Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 1/8


124 pages. Things get meta straight away, as the editor's hands intrude on the cover. That little goblin thing may well take a bite out of them if he tries to correct it. If that breaks your suspension of disbelief, I suspect this issue is Not For You. They're trying new forms of wackyness too, with a wacky review and wacky planescape article. Man, there's no shortage of silliness still. Are you filking ready?! I don't think you're ready for Weird Al Yankovic's belly. Hoo Ha!


In this issue:


Letters: Once again, we give it to the floor. Passing up ridiculous letters, enough for evermore. You won't be snoring or finding it boring although their stupidity might be appalling. Their twinky ideas can be quite egregious, you'll place your head in your palm and mutter Jesus. They make assumptions from poor perceptions, and don't realise they'll get a risible reception. And when they try to be nefarious, you can bet we'll find it hilarious. Just don't try to compete with Drizzt, for every fanboy knows he's the shiznit. And I think that's enough horrible near-rhymes for the sake of humour from me for one year.


Editorial covers women in gaming again. This is the 4th or so time. Since the magazine has been around 19 years, you can't exactly call that overkill. And they are definitely making headway. If you look at the staff listing in the contents, slightly more than half of them are female, although the men are still hogging the top positions, so it's a bit of a mixed message. But it's still a massive improvement from 1979, when Jean Wells was the first and only woman on the TSR staff. The same can be said of general media, where there is also a decent amount of women being portrayed at least half-decently in prominent roles. Course, you can't expect them to like exactly the same stuff men do, and this road will eventually lead to them splitting away from the geek's categorisation and creating the currently massive Paranormal Romance genre, to much amusing nerdrage. Just as MMORPGs have substantial tabletop ancestry, but have now eclipsed us commercially by orders of magnitude and become very much their own thing, if you suddenly appeal to a different demographic, they won't play by your rules, but make their own. Which is why a broad definition of what roleplaying is is a good idea, otherwise you're setting yourself up for obsolescence. Learn from others, but find your own voice as well. And don't take crap from anyone. Lessons everyone should learn, regardless of sex, race or creed. And now off the soapbox for me.


First quest: William W. Connors may be a fairly recent arrival to the TSR stable, but he's already done pretty well for himself, with Masque of the Red Death exceeding their commercial expectations by quite a bit. His story begins with a game of Starships & Spacemen that went on for 16 hours, and was fun all the way through. The kind of game that pretty much deserves to be called legendary, more than half the participants have gone on to be game writers. Sounds like seeing the sex pistols in '76 or owning the velvet underground albums in the 60's. Another one that shows that you really can't start off with mature exploration of character if you want to grow the hobby. Little kids are drawn in by strange landscapes and blowing stuff up. It's only later that they wind up writing toned down, atmosphere heavy games which emphasise roleplaying over combat.

 

[(un)reason]

Once again, Merry Christmas everybody. Looks like we have a good few more to go too.

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 2/8


Bazaar of the Bizarre is brought to you by Bargle the infamous, former high wizard (read, grand vizier ) to the black eagle baron. He's killed Aleena, screwed over a dominion, and now has his own magic manufacturing line. Course, being in it primarily for the money (and how) his items are a classic example of let the buyer beware. Tee hee. April fool. I love this one.

Invisible rings disappear when you put them on. They might be mildly useful as brass knuckles, but otherwise this is practically the platonic ideal of pointless.

Rings of Destruction gradually turn your body to dust. The trick here is of course to make sure it's your enemy that puts them on, as with all cursed items.

The ring of the eagle lets you turn into a black eagle. As this is one of his oldest items, it's also entirely reliable, because his previous employer would probably apply some violence if he messed up.

Rings of fashion give you a snappy outfit. Well, an outfit in a snap, anyway. Hoo boy. Fashion can be a fickle thing

Rings of ideas are either going to save your ass, or completely ruin the party's day. Either way, they should keep things interesting. Good luck.

Rings of circular cursing inflict the same curse upon you and someone else. This'll force you to get really inventive and customised, thinking up effects that'll be devastating for them but minor for you. Genius.

The ring of gender confusion doubles the comedy by only making you think you've changed gender. This is easier to remove than the girdle, but has the potential for even more comedy.

The ring of impact lets you hit harder. Another one that actually works exactly as it should. It's stuff like this that keep you coming back after all the mishaps.

The Ring of kindness is another one you should put on others. Unless you're already saintly enough it makes no difference, you don't want to realise you've given all your stuff away to whoever asked for it.

The ring of languages is another helpful but risky one. Do you want to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, understandable by everyone? Ironic that such a scumbag should wind up producing items with drawbacks that are least troublesome to good guys.

He also has three self-help books to tell you nothing you can't figure out yourself, and give you new spells with quite serious design defects. Course, you won't realise that until after spending the money, but such is life. Really, killing him and taking his stuff would work far better, presuming you can pull it off. Thousands of adventurers will thank you for it.


Fuzzy Reviews: Oh man. This is like Clay-o-Rama's cuter big sister just bounced into the magazine. Fuzzy heroes is a wargaming ruleset which allows you to take nearly any toy, assign it stats based upon it's physical traits, and then have them fight. It has simple basic rules, but tons of optional advanced rules, and plenty of possible variants. The main complaint is that it's sample battles and setting assumes the same set of toys the author had, which probably will not be the case. Still, it seems perfect for introducing your kids to wargaming. April fool indeed.

Fuzzy Sooper Heroes takes this idea and encourages you to mod your toys liberally. Add a cape & mask, and suddenly they get a whole bunch of cool extra abilities, and an interesting attempt to implement a moral code. This means that games involving sooper heroes are more likely to feature one-on-one fights and a certain degree of roleplaying, as players have to learn to play fair and get along OOC to make the chivalry point rules work. It all seems designed to segue neatly into playing full RPG's. This is one joke that definitely has serious applications.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 3/8


April fools Faxions: Oh boy. Some philosophies are just too out there even for people in the planescape universe to take seriously. That's quite an achievement. April fool. The kind of april fool you could well include into your game if you handled it right, but nevertheless, this is primarily intended for humour's sake. Handle with caution, especially if your players are sensitive or humourless and involved in the industries parodied by this.

The Beautification League think that aesthetics are all-important, morality is irrelevant. Of course, there is still a degree of internal dispute, but most are not keen on the current chaotic and frequently spiky decor of Sigil. They may be annoying, but they can spot secret doors and hidden compartments like no-ones business with their keen sense of the out of place. Thats a benefit worth acting like a snooty fashionista for in my book.

The Free Flora Collective is a group of sentient plants fighting for their rights. This isn't making much headway in sigil, where people have no trouble treading on anyone whop doesn't stop themselves being walked over with force, and the biggest plant, razorvine, is not a valuable member of society. I lack the wit to come up with suitable plant related puns for a shaft filk at the moment, so I don't feel inclined to support their cause.

The Herbivorous Assembly think that the most humane and healthy thing for intelligent beings to do is stop eating animals and live in harmony with them. This ironically puts them in direct conflict with the FFC above. Develop synthetic foods to solve the problem.

The Wizards of the Black Teddy are an order of scantily clad dominatrix wizards, wielding the power of cheesecake to their advantage. Sounds more like a kit than a faction, given it's narrowness. Still, I'm sure they have no shortage of men seeking to be "auxiliary members". They shouldn't expect to get the faction benefit though, no matter how skimpy the leather thongs they're wearing.

The Apathetic Alliance are the Bleak Cabal on steroids. They can't even be bothered to rationalise the futility of the universe, and just sit around doing sod-all. They won't even notice if you attack them with nonmagical weapons, such is the strength of their apathy. This would obviously be pretty broken in a serious game, especially if you min-maxed them by pumping their wisdom up to 18 to mitigate their drawback. But surely no serious DM would allow that. Maybe, but don't call me Shirley.


Paranoia skips two editions and goes straight to number 5. Is it still funny? That's for you to decide.


Bards on the run: More filking. Some fairly obscure choices to mock this time. I can only recognise two off the tunes offhand. Wait a minute, is that the American national anthem? Ouch, man, ouch. Even Magic:the Gathering doesn't deserve that. So yeah, this is as excruciating as ever, while also managing to be moderately topical. April fool.


Paths of power: Back to the serious stuff. Now this is one of the more impressive attempts to rework the D&D magic system into something a little more literary feeing. It's been rather a while since they really tried altering the magic system, and the usual request, which they resolutely ignore, is for a spell point system like most other games use. This gets rid of the artificialness of having casters forget spells, while still constraining their options on a day to day basis. Spells are divided into paths, similar to rolemaster but a bit less regimented, with some paths having multiple or no spells in a particular level, and many spells appearing on more than one path. This is a feature, not a bug, with forking from one path to another being a good way to pick up cool new stuff without an external teacher, via scientific extrapolation. This has a whole bunch of interesting emergent effects, and many of them are spelled out in the article, showing they've really thought about this one, and hopefully done a bit of playtesting. I think this actually qualifies as a classic article, with both neat fiction, and very adventurous crunch. Don't see nearly enough of those these days. Ok, so it'd need a whole new campaign ( or at least region of the world where everyone does things differently) to really take advantage of it, but that's not insurmountable. Hopefully at least a few people tried this one out, given the demand for stuff like this.

 

[Orius]

I think this actually qualifies as a classic article, with both neat fiction, and very adventurous crunch. Don't see nearly enough of those these days. Ok, so it'd need a whole new campaign ( or at least region of the world where everyone does things differently) to really take advantage of it, but that's not insurmountable. Hopefully at least a few people tried this one out, given the demand for stuff like this.

I suppose the article was popular enough, because a stripped-down version of the system later appeared in the Wizard's Spell Compendium, in the appendix. I've always wanted to make use of it somehow, sort of like using them as the basis of courses offered by various magic academies. But the game has a crapton of spells which doesn't make it any easier. And 3e also complicates things a little bit by making little rules changes and adding in new features to the standard magic system like metamagic. Not to mention how those upstart sorcerers would be affected by the system. Still it's one of those things that's on my campaign to do list (#3!), along with a comprehensive list of herbs and such, another such list for alchemical concoctions, and develop the ideas I have for a magical board game played by the people IMC.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 4/8


The game wizards: Bah. It's the Player's option books. If Unearthed Arcana was AD&D 1.5 edition, this is definitely 2.5. And this is precisely the point where they started to lose me, back in the day. Quite a bit of that can be attributed to this first teaser. Goddamn critical hit tables. We hatses them, and the havoc they inflict upon our painstakingly developed characters, yesss. Get back to Rolemaster where you belong. The fact that all this was presented as optional made me instantly decide that I wanted no part of this, and was going to refuse to buy it, and any further supplements that required the stuff therin. Maybe I'd have chosen differently if they'd teased something else, like the various combat options that give fighters more tactical choice rather than showcasing the bad things that are likely to happen to you. So in my case this was a very definite marketing misstep. Whether this was one of the things that hastened their commercial decline overall I'm not sure, but it can't have had a particularly positive effect on overall sales, and did quite a bit to split the userbase and cause flame wars. So this is another historical turning point I'm not particularly happy to have reached, especially as there's going to be plenty more S&P articles before 3e arrives.


Eye of the monitor: Zeb Cook is our sole reviewer this month, trying to maintain links with TSR while also adapting to his computer programmer job. Once again, the job falls to the person who is least busy, quite possibly at the last minute. No back and forth banter this time, I'm afraid.

Doom II doesn't do quite as well as the first one. Yes, in technical terms it improves upon it in nearly every aspect, but it's simply not innovative in the same way the first one was. Diminishing returns and all that, just as with SSI's Forgotten realms games. Plus it needs a pretty high end system to run at a decent speed. You'll need to put a few more tricks in Doom 3 to keep the franchise fresh.

X-Com is a multilayered strategy game where your job is to defend the earth from alien attacks. This required shifting from a sim style setup where time passes and you have to choose where to position your bases and soldiers, and a tactical stage where you actually fight them off. This means that you have to think long and short term, and while you may be bored waiting months of game time for attacks to happen, you won't regret having taken the extra time to prepare. So it's not for everyone, but those that like taking on all these different roles in one will love it.


Rumblings increases in size this month as it has lots of juicy gossip. Dale Donovan is getting a sex change, lycanthropy and alien abductions run rampant through the department, and people are fleeing as chaos sweeps the land. April Fool. Anyway, the hit status of Blood Wars is confirmed. The Jyhad card game, Cyberpunk, and Castle Falkenstein are all getting novel lines. White Wolf is introducing the "masterpiece" HOL to a wider audience. And Steve jackson is combining Lovecraft and Shadowrun with GURPS Cthulhupunk. I don't remember that one at all. What was it like?


The Auld Alliance: Arthur Collins has been contributing articles to the magazine for well over a decade. If anyone knows something about persistence, it's him. So I can give plenty of credibility to advice about keeping a gaming group healthy over years of play from his pen. Game with friends and family, instead of meeting up with people you don't see outside gaming, and might not even like much. Don't be flaky, and get rid of those who are. A few stable people are much better for getting things done than a larger group full of people who only show up half the time. Respect each other, ya sonsofbitches! Make a regular time for the game and stick to it, regardless of how busy life gets. Trade off leadership, or at least give everyone a defined role so you can work together better. Customise things to fit you. And if things lose their spark, a change is as good as a rest. Sounds good for most kinds of social activity where the socialisation is actually where most of the fun lies. I approve of this message. Theoretical analysis can not compete with real world practical experience.

 

[prosfilaes]

And Steve jackson is combining Lovecraft and Shadowrun with GURPS Cthulhupunk. I don't remember that one at all. What was it like?

It wasn't like Shadowrun at all. They combined the Cthulhu Mythos with GURPS Cyberworld, a relatively low technology tyranny (more punk than cyber, as per the SJGames FAQ). I always found GURPS Cyberworld to be too gritty for me to think it enjoyable, and the same carries over to GURPS Cthulhupunk.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 5/8


Role-playing reviews: Masque of the red death tries to tone things down to accommodate modern day gothic horror, but still retains far too much of the D&D class and level system to make it work properly. These flaws are not immediately apparent though, and in terms of layout it's pretty great, resulting in Rick giving it a 6 pip rating. Style!

Parlainth: The forgotten city sees Earthdawn picking up pace and setting detail, with a nicely detailed citybook. Robin Laws gives it plenty of history, and makes it into a dungeon crawl with a sense of humour and plenty of opportunities for roleplaying. Rick's main complaint is exactly that, it's not sure if it wants to be completely serious as worldbuilding. Bah. TSR have certainly been guilty of that too. Glantri vice, anyone?

Red steel turns D&D's magic level up a good deal, ironically making spellcasters less essential in the process. The new races are pretty good, the kits are cool and well integrated, and the constant need for new sources of Cynnabryl to stave off nasty withdrawal symptoms keeps adventurers constantly busy and with plenty of potential opportunities and enemies. I like this a good deal more than Masque, and it has stood the test of time better mechanically. (apart from the CD, which was pretty meh even at the time, and now just seems embarrassing to my trained ears in terms of sound design. ) Rick just wishes there was more detail on the setting, which I can quite agree with.

Denver, the city of shadows gets a review that is largely Rick taking the piss out of Nigel Findley in an affectionate manner. The product is packed full of IC dialogue of shadowrunners trading off quips and information. This makes it an entertaining read, but tricky to find stuff in a hurry. Typical mid 90's writing flaw then.


Fiction: Dead man's curse by Roy V Young. An excerpt from one of their new novels? They haven't done that since Quag Keep & Trollshead. This is a very unwelcome stepping up of their co-ordinated promotional recycling crap. It's another goofy april story as well, which is a bit much after last month. On the plus side, it is edited in such a fashion that the excerpt still works as a standalone story, and the finale is genuinely laugh out loud worthy. So this is another case where I have to return a mixed result because I can see ever more of the sausage grinder that's actually producing this stuff, and looking behind the scenes isn't particularly pleasant. This is another case where I seriously hope they don't make a habit of this.


Forum: Jon Larie praises the idea of mashup games, but warns that you should be prepared to houserule after the fact if a combination turns out to be gamebreaking. In situations like this, GM agency is more important than ever.

Jason Hubred justifies the recent rise in minis prices. Yes, we know there are good reasons, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. It's still a pain from a consumer end, however you slice it.

Ann Wilson tells Stephen Jessup not to try railroading characters into novel plots, especially if they're the wrong level and party mix. That'll result in things turning out differently even if they try to play along.

Steve Shawler complains about the recent tendency towards railroading and statistical sloppiness in TSR modules. The backlash is building, the backlash is building. Damn right too. We want choices in our adventures, not to watch some NPC's having all the fun. Keep that to the novels.

Donald Hoverson suggests another thing that would become standard next edition. AC should have a base of 10 and go up, not down. These are really starting to add up and still 5 years to go. I wonder how many more canonised houserules we'll spot in here.

Ralf Toth thinks clerics are not the supreme class. Their kits suck, and they're in just as much danger of losing all their powers as wizards, maybe more if they follow a strict deity. They don't get as much love in supplements, do they.

Garry Wilson wants holy warriors for gods other than the same old lawful good stuff. You'll wanna go back to issue 106 mate. That'll give you more than enough examples to draw upon.

Matthew Ferguson continues the magic jar debate. He thinks it is all that compared to becoming undead. Y'know, I think I'd prefer the Shade option. Far cooler, and a lot less destructive of other people's lives.

Steve Collier is another person who thinks clerics can be pretty scary in combat. Ok, they may not stack up to wizards in AoE power, but stuff like hold person, heat metal, animal summoning can really turn the tide. Points of damage are not the only way of determining advantage.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 6/8


Novel ideas: Oohh. This column again. The unloved stepchild of the books department gets to go out in the sunlight for the first time in over a year. Albeit the nasty blasting red sunlight of Athas. Not sure that's such a great deal. On the plus side, it then gets to go to Cerillia immediately afterwards. Yup, here's our first teaser for the Birthright setting. Slightly more traditional than the other campaign worlds they've released recently, it nevertheless tries to change the gameplay quite a bit by putting you in the leadership role right from the start. But as this is the novel department, this isn't to do with the mechanics side. Instead, it's an interview of the guy hired to write the first novel in it. Simon Hawke. He turns out to be quite an interesting person, who's taken a rather idiosyncratic path to get where he is. A name change from the original Russian proved a good career move, making him a more recognisable brand. He's been a musician & DJ before becoming a writer, and still bounces round the room playing music to warm up before writing. He's got a pretty impressive resume of novels, both independent and working in shared worlds. It seems a fairly enviable life, even if he did have to sell out a bit to get it. Looking forward a bit, it seems like he stops producing novels in 2003, although as far as any of the wiki sites know, he's still alive. Early retirement? Health issues? In any case, this is one I pretty much skipped over back in the day, that's actually rather interesting second time around. This is a pretty good example of how you get to make a living in a creative industry.


Elminsters notebook: Kobolds of the Realms get a turn in the spotlight. After Dragon Mountain, it's not as if anyone is going to make the mistake of underestimating them again. Still, they do have trouble going it alone, which is why they work best as minions of something able to do what they can't, mostly spellcasting. (a flaw which will be solved spectacularly next edition) One or two is all you need to massively upgrade their traps, items and general mobility, which is just what you need when using your brains. As usual for this column, there's a ton of little setting details. Various kobold tribes, where they are, how they like to make a living, lots of little bits and pieces for a canon junkie to take advantage of. Pretty standard really. It's still good, but as with anything, sticking to exactly the same formula makes it feel routine.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 7/8


Sage advice is here, despite being missed out on the contents page. Skip is gonna have to do some serious capping of asses for this snub.

How do I deal with the huge XP needed disparities for dragons in council of wyrms (temporarily retire those characters. Make them play their human PC's more. Yes, the biggest problems are at 1st level, where you can't do that anyway. Is it Skip's job to solve all your problems?)

Can planar races take Al-Qadim kits (no, but their kids can if they settle there)

Do optional class awards supplement or replace the group ones (supplement. Otherwise slow advancement would be sloooooow.)

Are racial save bonuses cumulative with the normal ones for high stats. (Yes, but 1 is still a failure. )

What's the experience modifier for having psionics ( a mere +1-2 HD. Not very good differentiation given how much they can improve a character)

Do you need to be able to read to use magical books (yes. But you don't have to be able to write to have your own private code)

What does spellcraft let you do. (Tell if something's magical. Simple enough. )

Can you stack bladesinging with regular specialization (And make elves even more twinked. Skip thinks not. )

How many miles is it from the spire to the gate towns (Indefinite. Not all planes have euclidian geometry. The outlands, for example, has node and vector geometry with randomized travel times between nodes. 3-18 days travel to get to the next adjacent point location, no matter how fast or slow you are. This is a great pain in the ass when you want to be precise. It also means it takes 30-180 days to get to the middle from the gate towns, but only 24-144 to get to all the way to the other side by going round the circumference. Which means pi = .8 in that instance. Now that's alternate physics! )

How does lightning bolt work (with great brutality)

Do allies lose a level when a card says everyone does (yes)

Can you play cards before being forced to discard them (Immediate means immediate. Has you no memory at all)

Which effect happens first if you play more than one (The one you played first. They cannot be done simultaneously)


Curses, Dragonmirth is fooled again by those pesky do-gooders. All seems lost for yamara and co.


From the forge: This month, Ken chooses to have a sci-fi special. It's currently approaching mainstream in terms of TV coverage, with Star trek right in the middle of it's multiple series at once zenith, and Babylon 5 making real waves in redefining how you can handle long running plots on a tv show; while oddly enough, starting to decline in terms of RPG market share. Life is complicated, and saying something as large as an entire genre is becoming more or less popular is not a straightforward thing, with all kinds of subtle demographic shifts within the larger population.

We start out, of course, with the big boys. Games Workshop has a whole bunch of stuff for the familiar 40k universe, plus a new game, Titan Legions, which brings giant mecha combat to the grimdark future. That is indeed pretty heavy metal. Grenadier has competition for them though, with the Future Warriors line getting a game to go with it. It's different, with anticipating your opponent's moves crucial to winning, but whether it has longevity is another matter altogether. Global games also have four minis reviewed from their Legions of Steel game. Two rather sinister looking robots, one with four arms, and two heavily armed aliens. FASA get the best marks, with the Battletech Compendium and Tukayyid Scenario Pack filling in lots of setting and giving you sample scenarios to play out as well. Ral Partha has a couple more mechs for battletech, and also shows us how a minotaur and satyr look in Shadowrun. Pretty funky, really. Heartbreaker Hobbies have two dark legion officers for the Mutant Chronicles game, and two members of the Brotherhood determined to stamp them out. Pretty obvious who they're trying to imitate. Ground Zero Games get Full Thrust reviewed, which sounds vaguely pornographic, but is just a game of space combat. It's another one where you have to issue orders the turn before and guess what the opponent is going to do well, and also take momentum into account. It seems to strike the right balance between easy to learn and having emergent complexity, and has done well enough to get at least one supplement. And apropos of nothing, there's also a Tudor inn so fantasy fans don't feel completely left out, remember, there's plenty of crossover between the two.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 8/8


TSR previews is unreadable this month, for some reason. Even a slight angle on the scanned pages makes the cleanup software not work very well. Oh well, this is one magazine I have in print, so that's not a problem. First up, unsurprisingly, are the expanded and revised Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. More colour, bigger margins, more references to other books, (Gotta collect 'em all) less errata. Go on, give us more money for old rope.

The Forgotten Realms finally gives us info on the Seven Sisters. Like Elminster, they've been mary-sueing round the realms since it's outset. Now you can penetrate a big chunk of the mystery, and find out for sure just how twinked they are. There's also Once around the Realms, by Brian Thompson. Or around the world in 80 days converted to toril. What fun we shall have! :claps:

Mystara expands further on the Red Steel setting, giving the Savage Baronies their own sourcebox, including another silly audio CD. Find out just how common adventurers of various classes are in these wild and magic heavy lands, and just how fragile the current power blocs are. Perfect place for you to carve out a domain of your own.

Ravenloft has Van Richten's guide to the Fiends. They may not be common in the demiplane of dread, (possibly because they actually outclass the evil of most things there and the dark powers are scared of them) but they really do a number on the place when someone summons them in. No surprise that he'd have a run in or two with them under his belt.

Planescape fills in one plane that doesn't quite fit in the big sourceboxes. A Players guide to the Outlands sees Audio CD add-ons come to other gameworlds, this time as an IC artifact. Probably the best use of this idea they managed, even if some of the acting is a bit hokey.

Our generic novel this month is Mus of Kerbridge. The adventures of a mouse made intelligent by a wizard? Hmm. Not too bad an idea. I certainly liked the Dartford Mice stories, and Terry Pratchett's Amazing Maurice. This has potential.

Spellfire gets a booster pack, giving us stats for most of the weird and scary Artifacts in AD&D's history. Rod of 7 parts, eye of vecna, coat of arndt. I'm sure your champions'll be happy to have them.


This issue contains both the best and worst of times. It has both a genuine classic article, and some pretty terrible promotional stuff, and the humour both hits and misses, albeit with slightly more hits than misses. Once again there's enough enjoyable stuff that I don't feel I wasted my money first time around, but it's not by a huge margin. It won't take much of a decline to push me over that edge. The time when I quit first time round grows ever nearer. Let's see if I have the same opinion this time round when I get there.