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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4838611" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 127: November 1987part 1/5108 pages. Oh dear oh dear. We get another look at their sales figures this month. And it does not make pretty viewing. An average of 85,000, which is down a good 15% from last year. That is quite the slide. From the looks of things, most of the slide happened early in the year, during the crisis of leadership. Guess that had more impact on the distributer confidence than it did on the actual contents, which IMO really went downhill a bit later. Or maybe that's just human variations, who can say. In any case, they definitely need to get cracking on designing a new edition. After all, they've got to boost their cash flow somehow, and if they don't have so many players, that means they have to milk the existing ones harder. Anyway, back to this issue. Finally, it's fighters turn to get a themed one devoted to them. About time. Everyone else is way ahead on the cool toys stake. Let's hope none of them are nerfs. In this issue: Letters: Another letter from someone worried about the new campaign worlds displacing the older ones, and the compatibility of modules from one to another. Roger tries to be comforting, but is unable to disguise that the facts will not be palatable to everyone. Another letter about releasing compilations from the magazine, possibly of magical items, monsters, or something similar. As ever, they're always considering ways of making a little more money from their existing material. Another letter about setting up a BBs, and how this would be a good thing for them. Look, just get on with it, will you. Stop faffing around saying maybe. The rewards are more than worth the outlay needed to set it up. This month's editorial is also of note, given the number of times I've seen it referenced. Tuckers kobolds is of course about how you can make the little guys really scary by proper use of equipment and tactics. An idea we've seen before (see issue 60 ) this time it's taken more seriously. In one of the games in Roger's army days, the eponymous Tucker managed to make his kobolds so scarily effective that the group dreaded leaving the dungeon again even more than they did tackling the class VI demons on level 10, because of course they'd have to go back through them again. If you can emulate his example, you are a sadistic DM indeed. And remember, you can apply clever tactics to slightly more powerful creatures (I've found kenku work really well for this) and then the players really have to step up their game in response or die horribly. An important lesson to learn, presented in an amusing fashion. Don't hesitate to heed it. Forum: Tim McNally replies to SD Anderson's writings on XP with his own house rules for how and when you should be rewarded for getting treasure. Seems fairly reasonable.  Ed Friedlander continues to establish himself as one of our most prolific forumites, with a mini article on familiars. They can be both helpful and a liability to their masters. Here's how to accentuate the positives, and minimize the negatives. Also, we really ought to have rules for falling damage that vary according to creature size. (my own personal fix on this is to use the weapon size damage tables, and move up or down one column per size category change. Tim Jensen suggests that there needs to be two neutral alignments, one which actively tries to preserve the balance, and one that doesn't give a <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=":)" /> about all that crap and just does what's convenient. Interesting thought. It might just work. Peter Phillips pontificates about oriental naming conventions. Yawnaroo. Role-playing reviews seems to be in a godly mood this month:D&D Immortals set gets a surprisingly negative review. Even someone inside the company just can't figure out what you actually do with this curates egg of a system.  It completely ignores one of the most important factors of deities, how they relate to their worshippers, and things like beliefs, rituals and heirachy. What do you do with these powers? How do you make the leap from human to god and keep the players interested. How do you integrate them into the world and multiverse. How do you run fun adventures for them. It's all a bit of a mystery, and is badly in need of some good supplements to sort this out. How very disappointing, and also indicative of TSR's current tendency to tread over-carefully around the subject of real faith. Gods of harn, on the other hand, takes a relatively bottom up approach, detailing 10 gods, the myths surrounding them, and the churches that worship them. It remains vague about whether the gods are really real, but this doesn't matter, because it does have plenty of concrete setting details for PC's to interact with such as doctrine, sacred locations, history, saints, and even basics like what they wear. As this is Harn, the interrelationships between the 10 religions is also handled with plenty of detail. Ken considers it a success both as a sourcebook, as reading material, and a source of ideas to mine for other games.  Gods of glorantha becomes another casualty of Ken's preference for the older runequest material over the new. While not bad by any stretch of the imagination, it doesn't hold up to the likes of Gods of Prax, sacrificing depth of detail for a wider overview of lots of faiths. Still, the old stuff isn't in print any more, and this does manage to have a strong combination of coherence, and preservation of the contradictions in the various religions. Just don't consider it a must buy.Lords of middle-earth volume I covers the Valar, lots of maiar, and other high power, legendary figures such as Feanor and Tom Bombadil. This includes stats for them, which are of course disgustingly high. Thankfully it also gives advice on how to handle high level campaigns in the system. rationalizations for why these guys generally don't use their full power, and plenty of other stuff to keep them useful in actual play. If you like to roll like that, of course, which may not be easy if you're started off from 1st level.</blockquote>

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