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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4566676" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 59: March 1982part 2/2Exonidas spaceport: This month's module is a 16 page traveller one. This is less an adventure than a setting, giving you a location, and populating it with NPC's, but leaving it up to the GM to put an actual adventure in. Which is a bit annoying if you're used to using fully ready to go dungeons, but I suppose its another example of how they're trying to present different types of adventure. Whether it becomes just a slightly better fleshed out stop off point on route to somewhere else, or a new home base depends on your GM. The halfling point of view: Part two of our demi-human series. Halflings at this point are pretty similar to the original Tolkien hobbits, with three subraces, and a strong love of security and comfort. Adventurers are very much a minority amongst them, but as they are tougher than they seem, they're hardly unsuccessful. Very little is added to their characterization by this article. I'm not very impressed. The gods of the halflings: Halfling gods have never been as interesting as the dwarven ones. Blame Roger Moore for being short of ideas. Or blame the original source for not having as much depth and variety as the many myths of dwarves. Anyway, Sheela Peroyal, Arvoreen, Cyrollalee and Brandobaris all get their first airing here.  One big happy family, even if some of them do wander off once in a while. Pass the pillow and wake me up when dinner's ready. There's no danger here. The toxins of Cerilion: Larry DiTillio takes a leaf from Ed Greenwood's book, and gives us stuff on what he's done in his own world. By giving poisons descriptions, onset times, and more inventive effects, things get a lot more interesting than just save or die, and players have a chance to recognize them by description without having to roll some kind of knowledge check. Which is good, because there aren't any in 1st edition. <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=";)" /> This is a pretty useful and entertaining article, Make monsters, not monstrosities: From one regular writer to another. Lew Pulsipher gives us another article on ecology. Monsters ought to make sense in light of the rest of the world. So here's another basic primer on concepts such as the food chain, reproductive rates, and designing creatures powers to suit their tactics. And he does a pretty good job of it, not sticking too closely to real world stuff, and recognizing there are tons of fun different ways the ecology could work when magic is brought into the equation. Plus an adorable new monster, the starkhorn. Whosa tubby little telekinetic bloodsucker then. A pretty good article all round. Figuratively speaking's photo's are rather larger this month, which is nice. We have a griffon, a paladin, a monk, some spies, warriors and wizards. Business as usual then. The dragon's augury: Starfire III is another game in a returning franchise (if you want to look them up, starfire 1 was reviewed in issue 29, while starfire 2 was reviewed in issue 47, ) It builds upon the previous two to allow you to handle larger matters of economics and political maneuvering. This makes for quite an extended, open-ended game, which can go on for a long time, as you discover new worlds, face new challenges and deal with other players. Are you prepared to put that time and effort in?Demonlord is a wargame of magic and conquest. It gets high praise for the quality of it's visuals, and generally seems fairly good. Off the shelf: The best of Randall Garrett, edited by Robert Silverberg, is another compilation that does exactly what it says on the tin. 12 stories, each introduced by another famous author who likes his work (including issac asimov and philip jose farmer), should give you a good idea if you like him or not.  Fuzzy bones by William Tuning is a continuation of H. Beam Piper's fuzzy series. Posthumous pastiches can go oh so very wrong, but this one seems to be respectful and interesting enough to please this reviewer. The essential guide to home computers by Frank Herbet (yeah, that one) is a how too guide on buying, setting up, and starting to program them. He predicts that by the end of the decade, virtually everyone will have one. Pretty visionary, really.  In iron years by Gordon Dickinson is a compliation of short stories from throughout his career. While individualy entertaining, they don't seem to have any particular common setting or theme. This keeps it from being a brilliant collection. The art of Leo and Diane Dillon is given a full page colour spread of art from the book. Not just a load of pretty pictures, it also includes a history of the artists, and plenty of behind the scenes details on how they were made. It gets pretty high praise for this. What's new is the only comic present this month, and is focussing on mini's. And I don't think we want those in our sex in D&D, do we. Dragonmirth is also rather small. What's up with that? Another fascinating issue full of stuff that would make it into future books. There is a slight caveat in that an increasing amount of the articles are being done by house staff rather than freelancers. But I guess that's the way you maintain theme and editorial consistency. It's easier to work with people you know and can contact easily than strangers.</blockquote>

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