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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4877195" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 133: May 1988part 4/5Mutants down under, a supplement for TMNT. Seems fitting. Kangaroos with mohawks and uzi's would fit right in in that universe. Agents for hire: Top secret goes back to the idea of breaking away from your agency, and becoming a spy for hire. A risky business, with treachery from your employers a constant risk. Is it worth it, just to get a little more money? If you haven't built up a rep and some contacts, then you'll struggle to get any work at all. And rooting through bins for passwords, doing stakeouts for someone suspecting their wife of infidelity and similar stuff is a far cry from international espionage which influences the fate of nations. A rather lengthy article that seems mostly designed to point out how tricky this path is to tread, and mechanically codify the process of jobhunting, this is very much in the old edition's spirit (indeed, all it's rules references are to the 2nd ed books) and seems more likely to drive people away from this playstyle than encourage it. And I think that an article that discourages you from trying it out is a failure by most criteria, don't you. Success by conventional means: This year's focus on wargaming conventions continues with this article on running your own. Setting up something like this is not an easy proposition, and can consume vast amounts of time and money even if done right. So here's advice from someone who built their own con up from nothing, and has been going for 5 years now. Don't overestimate, for you will be disappointed. One person cannot do everything. There is no such thing as too much publicity. Make sure everything works and is rehearsed before the night otherwise you will screw up somehow. Consider your pricing policies carefully. Always consider food, for it can make or break peoples experience. If you are careful, you can make at least a small profit at every stage. Like the freelancing advice that pops up every year or two, this is the kind of advice that can be applied to any commercial venture. Ignore it at your peril. One of those diversions that I'm quite happy to see in the magazine, as it helps break up the monotony. Sage advice: How does ensnare restrict demons (They can't teleport away or summon more demons, but they can still pull lots of other tricks. Be vewy vewy wawy. ) Can I have some guidelines on wish. (Another nerfer? Not satisfied with the number of articles on this subject already. Skip is very very bored now. Unleash the didactics.) Can a ring of spell turning affect a wish. (if its effect is aimed at the wearer. )Can a magic user replace a spell in their book (yes. This is an entirely acceptable way of circumventing the spells known limit. )Isn't polymorph incredibly abusable (Oh yes, but not quite as much as you seem to think. People who are transformed have an annoying habit of forgetting their original form. Also, system shock's a bitch. Like wish and haste, this'll come back and bite you if you use it frequently. ) Surprise!: Ahh yes, the problem of nonstandardised surprise probabilities in D&D. What do you do when one thing has a power that increases the chances, another has one that reduces them, and neither even use the same dice type. How do we fix that? Same way they do for the Monk and Sentinel, convert the probabilities into percentages, and then add or subtract the two differences from the base 33%. While there are probably more elegant ways of doing it, they would require a substantial system overhaul, and this seems to work, so I think I'll adopt it. So it's a compact and useful article here. I quite approve. TSR previews: D&D goes from elves, to dwarves, with The Dwarves of Rockhome gazetteer. Find out more about the known world, and introduce dwarven clerics to your game. AD&D gives us H4: The throne of bloodstone. Their highest level module ever, this may not have quite the level of the BD&D immortal level modules, but it's still pretty ridiculous. Go kick Orcus' butt. You have the Power! We need to set things up for the second edition changeover, so it may even stick for a bit.  Marvel superheroes gets MU1: gamers handbook of the marvel universe 1. A-D of every character, all with stats, and we're already up to 256 pages? There's gonna be quite a few more installments coming. On the boardgame side, we have The Hunt for Red October game. Can you avert WWIII? The stakes are high in this little license. Our novel this month is Black Wizards. Doug Niles continues his Moonshae trilogy. The plot thickens, just as it must. Will there be a satisfactory resolution? And our solo gamebook this month is a Top Secret/S.I. one, The Final Bug. Descriptions are rather sketchy. The problem with solving this puzzle is not lack of evidence, but too much of it. Just slap it in the supercomputer and let that solve the problem.</blockquote>

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