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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4860651" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 130: February 1988part 4/5Dungeon Etiquette: Another entertaining little piece here. When one of your players doesn't show up, has to leave early, or falls asleep mid-game, what should you do to their character? There are some very wrong ways you can handle this, like the DM who automatically killed anyone who had the temerity to leave before the game was properly over. (and also liked running marathon sessions to 4 in the morning. Definite creepiest gamer candidate there.) You can assume they automatically vanish, and reappear next session, which can hurt the immersion and internal consistency of the game. You can run them as an NPC, which means they might behave in a way the player doesn't want or wind up getting killed while they aren't there. You can give the player a good prodding, and hope they aren't the cranky sort when woken unexpectedly. Similarly, if characters are killed, do you allow the players to stick around and advise the remaining ones, possibly causing some metagame info to be passed on? How do you deal with outbreaks of puns and digressive storytelling? Eating while gaming? Having the TV or music on in the background? Cheating bastards? Another topic that they haven't covered in detail before, and which could be the source of large amounts of debate. What is perfectly reasonable to one person is unbearably pedantic and strict to another. In any case this made for highly entertaining reading, steeped as it is in the worst case scenarios for these situations, as delivered by someone who seems to have been there personally. I approve, and hopefully we'll see some responses to this in the forum in future months. The oriental sea: Looks like OA is going to be getting at least one article most issues for the forseeable future. This time, the conversions are going in the usual direction, giving us info on something that's already had it's western counterparts covered in a previous issue. Ships. Although they might not do as much open ocean sailing, China has no shortage of massive rivers to traverse, and many people make a living on these waterways. So here's the stats for 14 more ship types, and some of the additional hazards they are likely to face in the east like typhoon dragons and cranky nature spirits. One of those articles that isn't likely to be useful often, but when it is, it'll be very handy. One of the great things about having decades of this magazine to draw upon is that it does give you a safety net to try different stuff when your players suggest unusual courses of action, without having to make rules up for it wholecloth. Once again, I have no objection to this at all. If looks could kill: Gaze attacks also get another look at, 7 years later. (our last article on this one was way back in issue 50.) And pleasingly, this writer does not try and step on Lew's shoes, instead examining the physics behind them as much as their adjudication. This is a bit of a pain, as many of the monsters with them work differently on a case by case basis. Some are consciously controllable, some shouldn't be, and some are more spell-like abilities than actual gaze attacks. It also addresses the tricky issue of mating when you can't look directly at each other. <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=";)" /> Thankfully, we already have a solution for this, taken from the ecology of the Basikisk. (issue 81) Nictating Membranes! (resists urge to filk) I must say, I would prefer my medusae a little more tragic and less in control, and frankly, this article goes on a little longer than the topic really deserves. But I do have to respect it for it's comprehensiveness of research and logical attitude, even if it doesn't quite hold my interest.</blockquote>

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