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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4771863" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 115: November 1986part 3/4There's something on the floor: And it's not a crawling pit. This is some quick and dirty old skool tableage, designed to provoke paranoia in your players. The floor should be the one thing you can always rely on, right? If the ground beneath your feet is unstable, everything else is definitely going to be messed up. Muahahahaha. Be it just an unusual appearance, or something that actually has a mechanical effect, having things happen to the ground beneath their feet really forces players to think, as the usual methods of fighting the enemy aren't going to work here. And since it's all on a random table, you can insert this easily into your endless dungeon building kit. The specific effects are both inventive and well organized as well, making this one I'd take great pleasure in using on my /victims/ players. Two thumbs up. The ecology of the harpy: Looks like we have another musically connected article this month. Harpies may have beautiful voices, but they are nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing as a well crafted harp. When you consider that they're also cowardly, bickering creatures who'll turn on the weak amongst their own numbers, they definitely don't make the case for music being a great unifier.  For a second time, we also have a case of the writing being handled by multiple people, with a freelancer contributing the first bit of fiction, while Ed provides the footnotes, with assistance from Elminster. The change in tone between the sections is quite noticeable, but that's probably a good thing. We get plenty more details on their lifecycle, tactics, and modifiers you can apply to the saves against their abilities. This is both interesting in itself, and as part of their new trend towards collaboration, on a historical level. After all, most RPG books these days from the big companies have a whole load of developers, writers, editors, art people, etc  listed, to the point where you can't really put a single name on the spine. Whereas most of the early D&D books do. (and it is frequently Gygax, even when it's made obvious that others contributed quite a bit inside.) Another change that's definitely worth noting and pondering. After all, most fiction books aren't written like that, it's more the purview of textbooks and guides to things. What do you make of this? Elven armies and dwarves at arms: We return to another recent subject, that of more detail in our follower tables. This time it's demihuman fighters that get the badass strike teams. All the new racial variants from UA are covered, including the dread forces of the valley elves. (which do not include any stubby gnomes, curiously) Generally, these are fewer in numbers, but more individually powerful than their human equivalents, as demihumans are usually at least 1st level. No great surprises here, as long as you are familiar with D&D's implied setting. As with the previous ones, I find it hard to complain about the extra complexity introduced here, since you only get to use it once a PC's career, and you really want to make a big deal out of it. Still, I would have preferred it if they'd tackled other classes first, before going back to ones they've already done before. Door number one, door number two, or: Hmm. More rehash. We've already had an article on doors, by Ed and Elminster, no less. Thankfully, this writer doesn't try and compete with that in sheer brilliance, but instead goes for quantity of ideas, giving us 50 brief tricks you can pull with your doors. Just the thing to put in your random dungeon design tables, just for extra sadism. Suspect everything. More quick and dirty old skool fun. Stayin' alive: There's no resurrection in Top Secret.  So you have lots of incentive to not die. Last month they gave lots of general GM'ing advice. This time it's players turn to get a general how too. This is both the usual character building advice, and lots of tactical advice for actual play. From first equipping for a mission, to scouting, to conflict, to the cleaning up of loose ends afterwards (and believe me, you want to do that, or it will come back and bite you in the ass) there are lots of ways of increasing your odds of success. Some of them are metagame considerations, while others are applicable to any system, and indeed real life as well. Apart from the strong emphasis on trying to play the game in a genre appropriate way, with recurring characters, romances etc, this is pretty standard, if with rather more width and depth than most of these pieces. Above average in terms of craftmanship, but nothing really leaps out at me.  GURPS autoduel: Roleplaying in the setting of car wars. Well, it's a good test of the universal part of it's name. If all it really does well is fantasy or modern day, they might as well not bother. The role of books:Lords of the middle dark by Jack L Chalker (boo hiss spit) gets a fairly middle of the road review. It has his usual disturbing penchant for mind<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing his female protagonists, and spends a lot of time in worldbuilding to the detriment of advancing the plot. As you may gather, I'm rather less fond of Mr Chalkers work than this reviewer, and from the sounds of it, I'd hate this one just as much as the books of his I have read. The A.I Gang books (various authors) are a series of computer/ spy adventure books. The science is pretty loose, but then, this is high action pulp adventure. You don't expect realism from james bond, do you? Aimed at younger readers, these seem like the kind of thing that might have drawn people to gaming, back in the 80's. The find your fate books are another set of multiple choice adventure books. These particular ones star the Dr Who crew. These very much bear the mark of bulk-written tie in products, with wildly uneven quality of writing and characterization. David Martin's one pleases the reviewer. Michael Holt's one most definitely does not. Same problem as gaming fiction, really. God game by Andrew M Greeley has the author doing exactly that, inserting himself into the story as the god of a computer controlled world. How very meta and prophetic. He uses this device to pose complicated philosophical and theological questions with a directness most books cannot, while maintaining a strong edge of humour. Sounds really rather tempting to me. Flight to thlassa mey by Dennis McCarty is written with dialogue in shakespearean blank verse, amazingly. That must take a lot of crafting. This elevates it above the generic fantasy it would seem to be from the cover, giving it both depth and a very distinctive flavour. This is an excellent example of how borrowing and incorporating the right ideas in the right way can make a work seem fresh. The throne of scone by Patricia Kennealy steals liberally from another source, this time celtic myth, to create the kind of mythic tinged sci-fi that would not be unfamiliar to stargate viewers. The maxim about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic is out in full force here, in another bit of epic storytelling. Merlin's Booke by Jane Yolen is a loosely connected set of short stories about guess who, the legendary archmage. Each takes a different perspective and tone, combining prose and (pretty good) poetry. This shows that by weaving together multiple, sometimes conflicting accounts, you can create a real seeming overall picture of something. Touch magic, pass it on.</blockquote>

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