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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5116426" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 175: November 1991part 1/6124 pages. As hinted a while ago in the letters page, some people want more stuff showing us how to create and run our own campaigns. Looks like the freelancers were listening, for such is this month's topic. Power to the people, and all that. Keep that approach up, and you'll rarely want for the topics you desire, and can reduce rehash quite considerably. That gives us a positive beginning to this issue. Let's kick the proceedings off then. In this issue:Letters: A letter advertising the beginning of the Sci-fi channel. High hopes. We've got hiiigh hopes. You mean the one that recently renamed itself Syfy, to much derision, while also cutting down on the amount of actual sci-fi it shows, just like MTV, and has churned out more than it's fair share of crap TV movies. Oops there goes another crappy cable tv channel. A letter about setting up pen-pal stuff. They stopped doing that ages ago because they had too many people writing in to handle.  It's all a bit of a pain, but they'll do what they can. Another person asking about the record for longest continuous gaming session. Roger gives the same slightly exasperated reply he made last time. Can't recommend it mate. 'Elf an' safety regulations, innit. Sigh. Another very rehashed question. What does TSR stand for. These days, not a lot. <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" />Editorial: Giant Space Hamsters! Oh Roger, what have you wrought? Forever now will spelljammer be inextricably linked with them. 20 years later, people will still snigger when you mention their name. But they do have plenty of supporters, as this outpouring of reader responses shows. In prose, in bullet points, even in verse, they show their love and the many things they use them for. It's enough to make me want to grow more heads and limbs just so I can perform multiple simultaneous facepalms. They just can't resist putting big globs of goofy into their products these days. When exactly will it end? Guess I'll just have to hold on a few years more. Inventing the "instant" Adventure: So they want to give us more help constructing our own campaigns. Hrmm. How do we go about that? Let's ask one of our experienced freelancers, like, oh, :draws name out of a hat: Arthur Collins. Arthur, how do you create adventures on the fly when your players go in an unexpected direction. Well, Roger, I'm glad you asked. The easiest way is to have lots of ideas prepared that you can easily insert. And the best way to do that is to Kismif. Kismif? What's that. Is it some king of acronym, or are you just making up words?Why yes Roger. It stands for Keep It Simple, Make It Fun. A very important maxim you should all take to heart. I've written a little song to help you remember it. Keep it simple, make it funThen it works for everyoneKeep it simple, make it funThat's the way games should be runYou can have a million things going on at onceThe subtleties get lostand people wander offKeep it simple, make it fungive the people what they want Keep it simple, make it funThen it works for everyone!Um, Thank you Arthur. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Why yes Roger. I've got six easy lessons and 24 ideas that are just spiffing at getting things moving again quickly and easily. And they can be yours for the small small price of $3.50! Would you like a preview? I believe so, Arthur, since I'm the one who'll actually be selling it as part of the magazine. Well, of course. Don't roll on a table, just pick stuff off a menu. Don't tell them why, when their speculations will be more fun than what you come up with. Don't rush, use the time one encounter takes up to think of the next one. And there's tons of ideas you can steal from other media, as ever. Would you like to know more? I think that's enough to get their interest, Arthur. Looks like you've done a great job. Here's your pay. Thank you, Roger. Until next time then. Yes, until next time.</blockquote>

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