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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9041527" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon issue 79: Mar/Apr 2000part 1/592 pages. The number of underwater adventures has been up in general recently and it looks like that trend is continuing this time, if the cover is anything to go by. Will they stick to the shallows like most adventures, or will we finally get to see some of the darkest depths the ocean trenches have to offer?Editorial: You don’t have to have a good villain to have a good adventure, but it definitely helps! It’s time for another familiar editorial topic once again. If your bad guy is just an unnamed evil wizard, defined solely by his class, level & alignment, the odds of your adventure being accepted are much lower than if they have a distinct personality, history and motivations. (but don’t go too overboard in that direction either, because they only have so much page count and will prune the waffle mercilessly) To illustrate that, Chris has no hesitation in spoiling the villains of all this issue’s adventures and some upcoming ones as well, some of which sound very high level. Lolth’s daughter trying to usurp her mother? Not often they give you that much opportunity to influence the fate of the multiverse. If you still need help after this, both he and I can wholeheartedly recommend the Complete book of Villains, one of the 2e products that has held up and remains useful whatever system you’re playing under. That should give you more than enough advice to put something together step by step to terrorise your players with effectively.Letters: First letter is generally complementary about issue 77, but particularly about Ex Keraptis Cum Amore. This is a pretty common opinion. People want their high level deathtraps and this magazine hasn’t done nearly enough of those lately. Second gives their top ten of adventures from all along the run of the magazine. These are pretty varied, and they’re also worried about the idea of the 3e adventures being core only all the time, as that would get pretty boring after a few years. Chris sticks to the company line. They may change their mind in the future, but for now they want to make a clean break from the vast amounts of 2e supplements.Third is from Andy Miller, who tells us how many rejections it took before his first adventure was accepted. Persist, adapt, try something new. Hopefully that’ll get you past sending in the same old cliches they’ve seen hundreds of times before.Fourth praises their recent artwork improvements, and they way they used them to get the players into the adventure. Showing not telling and letting them figure it out themselves is better than just infodumping this session’s plot in their lap.Finally, another list of favourite adventures. They tend to be either spooky or whimsical, reminding us that emotional engagement makes an adventure more memorable than hundreds of rooms filled with monsters.</blockquote>

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