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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5306494" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 199: November 1993part 6/8The dragon project: Dunklezahn! This isn't magazine exclusive material! <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" />outs: On the other hand, that also makes it interesting because it is strongly tied in with the larger setting of Shadowrun (as many of you will have known as soon as you heard the name) The first corporate dragon, he's become quite the celebrity over the years, and probably made quite substantial amounts of profit from doing so. Sometimes he appears on chat shows, with the aid of a human interpreter to act as a mouthpiece for broadcast. Sometimes he experiments with VR, although that takes some pretty expensive and clunky custom jacking interfaces. And as a big, public political player, he has plenty of powerful friends and enemies amongst the megacorps, and is the subject of much gossip and speculation. Much of this is presented through IC excerpts from chatrooms and the like, in the same form they use in the actual sourcebooks. The stats are somewhat abbreviated, but he's pretty superhuman in all stats, well able to take down an entire party singlehandedly. Course, that won't stop him from being assassinated in future metaplot events, but that's a story for another time. This does plenty to show how a dragon can be a viable character in shadowrun's fusion of fantastical and futuristic ideas. And as a reminder of quite a few other cool bits of gaming's history, it's another joy to read. Respect to the people who sorted out this one, making it a lot more than a character sketch that just happens to use a system not normally covered in the magazine. The role of books: A night in the lonesome october by Robert Zelazny is a playful crossover of victoriana, featuring sherlock holmes, dracula, frankenstein, rasputin, and the elder gods. It's good fun, but also a bit silly, and the illustrations make it seem even more so. Dr Dimension by John deChancie and David Bischoff gets a negative result for bringing back the worst aspects of the pulp genre, including blatant sexism, paper thin characters, and ludicrous slapstick humour. Even the clifhanger ending feels forced and trite. Even Buck Rogers managed better. Galatea in 2D by Aaron Allston shows he can do full novels as well as short fiction and game books. The protagonist has the power to pull things out from paintings, which is a pretty cool power, but not one suited to unprepared magical spectaculars. This means he's still in serious danger from the people who want to exploit him, and has to use his imagination to deal with his rival. The final ending is a particularly good example of a literary magic battle. What will he turn his writing talents too next? Powers that be by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is a fun romp, but doesn't really work as worldbuilding, with John having no trouble picking holes in it's setting and plot. Like star wars, it's more fantasy than sci-fi, so you may want to disengage your critical brain and just enjoy the ride. Death comes as an epiphany by Sharan Newman takes us back to 12th century france, for a more historically rigorous bit of worldbuilding than most. This does not come at the expense of story, however, creating something that's not quite fantasy, but still pretty interesting reading. I guess you'd compare it more to the modern day continuations of now historical novels such as the Bronte ones. Dinosaur fantastic, edited by Mike Resnick & Martin H Greenberg, is one of those short story anthologies he specialises in. This time, of course, it's dinosaurs. Cashing in on Jurassic Park, the majority of these involve bringing them back in the modern day world, but there's a substantial minority of time travel ones where we go to them too. This includes a story in which we wind up in the Great race of Yith role, sending our consciousness back to bodyswap with a tyrannosaur, and a Loch Ness monster story, which fits in pretty easily actually. Dinosaurs can actually cover a surprisingly large conceptual space, and they've managed to get the good authors in as usual. Sage advice: Do lizard men get benefits from using shields (yup. They're adders, not basic number setters.)I thought aquatic elves couldn't be spellcasters. (Only on some worlds)Why are Lolth and Vhaerun's stats different between Drow of the underdark and Monster mythology, Which is right? ( Monster mythology. They're better standardized with all the other gods in there. )Can you combine trick shots (no, thank god. Elves may get to be better just because they're elves, but they aint that good.)How do spellfilcher powers work? (Same as regular wizard spells. Spell level, caster level, blah blah blah.)How do dragon caster levels and THAC0's change as they grow. ( Quite a bit. They're not primary spellcasters, but they're nothing to be sneezed at. )</blockquote>

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