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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4650517" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 89: September 1984 part 3/3Learn magic by the month: Dragonquest continues to get a surprising amount of coverage. This time, they cover the topic of learning a new college of magic in play. How do you keep it balanced with other training options, while still allowing for interesting adventuring. The solution is to allow you to break up your training times, and fit them around your adventuring. The rest of the article is comprised of crunch that looks pretty solid to my untrained eye, not making things too easy or hard, and having a number of quirks that emulate the real world education process. Again, I quite approve. It's nice to see they're putting plenty of non-D&D stuff outside the ares section as well. What is a monster worth: Ho hum. Another attempt to standardize the amount of XP different special powers are worth for monsters. The current rules don't differentiate between things like 5% and 100% magic resistance, and people may disagree about what counts as a significant special power. This needs fixing. How can we do this? For a start, everything not combat related is irrelevant. Hmm. Where will we hear that again? Snark aside, we get to see another bit of behind the scenes work, as they attempt to refine their design technology. One of those things which would definitely pay off in subsequent editions. But not particularly interesting to read about. Lists alone do not a fun article make, particularly when they remind you of what you're missing. Fiction: Dunkle Zee by Troy Denning: Hey, what's Minnie Driver doing in the artwork. This is way before she got famous. <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=";)" /> Anyway. Hmm. Looks like another writer who would go on to write plenty of books for D&D makes their first appearance here. This feels like an excerpt from a larger novel, as it refers to lots of terms that it doesn't properly explain, and then cuts itself off in an unsatisfactory way, leaving the plot hanging. I wouldn't mind, but it is well enough written that I really do want more. Which I suppose means he's done his job well. Is this expanded upon anywhere? He has my interest now, and If there is anything, I'd like to read it. The mighty Mega-Corporations: Star frontiers continues to get plenty of setting detail. The corporation system, and how it first drove galactic expansion, before being torn apart due to corruption, resulting in corporate wars that left the human civilizations vulnerable to the sathar. An all too plausible situation, given the reprehensible behaviour of many big companies in the real world. The pursuit of profit can lead to shocking amounts of misery and death. But it also leads to lots of cool adventure opportunities in a game like this, so that's alright. It ends with a promise to follow up on this next month, talking about the specific megacorps some more. Seems like they're doing that quite frequently in the ares section. I guess with limited page count each month, they need to do this to get the compromise between depth and variety right. I suppose it's making the best of the situation. Works for me, anyway. Luna, the empire and the stars: Our moon series turns it's eye to the Other Suns game in it's 6th installment. Once again, history has advanced to the point where the timeline in here seems a bit silly. (or depressing, given how many of us thought moonbases would be well established by now. ) Similarly, the long term deadliness of nuclear weapons is much exaggerated, given what we know now. But hey, artistic license is needed to make a good story. Worse things happen on TV. Of grizzly bears and chimpanzees: Gamma world gets another little expansion this month. Mutant animals as currently written require a lot of GM fiat in determining stats. So here's a little bit of help to get everyone on the same page, at least. We recommend that you not allow characters to select their species after determining what mutations they have, as this makes twinking relatively easy. Despite it's old skoolness, this is another useful little resource for gamma world GM's to keep their players in check with. If that's a good thing or not depends on your opinion. I can't muster a strong one on this either way. The marvel-phile: The marvel-phile proves itself admirably adept at alliteration. And then turns it's attention on Namor, the sub-mariner, and his enemy, Tiger shark. Some rather beefcakey photos here (Look at those eyebrows, hee. I bet he plucks them.) of our aquatic protagonists, and the usual potted history of their times and trials, divested of all the filler episodes. (of which I'm sure there were many, since this is comics we're talking about) Once again Jeff delivers a solid, noncontroversial entry that doesn't leave me with much to say about it. A monster crossword. That's a new one for this magazine. Cool. That looks like a good time waster. Dragonmirth gets limerickal. Talanalan goes all las vegas. Wormy catches a big one. Snarfquest fights the planetary cultural divide, with hilarious results. Once again, I am left vaguely unsatisfied by this issue, despite there being plenty of good articles in it. Maybe I'm doing this too fast, and need a break. Maybe I'm just jaded. No matter how good things get, humans can adapt to it and wind up taking it for granted. Life is a funny thing. Instead of a conclusion, I'll leave you with a question. How do you think the history of the magazine and D&D would have been different if instead of increasing their page count in 1979, they had instead decided to go fortnightly, and eventually weekly. What effect would producing lots of short issues, instead of long monthly ones have had on their style, and our perspective of the magazine? Would this have been a good or bad thing overall to do.</blockquote>

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