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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4690865" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 99: July 1985part 1/3100 pages. Well, it looks like whatever the general public may think, according to the designers, Unearthed Arcana does indeed represent official AD&D v 1.5 or the 4th corebook. All future submissions must take into account the stuff in there, or they will NOT BE CONSIDERED. That's right. KNOWLEDGE OF ITS CONTENTS ARE MANDATORY CITIZEN! BE HAPPY THAT YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SPEND MONEY ON EXPANDING YOUR UNIVERSE! THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. Thanks for telling us that. I'm sure your public will be delighted to hear this. Or maybe not. Well, I guess if there are complaints, we'll probably see them in a few issues time. And then they'll get amusingly rebutted by the absolutely not biased at all editorial staff. But we won't get to see that if we don't get through this issue. So lets not look ahead too far. In this issue: Letters: Two letters on the ecology of the gorgon. One of them is another case of the silly editors messing up Ed's perfect work by changing things without thinking about the consequences, and the other is answered quite efficiently. A letter full of questions on Blueprint for a big game. You need to read your dictionary more. A letter from someone who got their modifiers the wrong way round. (They corrct him with mild amusement. A letter from someone who's spotted a genuine mistake in one of Ed's articles. Math, you should check it. A letter from someone who's noticed that the magazine has lost some height. It's only an eighth of an inch. Hardly something to worry about, unless you're in porn. The Pendragon campaign, to go with the corebook. A year by year chronology of Arthur's reign. Obviously no-where near the depth of later versions, as it's only 80 pages long, but it's obvious Greg already knows pretty much what he wants this game to be. And if you got it right first time, why change it?The forum: Bruce Carlson thinks that balancing races by making them differently unbalanced at different stages of the game is bloody stupid, and doesn't really make anyone happy. Instead, allowing unlimited advancement, but imposing XP penalties commensurate with your racial abilities is a much better idea. You may be onto something there. Alex Bergmann, meanwhile, thinks that tracking how much worship power all the gods in your campaign are getting on a regular basis is too much bookkeeping. You'd have to spend all your time worldbuilding to do that. Two pretty non-contentious positions this time it seems. Not their highest moment.The neutral point of view: Ahh, lawful and chaotic neutral. Some of the most interesting alignments, and yet undervalued and ignored in too many books. (yes, you, the entirety of fourth edition.) Trust Stephen Inniss to spot a hole like this and fill it. It would be entirely logical for the various detect/dispelprotection from good/evil spells to also have lawful and chaotic variants, and this would require no extra bookspace at all. Doing this would give the endless moral war more shades of grey, which has definite plot potential. You do need to clear up a few things to do with planar stuff, but that's not an insurmountable problem either. This is exactly the kind of article you should be covering in the magazine, doing things specifically related to the rules and setting. It could definitely stand to be longer, and have more info on more mundane playing of morally neutral characters, but what there is is solid material. Come on, give us some more epic articles really delving into things, instead of just skimming the surface. Tables and tables of troops: A neat little expansion for those of you who choose to build a stronghold and attract followers at name level+. As this is the kind of thing that you only roll for once in your characters career, it could do with being expanded and customized, made more of a special event. Plus fighters don't get nearly enough love. So this allows you to change the specifics of your troops based upon terrain and how much you prepare for this. Which could definitely provide several sessions of fun gaming, as you maximize your potential rewards. They would later do variants on this for many of the kits in the Complete handbook series, and this is a development I'm pretty happy about seeing, as it expands on a previously neglected class feature. This is definitely one to note down and pull out when you reach the appropriate point in your games. The ecology of the Will-o-Wisp: Hello again, Mr Findley. So you've submitted another ecology article. And as with the peryton he goes quite a way towards reminding us that these creatures are supposed to be creepy. He also does another clever thing by turning the boggart into the immature form of the Will-O-Wisp. This is a cool article which adds a good deal to the creature, including legends of a trancended race, and abandoned civilisation from before they cast off material form. (See what transcendance gets you. Hanging around in swamps killing people for kicks. Definite lesson there. Don't transcend, kids. It's like reaching nirvana. It's no help to anyone else, and sometimes will have results akin to summoning cthulhu upon any unenlightened nearby.) His flavour is certainly quite different from Ed's articles. And that's not a bad thing, as too many cutesy Elminster-delivered ones would grow tiresome. Their mating and lifecycle is ingeniously described, and there's plenty of drama in the fiction part. One of the best ecologies yet. Don't be a stranger. That's life in the big city:  Ahh, city building. Are people still having problems with that? Well I guess what counted as a city did vary a lot over the centuries. You've gotta put a bit of research in, then make a big load of stuff up. Here's a load of potted info for if you want to build a pseudomedieval style one for your D&D games.  Lets not forget that they were pretty gross places in terms of hygiene, and there's all kinds of mundane hazards such as thieves, "Insurance" salesmen, dodgy food and goods, mockney urchins, fire outbreaks, etc etc. Demographics, mapping, ensuring you have the stuff needed for people to actually live there. The usual advice we have to sit through on a regular basis. No great surprises here, good or bad.</blockquote>

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