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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5031320" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 161: September 1990part 1/6116 pages. Another month, another attempt to liven things up for their long term readers. In fact, this is explicitly the special topic of the issue. How very telling. Have Roger & co found something new to stoke their interests, or will the advice they give be pretty familiar to experienced trope connoisseurs such as myself. Another chunky issue is here for the taking, and I'm certainly not quitting at this stage. In this issue:Letters: A letter wondering why quite a few of their articles are still using 1st ed stats and formats. They have a huuuuuge backlogged slush pile, and getting out a magazine each month being their top priority means they have less time than they'd like to do something about it. A letter asking where all the various new classes the magazine's published over the years are. Roger is nice enough to alphabetize the answer, but does not include the new one in this issue, for some reason. Oh well, it gives me another chance to double check my list of allowed classes for my own game. A letter expressing approval at the idea of monsters being given different names in different regions, but with the caveats that they should fit the overall linguistic construction of the area. No dispute there. Editorial: Black Bart returns, as I thought he would. Last seen in issue 48, it looks like he's appeared in more than one campaign, with more than one set of stats. I guess it's like the John Smith of adventurer names. I am Black Bart! Fear my rugged good looks and dark backstory! You and every other badass wannabe. <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" /> Anyway, this is another of Roger's editorials where he talks about his actual play experiences. The story of a romance that took place in his game, including the NPC's death, the amusing brooding that happened as a result of that, and the rather dramatic way he brought her back so they could kill things and take their stuff across the dimensions happily ever after. The perfect melding of hack-and-slash and drama. Actually, it does look like he was pretty heavily of the gonzo monty haul school, but they had fun anyway. Anyway, this is a reminder that romance is a tricky but rewarding subject to put into your game, and actually, given it's importance in nearly every entertainment medium, it's surprising there's not more of it in roleplaying. Whether that's a factor in it never attaining wider commercial success I'm not sure, but it does seem very probable. And since V:tM'll come from nowhere to become no 2 in a very short period of time, and attract a rather larger proportion of female players, it does seem probable that this could have been handled a lot better by TSR. Once again, we are reminded how things could have been different, and possibly better, if people had made different decisions during TSR's early days. Inside information: So getting adventures from shady characters in taverns is growing stale. There are many other ways you can find out about cool adventures and monsters to slay, even if the adventures don't come to you. And this reminds you of quite a few of them. Libraries, marketplaces, rumours, songs, divinations, etc etc. I'm sure you've seen stories using all of these. but it's easy to forget in the moment. So this is one that's very useful to novice GM's, and mildly so as a reminder to experienced ones. There may only be 30-odd stories in the world, but that's still a lot more variety than getting stuck doing one over and over again, as many writers do. And the RPG's out there at the moment tap into a surprisingly small subset of that group.  Yup, there's definitely still room for refinement and diversification in gaming, and they're still trying to push for it. Romance and adventure: Looks like Roger isn't alone in wanting to see a little more romance in people's games. And there's plenty of GM's who might want to try it, but are afraid that it might go horribly wrong. Oh come on, it's not like you're really asking someone out. Like they've been saying in the forum, an invaluable part of roleplaying is getting to do something safely that would be difficult or impossible in reality. Course, if you try this on your players, you should really expect the unexpected. They'll ignore or spurn the obvious romantic interests, and develop odd obsessions over minor characters you mentioned offhand. Heavyhanded manipulation or actual mind control will likely backfire spectacularly. Similarly, there's that horribly irritating fact that overenthusiastic pursuit will likely scare them off. On the other hand, a little competition can work wonders. And on top of all this, you have to make sure that you don't spend too much screentime on one player's issues over everyone else. When you describe it like that, I can see why a lot of DM's would be put off. So lots of advice and warnings here, most pretty solid. I think this definitely counts as a sign of the times. People are growing up, craving romance, serious commitments to epic character arcs and worlds. Can we satisfy those urges, or will we be left frustrated or heartbroken, returning to the dungeon to smash away the angst. Guess that probably varies from campaign to campaign.</blockquote>

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