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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4757473" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 112: August 1986part 3/4D is of course for Dragon. Every year we get at least one article on them. Some are good, some are bad, and some are mediocre. But the important thing is that the namesake of both the game and the magazine remains one of their most fleshed out monsters, with tons of variants usable in all sorts of rules, suitable for any campaign. From rampaging monster to sage to urbane loan shark to embodiment of the land, they can do all sorts of things. Like alignment, without them, you aren't really playing D&D. E is for Ed Greenwood and Elminster.  By a big margin both their most prolific and capable all round writer. By coincidence, It's also for Ecology. Fitting, really, as he's produced some of our most kick-ass ecologies, and Elminster has participated in some of them. Long may he contribute to the magazine. F is for From the Sorcerer's scroll. Gary's regular column in which he pontificated on whatever came to mind. New rules, news, reviews, vitriol. All have been thrown in and stirred together to produce a fascinating, if not always palatable stew for us to consume. He always had a rather different writing style to everyone else, but somehow it worked. Genius, madness, or both? Whichever, he created an entire new genre of games and took it to multimillion sale success within a decade, so he must have ben doing something right. And his contributions to the magazine allowed us to see his ideas raw, as he came up with them. Do you only want to see people's ideas once they've gone through layers of redrafting, editing, polishing and committee input? You're missing out on a lot if you do. G is for Gods. One of the biggest sources of new crunch and fluff has been articles on deities. From the seemingly endless followups to G: DG&H introducing new real world pantheons, to Len's Suel pantheon stuff which also developed the idea of cleric powers being differentiated by the god they serve. The cosmic beings of your universe are an important part of it, especially when 1/4 of your PC's are supposed to get their powers from serving one. Not defining them properly will result in a shallow setting. H is for Hell. One of this magazine's and Ed Greenwood's shining moments are the three epic articles he did on the nine hells. Between them, we have nearly 50 pages of creatures, places and ideas, all brilliantly constructed and evocatively written. Not strictly judeo-christian, but still drawing heavily on that mythos, this is a great place to adventure. You can play it as the ultimate hack and slash dungeon, world spanning conspiracy horror, or dangerous high stakes political negotiations. Whichever way, it's awesome with an extra helping of awesomesauce on top. I is for Imagination. As in use your own, goddamnit! The number of letters they have to deal with from people quibbling over the official ruling on stupid details must drive them mad. Canon is not important. The game is yours to twist and add to as you see fit. If you want prepackaged entertainment to simply consume, go to another hobby. J is for Jesters. The mascot and ringleader for their yearly dose of april mischief.  Because having a sense of humour is important. The real world is full of ridiculous things, (look down your own trousers if you doubt me for a second. ) and if you're all serious, all the time, people wind up ignoring you. By injecting strange and sometimes silly elements into an overall serious product, you massively increase it's appeal, making it more likely to be paid attention too, and eventually taken seriously, ironically. They might have very different writing styles, but one of the reasons both Gary and Ed are so successful is because they are often rather witty and amusing, and sometimes silly. K is for Kender. An excellent demonstration of my previous point. Dragonlance's cheese factor has always been a bit too high for me to digest. ( Although I did try back in the day. To my eternal shame, I made my highest set of stats ever rolled legitimately with method I a Kender Ranger/Bard. I still have the character sheet.) but plenty of people have eaten it up, and the world still has a decent fanbase. Honorable mention also goes to the Kzinti, who've also got a surprising amount of airtime in the magazine. I have no objection at all to Larry Niven's stuff showing up here, so those were welcome cameos. L is for Leonard Lakofka and Leomund's tiny hut. Of all the regular contributors to the magazine, he's been the one I've disagreed with most frequently and consistently. He has managed to produce some cool stuff, such as the elemental planes stuff, incremental saves, and of course, Carnivorous flying squirrels <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" />, but on the whole, I haven't enjoyed reading stuff written by him. What does this say about me? What does this say about him? Damned if I can figure it out. M is for module. We've seen plenty of them in the magazine, but that's a thing of the past. Still, we have more than enough to take you from starting level to early teens and still have some choices of route. And that's not even counting the non D&D ones. I look forward to trying some of them out. Honorable mention also goes to Minarian Legends. Divine Right became the wargame that got the most consistent coverage in the magazine, with both rules variants, and a richly detailed setting built up for it over a couple of years. It really would be a great candidate for a revival or licensing as a setting to other media. N is for Nerf. Putting stuff back in pandoras box once you've taken them out is always a tricky business. In another marvelously appropriate coincidence it's also for ninja. One of the classes introduced in the magazine that most needed a little nerfing. The mysterious orient is always a good excuse for people to sneak in a little power creep. O is for Oriental, in another incidence of one thought leading appropriately to the next. The love of eastern stuff did not start with anime, or even kung fu movies. Forget not Fu Manchu and the many pulp stores that featured mysterious characters from the east, and all the, erm, fun our ancestors got up to and wrote about in colonial times. While we have seen a few articles, this is a rich seam for mining that they can still do a lot more on in this magazine. P is for Psionics. While generally neglected, it does hold the distinction of getting the themed issue with the most articles devoted to it's topic. Honorable mention also goes to polearms, which have got less attention than the flak they get would credit. Sure Gary was interested in them, but there's plenty of things that he was interested in more. Just because other games neglect them, does not make D&D weird.</blockquote>

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