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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4715980" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 104: December 1985 part 2/3Three challenges in one: A second, shorter promotional piece follows. As they've said several times before, Module X10 involves the standard D&D rules, the War machine from the Companion set, and the new Battlesystem rules. This really pushes the boundaries of what you can do in a roleplaying game. No longer do you need to fudge things when armies become involved. Instead, you can scale inwards or outwards as needed, to create a truly epic overall game where you can command nations. Use the War machine to quickly build up your countries, and their armies. In short, this becomes much more than just a bit of promotion, as it really challenges you to step up your game, take it in new, bigger directions, and makes it seem like a fun and achievable prospect. A single campaign can go from dungeon crawling, to wilderness exploration, to diplomacy, to comedy, to domain management, to personal introspection and relationship drama, to war, to other worlds, and even to godhood, while still retaining continuity. (aardvarks are optional) Do you have what it takes to pull that off? Or are you just going to pick one milieu and stick with it. If you do, don't be surprised if I get bored and leave you behind. This is much more successful as a mind broadener than the preceding OA piece. Meeting of the minds: Another 1 pager here. Do you wish you got more psionic monsters in your random encounters? Roll here then. Be very afraid, because your chance of encountering a demon lord, primus, slaad lord or similar unique monstrosity that terrifies even 20th level characters is better than 1 in a thousand. man what. They put creatures like that on the random encounter tables back then? What happens if you kill them, then the DM gets that result again? This is definitely another attack of serious old skool design I'd be rather wary of using in actual play, for though it might be entertaining, lots of horrible deaths would result. This is why they started designing CR appropriate encounters and all that goes with it. Leomund's tiny hut: It's been quite a while since we heard from Len. What's brought him back into the fray? Specialization, and its effect on game balance. Cue annoying average damage per round calculations. Yes, it makes fighters more powerful. That was the point. They're still seriously limited in options that can change the whole course of a battle compared to spellcasters. And if you determine the treasure your players get randomly, the benefits will balance out in the long run because chances are, they won't get magic weapons of types they know how to use as often, making the theoretical twinky synergies unlikely. Yet Len still wants to nerf weapon specialization further, making it harder to learn, and less beneficial if you do get it. Once again, I find myself at odds with his design choices. You need to be giving them more options, not reducing their power. The ecology of the ochre jelly: Now there's a monster you don't see much anymore. Which is curious, as they're one of the least screwage inflicting of the oozes and their relations, like slimes, molds, and puddings. Elminster delivers a rather clever tale of turning the quirks of the monster to your advantage, and using it to devastate your enemies. Gotta love that division power. Which is a kind of story we haven't seen here before. I strongly approve, as this is the kind of stuff it's great fun to see your players try, and hopefully reading this will inspire them to do likewise. Drama, realms lore, some rather well researched physiological descriptions, character ingenuity. Once again Ed has pushed his own limits and come up with a new trick to keep me interested. How very pleasing. He's continued to surprise way long after most writers become predictable. And hopefully will continue to do so. Assessing, not guessing: Hmm. Looks like we're getting a third article introducing a new subsystem this month. This is an interesting trend. This time, it's one for when characters try and figure out how much something is worth. After all, it's unrealistic for them to automatically know what it's value is. For that matter, it's unrealistic for gems and other valuable items to have a fixed value in the first place, but enough about D&D's monolithic price fixing cartels, and their desperate need for a union-breaker. Anyway, this is another efficient and easy to use  article that reminds us that independent subsystems aren't neccacerily a bad thing, as they can be tailored to the needs of the matter at hand more precisely, it's just that learning them and keeping track of them becomes more fiddly when there are hundreds of different parts. Still a fun read, though. Sudden dawn: It's been getting articles every month for over a year. Now the Marvel superheroes game gets it's first module. As it's christmas, it's a full 16 pager.  Venture to 1944, either using the pregenerated characters, or by concocting a reason for your regulars to go back in time, to save New york city from nazi ubermensch and a vampire with a nuclear bomb. It's a bit of a railroad, with a bunch of cool scenes, but very little opportunity to manipulate the plot. It's certainly an interesting experiment, and would make a decent pick-up game, but I can't see myself using it as written with a regular group. They'd refuse to cut the scene where it says and go off to investigate and mess it all up. A bit of a disappointment, really, despite the strong presentation. It'd make a good actual comic book story, but as we've found, what makes a good story and a good game are very different things. Spy's advice: What happens to an agent who quits and sets up their own agency. (Watch your back, especially if you found out important secrets before leaving. )I want my agent to use heavy weaponry. Pretty please. ( You'd better have a better justification than that.) I want my agent to use lasers. (Tough. This is a modern day game, so they do not exist, so they have no stats. Doesn't matter how highly cleared you are. Can't have something that doesn't exist.)If you shoot a car, how do you determine where you hit. (see page 38, and use common sense. Hitting what locations would produce these results?)I want more info on uzi's. (zzzzzzzzz. Oh, alright.)At what point does an object go from being really hard to conceal to impossible. (good question. )How hard is it to shoot two guns at once. (depends how many shots you do with each. Recoil adds up quite dramatically.) If you kill someone with a full burst, can you retroactively not shoot the extra shots (no. Chaos of melee and all that.)Does increasing your charm also increase your deception (yes)What guns did the use on the man from U.N.C.L.E (Walther P-38's)Can you use fortune and fame points to escape excecutions and explosions. (people certainly survive them in the movies against impossible odds, so yes) Can assault rifles be scoped. (yes. Most guns can. It helps with some more than others though. )</blockquote>

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