Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9062006" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 81: Jul/Aug 2000part 1/5108 pages. Beauty may or may not be in the eye of the beholder, but this beholder is at least pretty impressively rendered, although the Behir just behind it is in somewhat worse shape. I suspect the PC’s may need to talk or run fast if they want to avoid the same fate. Let’s find out what its selection of eye rays will be capable of and just how powerful your party will need to be to survive it.Editorial: With one of the biggest landmarks in their history looming up ahead, Chris takes the time to list a bunch of previous issues that went above and beyond the call of duty. First sequel. (issue 17) First co-ordinated tie-in with Dragon (issues 19/148) First non D&D adventure. (issue 25) First guest editorial. (issue 44) First time a single artist did the whole issue (61) First comics. (67) First Map of Mystery. (68) First full-length adventure series (69-73) Plus several where they had a big centrefold special feature to make the adventure a little less confined to your imagination. Many of them are still available for back order so if you’re a new arrival daunted by the prospect of sorting through all these old adventures, they’re good ones to get first. Can they keep on coming up with ways to top them, or at least think up some new gimmicks to make issues stand out? Well, that’s as much your responsibility as ours. Keep sending those adventure ideas and hopefully some’ll be worth giving the big budget special effects treatment to.Letters: First letter complains that there are not just one but two adventures recently where Kenku talk, when their MM entry clearly says they can’t. They’re so good at mime, you’ll often forget they aren’t talking! And that’s when they’re not even polymorphed! I guess the advantage of cutting down on the amount of ecological lore in the next edition is also reducing the odds of these kinds of complaints happening. (although the odds of getting the math wrong once you start stacking class levels and templates on creatures goes way up so it’s swings & roundabouts overall.)Second is very much in favour of their new features. More series of adventures and more maps of mystery please! One of these things is much easier to create than the other, but more of both will be forthcoming.Third is full of praise for Bad Seeds. Even at low level, you’ve got to have plenty of variety in the things you fight.Fourth is a long one with lots of specific opinions on recent adventures. Overall, they have a definite preference for gritty old school generic adventures without any jokey nonsense. No poking the 4th wall, it’s covered with deathtraps. Fifth thinks they’ve done too many underwater adventures recently. Chris is inclined to agree and will give them a break for a bit. Blame the Seattle weather for keeping water constantly on the mind.Sixth praises issue 79 for precisely the thing I grumbled about, lots of low level generic adventures in quick succession. Characters should start at first level, so there should be more 1st level adventures than ones for higher levels.Seventh nitpicks the geometry in Peer Amid the Waters. Although they’re marked as 5’ wide on most maps because that’s the grid size, normal doors aren’t nearly that wide. You can’t squeeze around the side of the portal into the treasure room.Finally, a lengthy letter that lists their top ten of most overdone ideas and sincerely hopes they’ll do more high level adventures and more ones in general that stray slightly further from european medieval genericness to avoid this kind of repetition. You’ve got to go back to the classics sometimes, particularly at the start of a new edition but they’ll try not to wear out their welcome too much.</blockquote>

Verification