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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5974922" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Dragon Issue 286: August 2001</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>part 4/7</p><p></p><p></p><p>Fiction: Antrax by Terry Brooks. And so we finish off the themed section with an excerpt from the next novel in the series. Like many of the fiction pieces by WotC staff, this is primarily advertising, setting up the story and introducing you to some of the characters, but not resolving anything, so you have to spend more money if you want any satisfaction. And the writing is pretty annoying, telling rather than showing, and spending more time sketching out characters than actually having them do anything. Despite the cool stuff that the writers have plundered and converted from his world, I don't feel the desire to follow that up and read further. I'm left with rather mixed feelings about this theme. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Elminster's guide to the realms: Elminster comes up with a little something that feels like a holdover from the Wyrms of the North days this month. A dragon who schemes to control the economy of the Realms via cryptic clues and adventure hooks placed in the treasure caches she creates (while keeping the majority of her horde safely away from these plots, I presume) The map is of a good example one of them. While there is some treasure here, it's easily replaceable, and much of it is in the form of information, and magically enchanted so she can track it, and eventually retrieve and reuse it. This is another demonstration of how you can have dungeons that get visited and cleared out regularly, but still get replenished so other adventurers can use them, and why some powerful creature would go to the effort of maintaining and restocking them, while making sure that the challenges are set at a difficulty PC's have a good chance of overcoming. It illustrates how much of the adventurers life is a set-up, and how they can be tricked into fulfilling someone else's agenda without ever even speaking to them. Man, it can't be easy making a world both internally consistent, and able to sustain a high proportion of it's population being adventurers indefinitely. And Ed still does a better job of it than anyone else out there. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Cities of the ages: Venice! Now that is an interesting city. It's a great example of how humans can completely screw up their environment, yet adapt and survive to the changes. Massive subsidence as a result of industrial pumping sinking the city? We'll use canals instead of roads as our primary means of transportation. I don't think we're in any danger of extinction if we can pull tricks like that. Their history is pretty fascinating as well. The amount of adversity they faced both in building it and from their neighbours over the centuries results in more civic unity than the average town, but there's tons of room for politics, making money, and having fun here, and some spectacular architecture. It seems like another rather good choice for this column, as there's really no other city quite like it. Course, in your world, that might not be the case, particularly if the sea/land ratio is even higher than on earth, and stable building space is at a premium everywhere. Then you can have several dozen variants on the floating city theme. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Faiths of faerun gives us another prestige class, the Nightcloak of Shar. Another one that seems pretty badass. Take a single level of Rogue (preferably the 1st one, given the way 3e multiclassing rewards that) and enjoy your substantially increased powers of deception and spells that manipulate darkness. They do have one minor issue, in that like blackguards, they have some required skills that they then don't get as class skills. But still, once again, I think this will be one that turns out an overall positive compared to straight clerics, and gives you lots of flavorful abilities as well. As usual, the Realms gets the best toys to play with.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 5974922, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Issue 286: August 2001[/U][/B] part 4/7 Fiction: Antrax by Terry Brooks. And so we finish off the themed section with an excerpt from the next novel in the series. Like many of the fiction pieces by WotC staff, this is primarily advertising, setting up the story and introducing you to some of the characters, but not resolving anything, so you have to spend more money if you want any satisfaction. And the writing is pretty annoying, telling rather than showing, and spending more time sketching out characters than actually having them do anything. Despite the cool stuff that the writers have plundered and converted from his world, I don't feel the desire to follow that up and read further. I'm left with rather mixed feelings about this theme. Elminster's guide to the realms: Elminster comes up with a little something that feels like a holdover from the Wyrms of the North days this month. A dragon who schemes to control the economy of the Realms via cryptic clues and adventure hooks placed in the treasure caches she creates (while keeping the majority of her horde safely away from these plots, I presume) The map is of a good example one of them. While there is some treasure here, it's easily replaceable, and much of it is in the form of information, and magically enchanted so she can track it, and eventually retrieve and reuse it. This is another demonstration of how you can have dungeons that get visited and cleared out regularly, but still get replenished so other adventurers can use them, and why some powerful creature would go to the effort of maintaining and restocking them, while making sure that the challenges are set at a difficulty PC's have a good chance of overcoming. It illustrates how much of the adventurers life is a set-up, and how they can be tricked into fulfilling someone else's agenda without ever even speaking to them. Man, it can't be easy making a world both internally consistent, and able to sustain a high proportion of it's population being adventurers indefinitely. And Ed still does a better job of it than anyone else out there. Cities of the ages: Venice! Now that is an interesting city. It's a great example of how humans can completely screw up their environment, yet adapt and survive to the changes. Massive subsidence as a result of industrial pumping sinking the city? We'll use canals instead of roads as our primary means of transportation. I don't think we're in any danger of extinction if we can pull tricks like that. Their history is pretty fascinating as well. The amount of adversity they faced both in building it and from their neighbours over the centuries results in more civic unity than the average town, but there's tons of room for politics, making money, and having fun here, and some spectacular architecture. It seems like another rather good choice for this column, as there's really no other city quite like it. Course, in your world, that might not be the case, particularly if the sea/land ratio is even higher than on earth, and stable building space is at a premium everywhere. Then you can have several dozen variants on the floating city theme. Faiths of faerun gives us another prestige class, the Nightcloak of Shar. Another one that seems pretty badass. Take a single level of Rogue (preferably the 1st one, given the way 3e multiclassing rewards that) and enjoy your substantially increased powers of deception and spells that manipulate darkness. They do have one minor issue, in that like blackguards, they have some required skills that they then don't get as class skills. But still, once again, I think this will be one that turns out an overall positive compared to straight clerics, and gives you lots of flavorful abilities as well. As usual, the Realms gets the best toys to play with. [/QUOTE]
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