Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4762024" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 113: September 1986part 3/4A saddle isn't enough: Hmm. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a messenger was lost. For want of a messenger, an army wasn't ready when the enemies came knocking on the king's castle and the country was lost. Or in this case, the stirrup. Funny how such an innocuous looking device can prove so important. That annoying elves like Legolas can ride bareback and still kick much ass on the field of battle without falling off becomes a good deal more impressive when you actually know a little about the technical side of riding. It's minutinae, but minutinae I didn't know about before, so this manages to hold my interest this time around. If you're playing a gritty game, you would do well to heed it, and thereby frustrate your players when caught improperly prepared. Muahahaha. Combat complexity: An article for the Conan rpg. Another case where it's been out for a few years, yet the magazine has paid no attention to it before. Guess even though the Ares section is gone, they still want to give non D&D games decent coverage, so a little more general fantasy doesn't go amiss. Anyway, this introduces one of our perennial topics. Hit locations. Seems if a game doesn't include them (and many don't, as they can introduce a lot of extra complexity.) someone'll create optional rules for them. Thankfully, they manage to keep things fairly simple, and curiously enough, the system seems more friendly to the idea than D&D anyway. It also seems pretty brutal, but thems the breaks. Nothing particularly ground-breaking here. Cardboard dragon: Another interesting experiment is this month's centerpiece. We saw an example of Dennis Kaufman's excellent origami work on the cover of issue 100. Now, he brings you your own cardboard dragon assembly kit. Cut out the various bits and pieces, fold them up and glue them together, and hey presto, an embarrassing mess that doesn't look anything like as good as the photos in the magazine <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Joking aside, this is another pretty cool idea. Hopefully at least a few of you managed to put it together and keep it intact for a few years. What toys will they come up next? Lets hope that with modules gone we'll be seeing a few more of those fun little complete games Tom Wham and C C Stoll used to give us. Bubba the barbarian says "Don't eat Quiche!" Subscribe to Dungeon before it's even out! How nice of them. Now you can make sure you get every issue, right from the ground floor. Lets hope there are some more people who took them up on that, because our dungeon magazine reviews stalled ages ago, and I really would like it if someone would pick them up again and try and keep pace with me, now I've reached that era. TSR Previews is once again the wrong way around. D&D gets DA1: Adventures in Blackmoor. Dave Arneson is back, and he's bad! (man, it sucks, posting this bit just after he died <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> ) How did that work? Gary's embroiled in mad political crap, and the other founder is allowed to return. Hmm. I would rather like to know more about the behind the scenes maneuvering that led to this. AD&D gets I10 Ravenloft II: Gryphon Hill. What is Strahd doing in faraway Mordentshire, working with Azalin the lich? And just as importantly, who's going to foil his plans? Will it be the same adventurers that attacked him last time? This thread of history definitely thickens. Our 10th AD&D adventure gamebook is a Dragonlance one, Lords of Doom. Penetrate the evil city of sanction. What do you there? The synopsis doesn't say. Would it be too much to hope that you kill them all? Nah. If good won forever, they wouldn't be able to keep milking the gameline. Marvel gets MH9: Gates of what if? Seems like a standard opposite universe romp. Finally, Agent 13 get's his 3rd book, Agent 13 and the acolytes of darkness.  Once again the description is pretty sketchy, but I guess this is pulp. You're probably getting exactly what it says on the tin. Fight evil cult, get captured, cliffhanger chapter end, listen to insane monologue, escape deathtrap, win, hooray! Profiles: Keith Parkinson is another of our well known artists. He used to be a drummer, but decided to become an artist instead because you get more creative control. He was introduced to D&D by a friend, realized that he could do better than their early crop of artists, and went and offered his services. And so he became one of their second wave artists, along with Elmore and Easley. As usual, we see that you've got to be a hard worker to succeed as an artist, and striking a balance between not being put off by criticism, but still learning from the constructive points of it is tricky but useful. Bruce Heard is our acquisitions coordinator, which means he's another of the poor sods who has to read through hundreds of manuscripts and find the gems amongst the dross. ( Once again we see that as the company has expanded, they raise the bar for allowing new people onboard. ) Born in france to a US soldier and a french woman, he is exceedingly multi-lingual. He first got a job as a translator of D&D stuff, but soon moved on to bigger and better things, and is turning out to be a pretty good writer in his own right as well. He seems to be one of the people who really pushed Mystara in a more high magic direction, which is a good thing in my book. I'm really looking forward to seeing his future contributions to the line.</blockquote>

Verification