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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4688369" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 98: June 1985 part 2/3Reviews: Dragons of autumn twilight and winters night get a review specifically designed to assuage people's skepticism about buying them. It's great both as an epic fantasy plot, and as a representation of the AD&D universe and how parties actually interact. It goes from the personal to the epic, and has great poetry. Er, ok then. Sorry, you completely fail to remove my skepticism. If it was a product by another company, I'd be more receptive, but this feels too much like a disguised sales piece. I turn my nose up at you, pfaw. Knowing what's in store: This is a strangely written but useful article. Mixing fiction with objective details, it tries to fill in what shopping would be like in a pseudomedieval setting for an adventurer. What is in different shops, (after all, no megamarts here. ) how are they likely to deal with people, and what you can expect to face if you try and steal from the places. The shifting of viewpoints keeps things more interesting than either would be on their own, and it's one of those ones you can refer too quickly to make sure you're not missing out some silly little detail. A good example of how to keep things fresh when imparting fairly mundane details, and how to make shopping fun. Why should all the action be in the dungeon? You can meet all sorts of interesting people and put plenty of plot hooks in while out looking for gear. And if you get into a fight, it's less likely to involve death. Very interesting indeed. Auctions aren't forbidding: From one shopping themed article to another very different one, this is advice about how to do the auction house thing. One of those things that progress has changed dramatically, with the rise of ebay and online shopping in general. If you know the basic rules about how and when to bid to get the most for your money, this will all be familiar. Apart from finding out that old modules can already go for ridiculously inflated prices, I haven't found out much I didn't know before. This definitely has the feel of a quick filler article used to complete the page count. The forum gets moved from the front to the middle. Another one of those little format changes that happens from time to time. Is it temporary or permanent? Guess we'll find out soon enough. Paul F Culotta points out that Gary is only a mortal, the system isn't perfect, and even tournament games don't use ALL the official rules perfectly. The system ought to be revised to better fit the way most people actually play it. Richard W Emerich shows up again, this time saying that no DM could enforce the game rules perfectly, all the time, and they probably shouldn't try. Most of the time, an approximation will do just fine. Dennis E Jones Jr, on the other hand thinks that the closer you hew to the official rules, the fewer arguments there will be when multiple GM's interact, and players go from one campaign to another. Um yeah. That assumes that they like the rules in the first place. I regard your statement with bemusement. Thomas W Gossard thinks that trying to hew too close to medieval settings in AD&D is silly (yes, you, Mrs Kerr) and you really ought to develop things based on the ramifications of the rules, rather than the real world. Ahh, one of the other great viewpoints that still crops up in debates today. Todd Breneisner weighs in with his personal experience of multiple games, some of which adhered strictly to the official rules, but most didn't. Since AD&D was made in 1979, using refinements developed since then really isn't a bad idea. Chip Myers also says that he's never seen a game where all the official rules are used. Frankly, the game wouldn't be as much fun if you did. Looks like the house-rulers are definitely in the majority. Daniel J Birkholz thinks that alignment is stupid, and expecting people to stick strictly to one without any deviation makes for seriously inhuman acting characters. Make proper characters with their own likes, dislikes, personalities and flaws, not cardboard cutouts. Coming attractions has some damn big guns this month. AD&D is getting Unearthed Arcana, the great book of compiled twinkery that will change the face of the game. Meanwhile D&D is getting the master set. It may not be the end, as you thought earlier, but it's still another quantum leap in your overall power, plus a bunch of odds and ends for the lower levels as well. It's also getting B9: Castle Caldwell <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=";)" /> and beyond. Guess some people are still back there starting up new characters and needing introductory stuff. And if that's not enough for you, there's the best of the dragon IV, which is good for both. Yet more recycling in an attempt to make more money fast and save the companies ass. Tons more stuff as well. The SPI imprint gives us wargames for Julius Ceasar's conquests, and WWII. Large scale games for players who think big. Marvel superheroes gets MHAC6: New york, New york. So good they made two little books on it.  Conan gets his piratical skills focussed on, in Conan the buccaneer. Will we get to go all the way through to his life as a king in future ones? Star frontiers gets SFAD5: Bugs in the system. Venture into the upper atmosphere of a gas giant to fix a refining station. What could possibly be the cause. I'm guessing giant insects of some kind. One-on-one adventures gives us it's second book, Battle for the ancient robot. Endless Quest is right up to number 28, Mystery of the ancients. People do so love digging up the past, even when that's a bad idea. And finally, the crimson crystal series has Renegades of Luntar, it's 3rd book. Set on mars, which seems appropriate. Whew. That's certainly a lot of obscure game lines. It's no wonder they were having problems with that many things hardly anyone was buying. I wonder how long they'll keep making new ones in them. Mutant manual: 12 pages of gamma world monsters make up this months centerpiece. Guess despite it not being popular enough for more modules to be published, there's still quite the holdout of people with lots of affection for it. We get 17 monsters: Aeroscpids (sic), Blade whales, Master Blossoms, Crusteans, Dracs, Encroaches, Flipps, Garrels, Harmony trees, Hogarts, Howlers, Jestes, Juggernauts, Marloks, Mountain men, Sifoners and Spitters. An array of bad puns, stuff stolen from books (including obvious conversions from D&D), exaggerated versions of normal animals, and really weird adapted plants, this is pretty quintessential gamma world material. You can fight them in the seas, you can fight them on the land, you can fight them in the sky, you can even fight them on the moon. (nice follow-up material there) Or you could play them as PC's, things like Dracs, Howlers and Sasquatches certainly seem suited to this. Despite the number of writers, this is a pretty consistent piece of work, that should be useful however you're playing the game.</blockquote>

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