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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4474498" data-attributes="member: 27780">The Dragon Issue 19: October 1978 36 pages. The price goes up to $2.00. Which is vaguely sucky, but thats economics for you. Convention season continues, with Gen Con. Gen con turned out to be less impressive than origins this year. Still, it also expanded quite a bit, and also had to face up to the logistical problems in feeding and accommodating that many people. I suppose that's another drawback of being an expanding hobby. It's interesting to note that the term "hack and slash gaming" hasn't been invented yet, with the editor using "hack and chop" instead. The stereotypes of gamer play might be pretty similar to modern day, but the vocabulary and in jokes to describe them still haven't built up properly yet. In this issue: The battle for Snurre's hall: Mentioned last issue, this is the actual play for the Origins tournament that would be developed into the GDQ adventures. As has been hinted, this relied heavily on tactical thinking for survival, as giants are rather powerful, while maintaining the kill everything ethos. An advert for the previously mentioned Giant modules. Were these the first TSR module adventures ever? It's certainly an epic way to start off the concept, even if the individual modules are only 16 pages long. Oh well, like everything else good, there would be plenty of mediocre imitations to follow. How many ettins is a fire giant worth: Yet another perspective on the epic module series, this time focussing on the scoring aspect of competitive tournament gaming. So much for there's no winners and losers as long as everyone has fun. We also see the beginning of the regulations to ensure consistent GM'ing in tournament play that would go on to stifle the RPGA in future years. Still, at this point, its obvious they are needed, as con games are quite a different experience to regular campaigns. Player personalities: After that burst of new epic articles, we go back to the old trope of what kind of players have you got? Not a very good one, as it tries to distill everything down to 8 archtypes, without the nuance to make this model properly all-inclusive. "Treasures" for gamma world: Another random roll table, largely comprised of modern stuff that would seem rare, valuable and strange in a postapocalyptic setting. A good reminder that a big chunk of modern electronic commodities such as CD's, mobile phones, laptops, etc hadn't been invented back then. Ahh, retro-futurism. How strange you can seem.More of the history of gamma world, both in and out of game. Another article that does about what you'd expect. The lowdown on wishes: You give PC's ultimate power, they will abuse it, or at least use it in a way that the GM considers detrimental to the overall fun of the game. So having put wishes into the game, people immediately set out to put limitations and risks on them. You really ought to think these things over before you put them in the game, so you don't have to nerf them later. Planning creative treasurers: More common sense setting development, such as giving creatures treasures that they can actually use, and are appropriate to their nature. It seems elementary today, yet you'd be surprised how often this advice isn't used. The mythos of Australia: Yet another expansion for G<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />G&H. I suppose its one of those things that are easy to do, and is always in demand, so they'll keep making them until they run out of real world mythologies to cover. Since they haven't invented splatbooks yet, so they need something else to fill the pages. Systematic Magic: A second attempt to divide spells up according to theme and effects. Not the same set that specialist wizards would later be divided into, although since it's working from first principles, there are some similarities, and they make the same mistake that 3.0 psionics would later, by assigning different prime requisites to different fields. Overall, this particular article is a failed experiment, since it was never taken up, and is notable largely as a curiosity of history and parallel evolution in the way that trilobites are. The fastest guns that never lived part III: More TV gunslingers for boot hill. As with anything of this type, the law of diminishing returns sets in, and these guys are considerably less famous than the ones in the first article. Keep this up, and you'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel in no time. A review of gamma world: Most notable for digressing into an extensive rant against the kind of people who think that magic and technology should remain separate in literature, citing Arthur C Clarke, and lots of other examples to show that the line between advanced technology and magic in books is a very tenuous one, particularly in terms of their position in the plot. He does like the game, by the way, and intends to incorporate its ideas extensively into other RPG's. An all the more entertaining review for its slightly unprofessional tone. Spell determination for hostile magic-users: Spellcasters shouldn't just unleash their highest level damaging spells one after another in a fight. They ought to mix high and low level ones, and damaging and utility ones intelligently. After all, if they blow their wad straight away, they might be caught with their pants down in a later encounter that day. (its pleasing that the idea of the 15 minute workday then rest doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone yet) It makes things much more fun if each enemy uses different tactics. And if you have to resort to randomising this every once in a while, so be it. Determining the location of treasure: Another random table for when you don't want another boring treasure chest in the middle of the room, and are out of ideas. Fiction: Footsteps in the sky. A supernatural coming of age story in which everyone in the protagonists family has better special powers than him, and his attempts to prove himself regardless.  You've probably read something like it before, and its pretty meh. Fineous fingers and Wormy are both particularly climactic this issue. A fairly good issue. Going to the recent conventions and getting a visceral sense of how the hobby is expanding, and how many fans they have seems to have infused the writing staff with a greater level of excitement than usual. This really carries through: despite a few duff articles, their confidence has once again increased, as they produce work that would be remembered well 30 years later. How long before that turns into arrogance and hubris, which is somewhat less likeable to read about? We shall have to see.</blockquote>

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