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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4739683" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 109: May 1986part 3/4Toon now has a couple of supplements. How much can you add in terms of new monsters and adventures in such a simple game? Blades with personality: Ahh, sentient weapons. A fine field for roleplaying, as they can wind up forging a personal bond with their users that can be stronger than their attachment to any NPC. Here's another quick single pager that reminds you that you can make treasure your players encounter much more interesting if it has a history, and in many cases, a personality. Even if they're of the same alignment, they can sometimes disagree with their owner. When they crave souls, can take over your body, or have a Machiavellian plot, it becomes a real choice if their powers are worth it or not. Another one of those articles that says something we've seen before and will so again, but does it fairly well. Giant-sized weapons: Oh, here's a nicely prescient little article. Instead of big creature's weapons being arbitrarily assigned, a proper formula for scaling up weapons based on their original damage for man sized creatures, and their new size would be a very good idea. So here's a nice little table doing exactly that. Annoyingly, it doesn't cover scaling down, so it's not as good as the later edition's versions. Still, this is something we haven't seen before, and which seems like an obvious idea once someone's brought it up. It also has some other info on using weapons designed for different sized creatures, missile weapon ranges, and tactical considerations, which is nice. Another case where the magazine was way ahead of the times that I'm very pleased to have discovered. Have some kudos, Stephen Martin. Hooves and green hair: Ahh, the joys of satyrs and dryads. This libidinous and highly dimorphous fae species are entirely partial to having a little fun with humans. And sometimes, it goes beyond just being a little fun, as they wind up having kids with them. So yeah, this article gives you the statistical info needed to make half dryad/satyr PC's. Neither are hugely powerful, and of course, both are quite good at  dealing with nature related stuff. While nowhere near as impressive as the class stuff earlier on, they're still a flavourful addition to the game, although they may irritate those who would like the lechery kept out of their role-playing. Looks like introducing new crunchy stuff aimed at PC's is on the up at the moment. What are we to make of this? Profiles: Jeff Easly is another of TSR's most popular and prolific artists, producing covers for lots of their recent books. He seems to be a visually inclined person in general, making sculptures and models, dressing up, and generally brightening peoples lives with the stuff he creates. He's a friend of Larry Elmore, and got a job here because of him. Ruth Hoyer is the Art Director, which of course means she gets to order people like Larry and Jeff around. Not that they're likely to object, really. She's the one responsible for their recent logos, particularly the Dragonlance and Star frontiers ones. She's surprisingly scientific for an artist, with a definite preference for clean, functional designs. Another part of the machine that makes production values here rather better than they were back in the 70's. TSR Previews: At last. The immortals set is finally here. Now you can take your D&D games all the way, and actually win the game. Godhood is just the beginning. You've got to work your way up to supreme deity, Twice. Have you got the skill (and patience ) to manage it. I'll wager the number of groups who've managed to do it fairly from 1st level are even fewer than those who completed Knightmare. AD&D gets CA2: Swords of deceit. A trio of short adventures set in Lankhmar. You even get to be the big heroes and save Fafhrd and the Mouser in this. How very unusual. We also get I8: Ravager of time. In it, your players are aged to near death, and have to find out how to defeat the villain while suffering the ravages of time and get their youth back. How very cruel. I'm betting a certain amount of railroading is involved to make that premise work. We also have the Best of Dragon part 5. That means we have more than 1 per 2 years the magazine has been around. Guess we're still getting in plenty of new people who want stuff from old issues. And if they want it, who are we to deny them a chance to spend money. For our 8th AD&D adventure gamebook, we're going back to Baba Yaga's hut. Since it's by the same author, I'm guessing there will be lots of similarities with our last visit. Dragonlance is up to it's 5th book, War of the Twins. Can Caramon and Tasslehoff save the world from Raistlin. Surely, otherwise we wouldn't get any more books in the series. Question is, at what cost, and how much cheese will the writers throw at us while they do it? One-on-one gamebook number 6 is Amber sword of worlds end. And once again, it looks like it does exactly what it says on the tin. Will the barbarian claim the sword and wield it with his mighty biceps. Or will the monk retrieve it in the name of his temple. The power is in your hands. Finally, coming atcha from Canada, It's the Balderdash Game, one of their new family party games. Are the words and their definitions real? You get to educate as well as entertain your kids, expanding their vocabulary to quite excessive degrees. Administrator's advice: Here's this month's Top Secret article. It's a big load of GM'img advice, helping you build your campaign. After all modern gaming is quite different from fantasy gaming. (although you can change that, by adding hypertech, bond style, and going overboard with the fame and fortune points. ) Still, there are lots of things you can't do in a modern setting, especially if you want to keep recorded history the same as the real world. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that you can do that you couldn't when you have to make up your own fantasy world, and you can travel anywhere in the world fairly easily. Lots of solid, specific advice here, that should help keep your players acting appropriately for the world, and make your games fun. Since we've had plenty of general advice by now, this kind of highly specific, focused stuff is just what's needed to keep long-term readers interested and developing their style. This may of course not be newbie friendly. But it's a big magazine now. Surely they can strike a decent balance between articles anyone can understand and ones that require a decent degree of expertise to build on.</blockquote>

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