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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4512296" data-attributes="member: 27780">The Dragon Issue 36: April 1980part 2/2Leomunds tiny hut: How to make a pantheon you can have faith in. AKA I don't like the idea of PC's killing gods, so I'm going to beef up their powers when they aren't on the prime material, reduce your powers when you are on a different plane of existance, and take a potshot at Jim Ward's GMing style while I'm at it. Now try and kill those gods. Truly Len, you are a visionary. (all of these optional rules would later become canon in Planescape) But the god slayers will rise again come 3rd edition. And then fall again in 4th ed. One of those things that obviously comes in cycles. Minarian legends: More cool setting stuff for Divine Right, this time covering the history of the kingdom of Immer, and the old empire it was built upon.  Dragon Grumbles: Ok, welcome to this years comedy central. They're sick of doing this, so its time to sell up and head to the bahamas. April fool. Out on a limbo: Joke letters. Stupid arguments, stupid suggestions, and political potshots. Probably not real. Enjoying your Dragon: How to properly take care of a baby dragon, so it'll take care of you when you're old and grey. (and it's still a baby.) This may be a joke article, but it isn't entirely useless in game terms. New joke monsters, the DM, and the keebler: the first is not statistically legal, while the second is. I don't think I have to explain these to you. The tax man cometh: I think the title says it all. Take their money, more than all of it, and leave them in debt to an organisation that doesn't play fair, and never stops taking. Just like real life. I fail to see the joke here.Meeting demogorgon: You say demogorgon's name. He appears. What do the NPC's in the party do? Roll on this random table to find out. Not that it matters, because you're all going to die anyway. Even converting to worshiping him won't save you. Because our double headed demon lord friend is an admiral crankypants when he's just got out of the abyss in the morning. Bazaar of the ordinary: Another set of 4 ordinary items presented as magical ones, just to confuse people. This months module, a 10 by 10 room. No orc, no pie, just a 10 by 10 room. That's your lot.  Leomunds in a rut: Jokes about footwear.Sage advice: Jokes about the aforementioned herb, in Q&A form. Much eyerolling punnery here. A visit to an interesting place: The best excuse for not handing your homework ever. I'm a D&D character who wished I was somewhere interesting, and found myself in the real world. Campaign mixing sure stirs things up! Another story of a gonzo crossover game. Not sure if this one is based on real events or not, since if anything it's less over the top than the monty haul games. The line between excess and parody of that excess is a thin line indeed. The mongols: Another one of those system free historical articles that seems to be in vogue in this period. And as ever, the most useful thing in it is the bibliography, as there's no way you'll get enough depth in a few pages to do justice to it.  The fantasysmiths notebook: Modifying and painting skeletons. Oooogie boogie boo. They're always going to be a staple of your undead armies, so if you like undead you'll be seeing a lot of these. This article shows you how to make the best of them while keeping the figures anatomically accurate. Which is pretty nice. Giants in the earth: This month, the fictional characters overtwinked Aaaaaaaare. Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood. H.P.Loveraft's Richard Upton Pickman, and Thomas Burnett Swann's Silverbells. . Fighting in the streets: A new scenario for Squad Leader, the German sieges of russian cities in 1942. A short but sweet article that does exactly what it sets out to do.  Experience points to ponder: A system of awarding XP by the amount of damage inflicted, so as to make shares more fair, and allow you to learn from fighting even if you failed to kill them. Which of course takes tons of bookkeeping. I think you know my position on articles of this sort by now. It just isn't worth the bother. Simulation corner: An essay on the development of wargames, from their simple and sketchy beginnings, to increasing crunch as they attempt to be comprehensive and also keep making money out of supplements, to finding out that too much crunch just slows things down and makes things less fun, and creating games designed to be elegantly simple and/or do one very specific thing very well. Which is also an evolution roleplaying games have gone through as well, in the last 3 decades. I wonder, it this one of those natural developmental paths that a media has a tendency to take, like the carnivore vs herbivore size, weaponry and armor race that has taken place at least 5 times in the past? And does the way wargames declined in the past few decades hold clues into the way RPG's will go, and what we could do to stop a similar slide into increasing obscurity, with the exception of 1 big company (games workshop). I think this deserves it's own thread. The DM's right hand man? Once again we look at the subject of using a computer to aid in the bookkeeping for your gaming. This article is written by a (self proclaimed) computer science expert, and goes into a detailed look at just what a computer can and can't do to help you. Obviously it cannot substitute for creativity, and the visuals will be a bit crap. And you have to watch out that it doesn't use up more time working it than it saves. A pretty well thought out and informative article, which neither exaggerates or understates the benefits and problems. I quite approve. The fastest guns that never lived parts I-IV: All the previous articles on this subject collected, plus a few new entries. As they point out, they, like the D&D characters in GitE, are tremendously powerful compared to an ordinary PC, sometimes have special abilities that we have no way of getting, (sigh) and should be used with caution. Maclankhmar - A compromise game: More rather tedious houseruling minutinae by Mr MacKnight. You should have quit this series while you were ahead, instead of overburdening us with detail and running them into the ground. The electric eye: A second computer article in the same magazine. This one focusses on the software aspect of computing. Another article aimed at the absolute beginner, and a reminder that they didn't really have dedicated computer shops yet, plus programs were small enough that their code could fit in a few pages of a magazine and be input by you personally. Which would also remain true for almost a decade yet. Yeah, things have really changed here. I wonder how long it'll be before the first mention of the internet in the magazine. Not until the 90's, I'll wager. Dragons bestiary - The krolli: Ooh. writing and art by Todd Lockwood. I remember that name. He'll be doing plenty of cool stuff in the future. A fairly badass race of flying lizard men. Reviews: Starship troopers (yes, I know the game's been out for a few years, and already got an article here) Mech war 2, a (very crunchy indeed) wargame. And our first computer game review, of Trek-80, a star trek tactical shoot-em-up. A very interesting set of reviews this issue, and nice to see them spreading out into new avenues. I wonder when computer reviews will get their own separate column? And how long it'll be before the magazine stops covering them, for that matter (sigh)  Wormy continues. It's becoming pretty obvious at this point that the magazines are now too big for me to properly digest them mentally in a single sitting. (And they're still only going to get bigger, as well.) So from here on in, I'm going to stop trying to form an opinion on everything, and just concentrate on the articles that I do find interesting (be it because they are good or bad), useful, or parodyable.  The magazine is still full of cool stuff, and it would be a shame if I missed stuff or got jaded with it from pushing through it all too fast.</blockquote>

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