NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4654611" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 91: November 1984part 1/3116 pages. So here we are, pretty much at the zenith of their popularity. With a circulation of 120,000, they're certainly a pretty significant force to be reckoned with. This is their biggest issue yet, and they seem to be making an extra effort for this one, with a load of format changes and special features. They probably should have held back for christmas but they just couldn't wait. So I won't bore you with pretentious preamble either. In this issue:Out on a limb loses it's vaguely amusing name, and becomes simply Letters. Seems a slightly pointless change to me. Eh, if they feel it'll make us take them more seriously. :shrug: Anyway, lets see what people are actually saying. A letter praising Katharine Kerr's recent articles, and offering some supplemental advice. Kim gives an unnecceceraly large reply justifying an argument against such a minor quibble. Three letters complaining about the rust monster ecology and asking further questions. Kim once again reminds them that a creature's description is not something to be stuck too slavishly. We're willing to give Ed plenty of leeway because the things he comes up with are cool. Whining whenever things aren't just so, on the other hand, is the epitome of uncool, and will not endear you to anyone.Four letters about the details of various magical items they recently published. Once again I yawn. Just make it up for your own campaign. Is that really that hard? The forum also gets it's header improved. This is nice. Scott Hicks is not pleased at Katharine Kerr's denunciation of evil characters. Evil =/= stupid. The pragmatic bastard approach to adventuring can be very effective indeed. The success of many corporations in the real world is not hindered by their ethically suspect actions, quite the opposite in fact.Steve Null also attacks Katharine, along a different tack. If even fantasizing about committing evil acts was mentally unhealthy, them all the GM's in the world would be on the fast track to breakdowns and depraved real life behaviour. This is obviously not the case. Your logic is deeply faulty. Eric Herman worries about demihuman lifespans and the levels they would acquire in that time. Surely an elf is far more likely to advance to obscene levels than a human, particularly if they take thief, which is unlimited. Probably true, but for any race, levels will be an exponential curve. There is no proper age/level progression. Becoming high level is like becoming a millionaire. Some people manage it before they hit 20, but most will never do it, no matter how long or hard they try. Even long-lived races only have a low percentage of name+ level characters. David N Moolten sticks his two cents in on the matter of falling damage. So much of it is dependent on what material you're hitting. This ought to be taken account of in the rules. Ha. No chance. Finally, Alan Zumwalt sneers at Kevin Lawless' criticism of dragon clerics. It's perfectly normal for people to worship gods of different alignments if they have a desirable portfolio. Awareness of alignment is not constantly on creature's minds.From the sorceror's scroll. Prreeeesenting! The Dukes of Demonic Destruction! The Squishers of Spinagons and Smashers of Structures! The Tanks of the Tanar'ri! The Goristro! Quail in terror, puny mortals! RAAAAARRGG! Particularly Gary's editor. You are most incompetent and must suffer for all the mistakes you introduced to my perfect work. <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=";)" /> A particularly amusing article that is a classic of Gary's writing style. Unlike last issue, which felt rather tentative, he's now back and firing on all cylinders. It's good to see him in the driving seat again. Long may he continue to entertain and confound us (from a safe distance, preferably.) Realistic vital statistics: Ahh, Stephen Innis again. He's becoming another regular of recent issues. This is another reiteration of the Square-Cube law, and the problems it presents when dealing with giants and other proportionally weird D&D creatures. A dwarf the height of a human would weigh around 500 pounds. There is no way cloud and storm giants could function without magical support or being way less dense than humans. (which is why they are partially composed of clouds, I suppose. ) This is one of those articles that falls into the competent but dull category. I already know this, don't particularly care at the moment, and would rather concentrate on figuring out how to make games fun than realistic. So much for all that hard mathematical work. The ecology of the leucrotta: Now here's a bastard of a monster, made even more bastardly by a well written Ed Greenwood article. Leucrotta may not have genius intelligence or an array of magical powers, but they're still smart enough to trick humans, and cause quite considerable amounts of harm and paranoia with their mimicry and depredations. Kinda like the peryton in that respect. Are they from the same mythological sources? In any case, this is also another good reminder that even fairly mundane monsters become a lot scarier when you start applying basic tactics and not just jumping out and fighting the adventurers on straight terms. Once again, both the fluff and the extra crunch are entertainingly written, and you get a real feel for the creatures and how they live their lives. If only it were a little longer, as I could definitely stand to hear a little more about this kind of topic. Nine hells revisited: Ed also gives us another 16 pages of cool stuff on the nine hells. Well, since Roger messed it up, I guess it's up to him to remind us how it's really done. Which means if my math is right, this plane currently has more concrete stuff about it than all the others put together. People do so love conceiving of unpleasant people and things. Since the basic layout and hierarchy is well covered, it's time to diversify. Any place with any kind of law will have outcasts, so we get 8 new unique devils for you to fight, deal with, and probably get screwed over by, because even if they're no longer welcome in polite society, they're still devils. They may help you in a scheme against the established power base, but only so they can get back into it, by trickery and treachery. They have a huge range of personality quirks and powers, reminding us that alignment is hardly a straitjacket, even for it's exemplars. And because all the outcasts live on the first level, that means they're relatively accessable. This is the kind of stuff that's both entertaining to read and incredibly useful in actual play, as it'd take months to whip up a cast of this size and diversity yourself. Next we have treasure in the hells. After all, if you're going to kill devils, you're probably going to want to take their stuff as well. They get increasingly rich as you go down the levels, with tons of different types of gems just waiting to be mined and used. They're certainly not short on stuff to trade or hoard. Just remember, the wages of sin may be a bad influence on you, and finance can do things as impressive as any magic when it comes to gaining influence over a nation. This neatly segues into a discussion of devilish agents on the prime material plane.    If you believe them, they're all over the place, the ultimate illuminati, pulling strings  and manipulating the fate of worlds. They're probably not as good as they think they are, but if it weren't for adventurers foiling them on a regular basis, who knows how bad things could get. As with the GDQ series, use of devils as behind the scenes manipulators is a great way to gradually build up to an epic multiverse spanning campaign, which is great fun as long as it doesn't happen every game.  And finally, we get a trio of short sections. Talk on the devilish hierarchy & promotion process. Some talk about the river styx and securing passage to places via it's treacherous boatmen. And finally, one of those tedious exhortations not to allow players to kill archdevils and otherwise make significant changes to the universe. That privilege is reserved for the game designers alone. That standard disclaimer aside, this is another demonstration that there's no-one on the team who can match up to Ed in terms of all round writing skills. When he's on, he's on. And this month, that is definitely the case.</blockquote>

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