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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5354626" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 206: June 1994part 2/6The dragon project: Sandy once again holds this column up, and shows us that he's a pretty versatile writer in the process. This time, it’s Runequest, another BRP variant. Runequest has always had a good dash of goofy humour in it’s setting details, and this is the case here. But it also manages to have both serious storylines and genuine poignancy. Cerulean  Glory Oversees Tides used to be human, a long time in the past. He’s spent centuries as a dragon, and has enormous physical and magical capabilities. But he’s decided he was happier as a human and wants to go back. So he’s trying to act like a person, while still being an 80’ dragon with odd mindset and biological needs. You can’t go back the way you came. That’s like trying to uncook a cake by freezing it to -200 degrees for several hours. The results may be interesting, but they won’t be what you want. In contrast to the previous article, this one comes off a lot better on rereading. The idea that you could separate yourself from humanity completely and then want to go back just seemed vaguely comical and stupid back then. Now it makes a scary amount of sense. You spend years trying to become something better, more knowledgable, more skilled, more focussed than you are, and then you find it doesn’t make you any happier and ask what’s the point? It’s all going to be dust in a hundred years. So I give this one my approval, and now I’m off to have an existential crisis. See you in a bit. Part dragon, all hero: Oh yes. While it had it's flaws, if there's one thing that came out of the Council of Wyrms setting and stuck, it's half-dragons. While there might have been plenty of monstrous dragon hybrids, such as dracolisks, dragonnes, etc; the idea of PC'able draconic hybrids didn't seem to have occurred to anyone before then. Without this, there likely would have been no half-dragon template, no Mojh and Dracha in AU/E, no part dragon bloodlines in UA, and no Dragonborn as a new PC race in the 4th edition corebook. So here we have one of my favourite tie-in articles. Roger Moore gets back to article writing with a real bang, with something in the vein of his old half-ogre article, only better. He looks at the possibility of half-dragons in settings other than the council of wyrms, in the process granting most dragons with innate shapeshifting powers the capability to procreate with other species. Things vary widely from world to world, with even greyhawk and toril having their own quirky variations, and Krynn and oriental stuff working pretty much completely differently to the norm. This is very definitely not a case of one size fits all, which I find very appealing. They also have balancing factors! Ok, the powers they get are a good deal better than the ones they lose, but still, having them gradually lose their original racial abilities as they become more draconic is a neat touch. As is including half-iron dragons, which of course are entirely from the magazine. Still, unlike last issue's dragon slayer expansion, this does mostly work standalone mechanically, although it does reward setting mastery fluffwise. This convinced me to buy CoW first time around, and it still seems moderately significant in retrospect. It does have the risk of making everyone want to play special snowflakes, but that's always the case when you introduce cool rare races and classes. And hey, if you can't be amazing in your fantasies, what really is the point? Gunnar Thorson: Another comic starts up to replace Twilight Empire. Barbara Manui & Chris Adams show they're capable of a quite different art style to Yamara. A Viking detective? Well, Cadfael was doing something similar around this time. Dropping deductive reasoning into a setting where it’s unusual does have interesting effects.Campaign journal: Some more of Carl Sargent’s cut Greyhawk material here. Off to the east coast to meet the sea barons. This of course means pirates. A loose confederation of bickering landholders, they have nice weather and plenty of resources, but limited actual land. And of course, they can treat any serfs who don’t have the resources to sail away very poorly. So there’s plenty of wrongs to right around here. There’s also plenty of uninhabited  islands, ready to populate with monsters for those who prefer their dungeon crawling. It’s all in character with his moderately dark, but not totally hopeless setting changes.And of course, you could probably plonk X1 or X8 in easily enough. Neither terrible or brilliant, this seems like enough info to get us started on another adventure. About what we can expect from an article.Was equinox really that hard?</blockquote>

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