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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5193390" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992part 1/8124 pages. A nice bit of tag-team self-insertion on the cover here from the TSR staff. Why should the PC's be the ones initiating all the action? Since our special topic this month is NPC's, this seems appropriate. Ok, so it may be a bit GMcentric, but GMs are disproportionately represented among the magazine buyers, and I'm sure players'll get their turn again in later issues. Sometimes you have to specialise to do the best job possible. In this issue:Letters: A letter revealing the Toad-men in Twilight Empire were speaking hungarian. They contact the writer, who duly provides a translation, along with some other commentary. He's not just throwing stuff in off the cuff, he's got a plan. Another letter on the Twilight Empire, extolling the virtues of New Hampshire men. It's the best state evar! Tee Hee. A letter from someone driven mad by the hidden easter eggs on their covers. Once again I just have to laugh. People get worked up about such tiny things.Some more amusing dice habits. Like people's animal empathies, this could produce quite a few more amusing comments over the next few months. Editorial: Yay! The survey results are back. And not changed that much from a decade ago, really. Still 95% male, and with an average age in the late teens/early 20's, it's very obvious what their core demographic is. The Realms is by far the most popular game setting. Dragonmirth, the previews and sage advice are the most popular regulars. It's not all positive of course. We want more ecology articles, goddamnitt. And yes, Roger also think's we're long overdue a new Best Of too, but it doesn't seem to be happening for some reason. Blame upper management, as usual. Some of the improvements we want to make are not an option due to writer or budgetary limits. Anyway, it seems most people are happy with most things. Any tweaks need to be made carefully, or they risk alienating the majority by pandering to a vocal minority. Courts and courtiers: Another attempt to make things both fun and awfully confusing for PC's as they rise in levels. Whether they're visiting an existing court in the course of their adventures, or starting to accumulate their own camp followers and toadies as they gain wealth and power, you can wind up in an awful pickle if you talk to the right people the wrong way. They may not be nearly as powerful as you, but when you're a highly specialised killing machine, having people around to handle the everyday aspects of life has it's benefits. And hey, if you get bored, or realise a particular person is just a waste of space and money really, you can just pull the old Off with their Heads! routine and everyone'll be on their best behaviour for a few weeks. Full of sample NPC's, this is one of those articles that provides you a good checklist of the kind of staff a good castle needs, and just how expensive keeping them around will be. Combine it with a random personality generation table (such as the one in issue 29) and a relationship map and you could probably get a whole political layout going in an hour or two. A decent enough starter, it only becomes more when you combine it with a whole bunch of the other time-savers the magazine has accumulated over the years. Really good bad guys: Or revenge of Tuckers Kobolds part 4, now with PC skills. Yes, it's another reminder that you really ought to be playing monsters with the intelligence they have. There's all sorts of tricks you can pull even with a few low level spells that make an encounter both more challenging and a lot more interesting. This all feels very familiar, both in it's generalities, and it's specifics, which are heavily derived from recent forum debates. Some of the more imaginative tricks are new to me though, so like new monsters and magic items, this certainly isn't useless, even if it is a well covered topic. I may well use some of these tricks at some point.In an appropriate twist of advertisting, Grimtooth's traps is promoted directly below this article. Now there's 5 whole books of them, including a new one full of nonlethal but humiliating stuff. This speaks of a pretty popular series. Why is it that the traps column never really took off in the magazine again?</blockquote>

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