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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4730965" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 107: March 1986part 3/3Spy's advice: What did you mean when you said .44 magnums weren't suitable for use. (they reveal your position, letting everyone else shoot back. Baaad idea for a spy.)How does magnum ammunition interact with regular guns. (badly. That extra damage requires special design. ) How do equipment finding percentages interact with the black market. ( If you're willing to pay the price, you can find nearly anything. Course, this may get you in trouble if it's illegal equipment. ) How long are fusing cords. How long do they take to burn down. (As long as you make them. 1 inch per second. For once, warner brothers cartoons are fairly accurate to reality.)Can you load a gyrojet underwater (yes. You can shoot it too. Pretty handy.)How do different kinds of bullets differ statistically. (Quite substantially. Choosing the right one is a big consideration. )Can you kill someone with an overdose of truth serum (only if they're a wimp)Can you get agency help if the mafia is after you (yes) Can you wear karate pads on your feet (yes)Why can't you use a fist in untrained combat (You can. What book are you reading?)Can you use fame and fortune points to jam someones gun when you're unconcious and they'd kill you otherwise. (Only once. You'd better think of some other excuse next time. How hard is it to shoot someone outdoors in the dark (-100. No chance for most people. )Are there any limits on your advancement of your personal traits (Not many. Get as badass as you can dude.)Does increasing your knowledge score add to your AoK's (yes)Do police really carry thompson machine guns. (Sometimes.)How do you raise language ratings (same as any other AoK)Do NPC's have observation and perception ratings. (how else would they spot sneaking PC's. No challenge if they don't. )What are the rules for car crashes. Will they explode (buy issue 78 :teeth ting: )Are range modifiers cumulative (no) Can you make bullets of strange materials (at great expense)Do death rings affect the wearer or the person you shake hands with (good question. Both have their uses. ) If you attack someone while talking to them, do they have to check for surprise (no)What's a neckband holster. (Another clever way to conceal weapons. Ahh, those wacky secret agents, always having to counter each other's innovations. )How quickly can you replace a cylinder. (4 phases) Can an M3 use a Thomson ammo drum (can you use USB devices with a ZX spectrum? )Do frag and blast grenades cost the same (yes) You missed out some prices. (Oh noes. Easy enough to fix)If you shoot someone at point blank range, do you use the general determination chart (no)What happens if you fire flechettes or microjets at point blank range. (they lose their special benefits. No point, really.)Do telephone taps have their own transmitters (usually)Can walkie talkies be concealed (Not in the 80's.) Will a weapon still work after going underwater if you don't shoot it (unlikely, especially if you've just swum through a sewage pipe) What are defenses S1-3 ( S1&2 are in the book. S3 was a mistake) Weapon prices in different parts of the book contradict each other! (The chart is right)Can I use a real world catalogue to buy non-espionage equipment. (That would make sense. Course, the GM might not want their game to make sense. ) Fiction: Doomsgame by J B Allen. An amusing little tale of how Teachers & Classrooms, and it's dramas, is corrupting the youth of a fantasy world. Who will slay the dragons? Who will propitiate the gods? What strange hold does the idea of sneaking cigarettes in and smoking them while trying to avoid being caught, figuring out if the boy from your geography class likes you, and trying to get good grades so you can get a good job when you graduate have on these children. I'll give you some magical gems if you go back to your zombie slaying practice like a good girl. Very amusing, and a slant on the whole meta gaming fiction I haven't seen before. This certainly brought a smile to my face. Mutant fever: Hmm. Disease got short shrift in the recent edition of gamma world. This is rather unrealistic, and the writer of this article disapproves. Still, that's what articles like this are for. So here we get expanded rules for infection and treatment of disease. The kind of thing that will increase the lethality somewhat, but that's intentional, so I'm not criticizing the writer for that. As this is a big subject, this is only part of the article, with stuff on specific diseases coming next month. Which means it isn't really fully usable on it's own. Which is mildly irritating. Ho hum. Guess I'll have to wait until next issue before coming to a full conclusion. One in a million: How common should superheroes be in your campaign. Should you imitate the marvel and DC universes, and skew the ratio strongly towards america. Should your universe have all the different categories of origins and powers that they put in those, or will you go for a more consistent theme and structure. As ever, good questions, that may not be that well tackled by the article at hand. This is pretty purely about demographics, showing stats for how many heroes there should be, assuming 1 superhero per million people, where they should come from, what ethnic groupings they should be. Not very interesting stuff and oh so very out of date by now, but not terrible as a piece to get you thinking analytically about your worldbuilding. Do you want a game where the PC's and named villains are the only game in town, or a world where you can assume there are superheroes in every city, each with their own dramas and crises. Choice is yours etc, etc. Tote that barge: Looks like we have another recurring topic this month as economics is applied to sci-fi settings. Supply and demand becomes rather tricky when your travel times can run into years. You could make an enormous profit is what you're selling can't be found anywhere in the solar system. But if you turn up shortly after someone else, you'll make considerably less. Compensating for this instability is one of the prime causes of inflation. More stuff that seems perfectly reasonable, but rather dull. We do get some random tables for star frontiers that serve as an example. Think about what resources each planet has, and then plan your own economic map accordingly. The marvel-phile: Lots more canadian creations this month. Smart Alec. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> Diamond Lil. Flashback. Wild child. Scramble. Deadly Ernest :double rolleyes: Nemesis. Looks like Canada is as susceptible to attacks of bad puns as the rest of the english speaking world. As most of there are recently introduced (and in some cases already killed) characters, their histories and the true extent of their powers is rather sketchy. While they do have some interesting powers, this fails to sustain my interest as a whole, as the human interest just isn't there. A rather inconsequential entry. The crusading life: A third superhero article this month, as we look at how to present your heroes with some more mundane challenges. Many of them have to juggle their secret identity with a normal job to pay the bills, and even if you can blow up entire buildings and run faster than a speeding bullet, this won't help with your love life, especially when you're late to your date again because you just saved the world. This is a staple of certain comics, spiderman in particular, and I have to agree that this could be pretty fun in a superhero RPG as well. So a few random low level events between the big plotlines seems like a good idea to me. This is a mistake that kills high level campaigns. If you have to save the universe every day, you get blase about it. And then the whole thing will just peter out. And I would prefer not to have to start all over again so soon, so this seems a pretty good way to finish off the section. Wormy reminds us that while ogres may be stupid, they're still smart enough to kick ass. Snarfquest gets a little bit scooby doo in the way they face up to ghosts. Dragonmirth has some monstrous seduction. West end games gives us two games adverts, one with commentary by Harlan Ellison, of all people. He does get around. He's like a crankier Neil Gaiman. Overall, not a very good issue. The increase in contents seems to have resulted in more dull stuff getting in, which isn't very pleasing. Their editorial control also seems to be on the slide at the moment. To their credit, the survey shows that they are aware that they need to make some changes, but from this showing, I have my doubts as to whether I'll find them pleasing ones. Looks like the rollercoaster is heading downwards again now. How long before it goes back up again? Guess I'll have to just keep going and see. Well, they had three pretty damn good years. I shoulda known that it wouldn't all be like that. Onward! We can't end this on a downer.</blockquote>

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