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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5016516" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 158: June 1990part 5/6Sage advice: What are the stats for the scythe wielded by the minor death (Same as it ever was. No sense of harmony, No sense of time. Going first all the time is a property of the monster, not the weapon. )What kind of coins come out of Bucknard's everfull purse. ( You need to give a little of what you want to receive.)Why is chain mail better and cheaper than scale mail (because scale mail is older and inferior. We put it in for historical purposes. I know, most D&D campaigns don't have advancing technology. That's because you suck, not because we're at fault. )Can a ring of spell storing let a nonwizard get a familiar (Hmm. Yes would be more story enabling than no. Skip'll say yes. )Are buffs and strength bonuses counted to determine if a vorpal sword gets all head sevrery (No. Skip ain't gonna cave on the rules to save yo marraige.  )Is the limit for rogue skills 95 or 99% ( 95. You're gonna run out of places to spend points quite soon at epic levels. ) Does a girdle of dwarvenkind make you count as a dwarf for the purposes of other items (Hee. No, although Skip sees where you could get that idea, given the girdle of masculinity/femininity.)What's the formula for fighters Xp awards (10 per HD. This is on top of regular experience, remember, otherwise you'll completely cripple them. They don't need that. )Why are red dragons weaker than blue dragons. How do you determine their THAC0 ( Errata. And THAC0 for monsters has a simple formula, just like for PC's. You should be able to figure it out, looking at the examples. Why are riding horses more badass than war horses ( More eratta. This is what happens when you farm out to multiple writers and don't edit. )What's with the juvenile entries for giants XP. (More aborted experiments we didn't clean up after properly. Don't let the pro-life movement start attacking us as well. )Do the avatar books spoil the modules (Not much. Not that it matters anyway, as it's a railroady plot module. We can't let the free will of players spoil our metaplot. )   TORG is now out, along with supplements and a tie-in novel. Guess they want to start a supplement mill of their own. Money money money. Novel ideas: A bunch of rapid fire microinterviews this month, as once again they examine the process behind the creation of their upcoming novels. When you put a bunch of creative types in a room, and make them write on specific briefs with tight deadlines, strange things happen. Flint Fireforge's dialogue gets modeled on Yosemite Sam. Characters travel into the memories of other characters, which allows them to go back in time without worrying about contradicting other entries in the series. A whole cast of secondary supporting characters gets created, hopefully to fuel more spin-offs if they prove popular. And husband and wife teams really shine. Funny how Dragonlance in particular seems to thrive on male/female pairings in it's writers. I suppose it reinforces another lesson. While writing is stereotypically a lonely business, it really shouldn't be. Even if one person is doing most of the heavy creative work, having a set of attentive ears around to read your work to at the end of the day and be your first line of feedback massively helps you hone your storytelling abilities. An amusing read, but on the whole, this is yet more evidence that they're piling up stuff in that world with more concern over volume than quality. I think I'll leave them to it. Role-playing reviews: Call of cthulhu 4th ed shows that while the rules haven't changed hugely in 8 years and 3 revisions, the presentation has, and so has the sheer comprehensiveness of situations covered. BRP continues to handle the mechanical end of things quite nicely, while the writing captures the horror of the books without taking itself too seriously. After all, going mad and dying horribly is supposed to be fun, otherwise why do it? So let's suit up, put on our period appropriate hats, and go out there to enjoy the vast number of ways you can lose, see who survives the longest. After all, there's tons of adventures out there now. Let's see what Jim makes of those as well. Masks of nyarlathotep has been reprinted as a book rather than a boxed set, with a bunch of extra illustrations. This has not hurt the product at all, and it has become one of the iconic CoC adventures. You should get it, if only to learn from it. Cthulhu classics also draws upon and reprints a bunch of old adventures. While I'm sure they're good, that the line has already started eating it's own tail so soon worries me a little. Oh well, at least it keeps shadows of yog-soddoth in print. The great old ones is a collection of new adventures, hooray! Hastur plays a large part in this set, which can be connected together into a larger story, but it'll take quite a bit of work. Mix them up with other adventures and you should be able to get a lengthy campaign out of this. Gaslight takes us back another 30 years, so you can go mad in victoriana rather than between the wars. And then have kids, who can go mad in turn. As with Masks, this was originally a boxed set, but has been reprinted as a more standard book with a bit of extra stuff. You can meet and adventure with sherlock holmes, which seems a little schlocky, but hey. Plenty of fun to be had here as well. H P Lovecraft's Dreamlands is also an ex-boxed set. Seems to be a standard policy. I guess it saves them money, given how annoying boxed sets are to produce. Anyway, it lets you venture into the realms beyond, instead of just trying to guard the earth against their depredations. Turns the thing a little closer to dark fantasy than straight horror, but hey, you can't stay disempowered forever. S Petersen's Field guide to creatures of the dreamlands expands on the last book with more IC pseudoscholarly fun. Both the art and writing are well up to scratch. He's still more than making his mark on the RPG community.</blockquote>

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