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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5353845" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994part 1/6124 pages. Not just one, but a whole family of dragons on this birthday's cover. Ok, so the lighting could be better, and they're definitely not going to smile for the camera, but would you be the one trying to get them to say cheese? Frankly you'd be lucky to avoid having your intestines used as spaghetti, with your kidneys as cocktail snacks. Not the way I'd like to spend a party. In this issue:Letters: A letter including a picture, of someone who has managed to get every issue and spread them all out on the floor. Whoa. You're gonna have a hard time getting back out after that one. In sharp contrast, a letter from a complete n00b seeking advice on roleplaying. You're in the right place! Probably, anyway. A letter from a group who have recently lost a member. Someone dying IRL has really taken a lot of the spark out of things. Understandable, really. A letter from someone suggesting incorporating fate points into D&D. Dale doesn't object to the idea, but points out it isn't exactly a new one. Many games these days are trying to make high action swashbuckling heroics work better than D&D manages. Quite a few of them succeed. Editorial: So why do we play anyway? In my case it’s always been linked to my need to create, which is pretty integral to the way I approach the world. Dale, on the other hand, suggests the more straightforward idea that it’s because it’s fun. I vaguely recall fun.  Something to do with getting carrots for what you do rather than an absence of stick. And escapism. And once again, I’m confronted with the problem that when you do decide to seriously pursue the dream, and find it’s a lot more work than you thought, you’re left with nothing to use as escapism from that. Is it any wonder I’m depressed a lot of the time. Spending time with people you like? Creating a world where the solutions are simpler than reality? I’m really not doing this right by those standards, am In. So this really tells me one thing. When I finish this thread, I’ve got to do a complete detox, and find something to do with my free time that I actually enjoy, and doesn’t involve computers in any way. This may be interesting as an excercise, but it’s also rather unhealthy in the long run.Street fighter the RPG! You go from gothy narrative games to one of the most straight-up fighting licenses. How you you make that work? Well, for a start, you can break Blanka's arm with your cannonball boobs <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> Now that's a special maneuver. First quest: Skip Williams has of course been playing longer than the game was officially published. If anyone can claim the grognard title it's him, even if he's not actually that old. Benefits of starting young, I guess. Unlike Jim, he still mentions Gary’s name, albeit mainly in conjunction with his son Ernie, who was one of his early players, and apparently still is. It must be a bit awkward still working around lake geneva, like dealing with divorced parents who still regularly run into each other at the shops. But  anyway, this is about the fun they had, not the bad things that have happened since then. Not that he can resist talking about that either, as his second game was rapidly put out of print by legal crap. Formative experiences like that highlight why he became their premier rules lawyer. This is a fairly fun read, helping me not only get into his head, but also reveal a few bits and pieces that they didn’t mention back in the day, like Don Arndt’s cowardice in the face of imaginary danger. Funny how formative events that still have effects in the shape of D&D today can have such petty seeming beginnings. Butterfly, hurricane, etc. I’m sure they didn’t expect a paladin in hell to be turned from a picture into a whole module 20 years later either. But he’s the one still influencing rules development on a monthly basis, while they’re long gone from the company. It’s not hard to say who’s the bigger legend now. More than just couch potatoes: More draconic roleplaying advice. As we saw in issue 200, they can be pretty machiavelian buggers. Wouldn't it be nice to make proper use of that intelligence, have them turn out to be the ultimate big bad who was behind most of the plots throughout the campaign. With their long lifespan, plentiful financial resources and array of magical powers, they could well have been at it for centuries, and have their claws in every pie. So fairly typical don’t underestimate the monster advice, showing you that they can be made a lot scarier without touching their statistics at all. Only dressed up in a birthday suit. Which neatly sets us up for an emperor’s new clothes quip. This is a lot less impressive second time around.</blockquote>

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