Dragon 303-305, Dungeon 97: Good?

[Spatula]

but can you at least tell me what an "S-bomb/F-bomb" is?

A silly way of referring to the four-letter words that start with S and F. Dragon 305 features an excerpt from the upcoming George RR Martin novel "A Feast for Crows" and the F word appears therein.

BTW, how many such fighting styles are there, approximately - e.g., more like 3, or more like 10?

More like 10, there's some general ones and then one for many of the humanoid races.

Hmm... Anyone can tell me what else is in that issue?

An astral city is detailed, the aforementioned novel excerpt, a fold-out map that has sewers on one side and a town square on the other... I'm blanking on the rest.

 

[Renaissance Man]

"Saying the Right Thing" isn't similar to that one funky article some issues back where everyone was supposed to have "social hit points" (don't remember what exactly they were called), is it?

That one's also out on loan at the moment, but yeah, definite similarities.

BTW, how many such fighting styles are there, approximately - e.g., more like 3, or more like 10?

Fifteen, divvied up along racial lines. Three for elves, two for drow, two for dwarves, and one each for humans, halflings, gnomes, gnolls, goblins, lizardfolk, ogres, and orcs.

BTW, are there a lot of necromantic spells in there? (Yeah, I admit it - I'm a sucker for necromantic spells... )

Twelve out of 46 - that ain't bad. Psionic versions for some of them, too.

 

[aurin777]

I cant talk about Dragon, cause I've never read one, but Dungeon on the otherhand, I love. In fact, I love the minigames so much, I picked up a subscription to it after 96 and am eagerly awaiting 98. 97 was great! Life's Bazaar is a great adventure and will have the rest of the series coming as dungeons progress, and V is for Victory has become my favorite AD&D product I've seen in a while (I'm running a d20 modern WWII game, kinda shadowchaseresque, so the book really helped). Buy buy buy!
~~Brandon

 

[tburdett]

Dragon bad.

Dungeon good.

 

[Darkness]

1. "V for Victory":
- designed by Chris Pramas
- no D20 Modern, but a new system. 4 basic classes (leader, combat, intelligence and recon), some new skills, many new feats, weapons (of course) and some rules (autofire, Shell-shock), finally advice on possible campaigns [We combined D20M and "V" without any problems by generously pilfering from both.]

Right, sounds usable.

2. Adventure Path:
It's indeed a series, planned like the original adventure modules to go from lvl 1 to lvl 20. Paizo also has some goodies adding to it on their website; I believe Maps and a Web enhancement. This part is written by Christoper Perkins.

From level 1 to level 20? Wow... I guess it'll take them 'til D&D 3.5 to finish it, then? Not bad; not at all...

Noch einmal danke, Folkert! (Thank you once again, Folkert! )

- Florian (a.k.a. "Darkness")

 

[rounser]

The Dungeon Adventure Path is the kind of experimentation I want to see the magazine doing. Porphyry House Horror with the "vile" stuff was worth a try, but I think that experiment failed.

Another experiment I think Dungeon could try:

Each issue continually reinvents one or more villages or towns for adventure support, which take up space. A village could be put in an issue and used as "the village" for all the adventures in that issue.

 

[Darkness]

"Life's Bazaar"

Damn, I should have guessed that; walking robots / demonblades and low-level PCs don't usually mix too well. Thanks!

A silly way of referring to the four-letter words that ...

...

Oh.

An astral city is detailed, the aforementioned novel excerpt, a fold-out map that has sewers on one side and a town square on the other...

*nods* Ok.

Originally posted by Renaissance Man
Fifteen, divvied up along racial lines. Three for elves, two for drow, two for dwarves, and one each for humans, halflings, gnomes, gnolls, goblins, lizardfolk, ogres, and orcs.

Now that could be really interesting...

Twelve out of 46 - that ain't bad. Psionic versions for some of them, too.

Works for me!

... Dungeon ..., I love. In fact, I love the minigames so much, I picked up a subscription to it after 96 and am eagerly awaiting 98. 97 was great! Life's Bazaar is a great adventure and will have the rest of the series coming as dungeons progress, and V is for Victory has become my favorite AD&D product I've seen in a while (I'm running a d20 modern WWII game, kinda shadowchaseresque, so the book really helped). Buy buy buy!
~~Brandon

Right, I guess I will.

Dragon bad.

Dungeon good.

You disliked all of these three issues of Dragon?
Yeah, well - not all articles are useful, and even less so come 3.5 e.
Still, some of these things sound quite neat to me - so it's mostly a question of how the ratio of useful to useless material is...

 

[Darkness]

The Dungeon Adventure Path is the kind of experimentation I want to see the magazine doing. Porphyry House Horror with the "vile" stuff was worth a try, but I think that experiment failed.

Definitely... And yeah; the "vile" adventure was okay, but not really great - which isn't too impressive, considering Dungeon's generally very high quality.
(IMO, anyway; if anyone absolutely loved the adventure, more power to them. )

Another experiment I think Dungeon could try:

Each issue continually reinvents one or more villages or towns for adventure support, which take up space. A village could be put in an issue and used as "the village" for all the adventures in that issue.

That's a very good idea, actually, IMO. Makes it easier to connect the adventures a bit (say, in the first adventure, you also find the hint that leads you to the next one), too.
Also, at least half of the villages that they're using in Dungeon are very generic anyway.