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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5225081" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 189: January 1993part 1/6124 pages. Another month another year, another set of special topics to fill. Fortunately, one of Roger's requests to the readership now yields fruit. African gaming! Yay! They're finally getting to fill that long neglected region in in fantastical manner. And it looks like they're covering some other exotic regions of the planet too. Seems a good way to start off a new year. How long will this resolution last? In this issue:Letters: A repeat letter from a soldier who got shipped out to fight in the gulf war. Roger remembers him personally, and is quite friendly, but can't solve his primary request. They have proper professional artists to hand draw their maps, not some computer program. No easy shortcuts via throwing a bit of money at the task here. A complaint that Atari isn't dead. Maybe not, but they're certainly not a leading company any more I'm afraid. We certainly won't be making any more computer games for their systems, so there. Errata attacks again! Because we can't have things with AC's above 10, even though the system has no particular trouble with it. That would mean normal humans aren't the weediest, most fragile things in the world. It's things like that that remind you how mathematically unrealistic D&D can be. A complaint from a UK gamer that far too many of the things they advertise are only available in the US. Roger is apologetic, but there's not much he can do. Roll on internet ordering to close these gaps somewhat. Another complaint about ageism, from someone who's probably been playing longer than the complainers. Keep practicing, and smoke their asses like a good prodigy. A letter praising them for finally doing some Greyhawk material around here. Roger gets a bit snippy, pointing out the many modules and sourcebooks they've released in recent years. Ok, not as many as the Realms, Krynn or known world, but it's hardly been neglected ……. yet. And of course when you actually get greyhawk wars, you may well wish they had neglected it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />A letter asking if there's a mundane survival game. Avalon hill has something about right. And finally a throwaway joke comment just to pad out the page. Just what the doctor needed after a rather heavy interrogation. Editorial: Once again, Roger exhorts you to fight complacency in your own campaign. Visualise what you want your players to experience vividly and then throw it at them with gusto. The results will be far more interesting than just grabbing some monsters and having them charge along a 10' wide corridor at the PC's. And even if they lose, the results will be memorable. Remember, roleplaying isn't about winning and losing, it's the ride along the way. hand it to them on a plate and they'll be bored as well. It's also a demonstration of how to nick stuff from literary sources the right way. You can't control what players do, but you can control the weather, you can control what they encounter, and that gives you a lot of leeway if you know how to use it. If you can't scare them with all the tools at your disposal, they're insufficiently invested in the game. Fairly standard roleplaying advice here. If you want your world to be real, visualisation is a very good task. I use it regularly myself. The dark continent: Off we trot to africa then. Or at least, a place as much like it as Kara-tur is to real asia. David Howery kicks things off with a brisk 9 page special feature, including the map and quite good artwork. Integrating it into your campaign, terrain, natives, appropriate monsters, environmental challenges, magic, etc. There isn't a huge amount of new crunch, but there is lots of drawing upon various supplements to bind things together. He takes care to avoid the monoculture problem, pointing out that it's a big continent, and there's plenty of different cultures and environments for you to choose. Ironically, despite being bigger than most features these days, it does still feel too small, but I suspect anything less than a medium sized sourcebook would have the same problem. It does compare quite favourably to the introduction to the Known World at the start of the Isle of Dread module as a skeleton to build on though. If we're very lucky we might even get a few more articles doing just that. Anyway, this is a pretty decent way to kick things off. Arms & armor of africa: So we've explored the dark continent, and met the natives. What time is it? It's violence time! Nothing to do with racism, just to make things clear, it's just that we're adventurers, and killing things and taking their stuff is our job. The fact that we took the job because we enjoy killing things and taking their stuff is neither here or there. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> But you can't expect them to just lie down and die. Wouldn't be realistic or fun. What unique weapons have the people of africa come up with? There's the usual knives, spears, bows, swords, axes, albeit adjusted for things like chopping through jungle, and paddling across lakes to skewer fishes without carrying two items. There's giant razors and boomerang/club hybrids. There's sickles designed to get around enemy shields. Speaking of shields, they have lots of interesting variants on them too, as since it's too hot to wear armor, you've gotta make the most of them. Using lighter, more fragile materials than metal means you can make them larger, more cover than blocking devices. They also have ones designed specifically to deflect missile weapons. And they reintroduce the idea of spending weapon slots to specialize in shield use, which I believe we saw in the forum before. Again, this is competently done, and not hugely surprising. What next. Some new mythological monsters wouldn't be a bad idea.</blockquote>

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