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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4728121" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 107: March 1986part 1/3108 pages. So they've expanded the size slightly again, to make up for the price increase. It's now reached the size that it'll remain at for the rest of the decade. Combined with their new drive for efficient use of space, this may result in a bigger increase in material than it seems. The contents page is certainly jam-packed. Will this force me to slow down my progress through the issues even more? As ever, this is the kind of question that can only be answered by doing. Let us see how much energy their new enlarged issues deplete.  Anyway, this month's theme is the ability scores. Not something they've tackled before in this way, and a little more basic than their usual fare. Will they completely deconstruct the game? Here's hoping. In this issue: Letters: A question about how to handle point-blank shots from firearms in D&D. Do you allow coup-de-graces, or let high level characters be unrealistically tough. I'm gonna go with the unrealistically tough version alex. A letter asking when they're next going to do an index for the magazine. Issue 112! Look forward to it! A letter asking what a 26 int does for you, and if gods can have other stats above 25 as well. They suggest you engage in basic mathematical extrapolation from the current tables. You should have more than enough to work from. Oooh. Well well well. We get the first rumblings that they're planning to make a magazine for adventures. They don't have a name for it yet, but it's going to be 64 pages long, published every 2 months, and edited by Roger Moore. Obviously, since they want lots of submissions from freelancers, they'll be giving more details as they figure them out. And almost as obviously, that means dragon'll stop having adventures in it soon. Which is a shame for me, but probably a good thing for the people at the time. Looks like they're not content with the changes they've made already, but have a whole bunch more to be rolled out this year. Will they be well-recieved? I'll just have to see.The forum: Michael Dobson defends the Battlesystem. You can engage in mass combat, and still have meaningful character development and roleplaying. Have you never watched war movies? High level characters ought to be doing this epic stuff. If they don't then high level play will be just low level play with bigger numbers. Don't be so closed minded.  Dana P Simer gives us a mini-article about clerics, alignment, and how they are enhanced or hindered by aligned areas. Interesting. Tom Humphries wants to reach a middle ground between the people who don't fudge at all, and those who do so regularly. If you kill too many characters too frequently, then you might end up with no game to play at all. How very wishy washy. Daniel Myers is decidedly unhappy with TSR's current direction, and has decided to stop buying the magazine. It's concentrating too much on D&D and other TSR products, and the new books constrain our creativity. The new edition looks like an excuse to constrain us even more, and bilk us out of money again for material we already have. Ahh, this familiar refrain. Some things never change. A new loyalty base: Hmm. Looks like Stephen Inniss is among those who finds that charisma is currently used as a dump stat and doesn't like it. Not only that, but the rules that use it are poorly organized, and scattered through multiple books. So he takes it on himself to provide an alternative system. Go him. This is actually slightly simpler than the regular system, and a lot more streamlined. The editors must have quite liked it to give it pole position. Can't say it really leaps out at me though. Given his crunch is generally pretty solid, I'll put it on the list of things to try out. Did anyone use this in place of the regular system? How did it turn out for you? The six main skills: Another increasingly regular writer takes the second spot. Jeff Swycaffer breaks down what your stats mean in terms of real world capabilities, and which ones can be improved by what means. While it's hard to improve your actual intelligence, and wisdom is something that should come with time anyway, there is a lot you can do to make better use of what you have. While the article is ok, it doesn't really seem to do much. I am left wandering what the point is. Room for improvement: Ah. This follows straight on where the last article left off. Now it makes more sense. Kim Mohan tackles the thorny topic of adventurers improving their ability scores. You may take this for granted now, but it was only a decade ago that you were pretty much stuck with what you rolled, powerful magic aside. He looks at the 6 of them, and whether, realistically, you should be able to improve them by training. He isn't completely against the idea, but if you do implement a system for it, he recommends you be exceedingly conservative, with months of dedicated training needed to improve one point, and no going above racial maximums. Ho hum. Stuff like this is why he's an editor rather than a primary writer. Just not very interesting, I'm afraid. Reviews: Pendragon gets high praise from Ken Rolston. It's well presented, well written, has a truly epic scope, and does a great job of turning it's source material into a coherent gamable setting, and then making mechanics that encourage play that works like the source material. It's both enjoyable to read, and makes a great game. Nice to see it getting the credit it deserves already. Harn's supplements get a good going over. Cities of Harn covers 7 major cities around the island. It's pretty small, and the cities are rather uniform. Whether this reflects a consistent design, or just copypasta, I'm not sure. The encyclopedia Harnica are a series of minibooks expanding on various aspects of the setting, from   economics to herbalism to cosmology. Looks like with the small size, they can write stuff that they couldn't fill a whole book with. Ivinia is another country set in the same world as Harn. It's covered in a similar way, but this area is based more on scandinavian stuff. It maintains the same standards as the rest of their stuff. They certainly seem to be a vibrantly developing setting at the moment. The role of books: A personal demon by Bischoff, Brown & Richardson is an amusing little morality play, in which a guy summons a demon, and ends up learning a lot about human nature. It has an interesting deconstruction at the end, where they talk about how and why it was written. This is of definite use to a certain kind of gaming. The misenchanted sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans is the tale of how a poor scout got saddled with a magic sword of immense power, that renders him immortal and near invincible, but at a dreadful cost. Like Bilbo, he just wants to live a quiet life, but his macguffin keeps dragging him into adventure, and he just can't get rid of it. This is of course, a much more entertaining story than some brooding badass adventurer with nothing real to complain about. Saga of old city by Gary Gygax is the first book in the Gord series. Unsurprisingly, it gets a fairly positive review, with the main criticism that the worldbuilding feels tacked onto the story, rather than growing organicly from his exploration of the world. The gygaxian prose is in full force here, resulting in a rather idiosyncratic read. Still, it should be useful to AD&D players, particularly greyhawk ones. The book of kantella by Roland Green and Frieda Murray is a rather large and ponderous story, that makes not even a token stab at being standalone. It gets one of the more negative reviews, but they still take pains to point out it's good points, such as good worldbuilding and military strategy. At least it's not just another fantasy heartbreaker. The book of kells by R A MacAvoy is nothing to do with our previous review. The book in question this time is a 10th century celtic manuscript sought by a modern-day artist. Somehow, he winds up traveling back in time, and getting into a whole bunch of adventures. And unusually, being crap at learning the language. There's rather more action in this than her previous books, which the reviewer considers a definite plus. Ahh, boys. Always after more action. The sorcery within by Dave Smeds is a cleverly crafted tale of a dragon, and the people looking to slay him. It spans substantial amounts of time, and has a cleverly crafted plot. Another pretty positive review. The iron tower trilogy by Dennis L McKiernan is an omnibus review of a very blatant tolkien rip-off indeed. As a pastiche, it's a well crafted success. As a work of genuine creativity, on the other hand, I think not. Probably not worth bothering. Plus we get lots more microreviews. Sheri S Tepper continues to be insanely prolific, as do Paul Williams, Charles de Lint and Katherine Kurtz, while Judith Tarr takes a literary right angle. No shortage of books coming out.</blockquote>

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