Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4755090" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 112: August 1986part 1/4108 pages. Looks like their promise to change things wasn't a hollow one. Straight into the contents page, and the Ares section is conspicuous by it's absence. Well, I guess last month's one was as good a send-off as any, both in the sense of being a good, well focussed one, and also a demonstration of how thoroughly it had been hijacked from it's original purpose by superheroics. Some people aren't going to be happy about these changes, and indeed, Kim isn't too happy about all of them either. Some hard decisions had to be made here, and he's really hoping they were the right ones. Still, better to try something new than trudge along in the same old rut year in, year out. I guess now all he can do is wait for the vitriol to come in, see if more people approve or disapprove. And although my opinion obviously doesn't matter when it comes to the direction of the magazine, I'm pretty curious as well. So lets take a gander. In this issue:Letters: Michael Selinker sends in a bunch of revisions for Death of an Arch-Mage. Kim takes this fairly well, considering. I'm sure this didn't ruin the adventure for many people, since this is only a month later, and it takes time to finish off adventures and move onto the next one. Dearie dearie me. The house in the frozen lands also gets a load of errata. More fixing needed. Oh, the horrors of being an editor on a monthly publication. Some mathematical corrections about the volume of water. Tripped up by the basics again. Talk about calling attention to your mistakes. The forum: James A Yates thinks that extremely big and strong people should be able to wield giant sized weapons, albeit maybe at a penalty. It's cool imagery, so yeah, I mostly agree with you there. Margaret M Foy thinks that if TSR are going to be all edgy about putting christianity into D&D, they should show just as much respect to other religions as well. If they do that, the only pantheons they'll have are entirely self-made ones. Do you really want that? Definitely a case of can't please everyone.  Thomas M Kane disagrees with some of the corrections about radioactivity. According to his textbooks, his numbers are mostly right. Ahh, science. Remember, science is a method of thinking and acting, not a fixed set of facts. If you're just parroting what someone else says without testing it, you're not being very scientific. Darcy Stratton is another person deeply annoyed by the sexism inherent in the AD&D game. These strength limits have knock-on effects on classes acessable and maximum level, especially to demihumans. (Why the hell are gnomes and dwarves even more dimorphic than humans? Realism is not a good justification there.) This degree of bigotry is unacceptable in my escapism! Amazing just how much of a deal a few points difference becomes when it's personal. Fraid you'll have to wait another 3 years for the new edition to fix that. Or play BD&D. They've never been sexist over there. Dawn of a new age: Welcome to a new era. We've already seen a few of the new changes, but here Kim really talks about what he's up too. The people have spoken, and he's done his best to sort out the signal from the noise. Of course, one of the things they've spoken most clearly on is that there's too much sci-fi in Dragon. Buncha philistines. :shakes head: So the Ares section is gone, and we've cut our intended amount of sci-fi per issue in half. Hopefully that'll strike a balance between the people who like it, and the people who would rather see it eliminated entirely. Computer gaming is of course, on the up, and they intend to keep track of that, which I have no objection too at all. The trickier question, is of course, how they recapture the magic of the old issues, whatever the hell that was. The decision they've come to is to stop worrying so much about making sense and getting everything perfectly lined up, and publish articles more on the basis of them being interesting than if they have solid rules. That sounds like it has the potential to go oh so very wrong, and bring in a new glut of overpowered, poorly thought out optional stuff. Set your quality control filters to defcon 2. This does not look promising. I said you could have phrased your questions better. Dinosaurs get another feature on them. This is one of those things that turns up again and again. They're really trying to go for a definitive take this time, with an epic 18 page article that hopefully will keep people satisfied at least until the next edition comes around. Taking a quite scientific approach to the subject this time, instead of listing tons of discrete species, they decide to give one set of basic stats for each genera, and then show you how to scale things up and down for a whole bunch of variants to challenge groups of various power levels with. Aetosaurs, Anklyosaurs, Carnosaurs, Ceratopsians, Giant sea turtles, Coelurosaurs, Crocodilians, Cynodonts, Deinonychusaurs, Dicynodont, Ichthyosaurs, Labyrinthodonts, Moasaurs, Nothosaurs, Ornithomimosaurs, Ormothpods, Phytosaurs, Placodonts, Pleiosaurs, Pliosaurs, Prosauropods, Proterosucians, Pseudosucians, Pterosaurs, Rhynchosaurs, Sauropods, Scelidosaurs and Stegosaurs. Whew. That ought to keep you going for quite some time, especially if you remember to include lots of variants on each body type as actually existed back then. It includes plenty of advice on how to run a game where dinosaurs feature, either tangentally, or playing a big part, along with lost world areas full of flora from their era as well. A very comprehensive article, that is both well researched, and keeps one eye firmly on making sure you produce a playable game with this stuff instead of getting bogged down in historical detail. While not quite as good as most of the planar articles in sheer epicness and imagination, it's just as good in terms of opening up a milieu further for play, and is in very much the same spirit. Which Is something I do like. Other eras and areas of the world can be almost as alien as other universes, and you can have fantastic adventures while barely traveling in a conventional sense. A very solid article indeed. Battletech! Pilot your own mech! Hello to another fun game. Revenge of the nobodies: Now here's a good demonstration of their desire to tackle more quirky topics. Commoners may seem innocuous, but you ignore them at your peril, for they provide much of the infrastructure that you depend on, regardless of level, (unless you're a live off nature type like druids and rangers) and slaughtering them will not benefit you in the long run, even if you have the power. So we have lots of demonstrations of how and why the peasants might become revolting. Many of them are incredibly funny, while also making a twisted kind of sense when you apply proper logic and knowledge of human nature to the fantastic elements of the setting. I can certainly picture tedious 'elf and safety people trying to force all the halflings to wear shoes, and the resulting backlash; and we've already had one examination of the support industry spell components can build up last issue. Disrupting parts of the setting that people have previously taken for granted is always interesting, if sometimes rather frustrating, and it does make a good learning experience. A deserved classic, that I fully intend to steal from when I get the chance.</blockquote>

Verification