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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5199907" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992part 8/8Audible Glamour: As usual as we near the end of an issue, it's time for the obligatory filler to ensure the page count lines up neatly. In this case it's one on making sure you describe rooms properly. Sight, sound, smell, touch. Hopefully not taste. If you do it right then you provide them with valuable clues as to what lies ahead, so they won't scream bloody murder when killed horribly by your latest deathtrap because the signs were there for them to avoid if they'd thought about it. Course, doing this for every room will multiply out your design time quite a bit, much of which will be wasted if the place is even slightly non-linear, which is why I've found myself actually doing this less in my most recent game. Quite frankly, I do not have the time. It's regrettable, but there you go. Perfectionism is for those who don't have constant deadlines breathing down their neck and a ton of other things they want to do with their life. And with that, I shall move on. Son of pen power: Man, they really are pushing the survey stuff this year. This one is all about themes. What type of themed articles do you most want to see next year? Ones on our campaign worlds? Historical periods. Races, classes. Humour, undead, wilderness/dungeon/underground? Something new? Go on, suggest something new. Roger'll thank you for it.  Once again we see the struggles trying to please their audience they have to deal with, especially after so long and covering so much already. Dragonmirth is slightly more technologically advanced than usual. Ogrek is once again full of ideas that exasperate Yamara, but would probably actually work pretty well. The plot seriously thickens in Twilight empire. Through the looking glass: Off to the conventions we go. This means this column is relatively uninteresting, but with the promise of cool new stuff next month, quite possibly from companies they don't normally get to cover. Just like gaming, there's a whole bunch of stuff that never gets into the standard distribution chains. Plenty of variety in minis this month though. A nicely looming set of undead that demonstrate that 3mm can make quite a difference in minis scale. Two dragons and a hippogriff. Yet another demonstration of what happens if you get on the wrong side of wizards with polymorphing magic. A rather interesting Dragon powered zeppelin manned by dwarves, which seems like an awesome encounter idea. A mech for battletech. A street samurai for shadowrun. And three new ships for the Silent Death game. Mostly variations on familiar themes with the odd cool bit here and there. Trading cards are certainly on the up at the moment. How long before they start making games specifically for them. A pretty dull issue really. When the most interesting bits are the promotional articles and the editorial, something is a little amiss. I'm not sure if that's because too much is just very familiar, and I'm getting roleplaying advice fatigue again, or because there's an actual drop in quality. In any case, the buzz I got from reaching halfway is gone, and I am left very aware that I've probably got another couple of years of this to go. Hopefully the recent survey gives them the inspiration to find a few new topics and get enough articles to do them justice. Otherwise I may have to take a break for the sake of my sanity.</blockquote>

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