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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4883346" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988part 2/5The long arm of the law: Thieves guilds seem to be virtually ubiquitous in D&D settings. Almost to the point where you wonder about their illegality, and the attempts the authorities make to catch them. Are they really so entrenched in the setting as to be impossible to fight? Good question. And obviously, in a properly fleshed out world, one that should vary from place to place. This article is very focussed on applying the alignment model to communities. Which is a good place to start, but a bad way to finish, since that's only 2 axes with three divisions. There's still room for huge amounts of variation within each alignment, especially once you take technology and historical relations with neighbors into account. But that's for you to develop. Another article that only really takes you a part of the way there, with most of it's info being pretty commonsensical. And since the law frequently has some aspects that seem nonsensical unless you know the specific events of the country involved, that's not very realistic, is it. Empire builder is back. And still using the same recommendation from Gary in issue 65. Couldn't they get a more up to date review?Taking care of business: The merchant class, as detailed ages ago in Leomund's (what happened to Len, did he quit when Gary was forced out as well?) tiny hut, gets a revised version. Which is nice. It keeps the players from killing everyone and taking their stuff when they shouldn't. They still have the same idiosyncratic spell learning ability, but their powers are better defined and laid out in general. Since they now also have decent combat capabilities, can earn XP from regular adventuring, and get yet another idiosyncratic way of breaking the usual multi/dual classing rules, they actually approach viability as a PC type. If you've maxed out your first class, switching to them seems a pretty good choice. This definitely goes on the list of classes I'll allow in my campaign. A room for the Knight: Given the number of adventures that start in taverns, and the amount of traveling you have to do in the course of them, a little more info on the places you eat and sleep while in town seems a good topic to cover here. When you add in rogues, rumourmongers, barroom brawls, and all that fun stuff, you can turn them into an adventure in their own right. But for a third time this issue, this is more about giving you the basics, so you can get those sorted out quickly and efficiently, and move on to customising stuff for your own campaign. So they show us roughly how 1 to 4 star inns vary in quality and price, and what you can get there. Once again, the most amusing part of this is in analyzing the quirks of the tables presented. Which in the cosmic scale of things, isn't really that amusing overall. Fifty ways to foil your players: Muahaha. What a very adversarial title. This seems promising. The title is, as is often the case, a bit misleading, as they use it in it's definition as a noun rather than a verb. So here's 50 character types that serve to amuse and inconvenience the PC's in such a manner that you're not expected to kill them, and doing so would probably make things worse. A strong streak of sadistic humour runs through this article, but they recognize that this is the kind of meal best served in moderation, for if you tip them into outright enemies, D&D characters will not hesitate to go into slaughter mode and damn the repercussions. This is definitely one that'll help you come up with random NPC's quickly, and makes for entertaining reading as well. From these seeds can spring characters that'll give you years of fun gaming. Sow them well. Mertwig's maze by Tom Wham. I guess he's still working for them, although none of his games have appeared in here for a while. I was wondering. I suspect he's one of the people who aren't taking the new corporate culture in the company well. Fiction: The curse of the magus by Bruce Boston and Robert Frazier. People never react well to the concept that something they take for granted is going to be stripped away. Look at the modern issue of fossil fuels. Despite it seeming pretty likely that they'll become scarce enough to be uneconomical to mine for everyday use within our lifetime, people and governments drag their feet on changing to more sustainable power sources until they absolutely have too, and this may seriously bite us in the ass. This has echoes of that theme, but frames it in a rather more personal context, that of the day to day trials and reminiscences of an archmage exiled and stripped of his powers for predicting and trying to prepare people for the depletion of magic. Being right is a bitter satisfaction in that position. Still, at least he manages to go out with a bang. As this manages to be both visually  evocative, and philosophically thought provoking, I think this definitely counts as another win for this department. Arcane Lore: Rather a tedious lore session this month, as they give us Recharge. Now not just any high level spellcaster can make and reload wands and staves, you need to do some more special research, and pay some more money on material components. How very tiresome, and not worthy of further comment. Next!</blockquote>

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