Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Ugh. I just got a mental image of a Bohemian earspoon doing unspeakable things to a glaive-fork-guisarme.

Longsword: I'm the most popular weapon around. Everybody digs me.

Two handed sword: Common does not mean best, pipsqueak. Size matters, and I'm the king.

Rapier: Hah! It's not size that's important, it's finesse. I get way more girls than you, with my agility and witty reparte.

Sabre: Arr. Did someone mention booty? I tell ye, ya might be a sweeter talker, but a little curve really hits the spot better, if ye know's what I mean.

Katana: Hyaaaaa! How dare you talk in this disrespectful manner. I will cut you down with my unsurpassed sharpness!

Wakazashi: But, we're a canon pairing man. Don't leave me!!!!

Dagger: :backstabs: Hah. While you lot were fighting, I found time to have dinner with that hot spork from the greek restaurant. Now I'm off to share a dishwasher with her. See ya later, suckers!

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989

part 1/5

108 pages. Another year, time to put some more old chessnuts to rest. No more Allycia and Scud. No more world destroying adventures of Waldorf. No more harpy biology. And definitely no more sodding debate on if female dwarves have beards. We haven't published stuff on that in years, so stop sending it in. Instead, it's back to humanoids. Another thing that has previously had a special on it. Do they have some new ideas? Or is it going to be 1982 all over again. Page turning time.

In this issue:


Letters: A letter suggesting they do a holographic cover for their 150th issue or some similar special occasion. Since it's expensive and awkward to do, Roger is skeptical about if that would be worth it. Not very Visionary of him, eh?

Someone asking why there's no articles for Dragonlance. Like BD&D, Greyhawk, and a ton of other things the magazine could cover, it's because people don't sodding submit them. It's not some conspiracy, honest.

Another question about the value of old stuff. Good question. How long is a piece of string, as ever. Hold on a few decades more, and it'll definitely go up in this case.

Another recycled question. Another group wants to try break the record for longest continuous session. Roger, once again, plays the spoilsport. For health and safety reasons, we do not recommend this.

And finally, someone upset because the role of computers skipped an issue. Honestly, it was only one issue. You don't have to go getting paranoid that quickly. A little variety is good for the brain.


Forum: Walker White continues the illusion handling debate, with another lengthy bit of opinion. You've got to keep the changes you make logical, so people are more likely to believe them.

Brad Shimzo introduces 4 new martial arts for the Marvel superheroes game. Another relatively unusual occurrence around here.

Mark Hunter dislikes the way many Dragon articles do not take each other into account, and are mutually incompatible. He's also not keen on the idea of adding new attributes. Perception should stay purely derived.

Douglas M Burck has some more sound strategies for aiding the survival of low level magic-users. Remember, spells can be combined to good effect, and even cantrips are invaluable. He also goes into some detail about the nature of different kinds of spellbooks.

Larry Madden has some more talk about ways for spellcasters to make a living, and rubbishes the idea of dual class 1st level fighter/magic users. It's not a practical option, in or out of the game.

Timothy Makinson chooses to debate the issues of weapon lengths and two-handed fighting, of all things. Well, it's one people can study themselves. That means realism nigglers can have a field day on it.

Aaron Goldblatt thinks, as a jew, that real world religion should stay the hell out of D&D games. Similarly, modern values cause substantial amounts of moral dissonance, and making your world too like them is not a great idea.

Darrell Anderson Talks about weapon and armour restrictions, coming to the conclusion that clerics are better overall than fighters or magic-users, and a certain amount of rebalancing wouldn't be a terrible idea.

Jimmy B Ellis points out that according to the RAW, a fighter can only specialise in one weapon. This means that you can't pour all your slots into several things to the exclusion of all else. Not that many future writers won't ignore that rule as well.

 

[LordVyreth]

This confused me on my first pass, and it isn't any better this time. Who are Allycia and Scud again?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989

part 2/5

Sage advice goes back to greyhawk for some retro setting reexamination.

Where are the clashing rocks and other special locations (wherever your DM wants to put them. They're supposed to be a surprise. )

Which areas are best for adventuring in. (All of them! Would Gary, in his endless genius, design a place that is unsuited for adventurers? (oh yes he would!) Oh no he wouldn't! (oh yes he would!) Shut up, you. Panto season was last month)

Where was the weather info (Issue 68. No, we will not reprint it for you, so don't even ask.)

How big is hepmonaland ( We dunno. Buy more greyhawk stuff, and maybe we'll give it it's own line, like the various forgotten realms continents)

Which modules are set in greyhawk ( WGAGDQSTEX. Try pronouncing that. It will summon a great elder grognard if you can say it right 7 times while looking at your reflection in a bottle of mountain dew. If your character dies in the ultimate old skool game they run, you die as well. Bet you wish you'd listened to Jack Chick now. )

How can elven clerics wield swords in the random encounter table (Legacy code. We didn't have the heart to tell them they couldn't use them anymore )

What is the symbol of the knight on the cover (The city of Fax. Just what you need to send a message)

Why doesn't the map show the countries borders (Because they fight so much. The map'd be out of date in no time. )

When do the GDQ modules happen (In default canon, they happened in CY576. This is quite a few years ago now. You are of course free to ignore this for your own games. )

Can I use non-oerth deities from legends and lore (Eh, it's your funeral. You want to dilute our themes, go ahead. It's not as if the place isn't a kitchen sink already. )

What's the scale on the map (1 hex= 30 miles. Or 10 leagues for the pretentious amongst you. )

Does Zuggtmoy have the usual demon powers (Yes. Being a unique and special snowflake does not weaken her in any way. )

What's Oerik's lattitude (see page 18. )


The Dragon's bestiary: Blacktrolls are, yeah, trolls, only even more eeeevil. Smarter, tougher, with quite substantial magical powers, they're another good demonstration of how the stakes go up substantially when you go extraplanar. The omnipresent fricken teleport without error is a particular pain in the butt. Really, who decided to make that a default at will power for entire broad genera of monsters?

Caiveh are yet another humanoid feline race. Based off lions, they're another low level monster with a few tricks up their sleeve, that could probably gain class skills if the DM wanted.

Cynamolgus are another form of dog men, in another case of inspiration deficit disorder resulting in filler. Far better to fill in the ones we have than keep on adding new ones.

Diurge are decidedly scary people from the negative material plane. With a consistently high general class capability, psionics, and the obligatory energy draining, they seem good ones for a world-conquering plotline.

Jor are another upgraded version of orcs. Adapted to swamps, they have natural talents at stealth and assassination. A good backstabbing is just the thing to really piss off a party. Muahaha.

Rocktrolls are a second even tougher troll variant, living in the elemental plane of earth. Well, not much apart from fire and acid kills them, so it's no surprise they'd go all over the place and adapt to weird environments. They also have quite decent stealth skills in their natural environment. Seems like they want to encourage you to play your monsters that way.

 

[(un)reason]

This confused me on my first pass, and it isn't any better this time. Who are Allycia and Scud again?

They were from issue 118's jousting article. Allycia was a 6th level cavalier, while scud was an 8th level fighter. Len used them in an example battle, to show how all the advantages a cavalier had in mounted combat meant they would easily beat a fighter of similar level. For some reason, this inspired a heated debate in the forum about both the math, the principles of the participants, and the stupidity of fighting someone on their terms rather than yours. After nearly two years (and probably far more letters than actually got published) Roger has just decided enough already, the two of them can go get married, given all this unresolved sexual tension, and closed that thread in the forum. All very amusing.

 

[Orius]

I've done partial conversions of the caiveh and cyanmolgus to 3e, but I don'r remember finishing them. Probably because D&D has enough furry races already.

The orc and troll variants I ignored because 3e can handle that stuff easy enough with templates and class levels. It seems like this stuff was running under 1e game tropes anyway; give 'em backstab so if they manage to surprise successfully they might be able to one-shot the M-U before he turns around and toasts all your asses with an old-school (read: no damage cap) fireball.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989

part 3/5

Orcs throw spells too: From stealth to spellcasting. Although they can't match up to humans and elves, many of the humanoid races detailed can get rudimentary spellcasting abilities, more commonly priestly than wizardly. And even a couple of well chosen spells can seriously improve the odds of a whole team of monsters. Be rather thankful they're quite rare, given the lack of formal education in their societies. Quite a long article, this gives plenty of design and statistical advice, to help you build them, flesh out their religious practices, and customise them appropriately for their racial tendencies. Many of the gods have ridiculously strict advancement criteria, which is an amusing example of their self-defeating tendencies. All in all, this is a pretty good article, giving us lots of extra depth without overlapping previous material. Very handy.


Boulder-throwers and humanoid hordes: Giants. The subject of the very first module series. Curiously, they're a race that is usually played as dumb, but can get quite substantial benefits from being played smart. This gives us tactics that are good for fightery races, thus completing the symmetry. They're quite good at ranged attacks, tremendously strong, and can often move faster than their foes. This means they can choose when they attack, and control the terrain. Much shorter than the last one, this still has plenty of neat tricks up it's sleeve, to help keep them challenging even once the PC's are loaded up with magic items and tricks, and remind you to vary the capabilities of your adversaries. Once again, pretty pleasing.


Hey, wanna be a kobold?: Ahh, the joys of people opening up races to become PC's. Few things are sweeter, or more potentially destabilizing to game balance. But lets face it, kobolds are not overpowering at all. If you don't use your brains, they'll be rather weedy. Still, they're considerably better in terms of stats and abilities than gully dwarves, more versatile than half-ogres, and a lot more applicable to campaigns in general. This also includes the stats for orcs, goblins and xvarts. In general, they are rather less capable than they would be in 2nd edition, and it's pretty clear why they usually lose to the PC's, but they are good enough that you could still have a fun game with them incorporated. Definitely a good contribution here.


Fiction: The ulfjarl's stone by Mickey Zucker Reichert. Ahh, the vikings. A decidedly ruthless culture in a lot of ways. The icy arctic snows require strong men to survive there, and even stronger ones to lead them. And often this requires a little more strength than simply prowess in battle. So here's a story that shows off the norse attitude to life, death, magic and riddles. Not connected to the issue's theme, but still fairly appropriate to it, this continues the fairly strong showing.


Role-playing reviews:
Megatraveller gets a rather long review, as befits a boxed set of this size. The reviewer seems considerably more impressed with this than they did with Traveller 2300. The advancements in timeline have made the setting rather more unstable, and as a result, there are considerably more adventure hooks wherever you may go. The career system is considerably expanded, with lots of the paths introduced in supplements (and this magazine) incorporated and they finally have a decent in play advancement system. Some bits are simple, some bits are possibly still a bit too complex and clunky, but as a whole, it's considerably better than previous editions.

GURPS Space gets a rather shorter review. Obviously, since it's a generic sourcebook to help you build your own settings, it isn't even trying to compete on that front. This just gives you lots of rules and example stats for creatures and objects. It does so in the usual clear and concise way, with well designed rules. No great surprises here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989

part 4/5


Adeptus titanicus! Giant robot battles in warhammer 40k. Now there's a concept with a substantial wahoo! factor. It gets a tremendously pretty full colour four page spread of advertising devoted to it as well. Ooh, you are tempting.


TSR Previews: D&D seriously delivers on the Gazetteer front, with GAZ10: Orcs of Thar. Another one opening up a ton of new PC options, and their fun society. Now you can play things from the other side. Maybe that'll teach your players a little sympathy for the monsters.

AD&D also gets a fun and not completely serious adventure, with Mad Monkey vs the Dragon Claw. Martial arts action ahoy! Slightly more scary is Lords of Darkness, a module full of little adventures featuring the undead. Shouldn't be hard to drop in all over the place.

Novelwise, we have Weasel's luck, a Dragonlance book, and Red Sands, a general book. Two very different protagonists wind up in rather different adventures, but both find their experiences pretty harrowing. What is an adventure without challenge, eh?


The role of books: War of the maelstrom by Jack L Chalker is the third book of a profoundly ed-up trilogy. I hated this when I read it, and the reviewer manages to pick several further holes in it's fundamental design and attitudes that illuminate just what a terrible book this is on several levels. Steer well clear unless you enjoy mind-rape, sexism, and poor plotting. And if you ever find yourself in a game like this, get the hell out after the first session. No excuses.

The fairy of ku-she by M. Lucie Chin is a tale of the chinese celestial bureaucracy, a byzantine organization full of powerful creatures working under their own idioyncratic rules and internal politics. This is a rich ground for adventure, especially when romance and duty collide. Plenty of fun ideas to be drawn for OA games here.

The armor of light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A Barnett is an espionage adventure set in elizabethan england. Walter Raleigh, Cristopher Marlowe and plenty of other historical figures make appearances in this high action adventure, full of magic, double agents, politics, and all the usual spy tropes that keep a story like this speeding along.

The sorcerer's heir by Paula Volsky is the second book in the trilogy, and builds up to a nicely grim climax that seems pretty insoluble. Will the heroes be able to solve it, or will it all end in tragedy?

The crystal warriors by William R Fortschen and Greg Morrison transports two opposed platoons of soldiers to a fantasy world, where they have to come to an uneasy truce to survive. With an interesting crystal based magic system, it'd probably translate better to GURPS than AD&D, and has both properly developed characters and military tactics.

The quest for the 36 by Stephen Billias features that rather familiar name Dexter Sinister, although from the description, I don't think it's the same one. (terrible puns have a strange attraction) It's another quirky one, with lots of silly names and odd bits while still telling a fundamentally serious story, drawing on real jewish mythology. Another one that's good inspiration for the stranger side of Top Secret games.

Song of the dwarves by Thoraninn Gunnarsson (now there's a fitting name for the writer) is a retelling of norse myth. Weaving the various sagas into roughly chronological order, it goes quite a way towards making them accessible to english readers. Now you can see where Tolkien got quite a few of his ideas from.

Also notable in this issue is a lookover of a whole bunch of star trek books. The next generation is just starting to hit it's stride, and a whole bunch of books based on both that and the original series are coming out in a regular production line schedule. This means many of them are crap of course, especially the one written before the new series was conceptually finalized.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989

part 5/5

The game wizards: Great. Buck Rogers fiction as well. Looks like he will creep into every department, until the realities of his sales become too great to press on against. This is all about the fiction coming up this year in general, which means there's quite a bit of overlap with last month's column, but it goes into more detail about the books. Dragonlance, Forgotten realms, general books, and the choose your own adventure ones, all lines are getting at least a trilogy, and some rather more. Unlikely many people will buy all of them. But that's probably not their aim at this point. As long as they can please all the people some of the time, the companies finances should stay in good shape.

The role of computers has tons of little reviews squeezed together this month. Many of them aren't very good. AAARG! is a game of giant monster rampage that gets completely panned. Alien Syndrome does not convert from the arcade to the home entertainment system very well, and there's a whole bunch of mediocre sports sims. It's not all bad though. Tetris is back, in full colour, with it's iconic music, and now increasingly recognised as a full-on classic. Moebius: Orb of celestial harmony is the kind of roleplaying game they ought to be covering, with both graphics and gameplay quite up to par. But overall, they seem to be trying to cram too much in, and not staying on topic. This is not a hugely pleasing development from my point of view.

Through the looking glass: Horses are this month's special topic. They're the kind of thing that shows up regularly, but can often be glossed over. Just slap a brown coating on it, and call it a day. But as we have seen in forum threads, there are also people who are scarily obsessed with horses, their colour variations, manes, hooves, the way they move, and write extensively about this. It can be most amusing. Thankfully the writer doesn't go quite that far. But this is an interesting little romp through the colours and nuances you can give them even when staying within the bounds of realism, and some magical ideas. The more little details like this you fit in, the cooler your stuff will be. A very welcome diversion from the more common areas of study.

The marvel-phile: Off to alternate reality land again. Earth-S has considerably fewer superheroes and villains than Earth-616, yet somehow, this bunch made history diverge considerably more from the real world. Most of them were detailed in the gargantuan gamers handbook, but it seems a few of them slipped through the gap. So here's stats for Master Menace, this dimension's Dr Doom analogue, and this dimension's Sorcerer Supreme, Professor Imam. (rather a tautological name, doncha think. ) Each has their own quirks in their personalities and abilities. A fairly standard entry in this series. Since they've filled in virtually everyone in the history of the company, I'm guessing from now on this'll be mostly about recently introduced characters, and any changes in existing ones. As long as there are dozens of different comics coming out every week, it's not as if they'll ever run out of material.

Snarf gets into a western style shootout. Dragonmirth shows how better things may come from disappointment. Yamara develops a personal hatred for the skanky villainess.

Once again, things seem to be switching around in quality, with the themed section being more enjoyable than the reviews and regular columns this issue. Still, overall, this is quite a decent issue. The changes in staff do not seem to have impacted on the overall quality of production values, and there's lots of stuff that is generally useful for people's games. They seem to have a decently built up slush pile of articles at the moment. Lets hope they can keep on using them to best effect.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 142: February 1989

part 1/5

84 pages (32 page insert missing) So second edition is just a few months away. (while the release of the books may be staggered, it certainly isn't by the length that the 1st edition ones were. ) They want to promote this quite a bit. Unfortunately, whatever twonks scanned the Archive in thought that this wasn't worth preserving for posterity. Which means I can't review it. This means that this issue's review should be a relatively short one, and there's no particular theme to the remaining articles. Bah. All we can do is what we can. The rest will have to take care of itself.

In this issue:

Letters: A letter asking them to repeat their critical hit system article. Roger gives a maybe, with a side order of I disapprove of this idea. We know which side his bread is buttered on.

A bit of historical nitpicking. Remember, the number of a century is one higher than the numbers in it, confusingly.

Two questions about Moldvay's undead article. One is easily answered, the other is left for you to sort out. Is precalculating xp really that hard for you?

A letter pointing out the snafu in snarfquest's numbering system. These things do happen.

A letter praising them for doing more roleplaying focussed, system free articles that are useful to all gamers. I think I can get behind that one as well.


Forum: Eric Parish is another person who thinks that balance by campaign is a better idea than balance by encounter. If magic-users weren't weak at low level, there'd be a lot more of them. And that would make it much harder to keep the world recognisable.

Jason Kasper has a rather dubious suggestion on how to get magic-users through those awkward first few levels. Bloody deus ex machina mentors. I don't approve.

Jim Amos thinks that XP for treasure might not be a good idea in all circumstances. Foreshadowing ahoy.

Alan Clark also thinks that there should be means to accumulate XP other than killing and taking of stuff, particularly for the classes which should eschew material things like paladins and monks. Plus it causes fewer economic problems.

Robin D Brock also has a strong opinion on the XP for other actions debate, being in favour. This seems to be quite the flavour of the month to debate.

S D Anderson returns to the debate he started, to give another fairly well thought out bit of pontification. You ought to make the system encourage characters to excel, not be a bunch of bet-hedging jobsworths.

Marc Sanders tackles the thorny subject of demihuman level limits side on, pointing out that being able to advance in multiple classes simultaneously is a huge benefit. Does this balance out the overall limits? Over the course of the campaign, maybe.

Timothy Emrick is very much in favour of perception being incorporated into 2nd ed in some form. Oh, if only that article had come a year or so earlier, before most of the stuff was finalized. Things could have been rather different.

Ilya Taytslin thinks that level draining undead should stay as they are, so as to keep them genuinely scary. Can't have the PC's getting overconfident, can we?

Mike Speca is also being conservative in terms of class changes. Ordinary fighters have a versatility in terms of how they are roleplayed that the various specialists can't match. Hmm. I suspect that once again, they might be trying to prime us for the lack of changes in the next edition.

William H Stoddard does some nitpicking over explosive magnitudes, and the recent DC heroes article involving them. There are some serious dropped numbers in the math here.