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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4769126" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 115: November 1986part 1/4108 pages. Looks like another class special. This time, it's thieves turn, with 6 articles devoted to them. Wait a minute, wasn't the last class special in issue 104 also a thief one? And in 84, they did two cleric specials with nothing else between, in issue 85 and 92. This isn't very symmetrical. What are the editors thinking?  We also get to see their sales figures again. And it looks like the slow decline has been taking place in earnest. With an average of 108,000, but a latest issue figure of only 101,000, that means they've been losing an average of over 1,000 readers per month this year. Were you one of those people? (Given my current level of enthusiasm, I might well have been one of those people if I was reading at that time. ) Lets hope they can stem that decline. But lets not be too pessimistic. There's still plenty of cool material there. Along with the D&D thieves, there's also quite a bit of top secret material again, which is pleasing. Also notable is Kim's abrupt departure, leaving Roger in charge of two magazines at once. Can someone fill me in on the behind the scenes stuff that led to this? Lets hope that doesn't result in even more slipshod editing over the next few issues. Looks like having barely recovered from the last big shakeup, there's going to be some more in the near future. This is morbidly interesting. In this issue:Letters: The introduction of a computer column has obviously resulted in a lot of mail for them, mostly positive. They've printed five of them, with a mix of questions and suggestions. This means it's future is pretty much assured for quite some time. Roger is surprisingly cagey in response to this, not wanting to promise anything he can't deliver. Curious. At least something's going right around here. You ought to capitalize on that. Forum: John M Maxstadt makes another appearance, this time complaining about last month's cover, and the general amount of cheesecake in the art. It's demeaning to women, it's bad for the hobby, and it's just plan embarrassing to explain to my nongamer friends. Woe, woe and woe some more. Paul Astle doesn't know how to stop players from abandoning your game in search of more munched out ones, but he has some advice on how to please the people still here. Even one-on-one games can still be fun if done right. Don't get discouraged. If you don't even try, you're definitely going to lose. David Howery thinks that a second edition is a good idea, but making stuff from OA part of it is not. He also thinks that doing profiles on the staff members that include photos is a good way to stop impersonators. You're going to be pretty happy then. Raymond Chuang has some thoughts about the interesting hassles PC's could face setting up a business. Any business with a wizard can massively outperform it's competitors, which may cause economic troubles and union unrest. Also, magical byproduct pollution can cause all sorts of hassle. Both are pretty good plot hooks, really. Lords of the night: Thieves guilds. Huh. What are they good for? Quite a lot actually.  Organized crime has quite substantial benefits. Training, specialized equipment, gossip and info, meeting new people, fencing your ill-gotten gains, infiltrating the legal system and making sure members don't get in too much trouble when caught.  It's no wonder that to be a successful thief, you need to be in one, especially with AD&D training requirements being what they are. Here's another nice but unexceptional worldbuilding article that deconstructs things like demographics, how these organizations are created, joined and maintained, how they differ, how they will usually be the same, and how they relate to the world in general. Not that fascinating to me now, but one to bookmark for when I actually get the chance to build another gameworld. A den of thieves: So, you've reached name level, and now you want to set up your own thieves guild. Congratulations, and good luck, you'll need it. Vince Garcia (now there's a name that sounds like a mafioso boss in itself) gives us lots of cool advice on how to make the life of a character trying to set up an organization interesting. While obviously focussed on crimelords, the lessons from this can be applied to other classes with a little conversion as well. Political maneuvering, constructing a proper hierarchy, with chains of command, specialist groups, and all that jazz. Raising money, dealing with the other local power blocs, breaking away from your current guild, this is all very solid stuff. It's also backed up mechanically with lots of tables, which alter the types of followers you get, and the odds of having run-ins with the law. Far better than the first article, this would definitely be of great use in actual play, not just worldbuilding, expanding the domain management system for rogues, and helping you zoom out and experience months of politicking in a session. And you ought to know by now I'm very much in favour of that. Are you ready to play D&D, Godfather style? Yes, I'm talking to you. There's nobody else here, so I must be talking to you. Space/fantasy gamer is back. I didn't even know they were gone. What's up with that? The art of climbing walls: Vince returns, (but gets his last name misspelled) to give us one of those really zoomed in examinations of an aspect of the game. How exactly does climbing walls work? Thieves are not spiderman, able to just scuttle up sheer walls using their fingers. You need ropes and grappling hooks and tiger claws, and other fun little implements to have a decent chance on smooth surfaces with no handholds. He alters the probabilities for climbing slippery surfaces quite substantially, and generally makes things a bit trickier. This is one of those fiddly little articles that suffers because even if it may be an improvement, the annoyance caused by looking it up when you're in mid play balances that out, especially if you try and use lots of them, from different issues. Same old problem.</blockquote>

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