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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8247398" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 22: Mar/Apr 1990part 1/568 pages. A motley collection of gurning humanoids indicates that they are indeed in a comical mood this april, so at least one adventure inside is going to be on the ridiculous end of the spectrum. Let's see if they're guilty of just one or multiple counts of attempted comedy, and if the adventures manage to actually be amusing and/or playable. Editorial: Fresh off Jim Ward's furor-provoking article in Dragon about the satanic panic, and why they removed devils & demons from 2e, Barbara puts her own two cents in on the topic here. Unsurprisingly, she's going to be sticking to the code of conduct like everyone else, and keeping everything reasonably family friendly. Personally, she'd prefer a little more sex, a little less violence, and a lot less adventurers meeting in a tavern. (which to be fair, they've been pretty good about not overdoing in here, but how many has she had to filter out to keep it that way?) Of course, this is D&D, so you need a certain amount of violence for the sake of XP accumulation, and villains that are sufficiently villainous as to be worth fighting. Even at it's nicest, D&D is never going to be Barney & Friends, (and thank god for that!) but as the biggest RPG company, and one who's buyers are largely kids, they do need to be mindful not to annoy the parents. Nothing hugely surprising here, but a reminder that their editorial direction is subject to interference from higher up in the company, and including certain things in your adventure will get your submission summarily rejected no matter how good the writing is. Hopefully most of the people motivated enough to write adventures are also smart enough to realise that, but I guess there's always a few that need it spelled out, especially as their standards get stricter and more specific over the years.  This wasn't the last we heard of the topic in Dragon either. Let's see if they get any angry letters about being too bowdlerised in here or Polyhedron as well.Letters: The first letter complains that they left out the precise stats of the wand of petrification. Pretty self-explanatory. You point it, they save or turn to stone. There's even an eponymous save category to use. Was that so hard to work out yourself?Second complains that they haven't done any Dragonlance adventures yet. Yeah, the fight to find decent adventures for their less generic settings continues to be a tough one. They've finally included one this issue. You're welcome to try and add some more. Third complains that the big monster in Ancient Blood was too tough for the intended level. It's a paper tiger. If you're smart, you'll see right through it. What you though was a mistake was entirely intentional, just from a different perspective than you thought.4th is from Venezuela and encourages them to do more weird and experimental adventures. They're in favour of that, but within certain strict limits, as they pointed out in the editorial. Psionic adventures, for example, definitely won't see any coverage until the new edition has rules for it. (and even then probably not many, going by the way stuff in supplements is usually treated) Anything straying so far from standard D&D that they'd spend more time on how the rules have changed than the actual adventure definitely won't make the cut. The final three are on the opposing problems of group size. Two struggle to find people to play with, and need a bit of help, while the third has a massive group that makes the balance on many published adventures go a bit skewed, as scaling is not linear to either the average class level or total party levels. Ironically, you may want to go back to the old Gygaxian adventures, which did assume a larger party bolstered by hirelings. Another example of how more rigid frameworks actually break more easily that'll become even more exaggerated in subsequent editions.</blockquote>

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