Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


part 1/6


79 (100) pages. An amusingly flippant april issue cover that seems particularly appropriate in hindsight, as this is when the news of the magazine's cancellation hit the forums. And are we worried? Life will go on, and the survivors will adapt. That's how it'll be until the sun burns our entire planet to a crisp, and even then, who knows what might hang on in odd corners of the world. Let's see what this issue contains, apart from the obvious modrons.


Scan Quality: Good, indexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Editorial: Erik's editorial once again indicates he'll be mostly playing it straight throughout this issue, with any humour being of the dry sort that's easily excised from the articles to keep them usable. The fun ought to be something you generate in game, because if you bake the goofy into the setting, you wind up with Dragonlance or Spelljammer, and those didn't end too well. Modrons, on the other hand, might be weird, but the humour in them stems mainly from the fact that they themselves completely lack a sense of humour, and so don't give a that their eminently logical designs look silly to illogical humanoids. So simply including them in the game is humour enough for him. Let's see if this is the right balance to keep people from complaining the way they do every year. (Or if they'll be too busy being upset about the magazine's cancellation anyway to talk about this individual issue. )


Scale Mail continues to suck, with the letters just another round of the competing opinions bogaloo. One long letter pissed off at issue 352, and two short ones supporting it. Some people don't want joined-up thinking in their magazine, because it wastes a whole issue if the topic isn't to their taste. This is no fun at all. Did you not get a single silly letter to print this issue? Bring back decent letters and decent fiction, then the magazine would be even better. :sigh:

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


part 2/6


First watch: Another old module gets converted to 3.5. Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Looks like this one got more substantially redesigned than Strahd's pad did. Still, I'm betting that it'll be considerably harder to finish Lolth off for good than in the original.

Our fantastic locations go back to the city, in City of Peril. More maps and encounter ideas for the DM of little time or imagination. Make the city safe for all of us!

Also on the rehash trail is our very own magazine, releasing a compilation of Ecology articles. Well, they are persistently popular, and that shows no signs of fading over the decades, despite several periods where they fell out of fashion with the magazine staff. With extra nostalgia fuel in the form of anecdotes from old writers about the game and the like.

Paizo also go back to a rather annoying idea. A critical hit deck, where you pick a card and enjoy the various gruesome effects that they inflict on your character. Let. It. Die. We do not need to know exactly how they've been chopped up as well.

Plenty more big pretty minis this month. SOTA get in on the rather crowded Cthulhu market, with some very squamous and spiny representations. Dwarven Forge continue to provide us with solid environments for your characters to adventure in. And Wizkids give us a Fin Fang Foom model, complete with scary Heroclix stats. My, that's a big neck he has.

Our D20 products are by the same companies as usual. Once again, they promote Wolfgang Baur's open design project. This time, we're heading off to the plane of shadow. Does that tempt you to participate? Also taking advantage of the opportunities online communication provide is EN Publishing, with their 12 part Burning Sky adventure series. Looks like several people are following Dungeon's adventure model now.

Zorcerer of Zo is our other RPG. Using the same system as Ninja Burger, but taking things into fairy tale land, and setting up the rules to emulate that kind of story, this'll allow for quite different games to D&D. Just the thing to give your gaming a little more variety.

In films, we have The Dead Matter. Mmm, undeadalicious. Another film from a self-confessed geek. Looks promising. Course, a little googling shows that this then spent ages in development hell. Money is such a pain in the ass.

Shadowrun gets another computer game. While they have produced decent licences in the past, a little more googling shows that this is a case of fail, with a distinct lack of actual roleplaying. Keep a close eye on your conversions, for things can go very wrong.

On the weird side, there's some edible dice. Chocolate, lollipops, cheese, they're made of all sorts of stuff. Looks like there's more than one website selling them, too. I guess like dice in soaps, it's fun for the people to make, and the money is secondary.

And finally, they promote the Indie RPG awards. The advancement of computers has made it easier for ordinary people to do a whole bunch of things to professional standard, and that includes creating RPG books. So people definitely deserve kudos for the ridiculous amounts of hard work involved in creating them.

 

[delericho]

Paizo also go back to a rather annoying idea. A critical hit deck, where you pick a card and enjoy the various gruesome effects that they inflict on your character. Let. It. Die. We do not need to know exactly how they've been chopped up as well.

Ironically, the Critical Hit Deck is actually quite good fun. I think the key is that you're drawing a card from the deck, rather than fiddling around with lots of table lookups.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


part 3/6


Core beliefs: Heronious. Ah yes, the Archpaladin. Well, you've got to have a god for every alignment. And it does have to be said that he's rather easier to write about interestingly than Pelor. Goodness means more when you've got a slightly embarrassing family, and had to actively choose it rather than just being spawned as an embodiment of it. And he has quite a few interesting traits beyond that, including of course, the battleaxe/longsword favored weapon controversy. They cast old cowboy Murlynd as his particular demigod protegee. (they do seem to be making a habit of that trick) They bring back the Invulnerable coat of Arnd too. The new spells aren't very interesting, but then, you wouldn't expect that in a clergy not encouraged towards academic thought. On the other hand, the NPC's are both good and varied, making a real effort to avoid the cookie cutter paladin mold. And the legends and duties stuff help reinforce the active nature of the faith. Overall, it's pretty decent, but doesn't have the same impact on me as the last couple of these. On with the show. Let's get these last couple of numbers played out.


Return of the Modrons: Poor modrons. They're a perfect example of how perfect symmetry is actually not the best way to adapt and deal with the challenges the universe throws at you. When faced with internal dissent at the top, thanks to Orcus, and giant ants that can not only breed rapidly, but aren't limited to a set number of creatures in their hierarchy, they rapidly got outcompeted, and penned in until they only controlled a small section of Mechanus, at which point the Inevitables started taking their old jobs elsewhere in the plane. The guardianals would never have got into this kind of mess if Talisid was corrupted. So the setting material in this fits in far better with the established facts from other books than the Ecology of the Inevitable in issue 341, which is pleasing to see. It's also far more in depth than an Ecology, with plenty of room for both the description and history, and full stats for all 5 lesser modron ranks, (although I must admit I still miss the lack of hierarchs) plus PC ones for rogue modrons. And the mechanical conversions retain the quirkiness they were famed for and even build upon it. They're continuing this year's far greater awareness of and affection for settings and adventures past, and it's just ironic that they're doing this just as another edition shift approaches that will throw away all of this and relegate modrons to an even tinier place in the new multiverse. Paizo and WotC may have started off as the same company, but after 4 years of independence, their office cultures and tastes have diverged a fair bit. Articles like this really make that crystal clear.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


part 4/6


Ancient PC's: Another article that has a bit of very dry humour indeed involved. D&D has had ageing rules for a long time, and yet very few campaigns run long enough to make use of them. (and even if they run for years of real time, it can often be less in game. ) This is a shame, because the longer a character has been around, the more room you have to give them an interesting backstory. Of course, you also have to worry about balancing power levels, but given the speed characters advance in 3e, that's less of a problem than you might think, and there's plenty of reasons you can give why they might have been more powerful in the past, and then lost a big chunk of it. Most of this article is devoted to playing characters that have outlived a natural human lifespan, whether through twist of fate, magical transformation, or merely belonging to a longer-lived race than humans, and there are a bunch of feats and backgrounds that reflect this mechanically in various interesting, and slightly more powerful than normal ways. (several cribbed from Dr Who) So while this still struggles to maintain game balance in the face of accurately representing their abilities, it does do a fair amount to make them interesting and accessible from a story point of view. And it's definitely something you're more likely to return to than a joke article who's mechanical bits aren't usable at all.


The ecology of the Kopru: Now this is a monster that richly deserves some more attention, as well as being linked strongly to their current adventure path. The Kopru are decidedly strange creatures that dwelled in the central caverns below the isle of dread in the original module. Merely a brief encounter at the end of the original, the hints of a fallen civilization finally get expanded out into an extensive bit of writing on their culture, religion, class and gender divides, and the decidedly unpleasant things they got up too. They'd fit right in during an ancient era when aboleths, illithids, beholders and other aberrations had massive empires and competed for dominance of the world. We finally get some decent illustrations, allowing me to get a better idea of just how different they really look from humans, and the usual advanced NPC to give us an idea of how we could customize them for our own adventures. About the only sour note is their turning the black pearl from a singular treasure to a regular class of item that's an integral part of both their food chain and magical rituals. Really, that's as dumb as some of the extrapolations of throwaway lines from the movies in the star wars expanded universe. Such is the danger of decompressing a short story to an epic series without adding enough new material. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and may transplant the setting stuff backwards as well. They are supporting their adventure path well this time around.

 

[Erik Mona]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


Scale Mail continues to suck, with the letters just another round of the competing opinions bogaloo. One long letter pissed off at issue 352, and two short ones supporting it. Some people don't want joined-up thinking in their magazine, because it wastes a whole issue if the topic isn't to their taste. This is no fun at all. Did you not get a single silly letter to print this issue? Bring back decent letters and decent fiction, then the magazine would be even better. :sigh:

As you've no doubt guessed by now, internet forums basically destroyed Dragon's Forum section, and email really put the screws to the letters section, as well. The reason I renamed Dungeon's letters-to-the-editor column "Prison Mail" around issue #114 is that 95% of all physical letters sent to the magazine at this point were from incarcerated readers (whom you'll learn a bit more about in an upcoming "please don't murder me, I didn't cancel the magazine" editorial in an upcoming issue of Dragon.

It's very likely that for this issue, those were the only relevant letters that actually came in. We occasionally scraped message board posts and emails for inclusion in this section, but as the format changed from actual mail to email, the "content" of the letters often shifted to much less formal, shorter inquiries that wouldn't be very interesting in a letter column.

--Erik

 

[Erik Mona]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007

Paizo also go back to a rather annoying idea. A critical hit deck, where you pick a card and enjoy the various gruesome effects that they inflict on your character. Let. It. Die. We do not need to know exactly how they've been chopped up as well.

Amusingly, this has been our best-selling card deck (out of about 60) that we've released to date. It's been through about five print runs, and has sold several tens of thousands of copies.

So there's a pretty good reason this sort of idea keeps coming back.

--Erik

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


part 5/6


Savage tidings: Ha. Given the last article, it's no surprise at all to discover the PC's are now up in the central plateau of the isle of dread, trying to figure out what darkness lurks there. Listen to the natives, because they've been fighting this crap for generations, and have developed a prestige class to counter these incursions. The Totemic Demonslayer. Essentially a prestige ranger focussed on fighting fiendish creatures, they get full BAB, 6+int skills, assassin/blackguard equivalent spellcasting, and a whole suite of powers, many of which they can select themselves. They do seem pretty badass. Like much of the pathfinder stuff, you could definitely level accusations of power creep at them. Still, given what I've heard of the difficulty level of the adventure, you may well need that extra power to avoid regular TPK's. Interestingly though, this is the first time they don't mention advice on incorporating new characters. They do manage to squeeze in a few more rumours however, which should spice up your game in an old skool stylee. I'd be wary about introducing the prestige class into other adventures, but this is still another solid bit of backup. Where will they go next, because they seem to be coming to the end of the isle of dread material. I'll take a wild stab and say it has something to do with the Abyss, since that's where all the trouble is coming from.


Volo's guide: Back to Myth Drannor again? Iiiinteresting. Looks like after being one of the primary adventuring locales for a while, filled with enough high level monsters to keep you busy for a campaign, it's finally been tapped out by a concerted elven attempt to retake the place. Well, sort of. They've learned from past metaplot mess-ups, and the new status quo looks pretty unstable and adventure hook friendly as well. The elven armies are hard-stretched, and there's at least 3 factions of evildoers (which don't get on with each other very well either) trying to make their lives difficult. They can't afford to be poncy stuck-up isolationists if they want to tun this place into a great city again. This does indeed look like a fun, nicely explained setup that makes you want to buy the books that lead up to this situation. The Realms is still a vibrant advancing world, even after all this time.


Dragonmarks: Halfling thief guilds. Not a laughing matter, as anyone who's been around since the days of Fineous Fingers should know. And poor Sharn is one of the cities they've got their pudgy little fingers on all the pies in, extorting, robbing, and peddling contraband, and ensuring others that try without their nod get kneecapped with great prejudice. If you plan to practice within there, you may want to sign up. So here's the rules for the affiliation, which help make it absolutely clear what behaviours they approve and disapprove of, and the mechanical and social benefits of sticking to them. That should lure in those who need a solid carrot to encourage their roleplaying. If alignment had been handled like affiliations, with a clear list of what is good, evil, lawful and chaotic, and how much specific example acts move you up and down the scale, there wouldn't be half the flamewars about it there have been. Or maybe there would, if you look at the example of WoD morality, but I can dream, can't I. Anyway, this is another pretty well handled article in this series.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 354: April 2007


part 6/6


Sage advice: Do multiclassed martial adepts have to track maneuvers for each class separately (Yess, Jusst like spellses, preciouss)

How does a character with more than one martial adept class calculate initiator level (Add half of all their other levelses to each class. Not too hard, iss it.)

Can you save a maneuver slot for later (no. Jusst like any other classs feature.)

If you replace a maneuver that's a prerequisite for another one, what happens (You lose acesss to the other ones. Not very clever. )

Does the swordsage's AC bonus stack with the monk's (No. Itss the ssame type of effect.)

Does the swordsage's discipline focus count as a weapon focus (yes)

Can you apply insightful strike and defensive stance to powers from other classes (yess)

Can a martial adept combine a strike with a full attack (No. We iss tired of boring iterative attackses. We wantss to make you move around and do interesting sstuff in your fightses.)

Can you learn the same maneuver more than once (no)

Can you learn stances in your maneuver slots (no)

Can you ready the same maneuver twice simultaneously (no)

Can you use more than one maneuver in a turn (If you have enough actionses)

Can you use maneuvers out of combat. How often? (Yess. Ass often ass you can recharge them, yess.)

What qualifies as a special attack (Anything that does ssomething different from a normal attack )

Is a maneuvers damage multiplied on a crit (if it addss extra dice to an exissting attack, no. If it adds points or makes an attack in itself, yess.)

Do you have to activate a boost before resolving the attack (Yess)

Do you need to use a disciplines favored weapon to use it's maneuvers (Not ussually)

What happens when creatures with different body shapes use maneuvers (usse you common ssesnse)

Can you use time stands still to activate more maneuvers in turn (no)

If a maneuver has no prerequisites, can you learn it at 1st level (only if itss a first level maneuver)


Class acts: Adventurers get Elements of Surprise. More Ninja love, with three new substitution levels. Fire, earth and water, all can be turned to the arts of stealth and misdirection. Not every ninja will use ghost step. A nicely themed set of new options.

Arcane gets Power Word, Spell. A list of all the spells without somatic components, for the wizard who wants to get out of being tied down. Meh.

Divine gets Aztec Mythos II. Chalchihuitlicue and Tlaloc get writeups, along with a sidebar about playing in worlds where the gods have a complex and sometimes contradictory morality. Some things, D&D doesn't do too well, and this may be one. Oh well, as 7 years of D20 have shown, you can kitbash it to do all sorts of things.

Warriors are still on the rehash kick, with barbarians getting the focus this time. These are definitely starting to go downhill. Methinks the format may need shaking up again.


Nodwick wonders what's up with all the ancient relics being sealed away. Perhaps there is a good reason they were. Dork tower tells a joke that's not so funny when you're the butt of it. Order of the stick suffers another instance of temporarily ignored rules.


Well, this issue continues the strong showing of the past few months, but it does still remind me both of the things that they've lost and never got back, and the things they still have to lose in the near future. As such, it's a decidedly bittersweet experience, and not really funny at all. Usability is not everything. Let the countdown continue. 5.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 355: May 2007


part 1/6


81 (100) pages. A good old Drow cover. Haven't had one of those in a few years. Still greywashing them for ease of artistically representing the facial features, but at least it's a colour that's good for blending in with cave walls, unlike the heavily made-up ones of issue 298. After several really cool themed issues, it's time for another random grab-bag. Well, we have been having a few letters where people complain they can't get any use out of an issue. Hopefully this'll calm them down for a bit.


Scan Quality: Poor, indexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


Editorial: The editorial this month is another bit of self promotion, for their compilation of monster ecologies. Gotta sell sell sell before the WotC licence goes for good, and you have to rely entirely on your own stuff and whatever's in the OGL. So they get three members of staff to talk about their personal tastes in monsters and why they like them. Not too surprisingly, they go for powerful and interesting monsters that you can write a lot about, even if you don't get to include that many of them in your campaigns. Fewer, scarier monsters which take study before you fight them to have a decent chance, and are climactic every time you have to deal with them make for a more mythological feeling campaign than 13.3333333 encounters per level that are only a mild to moderate challenge each. The whole point of the ecology series was to make you think more about what monsters can do, can't do and what they DO do when you're not killing them. And even after they cut down on the lifecycle stuff with the 3e revamp, it was still about giving them greater depth. So here's to depth. It's what keeps things from getting too repetitive throughout eternity.


Scale Mail: We start off with the completely unsurprising request for the rest of the modrons. Fortunately, there are already fairly serviceable 3.0 versions out there to direct them too.

Also missing from previous editions is the Alu-fiend. This is dealt with via a quick and dirty tweak to the half-fiend template, replacing the more violent spell-like abilities with minding. And now you could combine them with anything. A seductive green slime? Not impossible. Muahaha.

And finally, we have praise for the article on Wee Jas. It's all about opening people's minds to overlooked possibilities. That's what they're here for. Whenever you're short of new ideas, go back and do an old one better.