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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4705159" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 102: October 1985part 1/399 pages. Once again we Kim bemoans how annoying the press are, painting gamers as a bunch of weirdos who spend all their time dressed up in fantasy gear and talking pseudo-medieval bollocks, when they aren't living in their parents basements invoking satan. They're just trying to get the most interesting story. The fact that bears little resembelance to the truth is just because we're not actually interesting enough. Don't sweat it too much. It happens to everyone else as well. This is another reason why the internet is so great. It allows you to easily bypass the big media outlets and talk to real people around the world about a topic. It's no wonder we're so much more cynical when it's much easier to see through the <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, but they keep producing it anyway. But I seem to have digressed. Lets get back to the issue at hand.  In this issue: Letters: A letter asking how the training rules in issue 97 work. They are designed to slow you down somewhat. This was intentional. We want you to spend more time at low levels, so you don't see how much it breaks down at higher levels. A request for Dragonchess, asking if it will be for sale soon. Unfortunately not. They couldn't figure out how to make it cheap enough for the mass market. A letter from someone who noticed the numbering slip-up in issue 65. Very ancient history by now. But mistakes like that will live in ignomy forever. What are you gonna do. A rather amusing question. What happens if a character playing through The city beyond the gate finds and reads a D&D book. Kim deflects the question with a joke. Guess you'll have to deal with the recursion as you see fit. Finally, we get a bunch of Dragonchess errata. Curse you, unclear explanations. Once again, we see that Gary needs a firmer editor to turn his cool ideas to clear reality. The forum: Dan Fejes points out that the uberpaladin vs red dragon fight in issue 99 would have gone rather differently if you'd remembered to make item saving throws for all their stuff. One breath weapon would wipe out a sizable fraction of their toys, and even if they survived, they wouldn't be as twinked as they used to be.   You aren't playing the monsters cleverly enough, or taking advantage of their full power. No wonder you can't challenge your players. Anthony Ragan gets rather heated about the idea of the druid/ranger, and how dumb it is. This makes no sense and messes up the themes of the game. Cut it out now! Hee. Carl Seglem has a pretty simple yet profound statement. There is life after Monty Haul. Come back to the game you know. Chris Sheldon shares the sad story of how his game fizzled out when he tried to rein back the munchkins. Already D&D is starting to lose quite a lot of the casual players to the next fad. Mark Permann presents us with a horrible moral dilemma. What should the alignment consequences be of a bunch of adventurers showing up on earth, using magic openly and shattering our belief that we are alone in the universe. Even if they don't engage in mass slaughter, they've still completely overturned a culture. Man, that's a tricky one. I can see justified arguments for all sorts of positions on this topic. I hope we see some more on this in the next few issues. Realms of role playing: Ha. Gary thinks that too much attention is being paid to roleplaying, and not enough to the game part these days, and it's time the pendulum swung back the other way. Considering how undeveloped the settings and characterisations are still compared to even 2nd edition, and other games of the 90's, I find this very amusing. He's definitely not keen on immersing yourself in your character and their everyday likes, dislikes and behaviours to the extent that the goal pursuing aspect of the game gets forgotten. It's not that it's bad advice, but it's obvious that his idea of a good balance between the roleplaying and the game part is rather more skewed towards the game aspect than many of the new writers. If you think it's annoying now, just you wait and see what the next decade has to offer. We also get a bit of cross-promotion. For those of you who want to see more stories of Gord, buy Amazing magazine. After all, I can't fill Dragon up with fiction to the detriment of it's intended purpose. So you'll have to buy all our properties if you want to get the full picture of what we're up too. This is definite evidence that supplement bloat and scattering metaplot through multiple books would probably still have happened had he been in charge during the 90's. Overall, this is another entertaining, but not entirely pleasing contribution from the father of the game. All about gully dwarves: Looks like Krynn has given Roger a whole new seam to mine. Unfortunately, this means putting up with the second bloody comic relief race, gully dwarves. Still, if that means we'll be getting ones on irda and minotaurs soon, I can sit through this. At least they're not as disruptive to a party as kender. Of course, most players won't want to play them because they have crap ability scores, no special powers, and are not very glamourous either. This means that in terms of not pulling their weight in a heavily optimized party, they're probably even more troublesome. So hopefully only people who really want to play them for roleplay reasons and can handle their quirks without pissing the rest of the players off actually will. This is one area I'm particularly interested in hearing about peoples actual play experiences, precisely because as written, they do seem so troublesome and unappealing. Did anyone manage to transcend that? If so, how? A collection of canines: Doggies! This article gives stats for lots of variants on this species, and is essentially an ecology of article in disguise. This is a typical Stephen Inniss article, a well researched expansion on an already existing part of the game, with fairly decent crunch along with the fluff. We get revisions of existing stats based on more intensive study of how these creatures compare to people, talk on evolution and domestication of wild varieties of canines, and some stuff on jackals and hyenas as well. These are assisted by some pretty nice illustrations which remind me of science books from this era. This is one of his more pleasing contributions, avoiding the dullness he can slip into when he gets too interested in little details. He's certainly continuing to earn his place here.</blockquote>

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