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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4589305" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 68: December 1982part 1/2104 pages. Another extra large christmas episode. Nice. After more than a year of 84 pagers, I was starting to wonder when there would next be a size increase. The cover's nothing much to shout about this time, however. Oh well, hopefully the contents'll make up for that. In this issue:Out on a limb: A contrasting pair of letters, as is their wont, one praising the language stuff in issue 66, and asking for more of it, and more attention paid to it in official modules; and the other saying that actually putting fantasy grammars and vocabularies in is a waste of space, and too much attention to pointless detail that hardly anyone will actually use in a game. Ahh, the usual can't please everyone problem. No getting around that one. A letter on the great how illusions should work debate, adding their own opinions and houserules. A letter rubbishing the idea that all clerics should be forbidden edged weapons, regardless of alignment or their deities creed and culture. We have to break out of the medieval european mold.  A letter pointing out how inconvenient digging the right bit of equipment out of your pack is in the heat of battle, and the effect this has on wizards trying to cast from their spellbook. If you take that into account, you'll find it's not unbalanced at all <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> Featured creatures gives us lots of fungal, er, fun this month. Ascomids, phycomids and basidronds. Some seriously freaky looking and acting things. I suspect that like bug and deep sea fish based monsters, this may be another case of things based on reality being stranger than ones just invented wholecloth. In any case, these are worthy additions to the D&D dungeon ecology, fitting in perfectly with the array of slimes, oozes and things like gelatanous cubes and carrion crawlers. Take them out from a distance, because otherwise you'll get gunk all over you. Be a two-fisted fighter: Roger Moore turns his eye on two weapon fighting, one of the more problematic little tricks in the game. This is mostly clarifications and semi-official houserulings, not really adding much to the rules as a whole. It points out just how dangerous high dex characters are if they choose to become two weapon fighters, as they nearly double their damage output. Thanks for that, roger. Now every unimaginative twink'll want to play one. (the smart ones, of course, will keep on playing wizards and druids.) I suppose it would have happened sooner or later, he just helped it along. Are the crimes of the proletariat the fault of the proclamations of the elite? Did this open the door for drizzt and his clones? Is it way past midnight, and I'm reaching for things to say to finish this issue off? Who can say. The gen con mini's competition this year gets a good looking over. They give us the winners and runners up in the various categories, and show us photos of the dioramas. The legibility of the photos still isn't perfect, but is an improvement on most of their attempts in earlier magazines. Up, up and away: Looks like TSR has another new game to promote. Dawn patrol is actually a new version of Fight in the Skies, a game that has been mentioned in this magazine a few times. Obviously, they think the new edition is a substantial improvement. No great surprises here. I'll reserve judgement for a more impartial review. Beg, borrow or steal: An article for Barbarian Prince, of all things. Which is pretty cool really, given how much they've ossified in recent issues. This gives you a load of extra options for making a little money, most of them on the larcenous side. Well, Glenn does enjoy his shades of grey. I rather like this. It adds lots of options without reducing the danger, and gives me lots of clues as to how the rules work in play. Which does a far better job of selling me on the game than the straight promo piece above. Anyone know if this is available in pdf anywhere? Thrills and chills: Ooh. This is cool. (literally) Adventuring in the ice age. A rather harsher environment than usual, given that getting hold of enough food is trickier, and there are huge swathes of technology that haven't been developed yet. Just surviving is an adventure in itself, given the creatures out there in a D&D world. The author really does play up the degree of hardship involved, expanding on the cold rules, and giving us a whole new set of encounter tables. If you liked dark sun, and gritty survivalist fantasy in general, this should be fun to play with. From the sorceror's scroll gets a new, more dignified header, and gives us lots more official high level spells, including quite a few named ones such as Otiluke's telekinetic sphere and Mordenkainen's disjunction. The length of each description is considerably longer than in previous entries. We also get to find out who played the various named wizards that made the spells, which is neat. As in the last issue, we get quite a few spells that would become staples of play, such as chain lightning, contingency, and teleport without error, but also some that didn't, including a whole range of spells for dealing with extraplanar creatures such as binding, truename and dolor. This is pretty useful stuff, that once again boosts the power and versatility of wizards quite a bit. And thankfully, his spleen seems vented after last months outburst, so he stays on topic this time. What a relief. We wouldn't want to spoil christmas by fighting, would we? Leomund's tiny hut also gets a pretty new colour header. He introduces the cloistered cleric, the wimpy non-adventuring variant who stays at home healing people and copying books. So your characters can be ordered around by people who's asses they could kick no trouble, with the threat of withholding their magical healing and training. :sigh: We don't need this, the game doesn't need this. Still, at least we get some new spells out of the deal, which is always useful. As ever, you've got to seriously filter lens output for the useful bits, because big chunks of it are not, and some are actively detrimental to your fun quotient.</blockquote>

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