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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4965965" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989part 1/5108 pages. Larry Elmore gives us another character who looks very familiar. What diabolical plots does she have for that scarecrow? Since it's october, you can bet horror'll be involved. But there's plenty of different spins to be put on that idea. In 1980, they focussed more on the fiendish side of things. This time, it's mind flayers and other mind-bending alien horrors that'll be exerting their will on your players. Mmm. Mind control and tentacles. Two great tastes that taste great together, especially if you can't get girls the normal way <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Will it be well crafted oppressive tension and violation, or cheap schlocky scares? Let's crack open this particular musty tome from ages long gone. <img src="http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-water.phtml?picid=8428" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />In this issue:Letters: A letter pointing out that the info for the vampire in the new MC is borked. Roger replies that they are already well aware of that, have fixed it in the new printing, and just to be extra generous, are also including this bit of errata later in this issue. Can't leave a monster as popular as that messed up. A letter with a ton of questions, that require even more lengthy replies. Boiled down, they are Sorta, thanks, role of computers, no, no. Next! Two rather astute suggestions on getting hold of stuff, and dealing with errata. Roger is suitably chastened, but that doesn't mean he's going to use them. We have our creative independence to consider. Forum: The forum has both an unusually large number of contributors, and the individual letters are longer than usual. They also spread it over lots of pages throughout the magazine. Guess they had a load of awkwardly sized advertising that they needed to format around. That and the responses to the edition changes are starting to hit. This should be interesting. David Cody & Ed Kramer writes in in their official role as runners of the Origins convention to rebutt Bryan A Walker's letter from issue 145. Your worries about cancellations and gaming being seen as a negative influence are unfounded. We provide both quality and quantity. Nice to see them paying attention to stuff said in here. Toby Myers has yet more ideas on how a smartly played dragon could kick the ass of any party it likes, probably without ever even meeting them face-to-face. You know, even really smart bad guys have to sleep too. And a few years napping can really erode your trap setup and support network. Playing them as omniscient creatures with infinite resources and a contingency for everything that means you always play into some xanatos gambit and advance some other plan is just as unrealistic as the other extreme, and probably more unfun for players. As ever, balance please. S. D. Anderson has some advice on just how common commercially available magic scrolls should be. Once wizards get to name level, they've got better ways to make lots of money than setting up a shop for any peons and adventurers that come along. That's where the cutoff should be. Ted Collins rebutts S. D. Anderson's little piece on how untouchable characters with ridiculously buffed magic items are. Again, this boils down to how intelligently the characters are played to shift the statistics around. Mobs can beat a single character that is vastly more powerful, especially if they play it smart. So put the smart party against the smart dragon, and watch the fireworks fly. (albeit slowly, given the time both sides spend machinating and preparing their buffs and traps) Stephen Jorgensen thinks much the same as Ted, and would also like to factor in realistic penalties that people facing multiple enemies at once suffer. Don't forget the fatigue rolls either. Even mook-mowers will start to fade after a few hours. And then you are in trouble. A nice reminder of how cinematic D&D can be, and how little some people like that fact. Tom Foottit also thinks that S. D. is massively exaggerating how it would turn out in a real situation, rather than a white room simulation. You don't get to 5th level while thinking like a mook. This is going to be like Alycia and Scud all over again, isn't it. Dennis Rudolph gives his own rather idiosyncratic take on the ideas of cheating and getting more XP for high ability scores. Or less, in his case. Very interesting and worth consideration. Matt Foster freely admits that he's pretty messed up, and D&D is his main avenue of escape from the loneliness. Spare a thought for the people who don't actually get to play regularly. Lee Loftis has players who are getting tired of the modules with plotlines, and just want to go back to delving dungeons, killing things and taking their stuff. Please make more modules like that, TSR. Good luck with that one. Bill McCullough talks about his rather twinked current game, and how it was gradually forced into that state by player pressure, while he wanted something more down-to-earth, but players kept leaving. This is how power creep from edition to edition happens. You pursue the commercial agenda to keep your game from dying, and before you know it, you're a complete sellout. Anthony N Emmel is also interested in the gradual evolution of the game, and thinks that you can have both hack and slashing and complex roleplaying in the same game, and it'll be all the more fun for the variety. He also points out that the Dragonlance Chronicles, one of the biggest D&D series ever, shows good and evil characters co-existing in the same party. If they can do it, you certainly can.</blockquote>

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