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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5370624" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 209: September 1994part 3/6The invisible sun: A second (and final) amazing engine article for the magazine before it slips away like Top Secret and Gamma World before it. This is actually recent enough to be topical, as it's for Kromosome. Although it does look like cut material from the book, as it is by Wolfgang Baur, the actual author, but still, better than nothing. So here's a new organisation for the players to join or oppose. Existing largely online, and making use of nasty computer programs that burn out people's minds, turning them into cyber-zombie slaves, The Invisible Sun certainly isn't a heroic organisation by any stretch of the imagination. But of course, they have valuable information and a good social network, so you might need to deal with them to get things done. And the premise is fairly fun and not too hard to convert. The biopunk name might differentiate it a bit from standard cyberpunk, but stylistically, it means little. Just a slight difference in the kewl powerz. But I'm not complaining at all. Forum: B. Johnson brings back the paladin's code issue, once again saying you should discuss it with the DM before play to establish their moral priorities. Then, when the pinch comes down and it's time to make hard compromises, you won't lose your powers for prioritising a different ideal to the DM. Mary Cateli thinks that paladins shouldn't all be played as cavaliers, and cavaliers shouldn't have to act like jackasses towards the peasantry. Many of the best knights were humble and courteous to everyone regardless of age, sex, race or social class. Eyal Teler thinks that it's important that the paladin's code doesn't force them to act like idiots. Good ≠ stupid, and if you make it so, then of course they'll wind up falling from grace or failing in their tasks regularly. Unless they're following the god of pedantic bureaucrats, this is a bad thing. Steve Fletcher points out that paladins may be slightly more powerful than rangers, but they're both harder to get into, and easier to wash out of. This is what counts as balance in D&D at the moment. Mike Delmonico is finding his specialist wizards are gaming the system, and often not actually using that many spells from their speciality. And the fixed opposition school system is rather clunky. Perhaps removing that, and making the proportion of spells that need to be of their speciality rather higher, at least 50%, would help. Jean-Philippe Suter expresses his displeasure at Jon Pickens reorganisation of spheres in issue 205. This kind of movement based not on what they do, but who ought to be using them seems like putting the cart before the horse to him. Course, in his ideal world, every god would have a completely customised spell list. You know why they don't do that? Because that would mean it'd be a nightmare figuring out if a particular priest could have particular spells from supplements. The sphere system supports modular expandability. Julian Neale picks apart the power level of high level necromancers. Many of their spells are surprisingly sucky. House ruling time! Yeah, I think half the time they use necromancers as villains so they can inflate their levels to look impressive, while still having the PCs kick their ass when they get to them. Donald R. Maclean turns his eye on the many problems with using magic jar as a method of immortality. Sooner or later, they're going to break free, or you'll be stuck in the receptacle somewhere obscure for years with no-one to take over. Like becoming a vampire, you're setting yourself up for a troubled existence where you regularly have to worry about your victims coming back to haunt you. Christopher Davis also points out Eric Burns' misconceptions as to how magic jar works. People do fight back mentally when you take over their body. Plus you can't tell exactly what you're getting beforehand. That can be rather embarrassing. Doug Ironside recommends cheating on your gaming group with another one. If they're better, you have more fun, and if they're worse, you learn to appreciate what you have all the more. Either way, it's more interesting than hanging around with the same people year in year out. Ex Libris: Just back in issue 207 they encouraged us to use pieces of paper as treasures, for there are quite a few plot opportunities created by them. How many more opportunities in something comprised of hundreds of pieces of paper? We already have a decent selection of magical books in the DMG, so this adds a whole selection of nonmagical ideas, once again determined via random table. Most of them are useful, quite a few are funny, and some of them contain useful information for magic-users to research stuff. This is very much in the old school spirit, being short, lighthearted, and not afraid of bending genre. Does feel a bit rehashed though. Probably shouldn't have come so soon after a similar article. You wanna be a What!: Ah, yes, gamma world and their gonzo selection of races. Unlike D&D, which is still relatively conservative in the official publications, they've always encouraged you to play sentient plants, cockroaches, conglomerations of radioactive gas, and other such weirdness. So here's another bundle of crunch, giving you stats for characters derived from ants, butterflies, cats, dogs, dolphins, dragonflies, fleas, flys, killer whales, leopards, lions, lizards, owls, rabbits, rats, scorpions, snails and wolverines. Most of them are pretty much as you would expect in both stats and personality. The artwork goes for an alice in wonder land, pseudo-victorian style which looks good, but doesn't seem very appropriate for the post apocalyptic environment of gamma world. That, combined with the fact that this seems to be back to basics again (what, no stats for cat & dog stock in the corebook?) leaves me a little bemused. Not a lot of rigorous critical thought going into putting this together, it seems. What game do you really want to play? What playstyle are you trying to promote?! This is doing my head in now. Why did the editor put this together in this form? Chalk it up to lack of direction.</blockquote>

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