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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4776927" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 116: December 1986part 3/4Hello? your majesty?: This article is only peripherally connected to the sea theme, but is still an invaluable topic they haven't got round to covering before. Communicating over long distances before the modern era was a slow, and often exhausting and inconvenient business. Here's plenty of examples of how it was handled in different real world eras, plus some more speculation on how you could use magic to speed this process in place of technology in a fantasy world. With an extensive bibliography, this is a good example that there are still tons of things for them to still do, they just need to hunt them down. Lets hope they don't wind up rehashing this one like they have so many others. Definitely one to mine for ideas when worldbuilding. High seas in 3D: This month's centerpiece is another build it yourself effort. Cut out the cardboard pieces and build your own ship. How very appropriate for the nautical issue. Exactly what kind of ship it is is a bit vague, and of course size will depend on the scale of the miniatures you use with it, but this is another cool little centrepiece that I can definitely see the uses for. Dennis Kauth is definitely pulling his weight around here these days. Good luck putting it together. (they advise making photocopies so you can practice to get it right, which definitely implies a few of the staff members struggled with this one. ) As ever, any stories of how you actually used this in actual play would be very welcome. Rogue stones and gemjumping: Elminster reveal to Ed another of his little secrets for living a long, exciting and twinky life without dying horribly. Gemjumping allows you to enchant a special stone so you can teleport to it later without all that awkward rigamarole of verbal, somatic and material components that someone can disrupt. Just the thing for when you're captured, tied up, or caught off guard. If you're extra clever, you can give it to someone, and use it as a way to get into places you haven't explored without the awkward risk of misfiring teleporting offers. A short article, but another demonstration of both how cool his writing is, and how he can wind up being seen as twinky. Even if individual items are balanced for their level (after all, this is basically just a slight variant on word of recall.), he knows so many tricks and synergies that his characters will legitimately trounce any regular character of the same level. This is why wizards and priests should go into the spell and item design business as soon as they're high enough level. It gives them a huge advantage over people who just use whatever they can research from old grimoires and take from things they've killed. By tooth and claw: Ha. Someone thinks real animals aren't scary enough in D&D? The game where a 1st level character has a less than even shot at beating a housecat. Where any animal with a claw/claw/bite routine can take on a party of similar numbers and HD and trounce them unless the spellcasters spot them and get off their artillery spells before they can close. Where a whole load of creatures have save or die poison on every bite. I regard your statement with amusement. The problem is merely because D&D PC's scale so massively as they level up, and most creatures remain static, so what is a near impossible challenge at 1st level is a cakewalk by 10. You want a skill based system like Runequest or Storyteller mate, where even after years of play, you're still not even twice as powerful in terms of total stats. So yeah, this is another realism in gaming article, that has some sound tactical advice, (even normal animals are smart enough to pull tricks like ambushes and learn how to deal with traps.) but is mostly a waste of time built on a premise that's pretty dubious anyway. I've certainly always used plenty of natural animals in amongst the weird stuff in my games. Yawn. High ones, Ancient ones: Looks like they're continuing to push the boundaries of covered games, with this article for Elfquest. Actually, they have covered these before, way back in issue 66, but that was adapting the characters to AD&D. Now they have their own BRP based system to play with. Here we get stats for the High ones, which seem to be your stereotypical physically weak, but mentally powerful ancient race/alien types. Their disadvantages probably don't balance out their powers, but since both are pretty hefty, they probably won't overshadow everyone else all the time. An interesting article that gives me plenty of insights into the setting of a world I've never really got into, but am tempted to do so now. By that criteria, I think we can safely say this article is a good one.</blockquote>

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