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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4760836" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 113: September 1986part 2/4A capital idea: Setting up a business. Not the most obvious route for an adventurer. There are several ways you can keep this fun. You can treat this as something they do between adventures, leaving the day to day operations in the hands of someone else, and letting a few rolls determine how it grows or shrinks. You can handle it like domain management, and the systems probably ought to be compatible, as they are doing similar things over similar timescales. Or you can handle it the two-fisted way, hunting down contracts and big scoops personally, going out and prospecting for new sources of revenue, and generally doing for your profession what indiana jones does for archaeology. Any of those can be fun. What probably will not be fun is determining expenditures and income on a day to day basis by calculating the population of the neighboring region, and what proportion are likely to be interested in your product, cost of buying wholesale, pay for workers, optimum price for selling to get profit without driving them away to cheaper rivals, etc etc. And unfortunately, this article suggests doing exactly that. Epic fail. Not the kind of thing I want anywhere near my escapism, thank you very much. The role of books: The norby chronicles by Janet and Isaac Asimov is a set of tales about a very special robot, and the troubles he gets himself into. It puts a lighter slant on Asimovs famous robot stories, oriented towards younger readers, without sacrificing the underlying philosophical points his other books make. Hopefully it'll havedrawn in some new readers who go on to sample the rest of his marvelous canon. The curse of the giant hogweed by Charlotte MacLeod takes a character more used to mundane mysteries into a fantasy world, and trying to maintain his logical attitude in the face of witches, shapeshifted creatures, and of course, giant hogweed. It maintains a sense of humour without making the characters seem ridiculous. Dreadnought! by Diane Carey is a star trek novel about the aforementioned class of ships, hinted at in the technical manuals, but never shown on screen. It shows a general strong respect for the canon of the series, and tying everything together, while maintaining a fast paced plot. In general, the reviewer is pretty positive about it. Heroes in hell by Janet Morris et all is an attempt to jump on the shared world bandwagon that currently seems to be on the up. However, without a strong setting bible and editorial control, it fails to create a consistent world between the stories. And without that, what really is the point? Even big name writers produce less than the sum of their parts if not properly co-ordinated. The duchess of kneedeep by Atanielle Annyn Noel is a playful and punful tale of marital strife that manages to put plenty of depth and drama into the plot without resorting to violence every other chapter. She even manages to slip in reference to another Dragon alumnus. I find myself rather tempted. The hounds of the morrigan by Pat O'Shea is a book I loved as a kid. It steals liberally from celtic myth to create an incredibly detailed and surprisingly contemporary book that you don't need to have read the original legends to enjoy. Like Tolkien's opus, this was produced over a huge timescale, and comes strongly recommended. The dream palace by Brynne Stephens tries to push the amount of depth in the choose your own adventure genre. Of course, you have to make sacrifices, and rather than making the book huge, they decided to reduce the number of viable paths you can take to get to the end. The level of commercialism in the competition at the end is also a bit galling. The tales people tell: Y'know, the real world manages to have weird enough folklore without any proven supernatural stuff. Why shouldn't fantasy worlds have outlandish legends that aren't true. It might irritate players when they've trekked through the wilderness for months seeking a plot hook, and they find out [spoiler] the black pearl is just a big pearl, no magic powers at all[/spoiler] but it'll make the world more real. An excellent idea, but of course one that requires lots of prep time, or the willingness to steal and adapt from existing sources. Guess you'll have to choose if you're willing to put that kind of effort in for something that would cause player walkouts with the wrong group. And make sure that the journey is a fun part of the game as much achieving as the objectives. So this is an article I'm divided on, liking the idea, but knowing many people wouldn't. Oh well. Can't please everyone. Magic and Morality: Mike Gray contributes this month's computer feature, an exceedingly positive review of Ultima IV. Like Rogue, this comes far closer to simulating the D&D experience than most CRPG's, allowing you a good deal of freedom, both in the objectives you pursue and order in which you do them, and also in your moral position. While you are supposed to be good if you want to win the game, you can choose to be a bad guy instead and the game won't railroad you  away from it. You have to experiment with mixing up ingredients to produce spells, make real moral choices, talk to everyone, and explore everywhere. It also includes some nice little extras, like a proper cloth map and lots of booklets that it really will help you to read before playing. Another great reminder that there were plenty of cool games back then, quite a few that did things that most games now don't do, because it was so much easier and cheaper to develop games and so designers had more leeway to experiment with them. And now you can get most of them for free via emulators and roms. (not that I endorse illegal downloading, of course) Indulge your nostalgia. Go play. Clout for clerics: Like they've done with fighters and rangers recently, it's now cleric's turn to get their follower tables examined and expanded. This article takes a slightly different tack to the previous two, eschewing tables to instead embed the rules stuff directly into the prose. They are slightly more generous than the core rules, but as much of the followers are embedded into the community around your temple, and none are more than half your level, this isn't going to be adventure breaking. This does tack on a bunch of new rules which aren't related to the general domain management system, which may be problematic if you try and use them both at once. Such is the problem with inventing new subsystems. You'll have to pick and stick with one.</blockquote>

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