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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5112846" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 174: October 1991part 4/6Dark Sun occupies the centre pages with a full colour photographed advert, including a fake weird creature skull. Any idea what monster that's supposed to belong too?  The possibilities are endless: Oooh. A TORG article. Spike Y Jones suggests changing around a few of the default setting assumptions and seeing the potential for fun adventures that result. All it takes is for the initial blitzkrieg of the probability wars to have gone a little better or worse and the political landscape will look rather different. Similarly, giving the characters roles other than Storm Knights who awakened to their power in a recent crisis will alter the way the game goes quite a bit. This makes me think of Exalted quite a bit, where the default character choice is both the most powerful, and the least integrated into the world, and subsequent splats introduced very different ways of playing in the same world, each with their own distinctive social structures. It also makes me wonder about the choice of making a game have multiple settings, or one default one that it takes quite a bit of work to convert away from. Is the ultimate victory of the AD&D line over the BD&D one because it had a whole bunch of settings and encouraged you to make your own, while the BD&D one became increasingly locked into the known world as the line went on? Is that also part of the reason why games such as Exalted, TORG and Rifts never managed to unseat D&D in overall popularity and versatility? Was the introduction of the Infinite Worlds meta-setting tying everything together part of the reason why GURPS 4th ed has only had a tiny fraction of the books 3rd ed managed? Was the increasing degrees of crossover between the various AD&D settings part of what caused TSR's downfall? Now there's a big intractable question for us to chew over. So I guess this is a pretty good article, both giving coverage to a new game, and providing me with plenty of thoughts on how to change play that are applicable to other games. Spike is proving to be one of the better contributors of this era. Forum: Martyn Agass thinks that characters need a decent amount of customisability so their skills can accurately reflect their personality and goals. Spellcasters are decently provided for, as a rogues these days, but warriors still suck in this respect. Kits just don't seem to be enough for him. Jason Dunn has a fairly lengthy contribution, covering several topics, and mentioning quite a few previous writers. The result feels like whislestop tour through his GM'ing philosophy. Anything is possible. Don't kill too often, but don't let players believe they're invulnerable. Robert W. Heym is annoyed that TSR are devoting so much time and page count to their own game worlds, rather than giving more generic advice. Just go back a decade or forward a couple and your wish will be granted. <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" /> Salvadore Giraldi, on the other hand, finds preprepared campaign worlds a huge help. Even the big ones hardly cover every bit of the world, and it does make it easier for players to become attached to the world and impressed by the famous NPC's. So many people don't have the time to make complete games. The trick is to design campaign worlds so they assist your own creativity rather than stifle it. Shawn A. Chesak holds an opinion somewhere between the previous two forumites. Yes, the proportion of generic stuff to specific worlds is probably too low at the moment, but that doesn't mean they should cut out the campaigns entirely. They do serve a valuable role for novice players. Sandy Green speaks up in support of young people gaming, and Paladins and Demons playing a part in the game. Learning about morality in a non-preachy manner is important. Amber! By Erik Wujik. The first big diceless system! Once again with the progress. Defeating more with less: Or return of the Tuckers Kobolds part 3, Endor holocaust. Greg Detwiler shows us once again how enemies played smart are far more likely to live long and prosper. Basic tactics like taking cover and using missile fire massively increase your effectiveness, as real world armies demonstrate on a daily basis. Stealth, traps, hit-and-run attacks, stealing stuff, clever use of spellcasters, this all seems pretty familiar, albeit presented pretty well, and with plenty of detail. Still, it doesn't have enough new ideas to really stoke my interest. Seen this stuff before, will likely see it again. One for the new readers then.</blockquote>

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