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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4781888" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 117: January 1987part 3/4The forgotten characters: So hirelings are starting to go out of fashion these days. With the influx of new more badass characters from UA and OA, there's less need for adventurers to travel in large bands with massive supply trains of animals, squires and support troops if they want a decent chance of taking out a monster lair. But we're still a long way from the unaccompanied 4 and 5 person parties of 3 & 4e, and they want to make sure their current love of proper characterization is extended to every part of the game. This means thinking up names, personalities and backstories for your henchmen and hirelings. What's their motivation, likes and dislikes, ambitions beyond following the PC's around, etc etc. Just build it up organically, rather than engaging in tons of work making personalities for people who may die on the first adventure. More ideas to mine, that could be turned to fun or tedium oh so easily. Which will it be? By magic Masked: Another Elminster article covering a themed set of magic items, in this case m-m-m-m-MASKS! (the mighty power that will save the day. Ahh, the joys of the 80's <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> ) Anyway, once again, we're getting a big batch of stuff from the ruins of Myth Drannor. (What's the betting that when FR becomes a full setting, that'll be one of the first places to get a supplement dedicated to it.)  The horned mask gives you lots of cool perception related powers. The veil mask keeps your mind from being read. The winged mask lets you fly. The Skull mask protects you from undead special abilities, but also pisses them off, so they attack you first. Better make sure a Defender is wearing it then. The mask of magic lets you see magical energies. The fanged mask lets you chomp on your enemies. The mirror mask reflects gaze attacks back. The mask of silence lets you prevent other creatures from making any sound, perfect for assassins. And the mask of winds is basically just a gasmask, protecting you from nasty poisonous gasses and the like. Not a very inspired collection this month. Very few of them have the quirky additional effects we've come to know and love from Ed, and the setting and historical chatter has been almost completely cut to focus on their mechanical properties. You'd barely know it was him at all. Which isn't very pleasing, even if they're still entirely usable. What's up with that? Hopefully he'll get back on form soon. Bazaar of the bizarre is back as well! This is pleasing. Looks like they're reviving a lot of the old names. Are they back for good, or will they flip-flop on this. Either way, we get to appreciate their abilities at alliteration. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Anyway, we get another themed article in quick succession, this time focussed on magical rings. 23 of them, from a whole bunch of different authors. (although there's no big names on the list) I wonder how long some of them have been sitting in the slush pile until they thought they had enough to make a full compilation. While a mixed bag, there are more interesting ones here than in the last article, with funny stuff like the ring of animal magnetism, annoying stuff like the ring of annulment, quirky stuff like the rings of limited telepathy and distraction, and setting tied stuff with inherent plot hooks like the rings of Lolth and Crius. Overall, this is pretty pleasing, and yet more fodder for my random item tables. This should keep them getting repetitive for a few months more. More power to you: Having given us tons of system light roleplaying advice articles, it now seems that we're getting an onslaught of short sharp chunks of crunch. 5 new skills, 6 new powers, and a new limitation for Champions. Weather control, super flexibility, enhanced senses, greater flexibility, and the great old story device of not being fully in control of your powers. All abilities that have well known comic antecedents, and richly deserve a place in the book. Once again we are reminded just how much development and playtesting it took to produce a system that fills in most of these gaps, and just how big a book you need to cover all this in one place.  Most of these are deserving of a more permanent home in the next edition, whenever that may come. Tanks for the memories: Hmm. An article for car wars? Now that's something that's been around for ages, and never got any attention here. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since TSR  & SJG have recently started collaborating on the gameline. Anyway, tanks are also something that doesn't get a huge amount of attention, probably because modern games aren't very big in general. Anyway, tanks are far bigger and more heavily armoured than all but the most insanely rigged hod rod, but nowhere near as fast or maneuverable. If you want to beat them, you'd better be able to attack them from range and make sure they can't target on you to shoot you back. They're also exceedingly expensive. Whether it be fighting them or building one yourself, this is another thing that seems like it should add a little spice to your game. Roughing it: This month's Top Secret support is another sideways transferral from another recent release. AD&D recently got the wilderness survival guide, so why not convert some stuff over. After all, the life of a secret agent is not all witty reparte and pristine underground hideouts. Forests, mountains, swamps, deserts, arctic landscapes, ocean voyages, all present their own challenges, and get corresponding rules. Training to handle this may be expensive ( $10,000! Just how much money do secret agents have? I suspect the same bureaucratic inflation that can make a spanner or lightbulb cost $50. ) but it can save your life. Once again, they're making the game feel more complete and comprehensive, which is nice. The marvel-phile: As Jeff promised last month, here are the Marauders. Another incidence of the increase in brutal villains who actually kill people, these guys have caused much devastation recently and are mostly still at large.  Scalphunter, Arclight. Harpoon, Scrambler, Riptide, Vertigo, Sabertooth, Malice, Blockbuster and Prism. Many of them I've never heard of, three are already dead (for now) and one would become Wolverine's iconic rival, and is still in regular use today. Another case where we get to see the coalface that would be distilled to make up the cartoons and movies. Not every story can be a classic, and deservedly so, but you can still learn something from them. And so it is with this month's installment of this column. Even the bad get better: Stewart Wieck! One of the future founders of White Wolf gets an article published in the magazine! Now this is definitely one for the footnotes. The actual article isn't that impressive, being basically a single page article on how to advance your villains in a non fiaty way in Villains and Vigilantes. Whether you wind up using it for your PC's (playing the monster? surely not! <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=";)" /> ) or just for your NPC's (save it for the big ones, because otherwise it'd be too much bookkeeping) this is a pretty cool idea, that shows you how to make characters behave in genre by controlling what they are rewarded for doing. (once again, it's notable in that in a mere couple of years, people are already a lot more open to the idea of killing in comics. Poor FASERIP.) Don't be afraid to houserule it for your game is you want to support different stuff. As ever, I am left curious if we'll see him in here again before he goes off and starts his own club, and becomes too important and busy for that. Gamma III: So gamma world is getting it's third edition. And unlike their policy with D&D, they have made some quite substantial changes to the ruleset. A leaf has been taken from FASERIP's book, resolving everything using a single table, with odds of success largely based on your ability scores. Ahh, the joys of fashion. Of course this means you'll have to engage in a bit of conversion work to use characters from your old games with the new rules.  It seems that in general they have tried to simplify things quite a bit, making it both quicker and easier to play, and more suited to long term campaigns. Seems both ambitious and laudable. But as we know all to well, such sentiments do not always translate into commercial success. Will we see several more years of good coverage before it dies out, horrible flamewars from a divided fanbase, or an embarrassing flop. This is definitely another interesting thread of history I look forward to following further. OA3, the spirit warrior strikes gets a very pretty full colour ad.</blockquote>

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