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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5205154" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992part 6/6Forum: Alex Skrabut finds that the sense of accomplishment gained from worldbuilding pales in comparison to the amount of bloody work needed. He'd much rather just make it up on the spot as much as possible. Or so he says. Since he also wrote a computer program to generate a world's topography, I think the man doth protest too much.  Matthew W. Grieco points out that even most of the articles for specific campaign worlds are easily adapted for other games. This is particularly true of the forgotten Realms stuff, which is pretty generic anyway. People grousing about them having no place in the magazine are just being lazy. Kevin Costello thinks people are overestimating how hard it is to design a setting. Just draw a big map, make rough sketches of what's where, and then only fill out the areas your players seem likely to go to. It's easier than you think, and then you won't have to worry about players knowing whats coming up. (unless you leave your notes lying around.) Jeff House reminds you that most campaign maps have plenty of empty space that you can fill to customise them with without departing from canon at all. Even a single city can provide enough interesting stuff to do for a lifetime in reality. There's just so much more detail you could add. Barry White loves using both his own world and pregenerated ones, and the characters in his campaign regularly flip from one to the another. It's all good baby. We're versatile. Lawrence Hurley is one of those in favour of using official campaign worlds. It cuts through the boring design bit and gets straight to the fun playing. It's also easier to improvise off a solid base. Ross A. Isaacs would feel like he was cheating if he used a prefab campaign world. Stealing stuff from sourcebooks, even non D&D ones and making it your own, on the other hand, he highly recommends. Integrity is such a tricky thing to maintain, and everyone has their own line they don't want to cross. Jim Gonzalez has two big problems with prefab campaign worlds. 1: Other players read them and know what's coming. 2: TSR blatantly favours some worlds over others. Yes, that's because they sell better. How hard is that one to understand? They are a business, remember.  If you don't like it, just don't buy them. Dragonmirth makes a dreadful mess. Be glad you don't have to clean it up. Yamara's enemies make a pleasing discovery. Oh paladin, what art thou good for? Meanwhile we have more romance in extremis in twilight empire. Couldn't you just go on a rollercoaster or something. Through the looking glass joins in with the theme, unusually. Ral Partha give us some official Dark Sun minis to have a look over. Sadira, Neeva, Rikus, and a whole host of classes and races including the new ones like gith and mul are covered. They get 5 stars, being very faithful to the illustrations and lacking in ugly molding artifacts. Seems like another positive step in building up their multimedia empire. Now all they need is a computer game. Lots of other stuff, as usual. A Griffon. A tower keep which looks like it may be the start of an epic castle for your minis to fight on. Some banquet tables with included chairs (that none of your minis will be able to sit on) and various bits of ornamentation. A rather cranky looking pair of middle-aged nobility that could well make good antagonists. A full selection of skulls on spikes to put around your evil overlord's base. A winged skeleton with a scythe that should put the willies up inexperienced adventurers. A whole company of goblins riding giant spiders, including a spellcaster. They also seem like a good market for skull on spike decor. To take care of the spiders before they hit you with instadeath, there's a company of elf archers. But they too will fall before the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua. As will some basic orcs which look rather boring in comparison to the last few. Funny how that works out. In any case, this is an above average selection to read about. Drizzt finally gets enough prestige to go hardcover. See kids. This is what making angst glamorous can get you. Keep your eyes on the futility prize. With the start of a classic column series, and lots of other cool bits and pieces, this is once again an upswing after a couple of rather dull issues. The focus on specific campaign worlds is fairly welcome and useful this time round, rather than being just promotion. And since the survey seemed to indicate lots of people like this stuff, we may well be seeing an increase in it's frequency. Roll out those changes folks, you won't regret it.</blockquote>

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