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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5360117" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 207: July 1994part 3/6The magic of Karameikos: Joshuan pesters Jeff for a second issue in a row, just because he can. This time, he's talking about Karemekos' premier school of wizardry. This is one of those cases where they consciously lampshade D&D's tropes, with it built on a dungeon which was repeatedly looted, repopulated by new monsters, and cleared out again. In theory, this'll keep it from being reoccupied again, and give apprentice wizards a good source of relatively safe xp as they study, as they can explore the underground bits, but run up to the surface where there's a ready force to deal with anything too nasty. An excellent example of self-awareness in setting design. Course, if it all goes wrong, one of the wizards'll be corrupted and turn into an evil overlord with their own ready made looming spire fortress once they've killed or co-opted everyone else. But hey, that just means another adventure for the PC's. So this shows you that you can do Hogwarts school of magic in AD&D, quite possibly including members of other classes as support guys. Not burdened by the metaplot stuff of last issue, this is pretty fun, and looks like it could be adapted to any high magic campaign fairly easily. D&D may be slanted more towards campaigns where you travel around, but nothing's stopping it from being set in a static location if there's enough interesting stuff going on there. Looks like we might get a few more fun bits and pieces before this world falls into disrepair.  Forum: Greg Howley nitpicks over exactly what benefit bow and crossbow specialisation should have. Yawn. This is why we abstractify. Mike Tresca tells his stories of how thievery has hurt the gaming industry as a whole by making shops stop stocking them. This is obviously not a good thing, and the least you can do is eject people who admit to stealing books from your gaming group. Yeah, that's a tricky one. Why are gamers (and Terry Pratchett fans) more larcenously inclined than the average reader? Is it just because they have a much higher percentage of teenage males, or are more complicated social issues involved?Ken Lacy tries to solve the Bard kit issue. His first bit of advice is that where supplements contradict the core books, you should stick with the rules in the core books. That'll cut off the worst of the twinkery before it really gets going. One of those ones that illustrates the problems in their rules editing by directly pointing out that some of their books contradict others. Where are their editor's heads? Tim Emrick gives his 2 cents on multiclassed characters with kits. He's moderately conservative, taking the view that it's all optional, and disallowable by the DM. And don't forget, kits should have significant hindrances to offset their bonuses. Daniel L. Grindstaff complains that gamers at cons are becoming ruder and more likely to attack the GM's running style these years. Generally, not taking crap is a good thing, but there are proper ways to go about it. If you're the only one not enjoying it, you ought to not spoil it for everyone else playing. Adam Panshin has a whole bunch of ideas for tweaking classes. Multiclass prioritising, anti-paladins, weapon specialisation, ranger's balance with paladins. All in the name of Balance! Tough order, you know. No-one really agrees what perfect balance is. Role-playing reviews: The Planescape boxed set gets a 6 pip review from Rick, thoroughly pleasing him with it's stylistic choices, vastly greater accessibility, and highly fun to read prose. The bones may not be too different from last edition, but everything else is much more built up. Philosophy, geography, and biology are given new spins. Of course, it's still not nearly complete yet, but with so many infinite universes, you wouldn't want it to be. The stage is set for it to support many years of supplements. Chessboards: Planes of possibility is another attempt at creating a planar cosmology, this time system free. It too seems pretty cool, even if it doesn't have the amazing visuals or instant accessability of the planescape stuff. There's a lot more dimensional math which seems aimed at those who like analyzing the conceptual side of things. But it still manages to have a sense of mischief as well. When you're working in concepts, it's hard not to have some funny results. I think I'd like this one as well. Tales of gargentihr? What's that all about then? Another game I don't remember. The game wizards: Spellfire! Curse you Collectible Card Games! :shakes fist: We saw you on the horizon at the start of the year. Now one of the things that turned out to be a real bane of the roleplaying hobby, due to the way it competed directly with it for shelf space and social leisure time, is upon us. And it's chief corporate dog Jim Ward who's doing the promotional duties again. So here's a whole bunch of statistics, and a bit of rules details to tantalise us. Build realms comprised of famed locations from various D&D worlds, and attack & defend them with named characters using classic artefacts. It's not a bad idea, even if seems likely to produce scenarios that would be deeply cheesy if done in tabletop, akin to the setting gulf between WHFB & WHFRP. But then, that may be the point. Getting to quickly play scenarios that would be verisimilitude destroying in pen and paper does have it's pleasures, otherwise it wouldn't have had any success. Still, this is another development that is a bit irritating, especially as I know it'll also be taking quite a bit of magazine space in the next few years. I wasn't amused by it the first time around, and this looks like it'll give me plenty of fuel for complaint. Let's hope I can make some of the rants fun ones.</blockquote>

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