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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4544523" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 51: July 1981part 2/2A new breed of bug: A new unit for Metagaming's Chitin, the wargame of competing bug hives. The low hacker, designed to increase the role of stealth, defense and reconnaissance. Another article that seems reasonable enough from what I can tell without knowing the precise details of the rules. It's not easy being good: Ahh, paladins. One of the most problematic classes in the game. Unless the GM and player are on the same page when it comes to what behaviour constitutes lawful good, there will be problems. Because being stripped of your powers when you don't feel you deserve it sucks. That and its a hard line between don't be stupid and foolhardy, and you must spend your existence promoting law and good and smiting evil wherever it may be found. Roger Moore's opinion on this subject is that moral relativism does not have a place in D&D, drugs and casual sex are not lawful good behaviour, full stop, as they can have unfortunate concequences that gets in the way of being ready to go out and do good at all times; and the paladins code should be pretty strictly enforced. (and so should the anti-paladins, by the way. One act of genuine  generosity, selflessness or compassion, and you're out. ) If they look like they're about to stray, heavy handed hints from the GM should be used to make sure they realize their god disapproves. And if they go through with it, sometimes they'll just be smitten and killed outright on top of losing their powers. Which isn't very nice, is it. Thou shalt play this way: The paladin pontification continues. Robert Bezold is rather more constructive in his approach to defining what paladins should and shouldn't do, setting out a sample paladins code in the form of the ten commandments. Yes, it may be  another cliche, but drawing on the christian tradition is easy to relate to, even for those of us who don't subscribe to it, simply because of familiarity via exposure. You want to invent a whole pantheon of religions and their customs that have nothing in common with real world ones, be my guest. Search for the emperor's treasure: Tom Wham presents this months centerpiece, a somewhat comical fantasy boardgame. Will you return the emperors treasure to him, or keep it for yourself? Where could it be hidden? etc etc. Once again he's come up with the goods. If only he'd managed to come up with them a month earlier, so we could have a proper birthday game instead of a half-assed railroady module. A part of the game: A piece of fiction by Darren Schweitzer. Never trust the things you see in desert oases. Even if the illusion doesn't fade straight away, you never know what horrible stuff might really be behind the pretty image. A nicely dark little story I thoroughly enjoyed. Con season is coming up, so we get lots of stuff on what's happening and when. Figuratively speaking is back to two pages this issue. To go with the theme, they're concentrating on sci-fi appropriate mini's such as spaceships and soldiers. The electric eye: Wouldya like ta take a survey? It'll help us know what to put in future issues. Aw, go on, goon goan gowan Go ON! The world of beysycx? I don't remember that one. Looks like another advert for a D&D compatible 3rd party product. Anyone got any info on this? The rasmussen files: Lots of new courses and a few new traits this month. Although do you really want to be colour-blind, deaf, know what your blood group is, etc? I think those definitely fall under the category of unnecacary crunch. Having to spend months of downtime learning new things does rather get in the way of adventuring. Did len and merle work together at some point, as they seem to be of similar minds on the matter of additional crunch. Dragon's bestiary: Two rather badly named monsters this issue. Darkdwellers are basically smart trolls with the special mining powers of dwarves who ride carnivorous dinosaurs into battle. Whether that is awesomely metal or deeply cheesy and unimaginative is for you to decide. Pirahna bats are another D&D hybrid monster in classic format, and do exactly what you would expect given their component creatures, fly around, swarm you and strip all the flesh from your body. What a lovely way to go. Lets hope they don't learn how to hide in shadows and develop a communal hive mind. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Minarian legends: A story of the fairies of minaria, the Golglio favre and Ta-botann, and how schardenzar, a half-fae, became another great hero and sorcerer. Full of classic tropes such as the stolen fairy bride who leaves her husband if he violates a particular commandment, and enemies who lose their power if prevented from touching the element they are bonded with, this is another strong addition to the mythology of Divine Right.Reviews: The sci-fi theme continues in this section, with lots of traveller focussed stuff. Triplanetary is a board game of interplanetary conflict, with a exceedingly good system for handling the way space travel works in a form that is realistic, but not too complicated to make a fun game, and can handle a wide range of scenarios, including plenty of scope for player designed ones. Traders and gunboats is another traveller supplement (the 7th official one, man, marc could really churn them out back in the day) focussing upon more starships, and the things they get up to as they explore the universe. Ley sector is a judges guild supplement for Traveller detailing an area of space and the planets and creatures within. Which like any module, is pretty usefull for when the players want to go somewhere you haven't detailed yourself yet. Fenris and Tethys are two starship plans by FASA, also intended for use with Traveller. Looks like lots of companies were producing supplements for the game. They have detailed ship plans and sample NPC's running them, so they can also be dropped into your game to fight, buy or negotiate with easily enough. Whats new is starting to get into its stride. Fineous racks up the tension another notch. Wormy gets spectacularly extraplanar. The rest of dragonmirth trundles onwards. An issue that has considerably more for other systems than D&D, and makes me wonder how long they keep that policy up for. They still had lots of non D&D stuff when I started reading, which means they're likely to keep this policy for at least the rest of the 80's. Which is pleasing. While I might not know all the systems, concentrating on one game and nothing else for years would get rather dull. Variety is the spice of life and all that.</blockquote>

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