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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5366258" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 208: August 1994part 4/6Defend the realms: Our first proper spellfire article makes it's appearance. Variant rules time! Allen Varney was our first reporter on CCG's, so it's fitting he experiments to see what happens if you change bits around on TSR's new game. Change the pyramid to a line, circle, cross, grid or cluster. Introduce an economic element to play, as happens in reality. Ally protectors. And they squeeze in some errata as well. This isn't bad at all, and squeezes in a lot of options in a small page count. (made to look bigger by lots of awkwardly shaped adverts) It's a bit more variety for the magazine, and doesn't feel forced like the Buck Rogers articles in issue 157. Once again, it looks like I'm going to be able to get more info on something I pointedly ignored at the time. As long as they keep it to 1 article a month or less, and they don't suck too much, this is an entirely valid use of their page count. Gaming around the world: It's been a while since we had a yank go off to report on the UK conventions. This could be good for a laugh. No great surprises here, but of course, it's the little differences that really stand out in his mind. The greater politeness of the english (ha!) The vaguely prisonlike UK holiday camps. The massive greasy breakfasts. All the cool old stuff. And the convention itself isn't bad either. So this reminds us that you shouldn't just be adventuring in your mind, and if you do, don't be surprised when everywhere you create seems the same to your players. Some real travel'll really help shake up your ingrained assumptions and let you create more varied cultures in your game worlds. Plus shopping opportunities. It's fun being a tourist. So this is one that's interesting for me because it does turn the tables on my UK flavoured viewpoint, and the enjoyment of the writer bleeds through into the article. Obviously it's not as significant as Gary's first trip to the UK, back in issue 63, but very few articles these days are. Another little adventure, that hopefully'll lead to bigger adventures for you. Forum: Rick Underwood revisits that thorny subject of critical hits. He suggests the probability system adopted in 3rd ed. Natural 20 means a threat, then you have to roll a hit again to confirm. Well well. This is a turnup for the books. He also uses fumbles with a similar probability if you roll a natural 1. This seems like about the right probability of brutality to me. J. W. Rommell talks about his own experiences gaming, and suggests that you ought to let new gamers watch before they dive in. This stuff doesn't have to be scary. Serena Ng also tackles both the sexism and introducing new players angles. It's less scary if you introduce several at once. Girls can get intimidated when there's just one of them and a whole bunch of blokes, especially if they're already an established group. It's one of the things that makes bands with female lead singers particularly unstable. Marle McCabe believes Stout halflings have more in common with gnomes than dwarves. Don't let Tolkien hem you in. He never had gnomes to worry about. Daman Robinson points out that it is entirely possible for male gamers to play female characters. Some of them aren't even lesbian stripper ninjas. There are plenty of male actors who actually enjoy acting. Mike Olgren advises us not to be embarrassed of roleplaying as an adult. We don't grow out of our musical tastes. Like video games, the problem is simply because it's a first generation form of entertainment. We just have to make sure the hobby survives after they die out and gets passed down successfully. The game wizards: Dragon passed it's 200th issue fairly recently. Now Polyhedron hits the big 1 oh oh. And it looks like they're putting a similar degree of extra effort to make it a special issue as well. Ed Greenwood is contributing, of course. But there's also stuff from Margaret Weis, Zeb Cook, Monte Cook, Bruce Heard and Roger Moore. Pretty much the same cast as we see regularly contributing to Dragon. It also looks like they're making an extra effort to cover other RPG's in this one. I do wonder just how connected the editorial policies of the two magazines (and Dungeon, for that matter) are. Will all three cut out coverage of 3rd party stuff at the same time in early 96? Do they all use the same editing and typesetting equipment? (I'm still not sure if they've moved fully to computer yet) As ever, when they bring this topic up, I must bemoan the apparent absence of polyhedron issues on the web, or anyone willing to hunt them down physically and do a reading thread. It's looking increasingly unlikely that itch will get to be scratched. So this a promotional article that reminds me there's a whole other untapped source of old D&D articles, many of which are quite good in their own right, even if they don't have the same legendariness simply due to smaller reader base. It'd be a shame if that just disappeared into the ether as the physical copies gradually wear out and get lost.</blockquote>

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