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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4909843" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 139: November 1988part 5/5The ecology of the spectator: Say hello to our third look at the beholder subraces. Curious that they're getting more attention in the ecologies than Dragons. And curious that they occupy such widely varying ecological niches as well. Standard beholders are marauding destroyers, cutting swathes through all that oppose them.  Eyes of the deep are lurking predators in a hostile environment you're unlikely to even see. Spectators are almost benign, if rather weird in mindset, and you're unlikely to fight one unless it's being employed by someone. As an ecology should, this fills in the details of their lifecycle, and what they do when not being summoned. As you'd expect, this is rather strange. They really should do some more extraplanar ecology stuff. We have the basic books needed to giver people a framework. Filling it in would be a cool thing to do, and let people's imaginations really run wild. Also notable is the increasing use of greyhawk locations and personages in the recent ecologies. With Gary well gone by now, they grow increasingly comfortable with allowing all and sundry to write there, just as Ed's done with the Forgotten realms. That's definitely a development that will have reprecussions in the future. Overall, this is a very interesting ecology, with it's inventive ideas, variants, and a new spell for our use as well. One for both players and DM's. The game wizards: Back to the really big issue everyone's been wondering about for months here. The next edition of AD&D. Playtesters have reported tons of ideas. Zeb's been trying to change things, Jon's been trying to keep them the same, and of course there is much conflict in general about how much to change. It's all been a bit wearing. Entertaining, but not hugely informative, this is basically just a bit of blogging, not really revealing any specifics about what will be different. Definitely not a patch on the leadup to the release of the 1st ed DMG. Will anything provoke the same kind of furor afterwards as the female dwarven beards issue? (Demons & Devils, of course.) Come on, stoke our fires. It'll be good for sales. When the tanks roll: Top Secret continues it's more military focus, with talk about coups. When and why are they most likely to occur? Here's a hint. Don't neglect the basic utilities. That's just begging for trouble. This strongly reminds us that the new edition has stepped away from realism in both system and setting, with Orion and Web being virtually 80's cartoon organizations in the unambiguity of which is good, which is bad, and the tactics they adopt. Which also means Orion seems rather standoffish and reactive. If you want to make the world a better place, you can't just watch for villainic influence and then foil them. And in a world without supernatural stuff, the excuse that you don't interfere in mundane politics carries rather less weight. There's still plenty of valuable advice in this, but it is tinged with that annoying shallow cartoon morality that I might have accepted at the time, but laugh at now. Not only are they shying away from real world religion, they're also bowdlerising real world politics due to overcautious company policy. So it's an interesting but not very pleasing way to finish things off. Snarfquest is on vacation again because Larry Elmore is overworked. Dragonmirth also strains the sanity. Yamara wishes halflings had infravision like the rest of the demihumans. Definitely an issue that strongly foreshadows the changes to come in the next edition, both it's good aspects, and it's bad ones. Which isn't too surprising really, but shows how much they've planned ahead, and are setting things up so as to make the readers more likely to accept those alterations in mechanics and tone. Still, the magazine as a whole seems fairly healthy, with sales up again, Roger struggling less to keep everything running, and the amount of rehash stable or even declining slightly. They certainly seem to be in a fairly healthy position for the changeover. So let's see how it all goes down.</blockquote>

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