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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4854109" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 129: January 1988part 4/5The dragon's bestiary goes planar. Dean Shomshak points out that the para-elemental planes are seriously lacking in inhabitants. Course, ironically he picks the one that does have several already, including it's own statted out ruler, the paraelemental plane of Ice. I guess it's easier to think of interesting looking and behaving creatures for that than it is for vaccum or ash. And more planar stuff is always welcome. Shiverbugs are odd looking crystaline creatures that emulate no particular earthly phyla. But if you step on them, they'll rouse the rest of their swarm, and then you'll face death by a dozen chilly nips. Seems like they could still be a hassle at higher level. Icelings also take their aesthetic cues from Modrons, being three sided crystaline humanoids which can make a chilly situation all the more confusing. Again, they're not hugely aggressive, but that doesn't mean they won't defend themselves. Remember, just because it isn't immediately lethal, doesn't mean you shouldn't stack up on your cold resistance powers before visiting. Nearly everything has cold based blasty powers (that don't do much to each other) and you don't want to fall prey to them, or the more mundane toe losing crap frostbite can cause. Snowfuries are basically semi-intelligent snowstorms. Hot things make them cranky, so they may be a problem to adventurers intruding in their territory. They can still hurt you if you're immune to cold, so don't think you can just wander around, messing up their environment. Frigidarch are a third creature using the crystaline ice structure theme. Hexagonal pyramid things with tentacles coming from each side, they are smart, fairly magically capable, and frequently in charge, assuming they can find sentient creatures on the plane to be in charge of. If you're traveling there, finding one and ingratiating yourself into their court could definitely be to your benefit. Just like the reviews, this is an unusually strong delivery taken as a whole, as it presents a consistent aesthetic for creatures from this plane that is easy to extrapolate upon, to create similar monsters of your own. Since the plane of ice has always been one of the easier ones to design adventures for anyway, this makes it even more tempting to find excuses to get my players to visit. Rather pleasing, that.  The game wizards: Jim Ward continues to reassure us that Greyhawk will still be getting plenty of love under the new regime. Just what kind of love, precisely, is up to you, the reader. After all, we can't fit everything in the new corebook, so what gets cut depends on what you demand least. Even the biggest company in the industry has to worry about commercial concerns such as these, and listen to it's fans to know what to provide them. More evidence that this is a vibrant company again, and hubris has yet to set in, but otherwise a pretty unremarkable little bulletin. Onto the next thing. Fiction: The old ways are best by Larry Walker. Oh, now this is very amusing indeed. The derangedly humorous story of a man who's daughter wants to marry a troll, his irritating wife, the trolls father, and his great^8 grandfather. With some inventive descriptions, pithy commentary on human nature, and some interesting ideas in terms of magic that actually feels magical. A highly entertaining tale that still manages to squeeze in a little drama and sense of danger as well. A well above average little story here. Who's in charge here?: Demographics has never been something D&D has been particularly comfortable with. Here's another attempt at figuring out just how many higher level characters there are around for a particular sized community of normal humans or demihumans. Their answer is that it's an exponential decrease, going up to slightly below name levels for groups of 1,000+. Seems reasonable enough. Beyond those kinds of levels, the really high level characters will be singular, and have agendas that may or may not tie them to a particular community, so you'll want to develop them individually. It is probably a bit too generous with the spellcasting classes, unless you want a fairly high magic setting like mystara where many businesses use minor magics to increase their efficiency. But this kind of ratio'll keep players from rampaging through cities and taking stuff at their whim, which is important. And it remembers to account for demihuman limits and propensities, so it's obvious quite a bit of thought went into it. Not a bad attempt, even if it won't be appropriate for many campaigns. Armored and dangerous: Star frontiers gets an article covering another thing that really should have been in the game all along. Powered Armor. Allowing you to pile on even more protection and not be slowed down so much. At least, until the batteries run out. And unlike laptops, you can't just find a hotspot and plug in for a few hours during a dangerous mission in deep space. Like computers, you get best  value custom building them, and the price can vary hugely depending on what nifty add-ons you give them. Not sure how accessable this would be to most PC's, given the prices to buy and maintain one of these, but it does look like fun. This line still isn't completely dead yet, and as long as fans send stuff in, hopefully they'll keep publishing it. The role of books: Murder at the war by Mary Monica Pulver is a tale of a murder during an SCA LARP. IC waring and OOC politics collide, and the quirks of the subculture are referenced and punctured with the affectionate eye of someone who is intimately involved with it IRL. Like Bimbos of the death sun, this seems like it would be a good deal of fun to read for anyone involved in the scene. Agnes day by Lionel Fenn (aka Charles Grant, writing under a pseudonym) gets a decidedly unimpressed review. It tries to be funny, but isn't. Cliched, with a poor plot, it fails to hold together as a story. Learn from his mistakes. Masterplay by William F Wu is an interesting bit of speculative fiction, positing a world in which duels using wargames become a means of settling legal disputes. This is not a move that pleases everybody, and there's plenty of drama, both on the table and off it. Another interesting combination of interests here, handled well, in a book that is far less implausible than most of these. Sword and sorceress IV, Edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley is her 4th book of fantasy short stories featuring female protagonists. Writers both well-known and brand new contribute, and her editorial hand keeps them at a consistently high quality. Tales of the witch world, created by Andre Norton, is not quite as consistently edited as the previous anthology, but it still has several good stories contained within. Some of them may not fit very well within the shared universe, but when you're a young writer trying to get published, you've gotta use the material you've got.  War for the oaks by Emma Bull gets pretty high praise, along with a shout out to the Minneapolis-based writing group that has produced quite a few other published authors. A tale of fae war behind the scenes of the local american music scene, this is more evidence that Changeling:the Dreaming didn't spring from nowhere, and there were plenty of people playing with this kind of modern urban fantasy before White Wolf made a series of hit games involving it. More evidence that writing is more fun when you have a little help from your friends. Triplet by Timothy Zahn is an interesting combination of sci-fi and fantasy. As a logically explored setting up of a world and metaphysics, it's pretty good. As a story, the pacing of the plot leaves something to be desired. Not his best work.</blockquote>

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