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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5215782" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992part 4/6Forum: Dorian Loeffler sparks off a round of the metagaming question. You know, it's not metagaming when your characters can clearly see one option is more effective than another IC and choose accordingly. Still, that can be a fine line, especially when playing newbie characters with experienced players. Lawrence Davison sparks off another issue, that of limiting your player's choices so as to give them a coherent background, and help find reasons for the party to get together. This causes pissy players, which is no fun at all. This is why you should choose not only the system, but who you invite to your group wisely. Micael A Lavoie debates the same problem. You do need reasons for them to get along. These can be obvious or surprisingly obscure. Remember, often it's the differences people have that make them complement each other well. Good roleplaying goes a long way. Russell Dewhurst thinks crossbows should be more powerful. Once again I yawn. D&D lowballs this stuff for a reason. Andy Shockney complains at length about the imbalance found in multiclass demihumans and their various kits. Some choices are simply better than others in all ways. Something needs to be done. Yup, this is a fairly substantial problem alright. Good luck houseruling it to your satisfaction. Nicholas Abruzzo complains that a DM expected him to play lawful good as lawful stupidly merciful. Ah yes, another problem that won't go away, and will eventually be "solved" by taking alignment out of class requirements instead. As long as there are bad DM's and players, people will disagree about morality. TSR Previews: Ravenloft is their biggest export this month. RQ3: From the shadows sees Azalin exert his power to manipulate the other domains, using the PC's as pawns. Join the dots, and you'll see another big metaplot event approaching. Meanwhile, in Heart of Midnight by J. Robert King, an unwilling lycanthrope schemes revenge. Ironic vengance approaches for those who made him suffer. Will he give into evil in the process? Spelljammer gets crossoverlicious again, in SJ6: Greyspace. See their solar system, and show just how much spaceships would change the nature of the war down on Oerth. This should be interesting. Dark sun reveals The Dragon. Borys, the only defiler/psionicist to make it all the way to 30th level. DSR4: Valley of dust and fire. He doesn't need a city state. He just takes what he wants from the other sorcerer kings. Maybe if they all worked together, they could kill him, but good luck with that. Scary place. The Forgotten Realms gets FR15: Gold and Glory. A sourcebook on mercenaries? Well, adventurers often run into them. Sounds like it could be useful. Our generic products continue to resurge. HR4: A mighty fortress brings swashbuckling to AD&D. Dueling, muskets, mass combat, and various bits of renaissance technology. Have at you, power creep! We also get GR3: Treasure maps. Another way you can facilitate adventures, with prefab maps that aren't entirely accurate, leading the players into all kinds of fun. Meanwhile, D&D is very much not generic. HWQ1: The Milenial Scepter. The hollow world is having it's own metaplot events, and you're invited to the party. And finally, our standalone book this month is Half-Light by Denise Vitola. Some complicated intrigue and interdimensional strangeness seems to be involved. Hey ho. So many books, so little attention to give to each of them. The lonely harpist and the lady rogue: Another set of Ed Greenwood NPC's with not a single ability score without a bonus. Dear oh dear. Looks like once again he's serving up a cheese dish a little too pungent for my tastes. Mintiper Moonsilver is one of those high level npc's who's received a mysterious blessing from a dying plot device character that makes him near impossible to get rid of permanently. This of course means he's had all sorts of adventurers and seen more than his fair share of companions lost around him. This may cause a certain degree of angst, but certainly doesn't stop him from adventuring. Asilther Graelor is a slave girl rescued by Mintiper. She has the terrible problem of not being taken seriously as an adventurer due to her attractiveness, which seems rather out of character with the general portrayal of gender dynamics in the Realms. This makes me go <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="o_O" title="Er... what?    o_O"  data-smilie="12"data-shortname="o_O" /> a bit. What's going on here then? Is Ed starting to succumb to the dirty old man brain-eater? But he's only in his mid-30's. Really not sure about this, not sure at all. Fiction: Dragon scales by Eric Tanafon. Another dragon hunting story with a twist. Two actually. Both the result and the method of said dragon's pacifying are quite amusing, resulting in a situation that seems a lot more sustainable and interesting than recent ones where dragons are a dying race. The humour is both clever and properly integrated into the story, and the danger seems quite real. I think this is another pretty decent result for the fiction department.</blockquote>

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