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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5138156" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992part 2/6Follow the leader: Ooh. An expanded followers table. Haven't had one of those in a while. (see issues 99, 106, 113 & 115, all of which are obviously for the last edition.) This time, it's paladins turn, in an article which reduces the number of followers they get ( under the principle that extreme lawful goodness is a hard path to follow) but gives you more cool unique creatures attracted by your reputation. Using this, you could well end up with a lammasu, couatl, gold dragon or ki-rin helping you out, which seems pretty nifty. As ever, careful with the ones that are actually more powerful than the character, which should be used as friends and companions rather than outright followers, and turn on you if you should fall from your standards. It's not easy being a good guy. So no great surprises here, but useful for me nonetheless. In defense of polearms: Ah yes, the much maligned (unfairly, too) polearm. They might not be as glamorous as swords, but they're highly damaging, cheaper, and much more useful in formation based fighting. Reach is a tremendously useful quality that only gets it's full credit next edition. And they can also serve as 10' poles. Multipurposing for greater efficiency! This is one of Greg Detwiler's efficient, above par filler articles, playing a valuable part in keeping the magazine chock full of stuff, but unlikely to really rock people's worlds. Looks like this particular themed section has been pretty low on big cool surprises then. What not to include: Yup. This is an increasingly important part of game design once you have lots of different games to choose from. What is left out becomes as significant as what is put in in shaping the feel of the setting. And since TSR are currently adding new settings as fast as they can, this is a big issue at the time. (It is very interesting to note that Greyhawk, FR and later on Eberron, all started in times of comparatively few active settings, consciously go the other route, trying to find a place for everything.) Arthur Collins knows what he's talking about when he compares it to sculpting. You have all this material, and if you keep it all, your world will look little different from anyone else's. And you don't have to connect it all up to the official AD&D cosmology either. (even though that may involve changing or forbidding some spells. ) On top of this, there's advice about avoiding the generic monoculture races, changing up the things you do put in, sorting out the religion, gods, and history/myths, and making the things you do leave in seem suitably significant in the overall scheme of things. It may be a case of taking something mentioned in another article, and expanding it out to several pages of it's own, but this is a pretty good one. TSR Previews: Back to a fairly regular schedule this month. The Forgotten Realms is getting FOR3: Pirates of the fallen stars in the gamebooks, and Prophets of moonshae, book 1 in the druidhome trilogy in the novels. Doug Niles returns to the lands he helped create, bringing another crisis with him. Time for a new generation of heroes to level up and kick some butt. Dark sun gets it's very own monstrous compendium. MC12. They've long since converted most of the 1st ed stuff, so this is mostly new coolness too, with lots of psionic beasties. Now you can match up to the increased power of your PC's. Spelljammer continues their latest big metaplot event in SJQ1: Heart of the enemy. Fight those goblinoids through multiple spheres. Just how much mess will they leave behind them? Ravenloft does zombies, voodoo zombies (It's like james bond with swampwater and shabbier tuxedos) in RQ1: Night of the living dead. Another adventure designed for low level characters recently sucked into the mists. Are you ready to dance the night away and still foil their plans? Greyhawk is still mid-war, in WGQ1: Patriots of Ulek. Yet another one for beginning adventurers who don't have the power to make a big difference to the fighting. I suspect we may be seeing similar products for every single gameworld. This is not very useful to your existing playerbase. And finally, our standalone book this month is Thorn and Needle by Paul Thompson. Some rather quirky ad copy tries to set it above run of the mill fantasy. Does it live up to that promotion?</blockquote>

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