Let's read the entire run

[Ed_Laprade]

Probably easier in a superhero game than most genres. But there is still the issue of how much fine detail you know that'd actually be useful to them tactically, particularly if you were just zapped into a random era without time to prepare.

Very true. I first wrote: "Tell them everything that's going to happen.", then realized that probably wouldn't be possible. (A character with a photographic memory would be very nice to have in such a situation.)

Of course, ignoring what the Evil supers are doing would undoubtedly change things. Especially if they also stop off and tell the Axis what's going to happen to them if they don't prioritize!

 

[Orius]

Man, they made that ridiculously hard to reverse. Even using another girdle is a risky business. Coming back from the dead vs changing gender.

Yeah I know. Magic doesn't work, and even a god has a 50% chance to fail at reversing it. Even more evil, there's those belts that appear 10% of the time that remove all gender from the wearer. Twisted!

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989

part 1/5

108 pages. Roll playing vs Role playing? Really Roger?! That's the subject of your editorial? I suppose it wasn't quite the dead horse it is now. Anyway, the changeover continues, and this is another sign of the times, with Roger asking the freelancers to send in more role-playing stuff, and less pure crunch. Very interesting. Just how long will it take that particular pendulum to reach it's limit, and then swing the other way. I guess it'll probably be around when they start getting in financial trouble, look at the books, and figure out ones with lots of new crunch sell better. But anyway, back to the current bit of past we're going through. Our current topic is castles. We've had quite a few articles on this, plus a couple of actual castles as centrepieces in the magazine. Will they avoid the dread spectre of rehash?

In this issue:

Letters: Errata attacks again, as all our letters concern happenings in the magazine. Two of them concern the capabilities of humanoid shamans and witch doctors. You mean there's people who buy the magazines who don't also have most of the supplements? One from Vince Garcia, giving a few corrections for his Savant class article. And one goes way back, asking about the dragonlance mini's they said they would do in issue 91. Apparently, they got cancelled. So much for that idea.


Forum: Bryan A. Walker tells the story of a convention that went horribly wrong (while not naming names) People openly taking drugs and drinking in an environment which was also supposed to be child friendly was more than a little disturbing. With incidents like that, it's no wonder the hobby has image problems.

Graeme Adamson finds that the combat options in issue 127 do not bear up with his personal experience practicing with them. Same as it ever was. D&D is not a realistic game, and stuff from the magazine probably hasn't been extensively tested.

Zach Miller thinks that 1st level mages should be able to cast more spells, but at the same time doesn't want them more powerful. A tricky conundrum, which he solves by saying they should have more cantrips in independent slots. Another prophetic one then.

Michael Townsend, Dave Timmons and Bob Hempel all respond to Roger's editorial on disabilities and gaming, mostly positively. The power of fantasy can do a lot to bring people together and make a life bearable.

P. Jones is not happy about the fact that Oriental demihumans can't be multiclassed. As is often the case, he suggests his houserules on the issue.


Sage advice: How does the save against silence work (If you fail, you're stuck with it. If you succeed, it's still there, but you can just walk out. Neat way of doing it. )
What level do you need to be to make a level draining glyph (same as you would to restore it. 16th.)
Is tongues a universal or selective translator (Selective. Speaking truespeak tends to make it obvious you're a spellcaster)
Can you find a portable hole with find the path (no. It's an object, not a place. )
Can elves dispel a dust devil. No. They have specific resistance, not general magic resistance.)
How many spells can a 124th level cleric cast (enough that you really ought to retire him. )
Can an illusionist get out of the plane of shadow by casting shadow walk again. (Not unless they can find the planar boundary. Be careful, because the shadows can really bite around there. )
Are high level illusionists really that crap at casting magic-user spells (yes.)
Does alter self change your equipment ( Cosmetically!)
Does wraithform let you fly (no)
What counts as a 1st level illusion (any spell that is a 1st level illusionist spell. If it's higher up for other classes, then you can still see through it. )
Who loses con from casting permanancy (the caster)
Can massmorph turn you into things other than trees (no, but you can choose what kind of tree. No, you can't choose a carnivorous mobile tree type)
Shouldn't there be save against cause fear (no, because it's a touch spell anyway. It's the same reason you don't get saves against undead energy drain. Hohahohahohahoha.)
Colour spray has a contradiction in it's description (Yup. Don't worry. In just a couple of months 2nd ed'll be out and you'll have a whole different set of errata to spot. Won't that be fun! )
Can I breathe underwater if I polymorph into a fish (wouldn't be much use if you couldn't)
What's a small specimen. ( Talk to your girlfriend sometime. The things she says about you behind your back. Skip hates to be a bearer of bad news, but...... )
Why won't preserve work on mistletoe. (because it's a holy symbol, not a material component. If you mess with the cycles of nature, you despoil it's holiness. PETA girl mother nature goddess are not the most sensible of deities. )
How can whip disarm creatures if it doesn't work on things with an int above 3 ( You confuse clauses. A common mistake. Become a lawyer. They you can make a living out of exploiting vagueness and contradicting common sense.)
What happens if someone inside an ottilukes resilient sphere is shoved in the water (if the density of the contents of the sphere is greater than the density of water displaced, it sinks. If it's higher, it floats. This is an elementary enough bit of physics that it still works in D&D)
If you sucessfully make a magic resistance check to pass through forcecage, can you go back the other way (No. Once again, Skip finds himself feeling evil. )
I don't understand basic geometry. (This is your arm. This is the formula for calculating the distance between your shoulder and your hand based on the length of the two segments and the angle of incidence between them AFTER I BREAK IT AND TWIST IT 230 DEGREES MUTHAA! C^2 = A^2 + B^2 - 2 COS AB. Are we clear now?)
How many spells do level 30+ magic-users get. (like clerics, it really ought to be retiring time. Clear off, ya twink. )
Can you cast spells from the ethereal to the prime material (not without extra effects. Otherwise being untouchable artillery would be just too easy. )
Can dark elves see through their own darkness spells with infravision (no. It obstructs the whole visual spectrum.)
Do you have to stay still the whole time you cast a spell (Yes. Five foot steps take place before or after, not during. Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself again, aren't I. )

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989

part 2/5

Shadowrun! Another awesome game coming soon. Nice understated teaser advert as well. I'm guessing that they'll have more illuminating previews later.


A castle here, A castle there: Looks like the joys of random tables will continue even into the new edition. Here we expand upon the fairly basic tables in the old DMG, (after all, the new one isn't out yet) adding stuff from Unearthed arcana and Oriental adventures, and allowing you to quickly determine more details about it's construction, inhabitants, surroundings, and relationship with the rest of the world. Quick, but perfectly decent, this is yet another nice little time saver for me to pull out and use in my games.


Holding down the fort: A bit of rehash here, as they give us another events table for those of you who've settled down. If you won't go to the adventure, the adventure will come to you, with all kinds of natural and political inconveniences cropping up with tabloid filling regularity. You have to maintain the place, monsters show up and try and kill people, armies attack, assassins infiltrate, and the court in general bickers and machinates ad nauseum. A few months of this kind of stuff, and many players'll be itching to sell up and set off again. The frequency of events is rather higher than on most tables of this sort, to the degree where it would be exceedingly hard to stay on top of things, no matter how high level you are. Interesting, but not the best example of this kind of thing I've ever seen. You'll have to push yourself a bit harder to come up with a really expansive and statistically well distributed one of these that I'll really want to use in my game.


Strongholds three: A very useful article here. Arthur Collins does exactly what you'd expect from the title, and gives us three very different strongholds to insert into your game. All are logically designed to serve a purpose, and be advantageous to the people living within, rather than just some dungeon crawl. Littlefang is designed to give you a tactical stronghold in mountainous terrain, letting you control a travel route and bombard anyone who attacks with missiles while they have a tricky time even getting to the walls. Are you ready to pay the toll? Niriath Henning is a castle glamoured to appear as an elf hill. While designed to be aesthetically pleasing, with plenty of open space in the courtyard, it's certainly not without mundane defences either, and since it's inhabited by elves, expect lots of spell based attacks. Goldworthy castle, on the other hand, is designed as an exceedingly tough conventional fortress. Hard to get into, and easy to attack out of, it has extensive walled courtyards between the outer walls and the actual castle, so even if you penetrate the first line of defense, you're now being bombarded from all sides instead of just one. Since this is basically three half-adventures, (just give them a location, flesh out inhabitants and add plot) this is pretty handy. As they're pretty good as well, I have no hesitation about using them. He is becoming one of their more notable freelancers.


Your home is your castle: So why bother to build a castle anyway? It's incredibly expensive, takes quite a bit of maintenance, and they're frequently dank, drafty, miserable places. In case you'd forgotten, the big reason is so you can protect yourself, and possibly the local community if you're the benevolent kind of lord. (and even if you're not, you'll still want to keep anyone else from ravaging your dominion.) Anyway, this is lots of info on making your own realistic medieval castles. Just the kind of thing Katharine Kerr used to specialise in, and indeed, she gets mentioned in the bibliography. This isn't as fun as the previous article, but of course stuff that requires you to do a load of your own work to make it into something you can use in a game. Oh well, It's still pretty decent, with more well integrated illustrations. You can't use prefab stuff the whole time and be called an expert game master.


Bazaar of the Bizarre: 16 new items which are suited to this month's theme for your enjoyment here. Some of them, of course, are cursed; using their resemblance to other items to make a sucker out of you, and ruin your home. Still, the abilities to create teleportation portals so you can get around conveniently, keep your house lit for long periods of time at low cost, ward it from enemies, summon an army, and ensure that you always have a decent water supply are certainly not to be sneezed at. They also include two new spells, Balliant's Stonestrength and Stonesplit. If you want to have a siege, knowing these would be damn handy, whichever side you're on. A pretty good collection, with several items that have a whole bunch of inventive exploits you can pull. If you've made it to high enough level to settle down, giving your players some of these will definitely be appreciated. A pretty good finisher to the themed section.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989

part 3/5

The role of computers: Wizardry V decides to leave out the playing the villain gimmick they used in IV, and return to good old party play. It gets a typically detailed review, as befits an established and popular RPG. The stats are spelled out, the classes and races detailed, and plenty of advice is given on how to play the game. They have developed things quite substantially in terms of gameplay sophistication. The main complaint, as is often the case, is the complex and annoying copy protection scheme. Oh, woe. I'm sure people like you can figure out how to crack it, even if you don't say so in your reviews.

Gold rush! gives you a rather different roleplaying experience. Get from new york to callifornia by whatever means, and seek your fortune. All kinds of hazards await you at each stage of the journey, plus there's the additional subplot of finding out what happened to your brother. The whole shebang is designed to be educational as well as fun, with lots of historically accurate details.

Star Wars is a conversion of the old arcade game for several platforms. Unfortunately, this is still the era where the arcade version rules supreme. Technological limitations, combined with the fact that the game is rather old now, means the visuals aren't the best. One to skip unless you're a particular fan of the franchise, or shoot-em-ups in general.

Also notable is the number of complaints they've got about the Dungeon Masters assistant. Too many disk swaps are needed. I guess that's a problem when you only have 64k of memory. Wasn't that one of the programs they outsourced? Tut tut. Shoddy work. This will not do. Good to see the magazine pointing out flaws in products the company has a personal stake in again.


TSR Previews: AD&D transitions another of it's campaign worlds to the new edition. The forgotten realms kicks off the Avatar adventures with FRE1: Shadowdale. Prepare to become a pawn in the machinations of desperate gods who've lost (most of) their power. Mmm. I can smell the railroading from here.

D&D, meanwhile is not having an edition change, but is still keeping up with the conversions by making it's new rules compatible with AD&D 2nd ed in GAZ12: Golden Khan of Ethengar. If you wanna play a horseman in basic or advanced, there's some new crunch for you mixed with the setting stuff.

Top Secret gets futuristic in TSAC7: F.R.E.E.America. Chicago 1999. A sprawling city-hive filled with corruption, can your agents make a difference? So they're trying to get into cyberpunk as well, are they? Very interesting.

Novelwise, we see the start of the Dragonlance preludes trilogy. See what Sturm and Kitiara got up too before the big war. Enjoy the fanservice, and watch carefully for any continuity errors. If you'd prefer something standalone, we have The Jewels of elvish by Nancy Varian Berberick. Said jewels get stolen, and as they're the only thing that can avert an impending disaster, you can guess how the rest of the story goes.

Tom Wham delivers another of his fun boardgames, The Great Khan Game. Connected to the forgotten realms, really, that doesn't matter much. Just enjoy playing it. Or you could play Maxi Bourse instead. Translated from french, this is a games of stock market shenanigans. Someone's shooting for monopolies crown. But it is still going strong, while I've never heard of this before, so I shall assume they failed.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989

part 4/5

The role of books cleans up it's formatting, making the titles easier to pick out. The planet builders trilogy by Robyn Tallis manages to sneak some obscure references into a fun set of young adult stories. And as the reviewer points out, you've gotta hook 'em young if you want to ensure a future generation of gamers. Hmm. Don't underestimate the intelligence of kids if you want to sell to them.

The bristling wood by Katherine Kerr is set in the world of Dverry, her longstanding setting. It already has quite substantial amounts of mythos built up, and the reviewer recommends starting with the previous ones if you want to understand everything. He's also not sure about the attempt to combine celtic and chinese mysticism. Overall, he likes it, but he's certainly spending more time on it's flaws than it's good points.

Svaha by Charles de Lint sees him push the envelope in terms of milieus covered, while maintaining his usual standard of fun and well crafted storytelling. Combining oriental and amerindian mythology successfully, the reviewer seems to like this rather more than the previous book.

Vulcan's glory by D C Fontana gets a rather vicious review for blatantly violating existing trek canon and characterization. Spock doesn't act like that! This is highly illogical captain. I suspect the presence of an idiot ball. I recommend we pretend that this whole incident never happened.

A spell of deceit by Laurie Goodman is another young adult one that also contains decidedly mature moral questions and character dynamics. Including the question of how you keep characters of very different alignments in the same team without killing each other. Which I suppose is a useful question to consider for gamers.

The mirror maze by James P Hogan is an interesting but flawed piece of sci fi/espionage adventure. While there are plenty of interesting elements, the combination of omniscient viewpoint being in error, characters making expository speeches which are obviously intended for the reader, not the other characters, and a blatant real world political agenda, keeps them from recommending it.

Those who hunt the night by Barbara Hambly is a vampire mystery novel. Someone's killing them all, and of course, being badass creatures of de niiight, they're rather worried and want to stop this. As it also goes into quite a bit of detail on their physiology and how they fit into the world, it looks like a good one to draw on to make a game setting. And it tells a pretty good story too. Was this part of the inspiration for Vampire: the Masquerade?


Shadow world. A mysterious world plagued by the unlife, a force from beyond the dimensions. (Isn't that the plot of the neverending story? ) A new Rolemaster setting. Now with 200% more GRIMDARK!™. Well, it is nearly the 90's. And since plenty of writers still haven't got over that awkward phase, we'll probably see plenty of that in the future.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 145: May 1989

part 5/5

Role-playing reviews: 2300AD is the new edition of Traveller 2300, renamed so as to reduce confusion and annoying flamewars. They've revamped the visuals, advanced the setting a bit, and finally have an experience system. It all seems to be a considerable improvement. That's nice to hear dear.

Colonial atlas is a supplement for 2300AD, expanding on the various extraplanar colonies. Since it's covering 29 planets in 96 pages, the level of detail can't be that great, and it has a hellofa lot of authors, but it's more than enough to make them playable, with statistics, histories and adventure ideas. And it's definitely a lot more than could fit in the corebook. Now the stage is set for even more specific books.

Kafer Dawn is an adventure centering around the many-mandibled monstrosities. Figure out how not just to win the straightforward engagements, but also the resource war, and come to understand the enemy and their decidedly odd behaviours and tactics. It's a decent starter, but certainly not the final word on the subject, as having proved popular, they have more sourcebooks on the way.

Aurore sourcebook is one of those, covering the same planet as the last book, in more detail. With lots of history, NPC's, environmental details, adventure hooks, etc, it certainly seems to flesh out the setting nicely on a closer scale.

Mission Arcturus is the second Kafer based adventure. Your characters are now experts on the chitinous menace, and venture to a new planet to figure out what happened to the expeditionary base there. The review doesn't spoil the ending, but says it's pretty good. Do you have what it takes to handle both the combat and problem solving?

The Kafer sourcebook gives us yet more info on these guys. Seems like they're being set up as the primary antagonists for the game. Still, with a well thought out psychology, and more than enough info to use them as PC's, should you be so inclined. If you're not, don't let the players read it and spoil all the cool surprises they should experience during play.

Invasion builds upon all these previous books to give you an epic campaign as the Kafers sweep through star systems, conquering and destroying. They really seem to have thought this one through. Lets hope the players can bring their best game in response to make a difference in the war.

Finally, the Ground vehicle guide isn't directly connected to the war, but of course the stuff contained within will be damn handy if you want to fight battles using hard rules. Whew. That was certainly one of the more impressive review sections. Good to see other gamelines with supplement treadmills turning furiously.


Through the looking glass: A guide to painting various emotions? We sure aren't in 1981 anymore. Another guest writer definitely brings the 2nd ed spirit to this column. Obviously, quite a bit of the emotion of a figure will be determined by the existing model, and it can be tricky to get decent definition on small and cheap models anyway. But the colour scheme you choose can make a big difference, and subtleties of shading on the face even more so. For something like this to work, you need decent illustrations to demonstrate the more complex details. Fortunately, this column does not disappoint, with the photography being excellent, and the illustrations being both detailed and amusingly exaggerated. While there is a bit of obvious advice here, this is still an excellent little article that also managed to surprise me slightly. Looks like they're still trying new stuff in this department.


Fiction: Cornwoman by Steve Rasnic Tem. A trip into primal myth territory here. Everything is magnified, anthromophicised and given extra symbolism. The woman who brought corn (and implicitly, the whole idea of cultivation. ) to the human tribe must rescue a stolen baby from Raven and his flock of crows. This is pretty scary for them, but each triumph they make codifies a little more of the world, moving it away from dream logic towards reality, and making the monsters out there a little less scary. Reminds me somewhat of Neil Gaiman's takes on mythical stuff in American gods and Anansi boys, which is definitely a good thing. With a distinctive, well crafted atmosphere, this is another memorable little story.


Dragonmirth has decidedly mixed messages about modern technology. Yamara is losing both the battle, and the war of who's funniest. Snarfquest ends it all on a cliffhanger of authorial self-insertion, instead of resolving the plot. Really Larry, you need to manage your time better. This is only marginally better than wormy's departure.


Overall, another pretty good issue, both in the themed section and the reviews. They once again seem to have a strong freelancer base to draw upon, and enough submissions that they can reject the obvious dross. The main problem now, is keeping the both the quality control and speed of production up, which as I know, is not an easy business. Just how great will the rate of turnover be? Gotta complete 'em all.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 146: June 1989

part 1/5

108 pages. Welcome to their 13th anniversary. They've come a long way. But like their 10th anniversary, they're much more interested in moving forward than looking back at the moment. After all, we've got a new edition to fill up with splatbooks. And we have fairly prophetic editorial, as Roger ponders the probability that computer games will come to displace pen and paper ones. Yeah, that's the future alright, even if it'll takes ages to get there. Any activity that requires the coordination of a whole group of people is at an inherent logistical disadvantage compared to stuff you can do on your own. Back to reading for me.

In this issue:

Letters: A rather dumb letter in which someone is surprised that they don't reference their own books in the discussion on high and low fantasy. That would be a touch incestuous, non?

A letter praising the quality of their cover artwork. They do regularly have some pretty impressive pieces, don't they.

A letter about claydonia. The people who contributed to it should be properly credited!

A whole bunch of rather good questions about what they'll accept in submissions. Interesting.


Forum: Barry A. McEwen contributes his experience of gaming with people with impaired vision, working as he does in that field. He's even created a 20 sided braille die for use by fully blind people. Roleplaying games can be an excellent means of escapism for people with all kinds of physical impairments. Introducing them to a nursing home would also be a cool idea.

Katherine York responds to the piece about MA in Marvel superheroes, with her own suggestion for a new ki power. Charge that internal energy, and release it suddenly. Perfectly reasonable given the universe.

S. R. Oldson craves some more classic modules like the ones released in the late 70's. Modern stuff just doesn't cut it like the tomb of horrors or demonweb pits. Prefab politics and railroads just don't work in other campaigns like a nicely challenging dungeon crawl. You may be disappointed by the next few years then.

Wayne Roberts tells a rather interesting story of his own experiences with role vs roll playing thinkers. Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, and good tactical thinking and knowing your adversaries make even a combat heavy game much more fun. (and survivable)

Michael Drake contributes a rather scattershot letter, of which the main point, as far as I can tell, seems to be asking what is badwrongfun. Overall, I'm not sure what to make of this one.

Daniel Reardon also has a rather interesting and complicated point to make. The D&D system revolves around parties of adventurers working together. Selfish characters go against the whole system, and will ruin the fun of the game.

Ian Reyes, in contrast, has had plenty of evil PC's, and it hasn't caused problems, while allowing a whole bunch of fun scenarios you couldn't do with good ones. As long as you keep the PvP betrayals to when it would be logical, and find reasons to work together for greater profit, it can work just fine.

Douglas J. Hutchinson finds both the fearmongers and obsessive players tiresome. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Just get on with playing, and ignore the stupid reactionaries. They do the same thing to virtually every cool innovation, and it rarely amounts to much in a generations time.

Kirk Karste is not amused at all about the OA misrepresentation of ninja. They were a spiritual order who only used violence in adversity. Here we go again. It's as bad as the stuff about druids and barbarians.

Martin Millar also talks about samurai and ninja. As usual, in the real world, strict divisions of good and evil really do not hold up to close scrutiny. Even the samurai/ninja divide is pretty blurry, with some samurai secretly employing or being ninja. Just because D&D abstracts these things for ease of play, doesn't mean you should take them as fact.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 146: June 1989

part 2/5

Sage advice continues to occupy pole position. I guess with the edition change, people are really examining just what the rules of what they're playing actually do.

How do fighters make magical swords (they don't, they get wizards to do it for them. Or they break the rules. Because there's certainly enough stuff around that's impossible to produce by a strict reading of them.)

What spell gives weapons magical plusses (Enchant an item can do that on it's own. Relax. That's an easy trick. )

Can bless fix a cursed item (Are you joking? That's like throwing a bucket of water on an oilslicked beach. Completely inadequate.)

Will protection from fire or cold help you resist a fire shield spell (nope.)

How much XP can you get from destroying Asmodeus' rod ( A quite substantial amount. It would probably be a good idea to destroy Asmodeus first though. )

Is magical armor weightless or half weight (good question. Depends if you're carrying it or wearing it. )

Is other magical equipment weightless (Oh, this is a can of worms. Skip's gonna say no to be on the safe side. )

Do bracers of defense work if you're caught unawares (yes, but you still lose your dex mod. )

Are bracers cumulative with armour (no, you use the best result. Cut the twinking. )

What's with glowing magical weapons. (They glow when it's inconvenient to PC's, and don't when it would be useful. It's like they were diliberately given that feature to screw with you. )

How do you determine which limb is severed by a sword of sharpness (Random tables! How else! )

Which parts of a giantslaying sword's damage are multiplied (like backstabbing, only the dice. Their degree of aid is the same regardless of your stats. )

Do all giant class opponents count as giants (only ones bigger than ogres )

How many plusses can a weapon have (once you're at 6 or above, you're in rule-breaking territory. Better stop Myrland, ask him for directions )

Do you have to be lawful to use a vorpal weapon (yes, otherwise it's your head that'll get the chopping. )

Can a potion of longevity turn you into an infant. Can I use ghost aging to reverse this. Can an illusory ghost age people, since the fear is what causes the aging (probably, yes but we don't recommend it, and hell no that would be completely gamebreaking! )


Dragons are wizards' best friends: A whole load of minidragons is our first birthday gift. Designed to make good familiars to powerful wizards, these are typically tricksy little creatures. While they may not be able to match up to full dragons physically, they're easily as magically capable and tricksy as pseudo and faerie dragons. Scoring one of these little bastards might not be easy, but it will pay for itself in the long run, and give you plenty of fun playing out their antics.

Crystal Drakes may look pretty, and have moderate versatile magical powers, but as they eat gemstones, getting extra special powers based upon what they eat, they're probably pretty costly to keep. Once they die, you might be able to make a bit of that back by selling their hide, but it won't be much by comparison. You'll have to keep on adventuring to maintain them in the manner they're accustomed too.

Demon Drakes are as tricky as the other minidragons, with an additional sadistic edge. Not only are their tricks exceedingly dangerous, they're also pretty inventive. Their entry includes three new custom spells, and encourages you to give them more. Be very afraid, and don't hesitate to learn these tricks and turn them back at them.

Faerie Drakes are slightly bigger, tougher close relatives to faerie dragons. They aren't as magically powerful, but are more versatile, taking their powers and breath weapon from various full dragon types. Since they're pretty eager to learn spells, the chances of them becoming a familiar are pretty good, especially if treated as an equal partner rather than a servant.

Shadow Drakes are the shyest of these creatures, hiding in shadows and using connected magical abilities to misdirect anyone hunting them. They still have plenty of curiosity though, so you should be able to form a relationship if you take it slow and leave out food. Just the one for rogues and illusionists.

 

[amysrevenge]

James P Hogan.

blatant real world political agenda

Nothing has changed in 20 years. lol