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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4976582" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 152: December 1989part 1/5116 pages. So we come to the end of the decade a very different magazine than we started it. The name has changed, twice, the staff has pretty much had a complete turnover, and the format and readership have had similarly sweeping changes. But they're still the biggest magazine in the roleplaying sphere, devoted primarily to providing cool stuff for D&D players. And whatever else they may do, that involves going into dungeons, killing things, and taking their stuff. So what better way to celebrate and reaffirm that core principle than with another underdark special. The first was one of their most successful themed issues ever. Can they repeat that, or will diminishing returns set in as it did for oriental stuff last month. Either way, let's resolve this cadence and start on the next symphony. In this issue:Virgin games centres give us a double page christmas spread. Damnitt. Stop rubbing it in. I want to be mainstream again. Letters: Another letter from another person even more stupidly badass than Waldorf. Cower, puny mortals!!!!! Roger grows weary of this, but with so much public response, you've gotta do something. A letter from someone who actually used the Outrages from the mages joke spells in their game. This has proved to be of much amusement, and the odd moment where the spells actually turn out useful. This pretty much assures their future in the next few april fools issues. A letter mostly in praise of P N Elrod's familiars article, with a couple of little terminology quibbles. Research, research research. No amount is ever enough to satisfy everyone. A question about when the various colours and other types of dragons appeared in the magazine. In many cases, it was quite a while ago. But we're still not going to publish any more under the same or near identical names. Find new barrels to scrape. Forum: Toby Myers thinks that if a game doesn't cover a particular thing brilliantly, steal a subsystem or set of modifiers from another game that does it better. He's done it repeatedly to great success. Long live frankengames! James R Collier thinks that while magic might replace the big developments, technology still has it's place in D&D worlds, especially for things that you have to do in large quantity. Magic is crap at mass production.Jason Dunn tells a fairly dramatic story of a powerful mage who thought he could take on a whole cavern full of humanoids. While he made it, it was a close call. A combination of action economy and the odd magic item means low level characters can deal with a much smaller quantity of powerful ones with a little tactics. Daniel J Stephans II thinks that the nerfing of the cavalier in issue 148 was a terrible idea. All their abilities make perfect sense for the concept! Not even slightly surprised to see one of these. Jeff Cliber thinks much the same thing. Down with homogenisation and the removal of awesomeness in characters! Is anyone going to stand up for the Barbarian as well?  Alex Martin is not amused by all the controversy surrounding D&D, and thinks that the way to fix that is to talk openly about what you do, while also being a normal, well adjusted person. Easy for you to say. Not so easy for all of us to do. Dan Humphries is not amused about the idea of allowing evil characters because it's likely to cause the problems outlined in the last letter. Overhearing conversations results in awkward misunderstandings, and then things escalate. Better not to pretend to be mass-mudering treacherous psychopaths. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Michael J Natale, on the other hand, thinks there is nothing wrong with exploring the darker side of things in gaming. Do writers become psychopaths for writing villains. Do actors go mad trying to portray them? I seem to remember people using these same counterarguments against Katherine Kerr back in 1985. How little things have changed.</blockquote>

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