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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4525369" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 42: October 1980Part 2/2Leomunds tiny hut: Woo!! An extensive article on the workings of the inner planes, and traveling too and from them. I've been looking forward to this. As is often the case, Len's conception of the subject differs substantially from Gary's on several points. (and interestingly, while Gary's vision would take precedence in AD&D, and on to the planescape setting, this version would be a substantial influence upon the one in the Companion set of BD&D) Most notable is that the positive and negative planes are referred to as material ones, not energy ones, and both they and the plane of fire can be entered without an immediate horrible death. Plus each plane has planetary systems that roughly correspond to those on the prime material, and if a plane is missing a corresponding planet, then the planet on the prime material parallel to that position will lack that element. To go with this, it also includes a basic system for interplanetary travel in D&D, so it's the first hint towards the spelljammer setting as well. A very interesting article, that despite being light on smaller scale details, goes a long way towards making the inner planes playable. Like the alignment article way back in SR6, this provides hints at the other ways the game could have gone, and makes me rather want to explore those alternatives. Giants in the earth: This months characters are Poul Anderson's Tauno Kraken's-Bane, Robert Adams' Sir Geros Lahvohettos, and Gordon R Dickenson's James Eckert, plus two more Norse heroes I've never heard of, Orvar-Odd, and Heidrek. I really should do some more research into scandinavian mythology, since Tolkien apparently drew on it heavily, and it seems to one of the closer ancestors to the fantasy gaming mileu. Readers react to Ringside: Brian Blume talks about the reaction to his game, with rules clarifications, justifications and possible improvements to the game. It all seems pretty reasonable. From this showing, I can't see why he's the one who gets painted as the villain in the Gary leaving TSR conflict, when it's Gary who showed the tendencies towards hyperbole, one true-wayery and unpleasant rants towards things that displeased him. Oh well. I guess that's still to come, and I shouldn't make that decision based on the few articles I've seen from him. Simulation corner: This time, they talk about the concept of "state of the art" as it pertains to wargaming, that it, the new innovations and refinements that are made in the field of game design, and filter outwards to most future games, as their utility is recognized. Games can be objectively better designed, and these guys believe they have become so in recent years. I am skeptical of this. Whether that makes them more fun to play is another matter altogether, as is demonstrated in many modern computer games. The electric eye: Oh, god. Text command based adventure games. I remember those with horror. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing limited vocabularies and grammatical nitpicking that made getting anything done a nightmare. May they remain in the past where they belong. Dragons bestiary:gets 5 monsters this issue, the Quatsch, Necroton, Well Spirits, plus sand and swamp bats. As with the articles, these may not be what is immediately thought of when horror is mentioned, but these guys are pretty freaky. The respective creators certainly have twisted imaginations (or have read books by twisted authors, as many of the ideas behind the monsters are familiar to me) Barsoom in a box: A big review of John Carter, Warlord of mars, a game based upon the books. Considerably more than a wargame, with dueling, scouting, and some social stuff involved, but not quite a full RPG (although like the old Heroquest board game you could probably use this as the framework for combat, and roleplay the events) this sits between firm classifications in an interesting way. It has its flaws, but many of those are simply because it emulates the source material a little too well. Which is interesting, and something to keep in mind when designing your own games.  Sometimes perfection makes things less true. Reviews: The other reviews this month are Swashbuckler, another sorta wargame that works on an individual level and could be adapted to roleplaying. Time tripper, a wargame in the Quantum Leap/Sliders mould, where you play a soldier randomly bouncing through time with an experimental device trying to get home, facing enemies in each period. And Starmaster, a computer based play by mail game (my head hurts, these people need several thousand cc's of internet, Stat) that costs $2.50 per turn. Jesus. I think I'll skip that one, thank you very much. Not that it's still available anyway, as like anything that needs an external infrastructure to play, once the company stops supporting it, you're screwed. The day of the Dwarf: Fiction (possibly based off an actual play) by Roger Moore in the monty haul tradition. Mad crossovers happen, and Asmodeus gets shown up in a rather amusing fashion. Which is pretty cool, particularly as the whole thing is quite well written. But you probably wouldn't want to actually play in a game that featured this much GM favouratism. Jasmine and Wormy continue. And the modulicious fun continues with another halloween flavoured goodie, The Mansion of Mad Professor Ludlow. A decidedly odd module that is technically a D&D one, but does not fit in D&D at all, being designed for the players to be a bunch of modern day children, and making huge adaptions to the rules and tone to more properly emulate that kind of boys own/famous five style. Another ambitious piece of work that really throws the horrible limitations in the D&D ruleset into stark relief. I'm slightly surprised that this never got converted to ravenloft, since they drew on many old modules when making it. I guess they wanted to forget about the failed experiments, and concentrate on the ones that worked. Another issue that really felt bulky to mentally digest. But it has had more significant stuff that would go on to be developed later than most recent issues, and it's nice to see them do a halloween episode that doesn't focus on the undead. That kind of switching things around is neccecary to keep things interesting.</blockquote>

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