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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4537975" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 48: April 1981part 2/2Up on a soapbox: Two rants under this ageis this issue. When choosing a DM, be choosy considers the problem of finding a fun game to play in. How do you spot a good GM before you start playing, and so avoid wasting time with a crap or creepy group. This article gives you lots of good hints that are still relevant today, and can also be pretty easily turned round for when a GM is assessing prospective players. Not even vague wishy washy ones either, but some tight quantifiable guidelines. So I like it quite a lot, and have added it to my list of thing I intend to use next time it comes up.  What is gaming's role in life continues the morality in fantasy debate. And is dull. After the cool of the last one, this is rather a letdown. I shall say no more. Minarian Legends: The Mercenary ships of minaria. Pirates, privateers, and navies, plus the obligatory named character in charge of them, the Bilge Rat. Good guy, bad guy, not really either guy? You ought to know the formula of these entries by now. The floating island mission: This month's module is a second Top Secret one. Can you thwart the evil plans of the mysterious Dr Yes? You'd better be considerably above starting ability to do so. (see, vagueness like this this is why D&D is so much more friendly for casual GM's. The level system makes it easy to create pregenerated adventures for characters of different power levels, with an easy gauge. Which means you can continue to use modules beyond the starting level) The underwater fun continues, as you'll have to do some diving to infiltrate the island. And then you get to face Bruce Nee, Chuck Morris, and "Sweetbeam" Leotard, the good doctors amusingly named henchmen. And I think that's enough spoilers for now. A pretty decent adventure overall. Carrying a heavy load? Mules. The benefits and drawbacks to bringing an extra loadbearer such as this into the dungeon with you. Encumbrance is a bitch, and there's always something extra you wish you'd brought. But the more you have, the more it costs, the more you're slowed down, and the more you have to lose if things go wrong. Really, It'd be better to get yourself a bag of holding as soon as possible. Then you can laugh and stroll past all the low level adventurers struggling with their mules. Also introduces Black Bart to us, who I vaguely remember, so I think we'll see him again in the future. Giants in the earth: This month's statistical impossibilities by the D&D rules as written are Ursula le guins Sparrowhawk, and Andrew Offut's Tiana Highrider. Sage advice: Can A dual classed character switch back and advance in a previous class if they have high enough stats? (no) Can clerics and paladins heal themselves (yes) Do spellcasters get XP for casting spells. (only if they actually accomplish something with that casting) Can a neutral good bard backstab (if it's in a good cause, just like any thief.) Does power word kill destroy the bodies of the creatures it kills? (Entirely up to you. But yeah, it does kill in a way that prevents ressurection. Ahahahahaha)Can magic resistance negate magic weapon's plusses? (no)Instant adventures: Random plothooks, random plothooks. We can always do with more random plothooks. Spin the wheel, roll the dice, and lets see what fate'll throw at the players tonight. Leomund's tiny hut: Once again, Len pushes at redesigning the system, this time looking at balance in encounter design and treasure awards. Which again turns into 7 pages of complicated math that have some good ideas that would be refined and used again in later editions, but are currently way too clunky. I really ought to give him more credit for doing this stuff, so the rest of us don't have too anymore. Figuratively speaking reviews 21 mini's in 2 pages, which means there isn't much detail on each one. Once again, the picture shading is too bad for me to make my own judgments. Which is a shame. GenCon South: A review of the con's new franchise. (with gencon east to follow in july) Not as big as the main one, this still had a quite extensive and exciting tournament schedule, headed up by the Champions of DM's, Frank Mentzer, and administered by the TRS-80 computer program they've been talking about in recent issues. Seems pretty positive, and they intend to do it again next year. Soon there'll be gencon's everywhere. New orders for Russian Campaign: The wargame gets the Historically Accurate treatment in this article, with the author claiming the revised figures he's giving are the real ones from the official documents. Maybe, but will this make the game more fun to play, or unbalance it further in favour of the RL winners? I couldn't say, having never seen the game. As ever, clarification on matters like this would be welcomed. Adding airpower options: More Russian Campaign stuff, this optional rule increases the randomness of the amount of airpower each side has. Again, I can't comment on if that would improve the game or not. Want to influence who wins the Origins awards this year? Fill in and send in this form! Reviews: Asteroid is a quick game of saving the earth from an approaching, well, you know. (I don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep) Individual games may be short, but the amount of customisability in both character and adversary design should keep replays interesting for a while. Titan is a fantasy wargame, that may be cheaply produced, but contains a sophistication in rules design that is better than many games produced on a far bigger budget. Space fighters is a game of star warsesque dogfights, albeit with the serial numbers filed off. Like the film, the games action style is strongly reminicent of WWII dogfight games. It also seems to please the reviewer. Frankly, I would prefer my reviews more critical. It's more fun to read, and gives me more to comment on. Pinsom, wormy, jasmine and fineous are all here. Quite the turnout. I guess they needed all the artists for the crossover issue. Who's bright idea was it to put the ad on the back page upside down? They've been doing that quite frequently, but I never got round to mentioning it. Were they that way on the original mags, or is this scanning wierdness? The upward slope in overall quality continues again. Kim's stronger hand on the editing process seems to be resulting in a better overall quality of articles. How long is it before he takes over again?</blockquote>

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