(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Magazine Issue 270: April 2000
part 6/7
The ecology of the gorbel: The immanent edition change seems to have really stepped up the pace of the ecologies. After all, any that use the old rules will have to be heavily rewritten or discarded once 3e arrives, so they want to clear as much of their slush pile as possible. Unsurprisingly for april, we have another monster hunters association one tackling a silly monster. It's also our 5th examination of something in the beholder family, counting gas spores, which Gorbel have quite a bit in common with. So this ecology has quite substantial antecedents. Fortunately, these are some of the weakest of the beholder family, with their tendency to explode when hit, and even these guys can make short work of them with the assistance of a few wands of magic missiles. There are a lot of ecological footnotes on this one, plus a big diagram, which is something we really don't see enough of around here. This is actually rather more serious than the last couple of years entries, but still winds up with lots of quirky bits strewn throughout the writing. Overall, I think he's managed to strike a balance between fun and usability this year.
Giants in the earth: Oh boy. Nodwick has been a comfortable regular for the past couple of years, appearing several times a magazine and getting into our routines in a way Floyd never quite managed, for all it's ambitions. And now he's getting properly statted out. April Fool. Since he does most of the work, Nodwick has almost as many levels as the other three put together, although the henchman class must be pretty puny, because he still couldn't take them in a fight. In fact, none of the characters really work that well ruleswise, making this purely an entertainment piece, rather than something you can actually use in your game without some more work. So this is really an old fashioned whimsy piece, which I would have groaned at in the old days, but seems more tolerable after a couple of years of excessive dryness. Plus it's something I'm sure many of the audience wanted. I think it has an entirely valid place here.
The new adventures of Volo: A very footnotes and illustration heavy entry here, as Volo's main narrative proves a little insubstantial. Ardeep is one area we've visited before in the magazine briefly. As the closest bit of woods to Waterdeep, it's packed with outlaws, elves trying to get back to nature, low level adventurers looking for a rumble, teenagers trying to find a peaceful spot to make out, harpers having secret meetings, etc etc. So in typical Realms fashion, they're all bumping into one another and somehow missing the hidden tomb in the centre of the forest. It's all a little silly. As usual, Ed has put plenty of history behind the strange creatures and things to be found here, with challenges suitable for all sorts of levels. And the snark is stepped up a notch compared to the first few columns. You really are not expected to like Volo, or take him seriously for that matter, and it really does seem like a miracle he's survived this long. In fact, he may wind up pushing it too far and resulting in me becoming more sympathetic to Volo than Elminster. The cool stuff, annoying delivery approach is delivering interestingly mixed results.
New Frontiers: Alternity takes a leaf from the old school magazine, and converts the races from the second most popular game back then. Traveller! That's a nice turnup for the books. Along with a brief explanation of the setting for complete newbies, we also get stats for Aslan, the various droyne castes, hivers, k'kree and vargr, a couple of new bits of equipment and a psionic power. So it gives you just enough to work from, and then points you in the right direction to get more info if that intrigues you. (which at the moment happens to be GURPS Traveller, oddly enough. ) It is a bit crosspromotioney, but doing that for other RPG's is far less annoying than for computer games or books, and a nice callback to the days where they often had an article or two on a game owned by another company. So there is a bit of nostalgia here as well as general education. I do like this overall, though the illustrations are a bit crap for the current age. Now what they need is a boot hill conversion to make the Alternity system a little more generic.
Wizards Live: In addition to all the various live chats, this month, they unveil the official websites for the various discontinued AD&D settings. The Kargatane was the most well known of these, but all of them stayed around for at least a few years, and gave us quite a bit of material before they too succumbed to entropy. Actually, looking at this shows just how much the net has changed in the past 12 years, and why it's a good idea to download stuff and keep real books around. Information on the net isn't eternal and unlosable, any more than any other medium, although it can seem like it in the short term. It's only the ability to copy it really easily that makes it harder to destroy for good. If not enough people care, it'll still be lost to the waves of time. And if print disappears, then civilisation collapses, it'll mean future generations will find it easier to uncover information about the 20th century than the 21st. Very worth thinking about. This is a very good reason to be suspicious of DRM, cloud computing and closed architecture OS's. The more you take control away from end users, the more things can be removed at the whim of a big company or by a single disaster. So yeah, this little article has given me a lot to think about the way our media is developing, and if it's a good or bad thing overall. Now let's see if I can still download some of these site's material from the wayback machine.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finishes off his last dungeon design article before we get to see the final product by talking about what the player's goals should be there. Go in, explore, Kill everything and take their stuff is cool the first few times, but you do need some variety. And if you have a bunch of side-quests and alternate routes that you can complete in nonlinear fashion, you make your players feel like they have meaningful choices, even if the final result will be the same once you've done all of them. In addition, you have to figure out what the rewards are, how many of them are automatic for completion, and how many are optional, and will only be found if the players look in the right places and use their brains to solve puzzles. So this really demonstrates how by knowing the formulas, you can actually wind up increasing the variability of your adventures, because you're consciously aware of all the axes that you could adjust to make things different. Let that be a lesson to all those who think that learning the formal disciplines of your craft will spoil your creativity, whatever artform you're working in. It only will if you let it remove your passion.
part 6/7
The ecology of the gorbel: The immanent edition change seems to have really stepped up the pace of the ecologies. After all, any that use the old rules will have to be heavily rewritten or discarded once 3e arrives, so they want to clear as much of their slush pile as possible. Unsurprisingly for april, we have another monster hunters association one tackling a silly monster. It's also our 5th examination of something in the beholder family, counting gas spores, which Gorbel have quite a bit in common with. So this ecology has quite substantial antecedents. Fortunately, these are some of the weakest of the beholder family, with their tendency to explode when hit, and even these guys can make short work of them with the assistance of a few wands of magic missiles. There are a lot of ecological footnotes on this one, plus a big diagram, which is something we really don't see enough of around here. This is actually rather more serious than the last couple of years entries, but still winds up with lots of quirky bits strewn throughout the writing. Overall, I think he's managed to strike a balance between fun and usability this year.
Giants in the earth: Oh boy. Nodwick has been a comfortable regular for the past couple of years, appearing several times a magazine and getting into our routines in a way Floyd never quite managed, for all it's ambitions. And now he's getting properly statted out. April Fool. Since he does most of the work, Nodwick has almost as many levels as the other three put together, although the henchman class must be pretty puny, because he still couldn't take them in a fight. In fact, none of the characters really work that well ruleswise, making this purely an entertainment piece, rather than something you can actually use in your game without some more work. So this is really an old fashioned whimsy piece, which I would have groaned at in the old days, but seems more tolerable after a couple of years of excessive dryness. Plus it's something I'm sure many of the audience wanted. I think it has an entirely valid place here.
The new adventures of Volo: A very footnotes and illustration heavy entry here, as Volo's main narrative proves a little insubstantial. Ardeep is one area we've visited before in the magazine briefly. As the closest bit of woods to Waterdeep, it's packed with outlaws, elves trying to get back to nature, low level adventurers looking for a rumble, teenagers trying to find a peaceful spot to make out, harpers having secret meetings, etc etc. So in typical Realms fashion, they're all bumping into one another and somehow missing the hidden tomb in the centre of the forest. It's all a little silly. As usual, Ed has put plenty of history behind the strange creatures and things to be found here, with challenges suitable for all sorts of levels. And the snark is stepped up a notch compared to the first few columns. You really are not expected to like Volo, or take him seriously for that matter, and it really does seem like a miracle he's survived this long. In fact, he may wind up pushing it too far and resulting in me becoming more sympathetic to Volo than Elminster. The cool stuff, annoying delivery approach is delivering interestingly mixed results.
New Frontiers: Alternity takes a leaf from the old school magazine, and converts the races from the second most popular game back then. Traveller! That's a nice turnup for the books. Along with a brief explanation of the setting for complete newbies, we also get stats for Aslan, the various droyne castes, hivers, k'kree and vargr, a couple of new bits of equipment and a psionic power. So it gives you just enough to work from, and then points you in the right direction to get more info if that intrigues you. (which at the moment happens to be GURPS Traveller, oddly enough. ) It is a bit crosspromotioney, but doing that for other RPG's is far less annoying than for computer games or books, and a nice callback to the days where they often had an article or two on a game owned by another company. So there is a bit of nostalgia here as well as general education. I do like this overall, though the illustrations are a bit crap for the current age. Now what they need is a boot hill conversion to make the Alternity system a little more generic.
Wizards Live: In addition to all the various live chats, this month, they unveil the official websites for the various discontinued AD&D settings. The Kargatane was the most well known of these, but all of them stayed around for at least a few years, and gave us quite a bit of material before they too succumbed to entropy. Actually, looking at this shows just how much the net has changed in the past 12 years, and why it's a good idea to download stuff and keep real books around. Information on the net isn't eternal and unlosable, any more than any other medium, although it can seem like it in the short term. It's only the ability to copy it really easily that makes it harder to destroy for good. If not enough people care, it'll still be lost to the waves of time. And if print disappears, then civilisation collapses, it'll mean future generations will find it easier to uncover information about the 20th century than the 21st. Very worth thinking about. This is a very good reason to be suspicious of DRM, cloud computing and closed architecture OS's. The more you take control away from end users, the more things can be removed at the whim of a big company or by a single disaster. So yeah, this little article has given me a lot to think about the way our media is developing, and if it's a good or bad thing overall. Now let's see if I can still download some of these site's material from the wayback machine.
Dungeoncraft: Ray finishes off his last dungeon design article before we get to see the final product by talking about what the player's goals should be there. Go in, explore, Kill everything and take their stuff is cool the first few times, but you do need some variety. And if you have a bunch of side-quests and alternate routes that you can complete in nonlinear fashion, you make your players feel like they have meaningful choices, even if the final result will be the same once you've done all of them. In addition, you have to figure out what the rewards are, how many of them are automatic for completion, and how many are optional, and will only be found if the players look in the right places and use their brains to solve puzzles. So this really demonstrates how by knowing the formulas, you can actually wind up increasing the variability of your adventures, because you're consciously aware of all the axes that you could adjust to make things different. Let that be a lesson to all those who think that learning the formal disciplines of your craft will spoil your creativity, whatever artform you're working in. It only will if you let it remove your passion.
The framing device is another mini encounter, with a whole bunch of monsters, and several environmental hazards that are facilitated by the minis chosen. Very much of a kind with the short linear dungeons that would become more common next edition. This doesn't really turn me on, so I don't want to spend much time with it. 
Anyway, here we get shots of all the main characters, and several of the sets. Ironically, the outside bits look faker than the inside shots, which were filmed in cool real world eastern european buildings. Another demonstration of how practical effects date less than CGI. Most of the clothes don't look too bad at this resolution, aside from the Dwarf, and the Wayans ridiculous earflaps. And hey, at least they'e trying for a bit of racial diversity. I still wonder why they didn't include a cleric on the team though. Did they really think that would be too uncool or a hard sell to a wider audience? But those are small nitpicks compared to the ripping other people have already given this. We shall have to see if I can build up to that kind of frothing fury. 
lays super mario bros theme: They're pretty versatile. Raw, cooked or used to make a dye. I wonder if eating too many gives you orange pee. 
