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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5000326" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 156: April 1990part 1/6116 pages. Lest we forget, beholders were originally created out of a pun on a saying and a desire to screw over players. No great social commentary or philosophical point here, just the sadistic fun of inflicting a TPK in a single round. Now that's the kind of humour this magazine should be running. Seems promising. Course, they have to put a damper on it by forgetting to scan the convention booklet again, but that seems to be becoming par for the course. Oh well, still another even bigger issue to get through. I doubt I'm missing anything crucial to the history of gaming. In this issue:Letters: More weirdness from the readers that the editors really can't top here. The usual problem of people mistaking our head editor for the actor who plays James Bond. Two letters involving sex and gaming, which are dealt with in a manner that reminds us how their editorial policies have tightened up on this manner. You'd never see anything like 83's sex in AD&D article, thanks to upper management. :Wolves howl, rumble of thunder: Some bad poetry. Fear the encroaching filk. Some equally worrying speculation on the toilet habits of PC's and monsters. A request for help choosing a tattoo. Exactly where it is going on their body is left ambiguous and dubious. A question that actually makes sense, but is rather headache inducing, about the loyalty level of domesticated wolves. Leave it to the DM to make that decision in his game. Editorial: Roger decides to tackle terror, a subject that is normally reserved for their october issue. But you should always have at least some element of risk while gaming. Once again we are reminded that Jim Ward is the king of monty haul games, and then creates enemies that can challenge those superpowered characters in turn. You can never be safe while he's around. Even crab grass can mutate into a monstrosity capable of killing gods without breaking a sweat. In comparison, Call of Cthulhu seems sane and restrained. A playful little editorial, but also one that manages to slip in promotions for several of their upcoming products, this doesn't ring completely true for me, and is another reminder that they are now a fairly focussed business driven by careful cross-promotion. We are not your friends,  even if we affect an informal conversational style. Our job hinges on persuading you to give us money. Don't forget it. Not necessarily the monstrous compendium: The magazine staff celebrate the goofiness inherent in the system, mocking mad monsters past and present as a way of warming up for some more of the most risible potential adversaries that our freelancers have submitted. This is not to say they aren't usable and in many cases are rather dangerous, for they worry not about ideas like fairness that lesser monsters adhere too. Muahahaha.  Blink wooly mammoths are like blink dogs, only for substantially higher level parties. Fighting a herd of them is an exercise in ugly cartoon deaths, for they have huge damage outputs, are very hard to hit, and are likely to teleport directly above you when attacked, with predictable results. You'll have to develop some very good tactics indeed if you don't want the humiliation of a TPK.  Death sheep are substantially less powerful, and played for more obvious laughs. Beware Basil the lord of the death sheep! While you'll probably survive this one unless the characters are too busy laughing to attack at all, there is a certain horror (and humiliation) involved in the fact that their death rage is infectious. Again, they can be played straight and still work. Gello monsters, on the other hand, are just lame. Moving jelly cubes that are invulnerable to all attacks save being eaten? Pass me the giant rolleyes smiley that pukes little rolleyes smileys. There's no way these'll ever become anything other than a lame joke at the expense of D&D's lovely catalogue of oozes, molds, slimes and puddings. Killer spruce work pretty well, actually. There's certainly enough mythic antecedents where this is played straight for this to work incorporated into a regular campaign. Evil plants, like underwater adventures, are a valuable addition to any designer's repertoire. Man-drakes also seem pretty mythically resonant, but incredibly goofy at the same time. Essentially were-ducks, which are the male equivalents of foxwomen, they are a persistent embarrassment to any swanmays that may be in the vicinity, and can make your romantic life become deeply excruciating. Pelt any DM who tries this one with bits of bread, and hope that doesn't just encourage them. Paper dragons are kyoot, and eat your spellbooks. Not hugely dangerous to fight, they are a pretty good screwage monster. Another one that will be taken very seriously indeed if they show up in the game, despite their whimsical elements. Even if it only scoffs one page from your spellbook a night, that'll induce extreme paranoia in the players, and make them set up elaborate guard mechanisms that you can have all kinds of fun figuring out how to foil. Pigeontoads are a good demonstration that if you make something less cute, people are less likely to tolerate it flying around their city, crapping on the statues. Yet another vaguely baffling hybrid, they're really no more goofy than owlbears or stirges. Remember, the best way to eliminate monsters like this is to remove their breeding grounds. Otherwise they'll just be back in swarms again next year. Pink dragons blow bubbles. Ya, Rly. They're still quite capable of ripping you up if you laugh at them, or fail to laugh at their jokes. (Oh the irony) Not properly updated to 2nd ed rules, they're not that ferocious, but underestimate them at your peril. Ticklers are little flying puffballs that get under your clothes and incapacitate you with laughter. Dear oh dear. Still, the players'll stop laughing when they meet their epic level cousins. And while harmless on their own, combined with other monsters  they can make an encounter much harder. Tin golems look like big toy soldiers, but like most golems, they're immune to big chunks of your arsenal, and have an extra screwage trick on top of that. They're certainly worthy adversaries, and can be reskinned to remove the goofiness pretty effortlessly. Have a heart, and rescue them from the scrapheap. Unicows, like unicorns, have a thing for virgins, and refuse to be tended by anyone else. Yeah, it sounds pretty dodgy when you look at it like that. Just be glad no-ones introduced unipegataurs in the magazine yet. Were-hares are psychotic little <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ers, and you'll need a holy hand grenade to deal with them. Yes, it's time to break out the monty python quotes. Just when you thought you were safe. Methinks it's time for something completely different sharpish. A pretty good collection really. About half or so of them would work just fine slotted alongside, say, the contents of the Fiend Folio, and the rest are pretty memorable, if not quite so easily used. This definitely seems more promising than last year's joke stuff so far.</blockquote>

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