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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4876459" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 133: May 1988part 2/5Notice anything different: Ahh, perception. One area where White Wolf got things spectacularly right, and D&D still struggles to this day, with your ability to tell what's going on in an emergency awkwardly kludged into wisdom, where it isn't very appropriate for the classes that most use the connected skills. This would certainly be a far better and more frequently used addition to the ability score list than that bloody stupid double dump stat comeliness. This does pretty much as you would expect, setting up the new ability, and what bonuses and penalties high and low scores in it offer. I very much approve, and wish this had been incorporated into the official rules in some way. (maybe making it a bit more subtly graded, because at the moment only extreme scores have any effect) It would have saved thousands of us years of bother, really. Fools! Why did you not heed their advice decades ago!  An article that isn't historically significant, but could have been, and quite possibly should have been. Ahh, the joys and woes of hindsight. Role-playing reviews turns it's eye to tournament modules. One of the trickiest things to design, because they have to be played precisely as written, so if you screw up, it's gonna suck for most of the parties. It's no surprise they playtest them rather more intensively than normal modules. Ken is as usual full of contextual info on his current topic, sharing his insider knowledge of how these things come to pass. We get a recap of the old idea that AD&D was supposed to be primarily a tournament game (I remember that! <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" /> ) the differences between tournament and regular campaign play, and plenty of other stuff that makes it look like this is going to be another strong selection of reviews. C6, the official RPGA tournament handbook is a guide to constructing your own scenarios, and also has two sample ones within. Not just for prospective tournament writers and DM's, most of this is applicable to home games as well. It gets Ken's wholehearted recommendation.A1-4 Scourge of the slavelords is the compiled version of the slaver series from 1980. Like B1-9, it's been rewritten to tie it in much more closely with the setting developed since then, and to bridge the gaps between the 4 original scenarios. This is not a perfect stitching together, but it does the job. You may still have to do a bit of railroading, particularly if you want to use the 4th scenario as written, but you could also deviate from the path, and use the locations and characters in your own way. I12, Egg of the phoenix, on the other hand gets a pretty mixed review. While the individual scenarios are cool, the new plot trying to stitch them together is not well done, and there is quite a bit of editorial sloppiness. It all smacks of changes made due to marketing decisions, quite possibly at the last minute. If you can get the originals instead, do so. Ken also takes the time to comment on comments about his reviewing, and clear up a few misconceptions. This is also fairly entertaining to read, and hopefully he'll use the criticisms to become an even better reviewer. He does seem to be a very strong part of the team at the moment. The imperial gods: Ahhh, the roman pantheon. Not given much attention here because they're basically a reskinned greek pantheon, and that was covered quite adequately in Deities and Demigods. But as is often the case, the big similarities obscure the little cultural differences, and there are quite a few of those to examine. So this makes for a curious article, presenting a culture in which the gods may be important, but they are treated in quite a pragmatic manner. We give you veneration and sacrifices on a regular basis, you give us omens, good crops and other various goodies back. Clerics frequently give service to more than one god as the need arises, and are often quite cynical about the whole arrangement. Which is actually a pretty good model to adapt for a D&D campaign. After all, if the players are going to treat the cleric like a healbot and not actually give a damn about the IC religions anyway, you might as well make the problem into an opportunity to have a little fun. Perfect in particular for your god of business and the like. We also get the usual godly stats for Aeneas, Cybele, Divis Imperator, Eris, (Hail Discordia!) Janus, Mithras, Saturn, Serapis and Vesta. This is definitely a helpful article for me, being just what I needed to solve one of my current worldbuilding conundrums. After all, in a world where the gods are definitely real, active, and of great, but not omnipotent power, people are more likely to treat staying on their good side in a pragmatic manner rather than a mystical one. Considerably better than I was expecting.</blockquote>

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