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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4700427" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 101: September 1985part 1/3100 pages My god. The price increase was only temporary. That's a new one. How long before it goes up for good? As ever, this will be reported as I discover it. Another reminder that they're not really in it just for the money here, as Kim talks in the editorial about refusing to print an advert that slagged off another company. Nevertheless, the party is over, and it's back on the treadmill. The deadlines are coming strong as ever, and the contents page looks surprisingly empty. Hopefully that means several big articles rather than a glut of advertising, but of course the only way to be sure is to get reading. See you on the other side.In this issue:Letters: A letter asking about the level limits for aquatic elves. They remain reluctant to give any, because they don't want them as PC's. They may have opened up a whole bunch of subraces in UA, but an all underwater game? That's a little too far for their comfort. A question about the problems underground demihumans suffer in the light. They take the time to once again promote UA, but point out that PC's of those races have been nerfed in comparison to their NPC relations for the sake of game balance. Is this going to help sell it, or provoke complaints? Probably both. A simple question. Does the will-o-wisp keep glowing after dying. An equally simple answer. No. Yet more questions about demihumans, this time concerning their new increased level limits, and how they interact with old articles. They reply that yes, a whole bunch of old stuff is invalidated by UA. You'll just have to like it or lump it, because all the new stuff will be using it. We are currently in a phase of preferring cool ideas over consistency or universal compatibility, and publish our articles based on this. Which bits you take and use in your game, and how you make them fit together is your concern. Some questions about the lightning bug. This is not a huge problem. A question about murlynd's stats. Once again, there are very different versions of the same character floating around the D&D multiverse. It's like Amber. They got played in the original games, so they spawn tons of references and funhouse reflections all over the universe, long after they've retired. An editorial turn in response to getting far too many letters to print on the subject of the Dragons Teeth article. Man, people have picked this one apart like a flock of crows on a dead sheep. Please, folks, don't look to us for all the answers, make them up yourself. Seems to be becoming a familiar refrain here. A rather dumb letter that they seemingly printed as a joke, while still making a serious point. Logistics, people. All the old issues don't exist in some kind of phase space until ordered, there's bloody great warehouses and trucks and printing runs and all that. Its quite the issue. The forum: Mike Dombrowski has some rather complicated thoughts about the balance of humans and demihumans, and how it changes over a very long term game, with different races aging and dying at different rates, as well as having different class maximums. How do we deal with and compensate for this? This is definitely a topic worth examining. Gary comes in to make some comments on recent stuff. These are pretty positive, actually. He likes the idea of more scaling in dragons, so they can be a challenge for all levels of parties. After all, it is D&D. Without the Dragons, it would just be a dungeon crawl. Sam Swanson is very much against the DM fudging dice rolls. This may seem like a good idea in the short term, but in the long run it will ruin your game by taking away the sense of danger and freedom of events. Plus it sets a bad example and the players are more likely to cheat as well if they have a DM who does it. A good DM should be firm but fair. So there, David F Godwin. Dan Swingley has a short comment on the way climate affects the terrain. It's not just the plants and animals living in it. It also has significant effects on the erosion patterns. Why do you think we only get fjords in the far north. Jim Ayotte talks about his gaming experiences, and how one size most definitely does not fit all. Also, Gary should stop being so cranky. I know he has lots of deadlines, but that's no excuse, plenty of other writers manage to meet their deadlines and still not let their personal feelings spill over into what they're writing. And finally we get a rather innappropriate use of the forum, as Frank Mentzer pops in to shill the D&D companion set, and the new challenges it offers for jaded mid-level characters who think they've seen it all. You think dragons aren't scary anymore? Think again. With all their tactical moves, they make even a party of that level look like chumps if they don't think fast. While he has a point, this is definitely not where he ought to be saying it. I disapprove. Update from the chief: Unearthed Arcana has sold out immediately! Holy jumping jimminickers Mohan! Back to the printing presses! We also have two big new books coming soon. Oriental adventures. Booyeah! And Temple of elemental evil is finally finished and will be coming to you in a bumper pack book containing the contents of all 4 intended modules. Double Booyeah! Am I not the man! I can run two companies simultaneously, find time to make products personally, and still think of myself as lazy. Would a satanist do things as amazing and selfless as that? I think not. Now back to work. I can't rely on you incompetents to do anything right when I'm not around and someone's got to keep this company afloat. Plans and plots, we have lots. (Many of which are going to fall through painfully in the next year or so, but that's life) We take another step, albeit an entertaining one, towards the realization that the supplement treadmill is the way to go to make the bucks the company needs to pay all it's built up staff, and the infrastructure they require. Be afraid. All about the kender: Oookay, upgrade that. Be very afraid. Because these guys can't be, so you've got to be terrified for everyone. Roger Moore (lest you've forgotten, the creator of splat articles for all the other PC races back in 1982) outlines the history of the kender, and how they differ from halflings or humans. Fearless, insatiably curious, whimsical, no sense of personal property, vicious taunters. It's like they were custom developed to be pains in the ass to party dynamics in the hands of all but the best players. What were their creators thinking? Oh, yeah, we can handle it, and it works well in stories, so it should work well in a game. Plus it's the 80's, so you've got to have a silly comic relief character. It's a law or something. The transformers movie managed to survive four of them, so we can put in three bloody comic relief races and still create a serious, epic and dramatic story. Urgh. :throws hands in the air: Someone give me 20cc's of babylon 5 stat to cancel out the cheese overload. Funny how the writers of something liking them too much can result in other people finding them tremendously annoying, and not in the way intended. This is deeply problematic. Once again the integral flaws of the dragonlance setting are shoved in our face and called features. I do not find this pleasing.  Traveler alien modules. Now there's a splatbook series if ever I saw one. Once again, traveller is ahead of D&D when it comes to book type trends. Funny to notice that. Plan it by the numbers: Another attempt at a CR system. Oh joy. [/deadpan] Frank Mentzer gives us the one he uses. Actually, this is pretty good for it's time, allowing you to calculate the deadliness of an encounter and reverse engineer it to your taste with a few minutes math, and being pretty accommodating to parties of various sized and mixed levels. At least, as long as the creators of the monsters don't mess up their number of asterisk calculations. A system is only as solid as it's weakest link. Still, if you stick to the BECM stuff that he also developed, this should hold up pretty well. More evidence that Frank was one of the people who really helped make TSR a professional outfit. I can see myself using this, which is a good sign. For king and country: Great. Moral relativism and D&D alignment. Two flavours that do not happily mix. It's time for one of those detailed examinations of what exactly morality in D&D can mean. How can we have genuinely compelling morality tales when there is an absolute right and wrong, and people know for certain if they are good or evil. This writer dislikes the idea, and would rather change that. He'd much rather throw the idea of cosmic standards of behaviour out, and substitute specific ones derived from the character's culture and the specific gods they worship. That way, you can have people who both feverently believe they're right, and have their holy powers back them up. This is one of those cases where I find myself divided, as this is a well-written article, but one holding a position I'm not very keen on, as I rather like the idea of objectively quantifiable morality, even if the folks on the ground don't know exactly what the rules are they should be following. Still, this goes quite some way towards demonstrating that you can make subjective morality work in D&D, despite all the rules that get in it's way, as long as you apply a little effort. I'm not going to knock the fact that many people do like to play it like that.</blockquote>

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