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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4533383" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 46: February 1981part 2/2The temple of poseidon: This month's module. Looks like leaving them in the middle, rather than interrupting the page count is the new standard for these things. I preferred the previous way, but oh well, its not a huge problem. This is a heavily lovecraft inspired work, with lots of water related stuff to deal with, designed for a large high level party (they recommend the team has at least 70 total levels between them.) So don't expect stopping the devil priests from unleashing the ancient monstrosity ythog-nthtei to be easy. But then again, you'd get more XP for letting him get unleashed then killing him, than stopping them before that point. What a dilemma for an ambitious group of adventurers. Reviews: World of greyhawk. The long awaited new D&D book gets a pretty substantial bit of promotion, with two different reviews devoted to it.  Both are fairly satisfied with it, apart from a few quibbles, such as map inaccuracies, an accusation of anthropological insensitivity, and lack of information on the gods. And it is still only 32 pages, not really enough to go into more than a few paragraphs of detail on each country. But I guess it still has a lot more setting stuff than the original Greyhawk supplement from 6 years ago. D&D's gradual steps towards a proper shared setting continue, even if they are still well behind Runequest and Tekumel. They'll get there in the end. The complete book of wargames attempts to provide a newbie friendly introduction into the principles and tropes of the genre, along with an introductory game. The nine doctrines of darkness,Temple to athena and Mountain of Mystery are a trio of system free RPG adventures by Dimension Six, designed to be adapted to whatever game you might be playing. Which of course means they don't have to bother developing their own system or liscencing fees. Seems like stuff like that was more common back then. I guess not so many people were willing to take on the challenge of designing their own system. Giants in the earth is no longer Moldvay and Schick's private twinkfest, and is now accepting submissions from freelancers. Maybe new entries'll be a little less overpowered and more faithfull to the D&D rules. But I'm not going to bet on it. Sage advice: If a wizard shapechanges into a dragon, does his breath weapon do damage equal to his own current hit points.( Yes, and he doesn't get any more hp either. )Why can druids wear leather armor. You have to kill animals to make it. ( animals kill and eat each other normally. Druids can do the same True neutral + respect for nature =/= namby pamby ecopacifists. Do you get experienced points for doing something you were geased/quested to do. (yes. Being forced to do it does not stop you from learning normally from the experience. )What happens if turned undead can't escape you? (they cower in the corner, as far away as they can get. )Who can have 18% strength? (only fighters, and not girls) Because boys are stronger than girls, so ner. Does a luck blade give you a bonus to attack rolls? (not nececarily. The luck bonus is to your saving throws, and that's independent of any enhancement bonus to hit and damage it may have. What happens if you put a bag of holding into another one. ( It probably shouldn't work properly, otherwise it would be horribly breakable. Not sure how to enforce that yet. (they obviously have yet to think of the rule that multiple nested extradimensional spaces cause a rip that sends all the contents to the astral plane. )) The Quasit entry says they can be cleric's familiars. How do clerics get familiars? (ask their deity extra nicely. Do we have to give rules for everything?) Do paladins and rangers need to pray to a special patron god to get their spells?(No, they can devote themselves to any god of an alignment that fits their class restrictions. ) What does vorpal mean? (nothing, really. It was a bit of nonsense from a poem. But in D&D it just means really really sharp. Mmm, severed heads. Pike 'em and roast 'em and put an apple in their mouth and serve 'em up for dinner. Its nutritious and delicious and you have good odds of being cursed to become a vampire when you die. Hey, immortality. A plan with no drawbacks.) Simulation Corner: A look back at last year from a wargamers perspective. The recent trend towards microgames seems to be ebbing. There was quite a large number of civil war based games, for some reason. Sci fi and fantasy continue their gradual takeover of the market. West end games failed to release anything new this year, which can't be good for them. One of those cool historical perspective articles that helps me see what things were like back then. Pinsom: May I just say WTF? Oh, they're Elves. Certainly an interesting artistic take on them. Reminds me of the Raccoons cartoon. (Run with us. We've got everything you need. Run with us, we are free. Great, now I've got that song stuck in my head.) Which is no bad thing, once the shock faded. How will this little story progress in future issues? I look forward to seeing. The electric eye: An assessment of the current top companies in the market, Radio shack, Apple, and Commodore, and their respective products, plus honorable mentions for Atari and APF. As this gives me a good idea of how much power computers had then, and how expensive they were, this is another neat historical footnote that I rather enjoyed reading. Jasmine's plot thickens. Another stereotypical female character type is introduced, that of the witch queen who'll do anything to remain young and beautiful looking forever.  Fineous and Wormy are not present. Slightly more interesting than last issue, with several interesting new developments and historical footnotes. Still quite a few dull moments, but not enough to ruin the whole thing. They're still covering a wide range of topics for many different systems and styles of play.</blockquote>

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