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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5268620" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993part 6/6With a bond of magic: Greg Detwiler's back again, with a moderately experimental little article trying to get round the problems giving out lots of normal magical weapons causes. Bonded weapons aren't exactly what you would expect from that name. The bond is actually to a particular element or concept, such as fire, fear, disease, magnetism, wood, etc. They bypass the usual plus structure, and hurt nearly anything, but don't have the usual bonuses to attack and damage (although the majority of them do extra energy damage of whatever type.) This means you'll rarely be completely helpless against a monster the way you can be when they're immune to everything below +3, but things with massively low ACs'll still be a very real threat. Mixing these with regular magic weapons in your party handouts'll be another thing that subtly livens up your game. Nothing wrong with that at all. Novel ideas: As I've noted before, Dragonlance writing seems to be all about the male/female cowriter pairings. Particularly in the novels, it just works best when you have that particular kind of chemistry. It also helps if you have complimentary talents and work habits in other respects as well. Such as when one's a morning person and the other a night owl. Done badly, this can tear a partnership apart. Done well, people can set aside their egos for the sake of getting the product done quicker, better, by trading off work between them, and only actually working together for a few hours a day. Yeah, this all feels very familiar. A huge amount of my life, particularly the musical parts, are filled with annoyance at me being several hours ahead body clock wise, and a lot more reliable than anyone else. Learning to let go and allow them to run with it when I start to flag, because a lot of the time, they're just getting warmed up at that point is one of the lessons I've really had to work hard to internalise. Plus you want people who have talents that complement yours rather than compete directly with them, otherwise it is all too easy to get competitive, and that results in gradual resentment from the less talented partner which eats away at the relationship, while the more talented one can wonder why they're keeping these wasters around, they should just go solo and reap all the rewards themselves. It's all an incredibly complex issue. And here we see it played out in microcosm, albeit in a fairly harmonious manner, since it's also a husband/wife pairing that's being interviewed. It's all rather interesting, and definitely worthy of further discussion. How do you create a creative partnership that is greater than the sum of it's parts? Dragonmirth is even more dragon-centric than usual. Yamara continues enduring the twisted drow interpretation of imprisonment and torture. Won't someone save her? The party is back together in twilight empire, but the big fight is still to come. Through the looking glass: Is lead saved at the last minute?! Appeals are in process! You can still make a difference! Ah yes, the legal monster is a slow and sclerotic beast, and getting it to do anything takes months, if not years. This saga feels pretty sluggish to me going through the issues at this rate; it must have been positively torturous to live through. On top of the encouragement to keep fighting the appeals, Robert also starts motions towards setting up an underground railroad for existing lead figures, keep them in active use by the people who want them most. It's like a deliberate co-opting of classic social movement methods in microcosm. I can't help but smile. Our minis this month have a pretty high proportion of underground stuff too, in a different sense. Drow and their spider mounts. Three different sets of dwarves. An ooze creature to schlorp your adventurers. An equally oozy pod which could contain all manner of horrors. Plenty of humans, mostly of the martial kind. One female fighter, but plenty of male soldiers, with crossbows, bows and swords. And some very 70's looking cyberpunk rockers. And some centaurs and a giant for your aboveground combat needs. Ready for action? A pretty complicated set of issues raised by this issue. On one hand we have the substantial push to bring back coverage of non D&D RPG stuff. On the other we have the slick self-centred promotional stuff. Similarly, there's a definite tension between the bits that are business as usual, and the special features, and the bits where we see people trying to shut down our fun. Good intentions, but people pulling in different directions, and the whole thing becoming slightly less than the sum of it's parts. Is anybody really on top anymore? When no-one's on top, that leaves things open for someone unexpected to take charge. We shall have to see what happens next, because even if it isn't that unified, there's still lots of interesting threads to follow.</blockquote>

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