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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4471628" data-attributes="member: 27780">The Dragon Issue 17: August 197840 pages. They maintain their increased size despite not being a special issue, which means they have lots of articles in this one. Despite this, they don't feel they are getting enough good ones, and exhort their readers to send more stuff in. After all, to expand, you need more material. The printing presses are a never sated monster. A feeling I'm starting to know all too well. In this issue:Vampires in the dungeon: Yeah, vampires have a whole range of cool powers. So play them smart. Make the characters suffer, hitting and running from cracks in the floor, constantly watched and harassed by vermin, never knowing if some of their number are charmed and will turn on the others at a crucial point, etc etc. Now isn't that much more fun than I roll to hit, roll for damage, he rolls for hit and damage, back and forth until someone dies. And if you kill them all, you can make them roll up new characters, and have them face their old ones, now among the ranks of the undead. Isn't that nice. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Jousting in D&D: Another little independent subsystem based upon an attack and defense type matrix. Not too bad a one, and it helps in fighting without killing each other, which would otherwise be very likely in D&D. Review: Dragonlord. A pretty favourable review of the wargame, with an extensive explanation of how to play it. Faceless men & clockwork monsters: A an actual play of a D&D/metamorphosis alpha crossover run by Gary. Lengthy and quite gonzo, with a pretty happy ending, as the adventurers find their technological opponents have no defense against their magic, and wind up becoming heroes in short order. A wizard with a difference: A set of variant specialist wizard types. Not particularly balanced, I'm afraid. The AD&D players handbook! The second part of the trinity is now with us. Soon the new game will be complete. Sights and sounds in D&D: More random tables, this time for adding visual flavour to your dungeons. Another sign that they're starting to pay more attention to the setting, even if it's expressed in a different way to modern games. Another set of joke monsters: unkillable joke annoyance, the munchkin; plus scholars and crs'tchen. My eyes, oh how they are rolling. The monk and bard in Dungeon!: An expansion for the boardgame. Does exactly what it says on the tin. Tesseracts: Building hypercubic and other non-euclidian dungeons, making Escher proud, and mapmakers very confused, while maintaining internal consistency in your areas. Yeah, this is cool stuff, particularly to someone mathematically inclined like me. Its a fantasy game. Of course you should make the laws of physics suffer. Another article full of tactical advice for OGRE: Detailed breakdowns of how to use each unit make this a pretty good one. Boredom and the average D&D dungeon: Another sign of their growing attention to setting, they advise you to do things like themed dungeons full of monsters and items derived from particular cultures and creature types, to stop it from getting samey. Ok, so its hardly an "ecology of", but it's definitely further advancement in that direction. A short history of admanite (sic) Yes, its the even more uber than mithril metal, yet to be spelled the way it will in later years. Has a generic backstory of how it was discovered that you can drop into your game. Ahh, power creep, how easy it is to recognise thee in retrospect. Angels in D&D: Bears little relation to what would become D&D's angel analogues, the devas, apart from having pretty much the spells you would expect from bibilical angels. Encourages you to treat them with the respect they deserve, not just as another monster. Not the most scintillating or original of articles. Still, good to see they're not avoiding christian themes outright. (I look forward to seeing the BADD controversy as reflected through the eyes of the magazine)Natural armor for monsters in Monsters! Monsters!  Another miscellaneous expansion that mostly adds extra power to the creatures involved. Ho hum. Fineous fingers and Wormy continue their respective plots. Review: Warp war. Another review that reads more like an advert. They really do need to get hold of some more analytical reviewers. This is definitely an area that needs improvement. Another issue that among the dross, has quite a bit of really good stuff, and shows definite pointers for the direction that D&D would go in the future, and the setting/rules tropes that would come to define it. Overall, quite a good issue.</blockquote>

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