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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4660631" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 92: December 1984part 2/3Gods of the suel pantheon reaches it's end. It finishes off with a fairly pleasant bunch of gods. Lydia, goddess of music, light and daylight. Bralm, Goddess of insects and industry. Jascar, god of hills and mountains. Even as lesser gods, they all have tremendously impressive screwage attacks that'll inconvenience even high level adventurers trying to deal with them. Len also continues to hone his clerical designs, to the point where they seem pretty slick. Put them all together and you have a pantheon that is fairly varied and not archetypical. I may not always have liked them, but he does deserve credit for doing this stuff, and influencing future generations of game designers. And that's the end of the priestly portion of this magazine. Let the horse buyer beware: A single page article elaborating on the horse buying process and reducing the randomness in the D&D system. Surely characters should be able to tell roughly how good a horse they're getting, because the sellers would, and adjust their prices accordingly. Gary would probably say that you're defiling the Sacred Balance of the Official AD&Dtm Game at this point, but I don't think you care about that. Interesting in that it points out a problem that would become more focussed upon in later editions, that a mount's power doesn't scale with the rider, so they become increasingly a liability in combat unless you trade up for rocs and dragons and stuff. While it doesn't solve the problem, now at least we know it's a commonly known one. Hopefully soon we'll have a beastmaster class along to try and fix that. The ecology of the ettin: Ahh, ettins. Such delightful creatures. Despite having two heads, they most definitely are not very good at thinking. Or much else besides smashing stuff up and being incredibly stubborn even against mind affecting magic. Their slovenliness would give even the most odious chavs pause, and any treasure they may have is best left where it is, for having rot grubs crawling in through your hands and up your arms is exceedingly gross. Ed is relatively light on the footnotes this time, with the most significant entry being on how they handle losing one of their heads. (pretty well, considering) Certainly no great fresh perspectives provided this time. If they gave a damn, they would complain about being defamed by this article. He must be a bit worn out from last month's spectacular. Pages from the mages III: Or maybe not. Once again Ed proves his prolificness with a little help from his friends, as Elminster reveals some more stuff about other wizards of the realms, the cheeky monkey. We get 4 new spellbooks, and 9 new spells, 4 of which can be traced to specific authors. They're a clever bunch suited to situations you'd expect a wizard to encounter at various points in their lives. Even the blasty spells have unique quirks that mean they're all distinct and may be better or worse depending on the situation, and all the books have Ed's usual loving descriptions of their appearances and histories. As I often do, I find myself wondering how the hell he does it. I find myself regularly exhausted writing at this rate, while he takes it in his stride, and produces truly exceptional material much of the time. I am filled with awe and envy. Off the shelf also loses it's name and become simply Book Reviews. Seems like they're genericising quite a few things. What's behind that decision? The name of the rose by Umberto Eco has been both critically and commercially acclaimed, and now it gets recommended in Dragon as well for it's depth of historical research, making it a great resource for anyone playing in a pseudomedieval setting, and a good example of how to weave philosophy, mystery, and all sorts of mundane details into your plots. If you like that high crunch style, get it. The riddle of the wren by Charles de Lint may not be quite as famous, but it gets just as much praise. Particularly important from a gaming perspective is the way he keeps the perspective firmly shaped by the characters knowledge, not giving away OOC details which might spoil the plot. Striking that balance between providing plenty of descriptive detail, without obviously showing your intent is another important part of good GMing. Narrative choice and player freedom requires the kind of detail that gives people information to make decisions with. Castles, by Alan Lee & David Day, would have fit right in with Lew's book review in issue 89. A combination of artwork, and talk about the myths and stories of various historical eras, it shows just how many variations these places can have. You want places for your characters to go, whether to talk or to kill & loot, this'll help out with that. The sword of justice is this month's module, an 8 pager. Designed for starting level characters, it seems a good one for starting up with a more story focussed tone. It does have a few silly elements, but the overall plot is a solid way of getting players used to the idea that sometimes killing is not the solution to your problems, and the personalities can be more important than the environment. Thankfully it manages to do this without falling into the trap of railroading the plot. This is quite pleasing, as it shows that they are expanding their criterea for acceptable adventures some more as time goes on. Definitely a good one to use as a warm-up for a new campaign. A big list of the retailers participating in the TSR 10th anniversary sale. New heights(?) in silliness: A review of TOON! A rather distinctive one at that. Drawing on a demonstration play given by the game's developer at a con, this shows the ways it brilliantly emulates the source material, and the areas in which it doesn't go quite far enough, still being a little too tied to the conventional RPG model. Compromises, compromises. Use the officially sanctioned house rules here to shake that off and make the game even more gonzo and fun. This is definitely another signpost towards the diversification of the hobby. One one front they're producing high crunch games like rolemaster. On another they're putting greater emphasis on plot, characterization and storytelling. And here they're getting increasingly radical in their attempts to simulate a particular kind of reality and story style. All the sides of the big triangle are here, and hopefully you can find a game that'll please you. Anyway, this is a fun review. I could definitely enjoy a few more context heavy ones like this.</blockquote>

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