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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4649382" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 89: September 1984 part 2/3Gods of the suel pantheon: Len continues to provide a channel for Gary to get his material into the magazine during his unwilling exile. This month he's filling in the villainous side of the suel pantheon some more. Not even the sophisticated kind, but the ones that lurk in grotty places in the wilderness and'll get you you serious trouble if you're found worshipping them. Pyremius, Beltar, and Llerg. A fine bunch of reprobates to make your players lives miserable with. They shapeshift. They plot. They rage. They only grant mediocre special abilities to their clerics, including one clever little false benefit that makes suckers out of it's recipients. Once again, they also have to deal with errata. Gods are such a complication. And once again, this fails to enthrall me. So it goes. Dragonlance, the epic novel trilogy, to tie in with the 12 part adventure series. Hello, Mr railroad, how will you force us to follow you, to get from the beginning to the end, without any choice of routes. Infinite draconians? What a wonderful idea. Where do they come from? Neveryoumind. The many types of magic: Ah, yes, quibbling over exactly what the different schools of magic mean, and why certain spells are in one and not another. I knew this would come up at some point. And in many cases these are quite valid points. Why the hell is comprehend languages an alteration, or fear an illusion, when common sense would say they're a divination and a charm effect. What was their writer smoking at the time. Why is alteration used as a catchall. Why are there so few invocation effects, and what's the difference between an invocation and an evocation. Why does necromancy affect living things as well as dead ones. Why does magic jar get a category of it's own? Lots of questions are raised, and not nearly as many are answered. Lets hope that someone in the staff is paying attention and takes this stuff into account come next edition. Yet more evidence that despite their initial belief that AD&D was this great and perfect work that would need no change, an overhaul, or at least revision, is increasingly needed. A little cruft shedding never did any harm, and often makes you feel a lot better. Time life books takes out a rather pretty full colour double page spread. Enter the magical world of myth and legend. Subscribe now! Oh, the cheese. The role of books: Looks like they've decided to play around with their formats again. Lew is giving us another set of non-fiction reviews to help us in our worldbuilding. This time he's concentrating on the heart of the medieval experience, castles, and fighting. Two things adventurers love. And two things you can definitely do right or wrong, unlike all the fantastical elements. So what's hot and what's not in Pulsipher land? The art of war in the middle ages by Charles W C Oman is one of the great old books on this subject. Originally published way back in 1898, it has gone through a number of revisions since then. It covers developments over more than a millenium in exhaustive detail, far more than you could ever need. The kind of thing you go to a reference library to look things up from, rather than buy. Warfare in feudal europe by John Beeler covers a smaller period in less detail, but is far more accessable to the layman reader, with clear organisation, good synopses, and lots of analysis of the facts. If you want to get usable detail for your games without spending days poring over academic minutinae, get this one instead. Medieval warfare by H W Koch gets a rather poor review. With poor writing and organization, this is one to avoid. A history of fortification from 3000 BC to AD 1700 by Sydney Toy has tons of floor plans and photographs of various places that you can steal liberally, and adapt for your game, as well as plenty of detail about how they were built, lived in and developed over time. Another one you'll probably have to go to the reference libraries to find, and then photocopy bits from. Some things, the internet still doesn't really provide, at least not for free. The medieval castle: Life in a fortress in peace and war by Philip Warner also covers castles, burt is focussed more on the people who lived in them, and how they changed their tactics based on new innovations in technology and attack styles. Why things developed the way they did is as important as the simple facts, and this fills that gap admirably. A reversible hooded cape? Odd thing to advertise in here. Well, I suppose it is nearly halloween. Grim reaper is always a good costume choice. Halt! Who goes there: Hmm. This is a class I don't remember anyone talking about. The sentinel, guardian of people and places against assassins and thieves. Of course, in D&D, magic can render those abilities redundant with depressing ease. And while they can foil invisibility and stealth, other tricks like ethereality, remote scrying and mind control are still going to bypass them. Still, they have lower XP requirements than fighters, and more special abilities, so their power problems are more those that all the fighting classes face when compared to the spellcasters than actual underpoweredness. Having one of these guys along would certainly be useful as a backup for your thief, not to mention a failsafe for if you can't trust him, and suspect he's conning the rest of the party. I quite like this, as they fill a niche that the regular classes don't, rather than just being a hybrid. There are a few silly OD&Disms, like forced alignment change, but those just add to the flavour of the whole package. This is definitely an underappreciated gem that I'm pleased to have unearthed and would like to put in a future game. Beefing up the bureaus: Oh noes. Top secret isn't dramatic or cinematic enough. We must fix this. This is one of the most audaciously blatant power-ups I've seen. So much so that I can't really give my usual complaint about power creep, as there's nothing subtle about it. Which is cool, in a way. If your GM allows it, he knows exactly what he's getting himself into. I guess this is the kind of thing that would lead them to completely retool the game in Top Secret SI. In any case, it's a short article that gets right to the point, so I didn't have time to get bored either.</blockquote>

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