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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4695790" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 100: August 1985part 1/3116 pages. Time for the magazine to make a quantum leap, in the most literal sense. They've obviously decided to push things out again for the big number. However, this also means the price goes up, all the way to $3.95. They'd better have something to justfy this. Starting right away, they have a cover that's sculpted, rather than painted, which is very interesting, and the photo captures the three-dimensionality of it quite nicely. A nice idea for a change, but one that could go wrong if overused. Lets hope they don't start doing covers from posed dolls. <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=";)" /> We also have a whole bunch of special features, for both D&D and other systems. Whether this is as spectacular as they hoped is yet to be seen, but it's definitely going to be quite different, in any case. Which means it should be interesting for me as well. In this issue:Letters is actually not comprised of specific letters at all for a change, but is instead an extensive Q&A about the workings of the magazine and lots of other related stuff. As usual, we get told just how much hard work it is getting consistent product where creative endeavours are involved. The dreaded deadline beast needs feeding, and so often there will be something going wrong that results in them scrambling to get everything done on time. Which means the time they have to read  and answer letters and assess manuscripts is not as much as they'd like. If you want to be published, you'd better make your articles both eye-catching and well written, because with their current volume of stuff, if it doesn't get their attention on the first read-through, it's going to go straight in the slush pile. We don't have time to fix up cool but flawed articles like we did in the early days. Interesting to note that marvel super heroes is definitely the second most popular game in the magazine. Not so interesting is the usual disclaimer that their Roger Moore is not the film star Roger Moore. Like most of these editorials, this is a welcome look into where the writers heads are at at a particular point in time. Can you go fast enough to jump on board their train? Good luck with that, because you'll need it. Kim reminisces about the time he's spent here. Seems like only yesterday he walked in nervously, and got given a big pile of manuscripts to go through as his baptism of fire. Next thing you know, he's head of the department, putting together a hundred page magazine with a six figure circulation every month. How did they get there? One step at a time, just like any journey. And despite the hard work, not particularly stellar pay, and general weirdness, he still loves his job. But we can't rest on our laurels. Here's to many more years of cool gaming products. Score one for sabrotact: Looks like they're trying to put a little LARP material in here again. They do seem to try that every few years, but it never sticks. Most frustrating for all involved. Anyway, this is a most fascinating way of expressing the boffer LARP principles. By  attaching a bunch of target points to the people fighting, and having proscribed scoring systems for breaking specific ones, they remove the fighting from the realm of fiat without much danger of real injury by the participants. Of course, the buy in costs and need for large numbers of participants may be a problem. Still, this is definitely a game that has potential. Does it still get played these days, or has it become just another historical footnote? All about the druid/ranger: Ahh, one of the more awkward things in D&D's design. Druid and ranger are both nature based classes that complement each other well, but alignment restrictions mean you can't be both at once. So to allow this, you need to bend a few rules in their respective strictures, creating characters who balance their commitments to nature and the people from the borderlands who explore it. This is a definite roleplaying challenge. Frank Mentzer also takes the time to examine some of the game's metaphysical assumptions. Do druids and rangers get their spells from the same source, and if so, why are they held to very different standards? Could rangers who act too lawful or chaotic wind up being denied spells? Once again we see the writers being confronted with ramifications of their own rules that they hadn't considered before, and the implied setting that results in. Organic writing does result in a whole bunch of weird resultant effects that you could never get if you planned it all out from the start. Is this a good or a bad thing? Probably a bad thing in this case, but there's plenty of instances where it has turned out for the better. This may be a small article, but it's jam packed with thought-provoking stuff. You could have long, fun flamewars as a result of this. The forum: Michael D Selinker thinks that while there's nothing wrong with changing the game to suit your group, you ought to at least try playing it as written first, to make sure it isn't to your taste. If you can't handle playing AD&D as written, maybe you ought to go back to basic D&D instead. Brian McCaskill tells a story about his D&D experiences, and the stages he went through as players munched out, and then lost interest. Already, people are drifting away from gaming because they don't want to be seen as uncool. We need to regroup and reassess what we're doing if we want to keep this hobby around. Chad P Culotta (no relation) also thinks that the official rules are unusable, and you should examine them to use the good bits, as well as incorporating the good stuff from the magazine. Are we getting close to a consensus here? How very surprising. They'll have to find something else to flame about.</blockquote>

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