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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4528748" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 44: December 1980 Part 1/2110 pages. Holy crap, they've really pushed the envelope on this one. Now this is what a christmas special should be. Man, this is gonna take a while. We start off with another phil foglio cover (he is so instantly recognizable) which hints at the mayhem inside. <img src="http://paizo.com/image/product/magazine_issue/dragon/44/cover_180.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />In this issue: Iron crown enterprises starts advertising here, with arms law and the iron wind. Still hitching onto other peoples products, they have yet to create their own full system. Out on a limb: Three more letters on the female dwarven beards debate. This is the absolute last word on it, they say (again) Will they stick to that promise this time, or will continued public pressure force them to bring it out again? We shall see. A letter praising them, and asking them to keep on covering lots of different systems. To which they promise that they will never limit themselves to covering only one system. (Aww, how sweet. Ha :sneers: )A letter calling out a bad GM at their school, and asking Dragon to publicly chastise him. Which, errr, they do. Take that, teenage fool. I hope you're sorry now. <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" />And finally a letter from someone complaining that their DM doesn't allow them to read the magazine, because he's afraid it'll spoil the modules, monsters and stuff for their game. To which they tell him, change the stuff. Players shouldn't be able to memorize every detail of these things anyway, and if they do, you can still catch them out, because it's your game and you are god. But you are not god of this world, so stop trying to deprive us of revenue. Niall's 8th story, The lure of the golden godling. And he's still an overmuscled dick with no discernable strategic thinking power. If it weren't for Emelkartha he'd have been dead long ago. I really don't know.Oohh. An advert for a Logan's Run play by mail game. Intriguing. The super spies: As they have done with boot hill and are continuing to do for D&D, this is a big load of stats of famous characters from the genre, such as James Bond, Emma Peel and Number 6. And what are the odds that they're also disgustingly twinked out? Pretty good, I'd say. You'll never get characters as awesome as these unless you cheat your dice rolls. Back to the 48 hour surveillance grinds in the back of a black (or disguised as a pizza one if you're more sensible.) van with you, lowly agents. (sigh)King of the mountain, a strategy game by Mark Simmons, gets a fairly substantial promo piece. Hmm. I am reminded of the first episodes of Visionaries. Interspersing commentary of the rules with flavour vignettes, this does a pretty decent job of getting me interested in the game, if not the best job of explaining exactly how you actually play it. I suppose you'll have to buy it if you want to find that out. Hopefully there'll be a more objective review sometime soon. Fantasy genetics I: Humanoids in review. Yay. A whole slew of articles on one of my favourite avenues of real life study. I'm gonna enjoy this. This first one simply lists most of the demihuman races, plus some of the more likely humanoids to be able to engage in a little cross breeding (although they forget halflings for no apparent reason) This includes bad latin names for each race (homofaber? really? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> ) and some speculation on their ancestral relationships with one-another. I find myself surprisingly unenthralled. Maybe I'm just spoiled when it comes to this stuff, and these searchings towards a richer setting seem a bit primitive and obvious. They're still another important step forward towards the present in the overall scheme of things. Fantasy genetics II: Half orcs in a variety of styles. Does exactly what it says on the tin, offering stats for orc hybrids with all the other types of goblinoid. Which in practice, just gives you an increasingly fine-grained set of statistics for when 1 hit die monsters are too weak, and 1+1 hit die monsters are too strong. It's amusing, in a way. That's what happens when you can't gain class levels. And it's another good bit of evidence of just how annoyingly fecund orcs are, even compared to other goblinoids. Nice to see that bit of D&D mythology gathering weight. Fantasy genetics III: What do you get when you cross. Nerfed monsters with the worst abilities of both races, plus some additional disadvantages to boot, if you listen to this writer. Which is ..... not pleasing to me. You know the evolutionary drill. The good (or at least, empowering) articles get used in peoples games, while the bad ones get ignored. You just failed that test.Fantasy genetics IV: half and half isn't always full. What happens when you cross two halfbreeds? Not always more halfbreeds. Lets pull out that old mendelian genetics example, that of pink roses. (frankly, I would prefer my genetics Lamarkian, thank you very much.) Which does make for more interesting families than the straight add and divide by two method, and reduces the problem quarter, eighth, etc breeds present in terms of rules. Probably the most interesting of these articles, as while it might be a little too based in real world science for some people, it does raise both questions and solutions that would be interesting to deal with in play. Which is nice.Sage advice: A much shorter column this issue. It's christmas. Now is not the time for quibbling. Let us get the formalities over and get back to the celebration. Can magic raise your abilities above their racial maximums?(yes, unless stated otherwise in the specific power) Can you use your spellbook like a scroll and cast the spells without memorising them by reading them aloud? (no) Is it OK for a lawful neutral character to sneak up and backstab someone(only if they know for certain they're an enemy and need to die) How do you determine if a character is subdued?( if it's an npc you use the implied damage system, while PC's always get to choose if they're subdued or not. They shouldn't be slaves to dice rolls unless actually possessed or something.) Do bards get bonus spells for high wisdom( Why yes. Isn't that nice of us) Can you use bows underground (depends how narrow the corridors are. Your GM should use their common sense. If your GM has no common sense, I guess it sucks to be you then. )If you're in a dungeon, but take a character out of action to do downtime stuff, does time pass as if they're not in a dungeon (no. Learning new languages and training to go up levels is not a good idea when wandering monsters could butt in any second. Unless you're stuck in the worlds largest dungeon, you should get out first.)</blockquote>

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