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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4814063" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 123: July 1987 part 2/5Call of cthulhu advertises the miskatonic university graduation kit, arkham horror, Cthulhu by gaslight, and lots of other classic products. This is amusing. Music of the forgotten realms: Oh great. Music and poetry from fantasy worlds. Now there's a topic that ha produced quite a few abominations against taste and sanity over the years. Remember folks, just because you can make it rhyme, that does not make it good. Thankfully, Ed doesn't show us his poetry, (Put it away. No-one wants to see it.) and instead talks about the actual instruments used in the Realms to create their music. Which is actually a pretty interesting topic, informing us indirectly about cultures and technology in the realms. After all, music is heavily shaped by the materials and equipment you have to make it with. From signaling gongs to primitive organs, they have distinctive variants on earthly instruments that he obviously put quite a bit of effort into developing. Once again, he's tackled a challenging subject and come up smelling of roses, having put the research in and then thought about how his world's countries would handle these things.  I very strongly approve. It's a bit odd to have an unconnected article before the themed stuff, but I can see why they gave this one pole position. The mystic College: So your wizard has reached name level. Quite an achievement, since they have the highest XP costs and are weak at lower ones. Wouldn't it be nice to give back to the community, start a school for aspiring young wizards, so they don't have to go through the same degree of crap you did. Much nicer than building a tower, and then filling the area beneath it with monsters that you rule over and experiment on like a cruel and whimsical god, striking dread into the hearts of peasant communities for miles around. May be we can actually advance the culture a bit this way, make the average peasant a little less superstitious and hidebound by ensuring at least a few of their kids get a proper education. So yeah, lotsa advice on taking this route, how much it costs, and the benefits you can get from doing so. Political, financial, and personal, they can be quite substantial if you are willing to put the effort in. We get another system for advancing 0 level characters to 1st level spellcasters, which eats up substantial time and xp in typical fashion. (Far quicker to go adventuring, make it up that way.) Still, at least it's now an option in a non fiaty way, which is better than before. While not fully integrated with the existing game management systems, this is full of solid mechanical and roleplaying advice for players who want to take a few years out from active adventuring, and try their hand at a little sim game, see how they do. It may never be useful to your group, but it's nice to know it's there. Pretty cool special feature, overall. No guts, No Galaxy! Renegade legion. Now that's an eye catching advert, that makes it pretty clear what the game is about, even though I've never heard of it before. Nice. Fire for effect: Ha. It's a realism in D&D article. You ought to consider the consequences using area of effect blasty spells on the surroundings. We've had this one before, but not in as much scientific detail, as Richard W Emerich, one of our more frequent forumites, graduates to doing a full article. So here's lots of pontification about the effect of heat, cold, electricity on various items, and just how much they'll really ruin your day if you get caught in them. Not too long, but with lots of footnotes and a good bibliography, this certainly looks pretty well researched. As they've managed to surpass previous attempts, I'm not too bothered about the rehash. Lets hope it doesn't wind up spawning a load of forum flamewars from other realism pedants in turn. Arcane lore: Hmm. Looks like they've finally realized what a rich ground for freelance expansions new spells are, and have decided to actively solicit for them. That's nice. Hopefully we'll be seeing this column regularly in later issues. Interestingly, this is not only in theme with the general issues topic, but also the previous article's, as we get a whole load of fire themed spells. Elementalists are always popular, so that's a solid, if not particularly inspired way to kick things off. Flare is yer basic real world tech analogue. Smokescreen is one of the less popular transformers. Enchanted torch is a higher level than continual light, but less useful in most instances, which is a bit crap. Mellix's fire mouth is a variant on magic mouth that proves words may never hurt you, but breath can. Fallion's Fabulous fireball removes most of the tactical disadvantages of regular fireballs. Just the thing for the discerning mage with companions who still haven't mastered basic tactics 4 levels later, the twonks. Fire Phantoms takes the opposite tack, providing weedy elementals for those who don't yet have the skill for the real thing. Avissar's flaming weapon makes a weapon into a flame tongue, and I'm not sure if it's good or rubbish because the duration is left out. At that level you can make permanent magic items easily enough anyway, so it'd better be pretty long. Hellfire makes your life an endless burning torment until you die. Charming. We also get some fluff tying them all together, and a new artifact as well. This definitely shows the influence of Ed Greenwood's writings on magical books, which is not a bad thing. Lets hope it doesn't descend into formulaic variations on the same old themes too much over it's run.</blockquote>

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