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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4564240" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 58: February 1982part 2/2The gods of the dwarves: Ahh. Now this is a bit of canon that sticks for ages. Clangeddin, Dumathoin, Vergadain, Berronar, Abbathor! (unite and form!) The rest of the dwarven pantheon. Plus minor dwarven deities, and a new monster connected with them. Nice. If they keep this up for all the other races, 1982 is going to be a very big year in terms of building D&D's setting up. And we'll get to see tons of it first right here in the magazine. This makes me very happy. Fiction: In the bag by John Holmes. Boinger's back! Boingers Back! So lame I had to exclaim it twice. What's he up to this time? Having fun with a bag of holding. Some very creative application of D&D rules quirks here that I quite approve of. Wouldn't be surprised if this was another converted actual play, as it feels very much like a D&D adventure. Spellminders: This months special feature. A nice little set of cut-out playing aids. When you cast a spell, just flip it over. Saves you scribbling on your sheet every time. Plus, by putting them in piles and picking them out, you can generate spell lists for NPC's quickly. But they are rather easy to lose. I guess that's not a problem for me though, as I can just print more. Aiming for realism in archery: Oh, not this one again. Yes, the D&D to hit probabilities and weapon ranges aren't realistic. Will it help to introduce new longer ranges if you have to measure the chances to hit with d% and completely rejig the combat system. Frankly, at that point, you're better off writing your own system. You're never going to be satisfied with D&D's rules. Bowmanship made more meaningfull: More of this as well? This is focussed on strength limits. A topic only Homer could make interesting. It seems like the original crowd of writers who knew D&D wasn't supposed to be realistic are getting crowded out by annoying newcomers. This is the problem with having to fill 80+ pages every month. Anyone with decent writing skills and persistence can get in. Slicing into a sharp topic: An article on the history of swords to go with the one on shields last issue. And like that, it's pretty comprehensive, going from BC to the modern day, with plenty of details on how their construction evolved. But no bibliography this time. Oh well. It's still more interesting than the last two weaponry articles. Being a bad knight: Glenn Rahman turns his eyes upon Knights of Camelot. Maybe you don't want to join the ranks of the round table. Maybe you want to play one of the dastards who laughs at honour and chivalry, and instead loots and kidnaps. This of course isn't supported by the current rules, so you need a new scoring system and victory conditions. This completely changes the game in a way that looks like fun, particularly if some players are good guys, and others aren't.Anything but human: Can you guess what this is? Yup, it's a second set of charts for generating alien creatures in Traveller. Like the last one, this results in a wide selection of different body shapes, limb configurations, senses, and various special abilities. Which means in terms of actual power, races rolled will vary considerably, and many will need serious help fitting in on a spaceship. Just hope you get shapeshifting, because that covers up a multitude of problems <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=";)" /> Pretty much what I expected. The dragons augury: Griffin mountain is a huge runequest supplement with tons of adventure ideas and setting detail contained within. Clearly written and well integrated, it's pretty handy, overall. Star patrol is another sci-fi RPG. (there do seem to have been rather more of them around those days. ) It fails to be particularly standout, with several noticable flaws in the rules.Trillion credit squadron is a traveller supplement that has rather a larger scale than most of their adventures. It provides rules for being at the head of your own mutha<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 star navy! Plus mass combat rules, and more prosaic large scale details such as supply line stuff, taxation, maintenance and upkeep costs. Essentially, it's the traveler equivalent of the D&D Companion set domain management stuff. Which is something I strongly approve of.  Beyond and Vanguard Reaches are two more traveller supplements. Seems like traveller is getting more products than D&D is at this point. It's certainly getting more reviews. What went wrong? Off the shelf has lots of short reviews this issue: The pride of chanur by C.J.Cherryh sees her back and firing on all cylinders. Guardsman of Gor by John Norman is, er, no better or worse than any of the other books in the series. You'll like it or you won't, and the reviewer definitely doesn't. The death of a legend by Robert Adams is another book in the Horseclan series. Once again the reviewer seems pretty fond of his output.The dark between the stars by Poul Anderson is a compilation of his short stories. Full of shocks and twists, it gets plenty of praise. Whispers III (edited) by Stuard David Schiff is a compliation of the best stories from the magazine. Like the last 2 editions, it has a pretty good selection to choose from, so quality is not an issue. Fantasy annual IV by Terry Carr is another compilation of various writer's work, from both the high, and horrific side of the fantasy genre. Scarlet Dream by C.L Moore is another compilation. Focussing on her Northwood Smith stories, it takes what she considers to be the 10 best ones, and gives them some illustrations as well. What's new tackles Love in D&D (but is saving sex in D&D until next month) for valentines day. Wormy picks up a plot thread that's lain dormant for quite a while. Looks like we're starting another significant phase in the development of the D&D game. The official staff members are putting much more emphasis on building up a proper setting for everyone to play in, taking the sketchy descriptions in the rulebooks and giving them full-on motivations and histories, plus serious thoughts on their physiology and ecology. They've also realised that the AD&D corebooks they put so much effort into a couple of years ago aren't complete, there are plenty of things that the rules still need. I expect in a few years and supplements time, the game will have a quite different flavour if this goes on. 2nd edition's changes didn't come out of nowhere, and I expect we'll see many of them foreshadowed in the magazine quite some time before they go into common use.</blockquote>

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