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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5276185" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993part 1/6124 pages. The dragon in this month's cover takes a secondary role, looking a lot like a pet of the guy with the sword. Who's in the driving seat this time? Hopefully you, as it's time for another issue full of DMing advice. Poor players. They never get to control dragons. (yet) And if they do, you'll have to think of even more impressive suitable challenges or risk the whole thing falling apart. So a DM's work is never done. Good thing we've still got many more years of advice to draw upon to go. In this issue:I, Strahd, by P N Elrod. Once again they bring out the big guns for Halloween, on the 10th anniversary of the original module. Letters: A letter asking if the Snarfquest compilation is still available. Unlike the Fineous Fingers one, you're in luck. Larry still has a good relationship with the TSR staff, so they're happy to be of service to you both. A follow-up on the Uriah Heap question. It was the early 70's. Lots of people were putting occult & Tolkien inspired blather in their music. These days, their hubcap diamond star halos are looking a little rusty and need a good servicing. A letter from a person who found a moth squashed on their fire elemental trading card. The jokes here make themselves. Jim Ward, on the other hand, fails to see the funny side. I think the stress of his job may be getting to him. He ain't the mischievous monty hauler he used to be. A suggestion that they include martial arts demos at their conventions. After all, so many gamers love MA in their games. Luring them to try it out IRL would be good commercial sense, and also fitting from a health point of view. After all we have to battle the stereotypes about being weedy/overweight couch potatoes, and what better way than being able to slam anyone who takes the piss to the ground and punch through bricks. Roger doesn't think it's a bad idea, although he'd really like to see sumo wrestlers, but doubts they could get any in. Always the joker, eh. Some nitpicking about kukris. The historical accuracy brigade won't let any weapon go mislabeled! Editorial: Never trust a DM who forces you to roll for breast size. Roger can't find anything current events related to get worked up over, so once again his mind drifts back to reminiscing on games past, and the naive fun they had. Seems he's doing increasing amounts of that recently. So say hello to Bob. A guy with boundless enthusiasm, no sense of proportion, and very little taste. It's tricky to get rid of him because he's so enthusiastic about it all, but at the same time the things he does are so silly that you can't really have a campaign with him without it all falling apart. Still, while it may be a pain at the time, at least it makes for memorable stories. And given the alchemy of nostalgia, the fun bits remain, while the crap gets glossed over. And so Roger manages to come up with enough entertaining anecdotes to fill this column for another month. Making it a permanent fixture may not have been the smartest thing to do really. Exploring the fantasy political campaign: Ah yes, politics. One of those things that continue to be a challenge to insert into a game compared to dungeon crawling. Continuity becomes so much more of an issue when you're dealing with the same faces year in, year out. And if you get sloppy, it'll come back to bit you more than if you're moving from dungeon to dungeon, not looking back. Unlike a kill and take their stuff mission, where it can be safely assumed that the bad guys are indeed bad enough that compromise is a pointless task, who the PC's are, and what their opinions are on a topic can vary widely, and this affects the direction that they'll take the story. On the plus side, while you need to keep on making up new dungeons wholecloth, once you have a well set up political game, it'll last you years if well maintained, with actors fading in and out as time goes by. We've been through this before, but this manages to do so quite well, reminding us that the individual missions in a politics heavy campaign will often be little different, especially while the characters are pawns of the other power players. It's more the way the adventures tie together and have an effect on the larger setting that's interesting. And making the playstyle seem accessible rather than intimidating is an important aspect to getting new people involved that the older articles sometimes failed at. So as is usually the case with themed issues, they've picked a good one to start things off with.</blockquote>

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