, it keeps the world evolving as well. This complements the previous article nicely. When the conflict comes out of the dungeon, the players really have to decide how it affects their characters. </p><p></p><p>That's no pizza - it's the pong papers: Assassination advice for top secret. As ever, players are often not very clever or subtle, and need to be taught how to avoid detection better. bursting in shooting gets you killed, and it gets innocents killed, while if you plan things properly, no-one will ever expect your involvement.Sniping, Bombs, poison, mechanical "accidents", blackmailing other people into doing the dirty work. All good options bloodthirsty players neglect. The better you do at getting things done smoothly and covering your tracks, the less drama you'll have to deal with later. Surely that's what any professional wants. Only a fool fights when they don't have too. </p><p></p><p>Up on a soapbox: My god. Lew scores a hat trick for the magazine with this article. Another piece about playstyles, primarily focussing on the risktaking/caution axis of player tendencies, but also with some stuff on the logic/intuition one. Correctly judge your opponent's tendencies, and you'll be at an advantage. Fail, and the reverse is true. It's hard to encompass everything in a little article, and he doesn't even try, but he does put a distinctive spin on the subject. This is less boring than most articles of this type. </p><p></p><p>The dragon's augury decides to do a whole bunch of computer games this month: Wizardry is an adventure game wih a lot in common with D&D. Generate you characters stats, choose classes, and put together a party. The dungeons are large, pretty, and filled with all kinds of imaginative monsters (creeping coins) Of course, due to memory limitations, this means you have to keep the disk in and do lots of mid game loading, which slows things down a lot. If only they would do something about that in the future. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> </p><p>Akalabeth is a randomly generated adventure game. It takes a different tack, and fails to overcome the information limitations in old computers, so all the locations and adventures look and play the same, and there is no sense to the monster and treasure distribution. Which makes it boring. </p><p>Crush, crumble and chomp is an arcade game of giant monsters rampaging a city. It's fairly fun, but there's no way of winning, so its just a matter of how much you can smash and how long you survive to get as high a score as possible before being worn down. Which was often the case in those old games. You'll get bored sooner or later. </p><p>The chamax plague/Horde is another Traveller double bill. A pair of adventures that can be run separately or interlinked, they also provide an alien adversary with plenty of bite and ecology. Can you figure them out well enough to use good tactics against them? </p><p>Empire builder gives Gary a rare opportunity to indulge his love of railroad games. (no, not that sort <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> ) Build your network and compete with your opponents to make as much money as possible. Maybe not for everyone, but he certainly enjoys it. And as we know, he's not one to sugar-coat things and say so when he doesn't mean it. So that's a pretty good recommendation. </p><p></p><p>What's new sees dixie playing the pedant. Wormy fits a couple more plot twists in. Dragonmirth only gets half a page, which is a bit half-assed. </p><p></p><p>Gangbusters gets a cool newspaper style advert on the back page. Yes, I know it's been done here before. It works, ok. </p><p></p><p>I hope you've enjoyed the Lewis Pulsipher special. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> Honestly, at this rate, he ought to have a permanent job along with Roger and Ed. Whatever happened to him? I don't remember seeing any stuff from him during the 90's. More questions that I hope our Loyal Readers ( <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> ) can answer. See you next time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 4582654, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Issue 65: September 1982[/U][/B] part 2/2 Monsters of the Midway: Football. Of the american variety, just to ensure no confusion amongst our international readers. Played by D&D monsters, each with their own stats and special powers. I seem to remember Games Workshop doing something similar. Unfortunately, contrary to the (rather good) illustration, hydra is not one of the character choices. And we seem to be missing the stats for satyrs. I'm a bit iffy on this one. The rules don't quite seem to add up, and I can't really visualize how the game plays. It could definitely have been better written and edited. Tuatha de Danaan: Sigh. It's another article quibbling over the precise stats of a pantheon of deities, based on different sources, readings and translations. Experts in a field are like watches. If you have one, you know what's going on. If you have several, you're never sure. (and disagreeing experts are considerably more annoying than watches that are out by a few minutes.) I might prefer my deities statted, but if I'd had to deal with 10 years of this, I'd throw my hands up and say "Fine, you can't agree on deities stats? They have no stats. They are all beyond mortal reckoning! Are you happy now?!" as well. It might not completely stop the whining, but at least that'd save hours trying to figure out what they ought to have and add up all the math. Law of the Land: Ed Greenwood gives more setting building advice, once again using examples from the forgotten realms. Shadowdale is now ruled by a PC in his game, and so that means he has to defend his teritory. This is another sortie in his battle to get everyone building their own worlds full of depth and constant evolution, that feel like living places that don't just exist for adventurers to kill and loot. A war as unwinnable as the war against drugs. Anyway, this is about laws, customs, and punishments for breaking them. Differentiating between places in this respect is a good way to make them all distinctive, not just the same old pseudomedieval mishmash. You can even put a few utterly ridiculous laws in there. It's not as if you can think of any more stupid than the ones you can find in real life. As ever, he cites plenty of sources, and writes in an entertaining manner. I can't really fault him on this. War!: Lew gets a second article published in one magazine. He is pretty prolific. This is about creating in-game justification for conflicts. These things don't just happen for no reason, and discovering and dealing with these can create a whole load of plot hooks above and beyond those simply caused by the fighting and destruction itself. Economics, ambition, religion, race can be complex issues, and solving them a protracted problem. Or it could be as simple as the groups being of opposing alignment and therefore conflict being inevitable and eternal. Either way, it not only keeps the PC's busy, it keeps the world evolving as well. This complements the previous article nicely. When the conflict comes out of the dungeon, the players really have to decide how it affects their characters. That's no pizza - it's the pong papers: Assassination advice for top secret. As ever, players are often not very clever or subtle, and need to be taught how to avoid detection better. bursting in shooting gets you killed, and it gets innocents killed, while if you plan things properly, no-one will ever expect your involvement.Sniping, Bombs, poison, mechanical "accidents", blackmailing other people into doing the dirty work. All good options bloodthirsty players neglect. The better you do at getting things done smoothly and covering your tracks, the less drama you'll have to deal with later. Surely that's what any professional wants. Only a fool fights when they don't have too. Up on a soapbox: My god. Lew scores a hat trick for the magazine with this article. Another piece about playstyles, primarily focussing on the risktaking/caution axis of player tendencies, but also with some stuff on the logic/intuition one. Correctly judge your opponent's tendencies, and you'll be at an advantage. Fail, and the reverse is true. It's hard to encompass everything in a little article, and he doesn't even try, but he does put a distinctive spin on the subject. This is less boring than most articles of this type. The dragon's augury decides to do a whole bunch of computer games this month: Wizardry is an adventure game wih a lot in common with D&D. Generate you characters stats, choose classes, and put together a party. The dungeons are large, pretty, and filled with all kinds of imaginative monsters (creeping coins) Of course, due to memory limitations, this means you have to keep the disk in and do lots of mid game loading, which slows things down a lot. If only they would do something about that in the future. ;) Akalabeth is a randomly generated adventure game. It takes a different tack, and fails to overcome the information limitations in old computers, so all the locations and adventures look and play the same, and there is no sense to the monster and treasure distribution. Which makes it boring. Crush, crumble and chomp is an arcade game of giant monsters rampaging a city. It's fairly fun, but there's no way of winning, so its just a matter of how much you can smash and how long you survive to get as high a score as possible before being worn down. Which was often the case in those old games. You'll get bored sooner or later. The chamax plague/Horde is another Traveller double bill. A pair of adventures that can be run separately or interlinked, they also provide an alien adversary with plenty of bite and ecology. Can you figure them out well enough to use good tactics against them? Empire builder gives Gary a rare opportunity to indulge his love of railroad games. (no, not that sort ;) ) Build your network and compete with your opponents to make as much money as possible. Maybe not for everyone, but he certainly enjoys it. And as we know, he's not one to sugar-coat things and say so when he doesn't mean it. So that's a pretty good recommendation. What's new sees dixie playing the pedant. Wormy fits a couple more plot twists in. Dragonmirth only gets half a page, which is a bit half-assed. Gangbusters gets a cool newspaper style advert on the back page. Yes, I know it's been done here before. It works, ok. I hope you've enjoyed the Lewis Pulsipher special. ;) Honestly, at this rate, he ought to have a permanent job along with Roger and Ed. Whatever happened to him? I don't remember seeing any stuff from him during the 90's. More questions that I hope our Loyal Readers ( ;) ) can answer. See you next time. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Let's read the entire run
Top