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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5300369" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993part 1/8124 pages. It's blatant sadism time, with monsters being this issue's special theme. Like Magic, this is almost ridiculously broad a topic, that they really ought to focus a little more finely so as to reduce the frequency with which they repeat themselves. Guess they can only control what they get so much. Have the freelancers sent in some good stuff, or will we have to rely entirely on the staff writers again? Another day, another issue to fill. In this issue:Letters: A letter from someone amused to see a baffled boyfriend dragged along to game night for a change. Statistically, it had to happen at some point. A letter from someone wondering what happened to Rillifane in monster mythology. We've already sorted that out. Twice. Let's hope the back issues are still available. Another person who wants Roman stuff. By no co-incidence, they have a sourcebook out, oh, round about now. Gotta collect 'em all! A request for the addresses of some other gaming companies. This is no trouble for them to fix. A question about their old products from the 70's. This proves a little trickier. Their record keeping was apparently not the greatest in the early years of TSR. It's no wonder they keep getting dates wrong and forgetting old products. And finally, a question asking what happened to Judges Guild. They died, but many of their properties live on! Don't hesitate to pursue the new editions. (even if they might suck compared to the old stuff) Editorial: So the day has finally come for Rogar of Mooria to seek out new adventures. He's being promoted from mere editor to the title of Product Group Leader. A pretentious corporatespeak title that translates as guy who bosses around and co-ordinates the developers for all the different AD&D campaign worlds. (At least, that's what it looks like) Which means he'd like to thank all the people that helped him make the magazine as good as it could be over the last 7 years. Mwah, mwah, you're all stars in your own way. It's all pretty short and predictable for this kind of departure. What he does not say though, is who is replacing him. And flicking back to the contents page, it's Kim again! Weird. Well, I suppose he did leave the company for a few years to go off gallivanting with Gary. That probably set him back a few rungs on the career ladder when he did return to TSR. So it's quite possibly going to be all change again in the next few months. And they've already lost quite a few columns recently. Guess it's going to be interesting times again until they get a new pattern down. And the editing may suffer in the meantime. Still, at least it's not abrupt chaos like Kim's original departure. I guess we'll have to wait for TSR's collapse for some of that action. Opening the book of beasts: David Howery once again shows us that bad artists imitate, while great ones steal. Fresh and tanned from exploring africa, he heads back to medieval europe, and discovers that there's still a surprising number of creatures unconverted from there. Plus of course, there's the many mythological distortions of real world animals, created by imaginative naturalists with little real world experience of their subjects, and chinese whispers descriptions of African animals. Those are almost completely lacking from D&D, pushed out by the soppy revisionist witterings of PETA girl. Making even the mundane creatures fantastical would help reinforce the game against those tedious stickers for realism in fantasy as well. And I approve of both these objectives. On top of the alterations to existing creatures both real and magical, there's several new ones too. Calopus are horned pumas, making them fairly versatile in terms of attack mode, but not actually much more scary than regular big cats. Still, it'll make the adventurers wonder and maybe get paranoid, which is usually pretty fun. Monocerus are somewhere between the magical unicorn, and the mundane rhino in appearance and behaviour. They do have some weird quirks, and are pretty much impossible to tame, which means they won't be studied easily either. Best to just drive them to extinction then. <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" /> Sea Orcs are presumably drawn from sightings of killer whales, aka orcas. They're described as being more like crocodiles, but you know how these things change via chinese whispers. In any case, they're big, somewhat intelligent, and quite capable of smashing your little boat and gobbling up the party. Sea monks & bishops are curiously benevolent creatures, living in small enclaves under the sea. Since they do all have fairly substantial clerical powers, getting on their good side can result in much needed healing during adventures underwater. Serra are giant fishes that use their upper fins like sails to travel at high speed on the surface and slice straight through your boat. Even Jaws was never that awesome. The kind of thing you include just to see the looks on the players faces when they pull their signature move. It's no wonder sailors were a superstitious lot who got drunk and blew their money first chance they got. The sea has a lot to be afraid of. Yale have appeared here before, in issue 101's creature catalog. And from the looks of them, David remembers this, as the stats are virtually identical apart from being converted to 2e. I quite approve, and hope Greg Detwiler won't mind this uncredited recycling either. Bestiary Dragons are based on those long, snaky, frequently poisonous western ones that kill by constriction more often than they do by bite. Whether they have any magical abilities on top of that is up to you. As the legends show, spiky armor may well be a lifesaver. Just because you're adventuring in traditional lands, doesn't mean you won't profit from using your brain to solve problems. I think this is a pretty good little milieu opener.</blockquote>

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