Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994


part 1/6


124 pages. Not just one, but a whole family of dragons on this birthday's cover. Ok, so the lighting could be better, and they're definitely not going to smile for the camera, but would you be the one trying to get them to say cheese? Frankly you'd be lucky to avoid having your intestines used as spaghetti, with your kidneys as cocktail snacks. Not the way I'd like to spend a party.


In this issue:


Letters: A letter including a picture, of someone who has managed to get every issue and spread them all out on the floor. Whoa. You're gonna have a hard time getting back out after that one.

In sharp contrast, a letter from a complete n00b seeking advice on roleplaying. You're in the right place! Probably, anyway.

A letter from a group who have recently lost a member. Someone dying IRL has really taken a lot of the spark out of things. Understandable, really.

A letter from someone suggesting incorporating fate points into D&D. Dale doesn't object to the idea, but points out it isn't exactly a new one. Many games these days are trying to make high action swashbuckling heroics work better than D&D manages. Quite a few of them succeed.


Editorial: So why do we play anyway? In my case it’s always been linked to my need to create, which is pretty integral to the way I approach the world. Dale, on the other hand, suggests the more straightforward idea that it’s because it’s fun. I vaguely recall fun.  Something to do with getting carrots for what you do rather than an absence of stick. And escapism. And once again, I’m confronted with the problem that when you do decide to seriously pursue the dream, and find it’s a lot more work than you thought, you’re left with nothing to use as escapism from that. Is it any wonder I’m depressed a lot of the time. Spending time with people you like? Creating a world where the solutions are simpler than reality? I’m really not doing this right by those standards, am In. So this really tells me one thing. When I finish this thread, I’ve got to do a complete detox, and find something to do with my free time that I actually enjoy, and doesn’t involve computers in any way. This may be interesting as an excercise, but it’s also rather unhealthy in the long run.


Street fighter the RPG! You go from gothy narrative games to one of the most straight-up fighting licenses. How you you make that work? Well, for a start, you can break Blanka's arm with your cannonball boobs Now that's a special maneuver.


First quest: Skip Williams has of course been playing longer than the game was officially published. If anyone can claim the grognard title it's him, even if he's not actually that old. Benefits of starting young, I guess. Unlike Jim, he still mentions Gary’s name, albeit mainly in conjunction with his son Ernie, who was one of his early players, and apparently still is. It must be a bit awkward still working around lake geneva, like dealing with divorced parents who still regularly run into each other at the shops. But anyway, this is about the fun they had, not the bad things that have happened since then. Not that he can resist talking about that either, as his second game was rapidly put out of print by legal crap. Formative experiences like that highlight why he became their premier rules lawyer. This is a fairly fun read, helping me not only get into his head, but also reveal a few bits and pieces that they didn’t mention back in the day, like Don Arndt’s cowardice in the face of imaginary danger. Funny how formative events that still have effects in the shape of D&D today can have such petty seeming beginnings. Butterfly, hurricane, etc. I’m sure they didn’t expect a paladin in hell to be turned from a picture into a whole module 20 years later either. But he’s the one still influencing rules development on a monthly basis, while they’re long gone from the company. It’s not hard to say who’s the bigger legend now.


More than just couch potatoes: More draconic roleplaying advice. As we saw in issue 200, they can be pretty machiavelian buggers. Wouldn't it be nice to make proper use of that intelligence, have them turn out to be the ultimate big bad who was behind most of the plots throughout the campaign. With their long lifespan, plentiful financial resources and array of magical powers, they could well have been at it for centuries, and have their claws in every pie. So fairly typical don’t underestimate the monster advice, showing you that they can be made a lot scarier without touching their statistics at all. Only dressed up in a birthday suit. Which neatly sets us up for an emperor’s new clothes quip. This is a lot less impressive second time around.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994


part 2/6


The dragon project: Sandy once again holds this column up, and shows us that he's a pretty versatile writer in the process. This time, it’s Runequest, another BRP variant. Runequest has always had a good dash of goofy humour in it’s setting details, and this is the case here. But it also manages to have both serious storylines and genuine poignancy. Cerulean Glory Oversees Tides used to be human, a long time in the past. He’s spent centuries as a dragon, and has enormous physical and magical capabilities. But he’s decided he was happier as a human and wants to go back. So he’s trying to act like a person, while still being an 80’ dragon with odd mindset and biological needs. You can’t go back the way you came. That’s like trying to uncook a cake by freezing it to -200 degrees for several hours. The results may be interesting, but they won’t be what you want. In contrast to the previous article, this one comes off a lot better on rereading. The idea that you could separate yourself from humanity completely and then want to go back just seemed vaguely comical and stupid back then. Now it makes a scary amount of sense. You spend years trying to become something better, more knowledgable, more skilled, more focussed than you are, and then you find it doesn’t make you any happier and ask what’s the point? It’s all going to be dust in a hundred years. So I give this one my approval, and now I’m off to have an existential crisis. See you in a bit.


Part dragon, all hero: Oh yes. While it had it's flaws, if there's one thing that came out of the Council of Wyrms setting and stuck, it's half-dragons. While there might have been plenty of monstrous dragon hybrids, such as dracolisks, dragonnes, etc; the idea of PC'able draconic hybrids didn't seem to have occurred to anyone before then. Without this, there likely would have been no half-dragon template, no Mojh and Dracha in AU/E, no part dragon bloodlines in UA, and no Dragonborn as a new PC race in the 4th edition corebook. So here we have one of my favourite tie-in articles. Roger Moore gets back to article writing with a real bang, with something in the vein of his old half-ogre article, only better. He looks at the possibility of half-dragons in settings other than the council of wyrms, in the process granting most dragons with innate shapeshifting powers the capability to procreate with other species. Things vary widely from world to world, with even greyhawk and toril having their own quirky variations, and Krynn and oriental stuff working pretty much completely differently to the norm. This is very definitely not a case of one size fits all, which I find very appealing. They also have balancing factors! Ok, the powers they get are a good deal better than the ones they lose, but still, having them gradually lose their original racial abilities as they become more draconic is a neat touch. As is including half-iron dragons, which of course are entirely from the magazine. Still, unlike last issue's dragon slayer expansion, this does mostly work standalone mechanically, although it does reward setting mastery fluffwise. This convinced me to buy CoW first time around, and it still seems moderately significant in retrospect. It does have the risk of making everyone want to play special snowflakes, but that's always the case when you introduce cool rare races and classes. And hey, if you can't be amazing in your fantasies, what really is the point?


Gunnar Thorson: Another comic starts up to replace Twilight Empire. Barbara Manui & Chris Adams show they're capable of a quite different art style to Yamara. A Viking detective? Well, Cadfael was doing something similar around this time. Dropping deductive reasoning into a setting where it’s unusual does have interesting effects.


Campaign journal: Some more of Carl Sargent’s cut Greyhawk material here. Off to the east coast to meet the sea barons. This of course means pirates. A loose confederation of bickering landholders, they have nice weather and plenty of resources, but limited actual land. And of course, they can treat any serfs who don’t have the resources to sail away very poorly. So there’s plenty of wrongs to right around here. There’s also plenty of uninhabited islands, ready to populate with monsters for those who prefer their dungeon crawling. It’s all in character with his moderately dark, but not totally hopeless setting changes.And of course, you could probably plonk X1 or X8 in easily enough. Neither terrible or brilliant, this seems like enough info to get us started on another adventure. About what we can expect from an article.


Was equinox really that hard?

 

[LordVyreth]

Heh, that ad caught my eye too when I reread the issue to follow you. I doubt it, though given how irritating Solstice was, it's possible. I'm more bothered by the advertising method here. "Buy Equinox! You will ruin your life playing it and never even be satisfied with a conclusion!" Also, how did he get a grandkid if he never even kissed a girl by middle age?

Edit: Not to mention how sad it would be to play a single SNES game for so long. Could you imagine it even now? Everyone with their motion controllers and 3D HD games and you're still fiddling with the decades old machine and its 16-bit graphics?

 

[prosfilaes]

Heh, that ad caught my eye too when I reread the issue to follow you.

I actually haven't read the issue in years, but I still remember that ad.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994


part 3/6


Fiend knights and dark artifacts: More Carl Sargent cuttings, strewn through the magazine, filling in details on what Ivid & co are up too. The published stuff post greyhawk wars was very Iuz-centric. And this shows that would not have been so strongly the case if the line hadn’t been cancelled. Although the fiend heavy direction likely would. Seems like they’re getting everywhere, under the guise of service, with serious designs on taking the whole place over. And that never ends well, especially if you have baatezu and tanar’ri around at the same time. So here’s more nasty creatures and items to bite you in the ass.

Fiend Armor gives you a whole bunch of baatezu advantages on top of the standard AC boost. They do broil anyone of the wrong alignment though. One of those ones that’ll be a pain for most heroes because it is neat but not for them. Don’t just leave them lying around so the next mooks can be powered up by them as well.

Fiend Circlets are pretty similar in terms of granted powers, only less bulky and intended for spellcasters. Stuff like this does not mean they’ll respect you in the morning, just that you’re a valued pawn. But enjoy your few decades of hubris before eternal slavery while you can.

The malachite throne is Ivid’s ‘orrible great regal artefact of insane power and substantial dangers. It gives you true seeing, magical protection, and devil summoning, but said protections are useless against the devils, leaving you open for betrayal or collection of bills. And as he’s going mad, while simultaneously suffering from a wasting disease, it’s safe to say that the situation here will slip out of his control sooner or later, no matter how brutally he tries to hold on to it, and how much cool stuff he has. (unless he decides to become a lich, which isn’t unlikely at all )

The Spear of Sorrow is one of those nasty intelligent weapons that has a load of cool powers (literally) but also likes taking control of it’s so-called owner, and using them to bring back Tharizdun worship. How very embarrassing. I’d rather not be turned into a door to door preacher, no matter the god.

The Cauldron of Night is essentially a pure plot device for producing more evil artefacts. You risk your life by coming here, and only woe will result in the long term. Still, it’s a perfect looking location for a climactic fight with a big bad. Send them toppling into the bottomless pit in the middle and hope that finishes them for good.

Fiend Knights show that once again Ivid is sowing the seeds of his own demise. Turning your soldiers into unsleeping remorseless semi-automatons seems like a good idea in the short term, but it makes you very unpopular, especially with the friends and families of the transformed. Seeing them stamp around like this is in many ways worse than knowing they’re dead. Silly evil overlord needs a PR adviser if he wants to catch up with Iuz.


Forum: Kathryn Bernstein suggests that if you have one hack-and-slash player pissing off all the others, they ought to gang together and sort it out IC. That and the other logical IC consequences of being a psychopath who kills indiscriminately without remorse. They'll get themselves killed if the DM simply plays fair with challenges.

Anonymous gives his experience with hack-and-slash vs roleplaying, pointing out how low level characters succeeded where higher ones failed by using their brains. (and poison) There are several great equalisers in D&D, and even kobolds can exploit them, as Dragon Mountain so brutally showed.

B. J. Tomkins reminds us that if a particular player continues to be disruptive, you can and should just kick them out. If they don't want to change, it's not worth trying to force them. You'll have no fun, they'll have no fun, the whole thing will run and run.

Lee J. Ballard tried giving the hack and slasher in his group exactly what he wanted and then some. Curiously, that did not satisfy him. Hee. Nothing like a little dark humour to open people's eyes to the plight of others. Unlike the hectoring approach, that sneaks behind their defences to open their eyes.


Eye of the monitor: Once again sandy rubs in that the computer gaming and rpg hobbies are currently too young and transient for nostalgia. We’ve been through this before, so this time I shall shrug and move onto the reviews. You’ll get your turn in a few years.

Lufia is a Japanese rpg in the final fantasy vein. Build a party, choose a girlfriend, and travel through the land to fulfil the plot. It has a good beginning, but gets more fight-heavy the longer you go on. There’s plenty more where this came from.

Isle of the dead bores and frustrates Sandy. It’s shoddily programmed, and the rapid respawn of monsters means getting anywhere is tedious and unneccecarily challenging. We have enough RAM now that this is entirely soluble. Leave it out.

Archon Ultra also gets a crap review. Barely improved from a decade ago, it’s frankly inadequate. Not worth buying at all.

Epic puzzle pack, on the other hand gets a little slack for being lots of little games rather than one. They do get very cursory reviews though. His heart doesn’t really seem to be in it this month. What’s going on in his life?

 

[humble minion]

Those greyhawk artifacts seem to have been taken from Ivid the Undying, Carl Sargent's unpublished (and very very grim - there's maybe one or max 2 'points of light' in the whole book) post-greyhawk-wars Great Kingdom sourcebook. I haven't read it for ages, but I remember it as being very, very good - if hard to run because overwhelmingly powerful evil was everywhere, but there was a section in there devoted to handling that issue as well. It was available as an rtf download on the WotC site for ages. Not sure if it still is (but my copy is still safely saved to the hard drive...)

 

[(un)reason]

It does not appear to have gone far

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994


part 4/6


Karamiekos, Ho!: So Mystara has finally finished gearing up to go advanced, during which they've been absent from these pages for 5 months. Will Jeff Grubb be as regular and enthusiastic a poster as Bruce Heard was? He certainly managed a pretty long enjoyable run on the marvel-phile.

Straight away, we see that Jeff has brought things into AD&D land by using the same technique now common for Forgotten Realms correspondence. Say hello to Joshuan Gallidox, our latest 4th wall breaking character to pop into the offices unexpectedly. Only this one's a halfling. Exactly how he makes the crossdimensional trip is not explained, but there are plenty of magical items he could have come across. He’s not quite as scary as Elminster, but he is pretty prone to self-aggrandisement. I suspect Halflings may not be as crucial to this story as he makes out.

Second, of course, is the timeline advancements. The black eagle barony is free! Good has triumphed and the kingdom is just again. Er, sort of. Ludwig and Bargle are both still at large, the place is still a shithole, and the interim leader is thoroughly ineffectual, but these are all presented as opportunities for PC’s. The rest of this article fills us in on the other changes around this region. Jeff’s writing style is as fun and readable as ever, and this certainly looks like one of the better attempts at keeping the world living and moving forward. But still, you should be careful putting it into existing games, especially as the original overthrow scenario was presented as something the PC’s would lead. So this is another well-written article, that may or may not be good for your game. Now, where do we take the world from here?


The dragon's bestiary: Great, more irritating faeries. We had some of those last year too. Looks like this year has seen a drop in both the number and quality of monster submissions, just as the ecology series did a couple of years ago. This is a bit worrisome.

Brambles are meaner relatives of Gorse, and have a similar spike fetish. A good reminder that fae creatures were associated with thorny bushes long before C:tL, and they make both good protection and a decent home for the buggers. As usual, laugh at them at your peril.

Dobies are essentially incompetent brownies. They mean well, but having one of these in the house means botched chores everywhere. And trying to get rid of them may well make the problem worse. What is a poor farmer to do?

Faerie fiddlers are another predictable mythic entry. They can make you dance uncontrollably, and distort time so a night lasts for years outside. Now there's one that can really have interesting effects on your game. Can you turn this to your advantage, or will it really mess up the game?


Elminsters notebook: Ed once again shows us how to pack a campaign’s worth of adventure seeds into a single page. Another evil wizard from the distant past, and their somewhat dubious legacy is detailed. One of the biggest problems as a solo wizard vs a party is only being able to cast one spell per round, especially as wizards are somewhat squishy. What’s the solution? Orbiting undead skulls that are hopelessly in love with you! Unorthodox, but it certainly did the job. At least until hubris lead her into taking on a god and failing. Another example of how a greater number of high power characters and creatures actually results in the realms being more stable than krynn or oerth. Try the same trick on the krynnish gods and you might well succeed. So it looks like he’s once again playfully showing off his system mastery and inventiveness, while ironically pointing out all the cheap tricks in the world will not save you if the DM decides to invoke a deus ex machina. There’s a definite multilayered irony there. As usual, his output is pretty great.

 

[Orius]

Dobies are essentially incompetent brownies. They mean well, but having one of these in the house means botched chores everywhere. And trying to get rid of them may well make the problem worse. What is a poor farmer to do?

Hope the cat finds them tasty?

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994


part 5/6


Role-playing reviews: A bit more magic reviewed here this month. So many different takes on it are appearing these days. It’s one of those things that makes TSR seem more than a little behind the times. The rationale why spells work the way they do can also be pretty interesting, but Rick isn’t so bothered, and just wants to get to the effects. Fluff is something you read once or twice, crunch is for a whole campaign. Which of these books will make worthy additions to yours?

The wizards grimoire is for ARS Magica, and is sufficiently specific that rick can’t see players of other systems getting much use out of it. The kind of crunch you can spend years mastering, it combines the wondrous and banal, and the detailed and vague as well. There’s probably too many undeveloped ideas, needing a good pruning to bring things together and make the good bits better. Less can be more, and all that.

The compleat alchemist is a system-independent book from WotC that feels like one of those old articles from this magazine. And like the old alchemist classes from the magazine, it’s light on roleplaying advice and the characters are ill-suited to adventures. It’s like it’s actively trying to make itself not useful to the average game. How do you expect to sell it to us?

GURPS Magic 2nd ed, on the other hand, is solid as a rock mechanically, and full of ideas that you’ll actually want to put in your game. You can always trust GURPS, rain or shine, which is a lot more than you can say for most systems. The worst you can say about it is there’s a few vague or redundant spells, the overall building system manages to keep things both imaginative and well balanced.

Earth, air, fire and water puts the attention on clerics, showing us what you actually do with them in terms of playing, and filling in lots of cool high level stuff and new spells. Like much of dark sun’s stuff, they need this because it is so different from the D&D norm. They should be decently competitive with wizards again after this.


Sage advice: Why does locate object have different durations for wizards and priests (That's a typo. They got the regular and reversed versions mixed up. )

Is the bonus spells for high wisdom table right? (no. Congratulations, you've spotted more errata. Skip thanks you from the bottom of skip's heart)

How can a non-thief disarm a trap. (by describing exactly what they intend to do with the mechanism. Old skool fiat system strikes back!)

How long does an undead creature stay away after turning (24 hours - roll needed to turn. Not a long-term solution. )

Isn't enhance overpowered compared to wishes. (Not really. At that level, superbuffing is a perfectly standard tactic)

Can imps, quasits & pseudodragons become familiars (Yes. For plenty of other examples. check out issue 86. )

I haven't read the general spell keywords (well maybe you should, before ploughing into the spells. You can't learn a culture if you don't know the language.)

How do you get the acid from melf's arrows off (apply a little common sense, and then rub it in with elbow grease. )

Are liches immune to harm spells (yes, but not for the reason you think)

Can fighter/mages use their fighter THAC0's for touch spells (A few years ago skip would have said no, as he did regarding fighter/thieves using their fighter THAC0 for backstabbing. But skip has mellowed a bit since then. So Skip'll say yes. Don't go thinking Skip's not still a badass mutha though. )

Is an invisible character invisible to themself or not? (They are. The complete wizards handbook is another case of freelancers being irresponsible and sloppy. )

Is animate dead an evil act (sorta. It won't change your alignment straight away, but it will have a negative impact. )

Can forget disrupt spellcasting (Probably. )

Does prayer buff the damage of your spell attacks (Oh yes. This is why you should have a priest on the team.)

Can there be specialist wizards in dragonlance (Only if they become renegades. That thar's forbidden magic round them parts)

You got my question wrong! I was asking about what happens when druids absorb defiling damage from defiling regeneration. (Don't you get bolshy with skip. Skip is still The Sage, and you aint. Skip will answer you, but if you don't pay up on time, Skip will track you down and cap yo ass. )

Does creating an illusion of an attack break invisibility (yes)

Why are memorization and casting times so different (preparation for anything usually takes much longer than doing it. Even magic has to obey that rule)

Can ottilukes resilient sphere block teleportation (Probably not. Too weak.)

Can undead be raised (Recycled question. We sorted that out over a decade ago, and the answer's still the same. )

And this month's newly enhanced pantheon iiiiiiiiiiiiiis........... The norse pantheon! Are you ready to ragnarok? Come on up and collect your prize!