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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4746058" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 110: June 1986part 3/4Dragon damage revisited: Leonard Carpenter returns to follow up on last year's article on dragon attacks and how they scale with age. I know more about how the 1st ed system quirks now, so this doesn't provoke the bemusement it did last time. We have new expanded scaling charts for the 5 Gem dragons from issue 37, the 8 oriental dragons from the Fiend folio and Oriental Adventures, plus the Cloud, Mist and Shadow dragons from the MMII. We also get some design notes to help you adapt this kind of thing for your own campaign. After all, one size doesn't fit all. Maybe you want different dragons to the generic D&D ones. I'm generally happy to see follow-up articles going into more depth, particularly when it's an idea I approved of in the first place. I do vaguely wonder why this wasn't put at the front with the other dragon article. Eh, not important. I'd enjoy it just as much if it was right at the back. The house in the frozen lands: Looks like we're getting one of our last modules before Dungeon starts up and takes that job over. And they spill out a bit, going to 17 pages on this one. Curiously, it feels a lot like the Top Secret module set in the antarctic, with the same formula of troubles getting to the remote frozen location that's been taken over, and then dealing with enemies that are superficially polite, but really just want to get rid of you, and will kill you if you probe their secrets. Thankfully, there is no threat of nuclear apocalypse if you fail, but there is still the potential for wider political ramifications if you play this one right and tie it into your campaign. The maps are pretty good as well, (although the only toilet has a water weird in it, which may be a problem. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> ) A pretty solid adventure that could take up a good few sessions and play out in several different ways. Ok, It's no baba yaga or city beyond the gate, but it's still pretty decent. Once again, it looks like they've been saving their good stuff for the important issues. TSR Previews is still the wrong way around.AD&D is getting the dungeoneers survival guide. Further evidence of the acceleration of the supplement treadmill, this is lots of advice for your dungeon explorers and builders. Here we go again, into the breach. Terrible swift sword and Barbarossa are finally out ...... or are they? Oh, the annoyance. We also have a whole bunch of goofy stuff. The Paramount Movie and Broadway stageshow board games. The Honeymooners.  What is this? More attempts for them to tap completely unrelated markets, I guess. Marvel super-heroes is going Advanced. More crunch, more maps, and a whole bunch of gimmicky crap in the box. If that's not enough little pieces to get lost, you can get the 4th set of miniatures, with a definite X-men theme to it. Endless quest gets book 33: Knight of illusion. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Damn Illusionists. Proper wizards just blast you and have done with it. But no, you have to be given a chance and wind up facilitating your own demise in ironically amusing fashion. Fiction: The wizard's boy by Nancy Varian Berberick. Oh, inscrutable wizards. What pains in the ass you are. Always concealing your motives and goals from the people you work with. Things'd be a lot simpler if you just explained upfront what you're up too (at least, the nontechnical aspects. ) then we could help you achieve your objectives more efficiently. Still, I suppose when looking for an apprentice, if you let them know what you want, power-hungry people who would abuse the knowledge would fake it. If you remain inscrutable, things may take a little longer to plot out, but you know they're real when you see them. Yeah, this is one of those tales of a young boy growing up into a powerful wizard, and not having a particularly easy time of it. Not the most original idea, but again, not badly done either, with pretty decent characterization and magic. Guess we're finally slipping back into the filler material then. Knowledge is power: Seems like every new RPG that comes along these days has some kind of skill system, especially the ones that eschew classes and levels for a more ad hoc advancement where you only develop what you practice or choose to spend XP on. Games such as D&D and Gamma world are starting to seem rather outdated as a result of this. Just knowing what their players know or can describe them doing can result in huge imbalances in character effectiveness, even if they have the same stats. D&D has recently had a basic nonweapon proficiency system introduced in Oriental adventures, and in a few months that'll be rolled out for the regular classes in the Wilderness survival guide. But Gamma world is currently rather short on supplements. So here's a basic system for it. A very basic system indeed, as the skills are purely binary, most of their capabilities granted are handled narratively, and he neglects to give XP costs for learning new ones. Like the secondary skills in the original AD&D book, these rules are so vague as to be virtually useless. Frankly, you might as well just keep on using fiat, because you'll have to anyway if you try and incorporate this.</blockquote>

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