Let's read the entire run

[Echohawk]

We also get another computer game tie-in. Volo's guide to Baldur's gate.

Except that this book was actually titled Volo's Guide to Baldur's Gate II, presumably to tie-in with the PC game Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. But that makes no sense as the title of a book since there was never a Volo's Guide to Baldur's Gate I. The first Volo's book to cover Baldur's Gate was Volo's Guide to the Swordcoast.

Gah! I can't bring myself to read that book. The erroneous "II" in the title bothers me too much.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon: Your official dungeons and dragons magazine (yes, I think that's a bloated byline, and I'm not going to bother to put it on every title section.) Issue 274: August 2000


part 1/7


136 pages. So we've made it to the release of 3rd edition. Definitely an appropriate time for a special expanded issue, as they deliver the 5th biggest one ever. This is also an excellent time for a load of format changes. It also means a price increase by another dollar, to $5.95. They change the typeface of the logo drastically, and the colour scheme is extra red and yellow to match that of the new books. This also means the end of even token coverage of other TSR Products, let alone any other gaming stuff. They don't even get any advertising in, as that has pretty much been taken over by computer games and the odd bit of anime and various stuff. So lots of significant stuff happening then, not all of it pleasing.

In addition to the obvious 3e release material, they have a secondary theme this month. Robin Hood! That's a curiously specific theme, much more so than dragons, undead or elves. And not something they've done before, with only two brief articles in issue 11 & 55, and an editorial in issue 172. You could have done this last edition and I wouldn't have complained. So it looks like they'll have material that will remain useful even after the novelty of the new edition has worn off. That makes me a little less worried that they won't be all self promotion all the time.


Scan Quality: Generally good, but poster & bonus CD material are missing.


In this issue:


Let the games begin: So they've devoted a lot of effort to tightening up the rules, making sure they cover as many situations as possible. How do they demonstrate that first? Telling us how many creatures can fit into a Behir's belly, and how hard it is to cut your way out! Now that's the kind of situation that comes up in actual play, and needs formalising. This makes me giggle, but also demonstrates pretty well how they've focussed more on the universal application and reality simulation aspects of the rules. It's not that you can't just make stuff up, but you have less need too if you don't want too. Course, you've still got to remember where everything is, which will be easier than a 2e game with hundreds of supplements, but still not exactly effortless. Still, humour is a good way to get people to lower their defences. This is a pretty good start to the issue.


D-Mail gets renamed again to Scale Mail. Which is a definite improvement in my opinion. Both punnish, rhyming and hobby appropriate, it just seems to fit with everything else much better, even more than Out on a limb (gods, it's been forever since they called it that) I quite approve.

We start off with someone who's been using quite a lot of 3e's changes as house rules for years. Therefore, he wants to be hired onto their design team. If you were reading the forums over the past couple of years you'll see they took a lot of ideas from there. This is why the revision worked. People felt listened too. Just don't expect to get any money from it.

On the other hand, someone wasn't paying enough attention when they put Tiamat's heads in the wrong order in issue 272, and this makes one reader very cross. It's right there in the D&D cartoon! I quite agree. Shocking sloppiness. It's the little details that make a character recognisable regardless of who draws them. Otherwise how are we to recognise her from any other 5 headed dragon goddess in a police lineup?

And then we have another letter which has spotted an error in Tiamat's statblock. And that's before they even got the rules. This is a problem. Because they're built on formulas, it is much easier to take the writers to task if they screw up. They're going to have to get used to that over the next few years.

A letter from Johnathan M. Richards praising the bag of devouring ecology. It's good to have competition to keep you sharp. No disagreement there.

Praise for Gary for being able to cut through the and just speak his mind in a way other writers can't. Once again, I am in full agreement. it's good to have him around again.

A letter from someone worried that with all the upgrades characters are getting, they'll steamroller monsters now. Well, that's up to the DM, isn't it. Now they have a better idea if a monster is likely to beat a group or not, but they can still put them up against creatures way too powerful for them and see if they realise they should run away.

And finally, someone who's really missed Dragonmirth's absence. That's one thing they really shouldn't get rid of. We all need a little light entertainment after digesting some heavy rules.


Up on a soapbox: Gary loses his picture, but i'm sure most of us know what he looks like by now anyway. And he stops talking about reclaiming words and high concept what is roleplaying questions, for some practical advice on how to be a good DM. Look, listen and learn. Observe your players, and see what they like, observe other DM's, see how they run things, and adjust your play based upon feedback. Really, it's the feedback loop that is the crucial part here. Learning from others helps, but if you can't learn from your own experiences, then you are forever going to be stuck in a crap position in life. And if you don't vary what you do, you won't have the wide base of experiences needed to make an informed judgement in the first place. Just don't do an Orson Welles and get it right first time, then spend the rest of your life finding new ways to do things imperfectly.

 

[LordVyreth]

Let the games begin: So they've devoted a lot of effort to tightening up the rules, making sure they cover as many situations as possible. How do they demonstrate that first? Telling us how many creatures can fit into a Behir's belly, and how hard it is to cut your way out! Now that's the kind of situation that comes up in actual play, and needs formalising. This makes me giggle, but also demonstrates pretty well how they've focussed more on the universal application and reality simulation aspects of the rules. It's not that you can't just make stuff up, but you have less need too if you don't want too. Course, you've still got to remember where everything is, which will be easier than a 2e game with hundreds of supplements, but still not exactly effortless. Still, humour is a good way to get people to lower their defences. This is a pretty good start to the issue.

Of course, that reminds me of one of the sillier 3rd ed rules. First, how many creatures even have Swallow Whole as an option, and second, that if you carve a gaping hole in their chests to escape, "muscular action" fixes it immediately. Even for something like a T-Rex! I understand why they don't want to a giant monster's gullet into a novelty slide, but there had to be a way to do that without giving everyone regenerating stomachs.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 2/7


Profiles drops it's odd capitalisation, but acquires one of those odd foreign letters instead of a proper o. It also splays out over the bottom half of three pages, instead of being formatted in it's own section, so it runs parallel with the letters. This is mildly irritating, and rather gimmicky.

This month's profilee is Jonathan Tweet, designer of Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and now one of the lead designers for 3rd edition. He makes the rather unfortunate misstep of comparing the new ruleset to the pokemon game, saying both involve customizing your character build to fight in battles, and level up your characters as a primary objective. Yeah, that's gonna cause a few flamewars. His optimism about the state of gaming as a whole certainly contrasts with Gary's worries about the aging of the hobby last month. But then, even if tabletop gaming dies, there's still LARPing and computer games which are heavily drawn from TTRPG DNA. And people are still playing lets pretend in all sorts of forms. You've got to be willing to set your criteria broadly and change with the times, otherwise your expectations are bound to be disappointed.


Nodwick's team seem curiously unwilling to get in on the grimdark scene. Guess he gets to keep this magic item for himself.


Dragonmirth is back! Thank god for that. And it's all the more fresh for it's break.


Coming soon returns to being called Preview, although without the TSR, or the s, curiously. Oh well, on with the show.

First, completely obviously, is the new players handbook. No surprise there. Blah blah exhaustively playtested better than ever. That it may be true makes the copy no less tedious to read. Still, you don't have to pay any extra for the character generation software this time around.

Course, you still won't have all the tools needed to play the game. If you can't wait, or just want a more newbie friendly version, you can get the D&D Adventure game boxed set. Course, that really won't hold a candle to the old Moldvay or Mentzer versions in terms of mass market penetration, but they've gotta keep trying. They also have character record sheets, for those of you who like to buy these things instead of printing them off or just drawing them up roughly yourself (which is of course, rather trickier with the higher interlocking crunch quotient of the new edition. )

Their novel lines continue to chug along happily, despite the break in gaming products. Forgotten Realms finally kills off King Azoun IV for good, having faked us out before, in Death of the Dragon. Let the succession wars commence. Dragonlance turns up the heat on their latest conflicts with Draconians in The Citadel by Richard A. Knaak. Flying fortresses? Those never work out well for the people underneath them. I hope they aren't gnome powered.


Shop keep gets renamed Dork Tower. I think that's an improvement, don't you. It certainly allows the writer a little more freedom in the range of his jokes.


One roll to rule them all: Logically, our first proper article is explaining the core mechanic. Most games have had one for over a decade. Hell, even FASERIP did, and that was the mid 80's. But since D&D hasn't had a major revision before, they stuck with the mass of ad hoc subsystems approach long after most designers had realised how much easier a core mechanic makes a game to learn. Well, you've got your wish. Now the real complexity comes in figuring out all the modifiers to apply to your d20 roll. It's not the best of core mechanics, as the odds of success increase in a linear fashion, and very high or low numbers become a foregone conclusion, but at least it's easy to calculate your chances, which is very handy for a DM adjudicating things on the fly. Of course, having made it easy to set things with a 50% chance of succeeding, they then muck with that. Attack rolls generally increase faster than AC, to keep combats from going on forever with escalating hit points. On the other hand, your non favoured saving throws do not keep pace with monster's ability to penetrate them, which means save or suck effects actually become nastier at high levels than in previous editions. Which they'll realise, and seriously nerf them in 3.5, before fixing the math entirely in 4th edition. So this shows that they did have a good idea what they were doing in the short term, but weren't aware of all the long term consequences of their actions. That's life for you. I don't think anyone can really predict more than a few steps ahead where there's thousands of variables to consider.


Playtesting confidential: Of course, some of those problems could have been fixed if they'd playtested high level characters a little more. Despite having over 100 groups going at it for nearly 2 years, they're still going to spot and respond to the problems that come up in low level play and common situations more. Still, it's a lot more than most games manage. This is as much about the technology that enabled this process as the playtesting itself. The internet let them send the rules out to people all over the world, see what issues came up more independently, and revise the rules in response to feedback without spending a load of money printing and mailing out new versions every time. They simply couldn't have run something like this 10 years ago. And if someone broke the NDA, they could simply cut them off without worrying about socialising with them anymore. The notes from individual playtesters are pretty entertaining, with a certain amount of mischief in the parts of the rules they cover. It's a party in here, and they're the ones bringing the noise. When people want to do things for you for free, you enable them, not throw obstacles in their way. And that's one rule they're certainly following this edition. It's hard for this exuberance not to rub off on me.

 

[David Howery]

I never had a chance to play 3E, but I did get all the books (the MM was free, something I won in a drawing from somewhere), and I found it a mixed bag. I did like some of the stuff in it (particularly the revamped AC rules, the D20 base, dropping of percentile strength), was meh about a lot of it, and actively disliked some of it (the artwork especially). What really turned me off of it was the really goofy stuff in armor (spikes? Seriously?) and weapons (double headed axes/swords/flails). I've never been a stickler for realism in D&D, but that was just too much for me...

 

[haakon1]

I never had a chance to play 3E, but I did get all the books (the MM was free, something I won in a drawing from somewhere), and I found it a mixed bag. I did like some of the stuff in it (particularly the revamped AC rules, the D20 base, dropping of percentile strength), was meh about a lot of it, and actively disliked some of it (the artwork especially). What really turned me off of it was the really goofy stuff in armor (spikes? Seriously?) and weapons (double headed axes/swords/flails). I've never been a stickler for realism in D&D, but that was just too much for me...

Funny. I agree completely about the spikey armor and silly weapons, and that kept from trying 3e for a year or two (I stuck with AD&D for about 20 years).

But when I finally tried it, I like it a lot, and I've never been tempted to switch, except to 3.5e.

In practice, spikey armor has never come up in a campaign I've run or played in. The double-headed sword has for an enemy NPC once . . . just think of it as a Darth Maul homage and drop it if it annoys you.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 3/7


Class acts: Ahh, now if any series defined third edition Dragon Magazine, it's this one, with it's continuous cavalcade of player character centric crunch. Prestige classes were Monte Cook's baby, and he has high hopes for them as a way of allowing players to specialise in certain things and get cool different powers at higher level, instead of following the same old patterns; and a way for DM's to flesh out their campaign world and give specific mechanical benefits to belonging to an organisation. You are strongly encouraged to invent your own, and decide carefully which ones from official books are allowed in your campaign. Ha. Your hopes are going to be cru-ushed We get a mention of ideas we would later see fleshed out in Ptolus, and lots of guidelines on how to make your own (mostly cribbed from the DMG, but then, most people wouldn't have that yet, and they're still trying to sell the new edition to us.) This is a pretty significant bit of historical data. And let's face it, they might not be perfect, but they're better than Kits, since they're not mutually exclusive, scale better, and there's a genuine balancing cost for taking them.

So having described prestige classes, they get straight in on the act and give us a new one in the magazine. They're certainly taking this much more seriously than they did for kits. It took them what, until 1993 before the magazine caught on to putting them in regularly. Our first new idea is The Mystic. Vanilla name, and a rather awkward implementation, as they get lots of new spells and abilities, but don't advance in spellcasting level, or gain higher level spells. They'd be neat for a one level dip, but any more than that, and you'd rapidly become horribly suboptimal. This is an excellent example of how they aren't fully experienced in how 3rd ed's rulesystem works, with all the synergies, progressions, and knock-on effects that you have to take into account when designing a character. They may seem cool, but I pity da fool who just jumps into this one, instead of shopping around for the good prestige classes. It'll be interesting to see how soon people figure out that some of these are inadvertently over or underpowered, and start refining their designs in response.


Ridley Scoffs at danger: In which Justin Whalin doesn't come off too bad, but the director of the movie once again comes off as in way over his head, trying to make things work despite a limited budget and dubious directiorial skills. It's obvious that both of them wanted it to be a success, since they were some of the first people involved in the production, and I'm not sure at what point most of the people involved will try to play this down on their CV. Googling doesn't seem very helpful with answering this. I guess that shows they didn't talk about it much after it flopped.


Steal from the rich: Robin hood, robin hood, riding through the glen. Robin hood, robin hood, with his band of men. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Oh yes. This is an interesting setting for a campaign. Although maybe not one that's best suited to D&D, given that the story is notoriously magic light as myths go. Well, it is less than a millennium old, and firmly grounded in a specific period of history. And this first article fills you in on the late 12th/early 13th century period where this would have taken place, if it did happen. It turns out that there were plenty of reasons for people to be pissed off at authority at the time, and sherwood forest wouldn't be a bad place for them to hang out, as it's big enough to hide in, but close to a major trade route to rob from. This article is fairly dry, but it gets the facts across in a compact, system light form, and makes it very clear that people don't just become outlaws in a vacuum. If you want a similar figure to make sense in your campaign, you need to set up an enemy for them to rebel against, and a place it would make sense for them to hide out in. So this is a solid starter to their second theme, that'll hopefully allow them to add more crunchy or fantastical elements in the next articles.


Wolfsheads: And here we get out the shoehorn, and try and fit our topic into 3e rules. Actually, since 3e has a greater selection of martial character types, and fewer alignment restrictions, it probably handles this better than 2e without a load of house ruling and stripping away powers, at least as long as the characters are low level. The expert, commoner and aristocrat classes'll definitely get a good workout here. In addition to the class advice, which is fairly obvious, we also get 4 new feats for people who want to become kickass bowmen, DC guidelines for various trick shots, and rules for using ranged weapons as improvised melee ones. So they're showing you how easily the rules cover these eventualities, and also how feats allow you to break the regular rules, but in very specific ways. (that you quite possibly won't be able to get enough of for your character concept. ) This definitely shows off the strengths of 3e while glossing over the difficulties, which is exactly what they ought to be doing at this point. So once again, they manage to win over my skepticism with enthusiasm and cool stuff.


The great greenwood: We have our time, we have our rules, now for the place. A big sepia toned map of Nottingham, Sherwood forest, and the surrounding environment. Everything is crossreferenced on the grid and easy to find. 23 locations are described, including some that are important to the stories, but off the map. It does feel a bit strange seeing real places that you can still visit today get the mythic treatment, which just goes to show how well grounded the stories are, and likely that there were real world events which inspired them. The UK does have thousands of years of history, which is pretty well documented compared to most of the world, and every village has it's own stories and landmarks that stem from the strange things that have happened in their past. This is vast amounts of plot fodder to a knowledgable DM, and I've pulled ideas from my big book of local myths more than once. So this article is pretty interesting, and has quite a bit of worthwhile information in it, along with a look at how they handle demographics in 3e, which includes a rather higher proportion of mid level characters to go with the much easier advancement rate. For people who were picking the magazine up at the time, before the DMG and MM had been released, there's quite a lot of general information to draw from this issue, and this article plays it's part in that.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Love the theme song, the show, and the actors! But I thought, and still do, that Robin Hood was just wrong for D&D! At least, not without a lot of house ruling. (Pointing an arrow at the Xteenth level Sherrif will just make him yawn! )

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 4/7


Rogues & Royal: Finally, we have the big list of dramatis personae. The Robin Hood legend is very much an ensemble story, with different people getting more or less prominence in different retellings, sometimes being skipped entirely. So there's a lot of ground to cover here, and I'm sure some people will disagree with these stats. Let's get cracking, show them a few more examples of how different characters can be under the new edition.

Robin of Loxley is the most probable historical source for the Robin Hood myth. A middle class small landowner siding with peasants against the upper class? We must make an example of him! Trouble is, everyone loves a good common folk against The Man story, even most of the people who are part of the 1%. Hell, even tyrannical dictators will portray themselves as common folks made good who freed the common people from out of touch aristocracy the previous regime. Anyway, he's split fairly evenly between ranger and rogue, with all his feats enhancing his longbow skills. He should be very capable of shooting you from the trees where you'll have trouble attacking back. (unless you set the forest on fire ) And what knight would do a thing like that?

Robert of Huntingdon is the other big candidate for the Robin Hood mantle. A framed nobleman trying to clear his name, he's not so good at the woodsman part of being an outlaw, but is just as good with a bow, using his fighter bonus feats for all sorts of stunt shooting. We even get an example of how both could fit into the same continuity. Very interesting indeed.

Little John has an appropriately high Str and Con, and specialisation in the quarterstaff. He might be able to beat Robin in a fight, but still follows him loyally. Which makes him very useful indeed. Even a few extra people make everyday life a lot easier in a community.

Maid Marian is rather lower level than most of the men, which means yup, she's gonna need rescuing alright. She actually seems more prone to executive meddling as well, with different authors dramatically changing her backstory and personality. Well, when you're a tacked on love interest, that's the kind of crap you have to deal with. At least you got to be the main star in one TV series.

Will Scarlet is very much the Lancer in Robin's team, capable but sometimes rebellious. Eventually, he pays for that impetuousness with his life. Lieutenants eh? Who'd have 'em. Seems like they're always trouble in stories. Someone ought to make a pill to treat grand vizier syndrome before it gets out of hand.

Friar Tuck is a multiclass cleric/rogue, which means he can keep up quite nicely with the others despite his girth, and leaven his spiritual guidance with plenty of humour. That's definitely a lesson many players of clerics need to learn. You get more worshippers with healings than smitings, and you certainly don't have to hold yourself above your flock.

Alan-a-Dale doesn't play a big part in the story, wandering in and out, and sometimes being the narrator. However much a musician may agree with the general cause, they're still going to be of more use getting the public on your side than hanging out in the forest for months at a time worried about getting caught.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is the villain everyone remembers and loves to hate. Probably because he was the one that was most successful at hunting them down, before he got killed in turn. He sure does have a lot of cross class skills. In fact, I'm pretty sure they don't add up. Tut tut. Shoulda given him a few levels of Expert so he could legally be the well rounded human being you'd like him to be.

Much the Miller's son is the nice but dim guy who pretends to be completely innocent about Robin's whereabouts, but is actually helping him out on the sly. As a perfect example of the common man they're trying to protect, he helps to ground the outlaws. I know several adventuring groups that could do with a similar reminder.

Hugo de Rainaut is the corrupt abbot who actually appears in more old stories than the Sheriff, but somehow fell out of fashion over the centuries. What's up with that? I know Disney can do a decent evil clergyman. (frololololol lololol lololo ) Maybe it's because the conflict's not personal for him, he's just a greedy git. Or maybe it's because abbot isn't as cool a title as sheriff. Who can say.

Sir Guy of Gisburn is the Abbot's own Starscream, an ambitious but cowardly chappie who'd like to be in charge, but to be honest isn't nearly smart enough to pull it off. Like Prince John, even if he did succeed, he wouldn't be able to hold onto that power. Such a tragedy

King Richard the Lionheart is generally represented as heroic, but you do have to wonder about someone who spent so much time and effort avoiding his responsibilities at home to go kill people. Well, it makes for better stories if he was a good guy, just negligent and bound by family loyalty against his own better judgement. Anyway, he's a pretty high level paladin here, so if you can find him, you can probably persuade him to come back and put things right for a while.

Prince John fit the archetype of the weaker scheming brother who'd really like to be in charge, but couldn't handle it when he did get power to a tee. After all, this is the guy who pissed off his noblemen so much they said "Screw this divine right of kings malarkey, we're going to make a treaty saying what a ruler can and cannot do." and started us down the long path to most hereditary monarchs becoming mere sinecures in the modern age. The path to freedom is over the bodies of failed tyrants. Still a battle we have to worry about today, but at least strikes, letter campaigns and DoS attacks don't kill as many people in the process.

Sir Richard of the Lee (partnered with Sir Stuart of the Herring) is a knight who's been stuck in debt to Abbot Hugo, and is sympathetic to Robin's cause. This means he needs helping out. After all, having some friends in higher places makes it much less likely you'll be caught for good.

Baron Isambart de Belame is a dark wizard who was probably tacked on afterwards by people who wanted Robin to have a more supernatural adversary. He'll pull all kinds of tricks to get to Robin and his men. Careful with deals with the devil. You know they'll bite you on the ass in the end.

Sir Roger of Doncaster is his decidedly unpleasant lackey, who almost managed to finish Robin off once. If this were a more supernatural setting, he'd probably have a few levels of blackguard. Guess we'll have to skip the spiky black platemail with glowing red eyes this time.

So this article did take quite a bit of effort to complete, but like the geography article, there was a lot of information here, quite a bit of which I didn't know before. As with arthurian myth, (hmm, playing Robin hood using Pendragon, that's an idea) there's tons of information that the average person doesn't know, and gets left out of many retellings. And since the writers have drawn on sources both old and new, it's obvious they know their stuff. I definitely feel enlightened by this.


Indispensable: In theory, the DM is supposed to be a fair and impartial adjudicator of the fantastical world. If you win you win, and if you lose, you lose. In practice, unless running a tournament module, that is rarely the case. Firstly, when the DM is the person creating the challenges anyway, they will naturally tailor them to the party they're playing with, and most DM's secretly want the PC's to win. You can encourage that by appealing to their sense of story. If they like you personally, you make yourself valuable, or they have long term plans for your character, then they're more likely to fudge to keep you alive, and throw the most interesting plot threads your way. Once again, Robin Laws examines not the rules, but the social contract that underpins these rules, and has become increasingly obvious over the course of 2e as we see more campaigns that want to tell a story, and tell the DM to break the rules to keep the players alive. Essentially what he's doing is pulling what was previously implicit into the light, so we can consciously manipulate it. Which will have all kinds of consequences over the next decade as we see narrativist games designed which include detailed rules for social interaction and the flow of a session, and make relationships more important than physics in how the game universe runs, while causing vast amounts of flamewars in the process. So he's being both exceedingly interesting and rather influential here. While this won't really make it's mark on D&D that much, with encounter based powers, healing surges and action points pacing your adventure more on a scene by scene basis than a real time one being probably the most notable effect on 4e; it's impact on the wider roleplaying world will be quite noticeable. It looks like he's really making his name at the moment, and I'm very interested to see what he contributes to future issues.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 5/7


Plotbending: What a tweest! Yes, it's an article about throwing sudden curveballs in your story, just when the players think they know what's coming. A natural disaster, an alien invasion, an outbreak of war, anything that reminds them that it's a big complicated world out there, and both hero and villain's plans are but leaves in the winds of the universe. Or if you're really cruel, you can do the ghosts & goblins twist and have them think they've almost beaten the villain, only to find they need to go all the way back to get the macguffin, and then do the rest of the quest again, only harder. Or if you have a REALLY clever villain, they could just be spreading rumors about a secret weakness they don't have, to send would be heroes on a wild goose chase which'll hopefully get them killed or secretly advance their plans. Or would that just be too cruel, even for players that have solved the Tomb of Horrors? I think I'm willing to risk it, just for the amount of maniacal laughter I could wring from the results. All's fair in love and DM'ing, and I like this article quite a lot.


The hero with 1d1000 faces: This article too is pretty useful whatever edition you choose to play, or even if you're playing a different RPG entirely. After all, the last time they gave us a random adventure generator, it was literally a joke. This is much better, although since it only has 10 options in each section of the plot, it will get repetitive and the players will be able to predict what's likely to happen if it's overused. Still, with 7 sections, some of which you roll on multiple times, getting exactly the same plot will be less than one in a million, just like getting the same dungeon using the ancient random dungeon generator. So this is good not only as an article, but as a means of affirming they still care about their old readers, the ones who were there since the start and never entirely bought into shifting characters to point buy and making everything fit into a big neat story arc. Even with all the 3rd party stuff removed, they still have to balance the demands of people who want to play D&D, only with quite different playstyles.


Fiction: Power and glory by Ben Bova. Orion continues to defy his master and do his best to keep Arthur alive, not sure what effect this will have in the long run, but still determined not to be just a mindless attack dog. Although in the process of doing so, this means he probably kills far more people personally than if he were being a good little assassin. That's being a hero for you. Kill one person stealthily and they won't stop hunting you. Kill hundreds publicly and they give you a medal. My now terminal cynicism aside, this is a pretty good entry in this series, making Orion smart enough to make a difference without having the solution handed to him on a plate, but not enough to get out of his predicament entirely. Things are moving forward for him and arthur, but there's still room for quite a few stories before this vein of myths is tapped out, and he'll have to move onto another incarnation.


Nodwick finally stops going after slavers, and follows up on the GDQ storyline. Into the earth we go.


The bestiary loses it's dragon. Now that's a new one on me. Remember, dragons got you famous. Without them, you're nothing, just a second rate imitator. Anyway, our first bestiary under the new rules is a Greyhawk one, reinforcing that it's going to be the default setting for this edition, and it's a while before that objective gets diluted into meaninglessness. A couple of issues ago we went off to Iuz's lands. This time it's the Pomarj, last given lots of love in issue 167. And it still looks like they're trying to integrate them into the surroundings, rather than this just being a nominal home.

Grimorian are basically slightly more proactive komodo dragons. They bite you once, then let the vile stuff in their mouth do the rest. What's wrong with using the real creature if you aren't going to make any particularly large alterations?

Raknakle are creepy looking rock fae with a decent selection of powers to control their environment and make your life a misery while escaping easily if you attack back. Take out their environment to deal with them.

Skerath are another one that showcase their new poison system, that's more lenient than the old one but still no-where near as weedy as next edition's, as well as the handy concentration check mechanic. Little flying insects, they're quite suitable foes for 1st level characters. Well, the MM won't be out for 2 months. Some people'll be trying to play with just the PH and the stuff in here, so they've got to make it useful.

Skittermaw are yet another low level creature with poison effects. Leading with that many creatures with save or suffer powers certainly sends a message. Since this whole thing feels quite calculated in the changes they've made to the format, turning things full colour, playing up their actions in combat, reducing the size of statblocks while still fitting just as much info in, it does feel like an improvement, at least for now. And they're certainly not a bad collection of baddies to have your first battles under the new system against. Now, if they could just revert the name.


The adventures of Volo loses it's new. Reasonable, I suppose, given the amount of time it's been running. The footnotes move to the bottom of the page, and the whole thing gets ink-spattered in a slightly illegible fashion. Can't say I think this is an overall improvement.

Our topic this month dials back the snark and replaces it with a little prurience. The Stag lass is an interesting little Waterdhavian custom which has definite shades of hazing ritual to it, and involves the consumption of large quantities of alcohol by said lass and the other participants. It has slightly hazy origins, but has come to serve as both a cultural celebration, and a way for young women in a bit of trouble to gain some allies and hopefully a way out via an act of chutzpah. This has the strong air of something stolen and adapted from reality, and is yet another thing that can serve as a minor bit of flavour, or the driver for a particular plot. And as with last issue, it's completely system free, so it doesn't matter if you're planning to convert immediately or not. Is there a calendar in any of the books that marks when all these festivals are, as that would be very useful by this point.