(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Magazine Issue 143: March 1989
part 1/5
108 pages. Now this is a nice cover. A dragon in the sights of a fighter jet. Do ya feel lucky? Will the missiles have any effect? It'll be interesting finding out.
In this issue:
Letters: This month's letters page is a whole host of errata and rules questions. The lifecycle of Spectators. Name changes and body changes. Tactics for dealing with Metalmasters. Attributing the wrong name to the wrong illustration. Incredulity at how crap kobolds ability scores are. All pretty inconsequential stuff in the greater scheme of things.
Forum: Ed Friedlander gives a system for speeding up the resolution of when characters are bombarded with missile weapons. These will average out the amount of damage you take per round to a substantial, but survivable amount for high level characters, making army firefights actually a reliably calculable threat to them.
Bob Tarantino things people shouldn't look down on ordinary D&D. Simplicity in mechanics is not a bad thing, as it lets you concentrate on roleplaying. And really, who uses weapon speed factors anyway?
Thomas W Gossard reminds us once again to remember to apply the logical consequences of spellcasting to our worlds, this time in matters of law enforcement.
Daniel W Howard is allowed to reply immediately to this commentary. He agrees with it in principle, but remember that any society with pretensions to human rights will likely restrict when spells can be used to expedite the legal process. (and most which are tyrannical will be wary about training ordinary guardsmen with that kind of power. ) Even in countries with security cameras everywhere, they aren't really used to their full potential. (thank god)
Timothy Koneval is also interested in magical substitutes to real technology, and the uses they could be put too in probing the physics of their universe. Even the Greeks managed some surprisingly accurate theories. Don't underestimate the supposed primitives.
K B LaBaw is not happy about the sidelining of evil characters in the new edition. There's already more stuff for good ones, and getting rid of assassins just makes that worse.
John C Tiedermann also has a good deal of fun playing the bad guy, and thinks other people shouldn't be afraid to try it either. What have you got to lose? It's only a game.
Christopher E Brogan has a separate campaign in which they play evil characters as a way of blowing off steam. Sometimes you just want to smash stuff, and damn the consequences.
Darren Hennessey also enjoys the idea of playing reversed D&D, with the players taking the role of the monsters, and trying to figure out how to deal with those damned heroes.
Stanley Bundy, on the other hand, has a real world example of what happens when evil gains the upper hand, destroying a community of players. Plus it gives fuel to the people who say D&D is satanic. We really don't need that after all the work we've done to gain acceptance.
Eric Sonnestuhl suggests that magic-users with high int should be able to memorise more spells than they can cast. That would make them more versatile without hugely increasing their power. Interesting idea. I wonder how it would turn out.
Wendell Works makes the rather prophetic suggestion of dividing magic-user spells into common, rare, and unique ones, based on how easy they are to get hold of and learn. Are you paying attention, Monte?
part 1/5
108 pages. Now this is a nice cover. A dragon in the sights of a fighter jet. Do ya feel lucky? Will the missiles have any effect? It'll be interesting finding out.
In this issue:
Letters: This month's letters page is a whole host of errata and rules questions. The lifecycle of Spectators. Name changes and body changes. Tactics for dealing with Metalmasters. Attributing the wrong name to the wrong illustration. Incredulity at how crap kobolds ability scores are. All pretty inconsequential stuff in the greater scheme of things.
Forum: Ed Friedlander gives a system for speeding up the resolution of when characters are bombarded with missile weapons. These will average out the amount of damage you take per round to a substantial, but survivable amount for high level characters, making army firefights actually a reliably calculable threat to them.
Bob Tarantino things people shouldn't look down on ordinary D&D. Simplicity in mechanics is not a bad thing, as it lets you concentrate on roleplaying. And really, who uses weapon speed factors anyway?
Thomas W Gossard reminds us once again to remember to apply the logical consequences of spellcasting to our worlds, this time in matters of law enforcement.
Daniel W Howard is allowed to reply immediately to this commentary. He agrees with it in principle, but remember that any society with pretensions to human rights will likely restrict when spells can be used to expedite the legal process. (and most which are tyrannical will be wary about training ordinary guardsmen with that kind of power. ) Even in countries with security cameras everywhere, they aren't really used to their full potential. (thank god)
Timothy Koneval is also interested in magical substitutes to real technology, and the uses they could be put too in probing the physics of their universe. Even the Greeks managed some surprisingly accurate theories. Don't underestimate the supposed primitives.
K B LaBaw is not happy about the sidelining of evil characters in the new edition. There's already more stuff for good ones, and getting rid of assassins just makes that worse.
John C Tiedermann also has a good deal of fun playing the bad guy, and thinks other people shouldn't be afraid to try it either. What have you got to lose? It's only a game.
Christopher E Brogan has a separate campaign in which they play evil characters as a way of blowing off steam. Sometimes you just want to smash stuff, and damn the consequences.
Darren Hennessey also enjoys the idea of playing reversed D&D, with the players taking the role of the monsters, and trying to figure out how to deal with those damned heroes.
Stanley Bundy, on the other hand, has a real world example of what happens when evil gains the upper hand, destroying a community of players. Plus it gives fuel to the people who say D&D is satanic. We really don't need that after all the work we've done to gain acceptance.
Eric Sonnestuhl suggests that magic-users with high int should be able to memorise more spells than they can cast. That would make them more versatile without hugely increasing their power. Interesting idea. I wonder how it would turn out.
Wendell Works makes the rather prophetic suggestion of dividing magic-user spells into common, rare, and unique ones, based on how easy they are to get hold of and learn. Are you paying attention, Monte?
This shows you that it is remarkably easy to reskin them for your game, even if the scenarios seem superficially very different. And if they start deviating from the real world scenarios once you've set them in motion due to the actions of the players, then that's all for the better, really. Another pretty solid article, even if I'd encourage people to skip the commonly covered bits of history, and go for more obscure ones to steal from. 
Pinball, as dumb as he sounds, and dead as a result of it. (people complain about sexism and racism in comics, but the treatment fat people get is even worse, when they appear at all.) Remnant, with his magical fabric he can use for all kinds of tricks. Originally villains, the survivors seem pushed towards becoming slightly nicer people, simply due to the things they've been through recently. Do serious attempts to make the world a better place always have to end with the heroes failing and becoming worse than the villains they were trying to fight? I guess in comic book land, that'll only happen if the series is just about to be cancelled. Pretty average entry here. Character building, romance, moral questions, and buttkicking. Just another day hopping the dimensions.
