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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5378846" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 210: October 1994part 6/6Elminster's notebook: Oooh. Snake cultists. Been a few years since they got any press. Which I suspect is the way they like it, since they're generally all about the insssssidioussssnesssss. Here we see a return to the old ecology style of writing, where he keeps the main description purely setting, and puts all the crunch in footnotes. There's a pleasing blast from the past. Speaking of which, whatever happened to the ecologies? We haven't seen any all year. But anyway, along with info on the cult, we also have a whole bunch of their custom magical items which you could in theory take and use. (if you can control them, and don't mind people being suspicious of you because you're wielding a sword that is also a snake. ) As is usual for these columns, the sheer density of useful ideas is quite impressive, and the whole thing has quite an old school feel to it. Ed is definitely returning to a more active role in the magazine, after a few years away. And he certainly seems to have no shortage of ideas still. It's just a shame he can't carry the magazine all by himself. I guess even he can't write that fast. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Tarant has indeed made himself comfortable in Jen's homeworld and has no intention of going back in Libram X. Swordplay is all about the money, as usual. Dragonmirth has a rather good limerick this month. Yamara meets psionic bugs on hard fun. Whoda thought it. And Ogrek is still annoying. From the forge: Looks like Ken's decided to change the name of his mini's column to something a little more manly. Ironically, just as he makes the effort to distinguish his columns from Robert's a bit more, he takes his first stab at soapboxing about the lead banning bill. Lead might gradually return to the table now the crisis is mostly over, but prices sure ain't going down any time soon. If production costs go down again, that just means more profit. Uh yeah. The utility companies might be able to get away with that kind of crap, but everything else, you put prices up, we'll buy less. Supply and demand requires the demand part to work properly. Unsurprisingly, the minis this month are horror themed. Undead in all shapes and sizes. A chariot pulled by skeletal horses. A full blown warhammer army set, and an individual lich-king commander. Another lich, this time an official AD&D one from Ral Partha. Dr Mordenheim's official lab, plus some extra official mad scientist gear. This really is his year, isn't it. A big spiky gorilla/frog thing. A half dismembered undead giant using it's own leg as a weapon. A winged demon in the classical tradition. An alien stalker with a seriously heavy bit of weaponry. A vignette of a woman about to be sacrificed by an undead priest. Some fae, just to provide a little light relief in the midst of this gross sepulcher. Another undead legion with a mounted leader. A rather large werewolf, with additional mid-transformation models. And finally, in another break, some robot dogs for Legions of Steel. Actually, those can be pretty scary too, especially if they have the stereotypical glowing red eyes. After all, Terminator is really horror rather than hard sci-fi. TSR Previews: Red steel! Booyeah! One of the most brilliantly goofy parts of our most brilliantly goofy campaign world gets updated and rejigged from it's appearances in Dragon Magazine. Now everyone has a magic power of some sort,  and a rather devastating dependency. This makes things complicated but fun. Don't bother with the CD though. Yawn city. Masque of the red death! Double Booyeah, in principle at least. Like council of wyrms though, the attempt to do D&D modern is seriously mucked up by the rules, which nerf you horribly while offering nothing in return and really fight against the proficiency system, not changing enough to properly model the era. Most frustrating. Into the Abyss. Triple Booyeah. I've used this twice, and it's been pretty entertaining each time, even if the players go off the road and wind up in even deeper trouble. But then, that's what the abyss is for. There's always another nook that'll lead you even deeper and more in trouble. All you need is a sadistic imagination. Al-Qadim gets Caravans. Cross the desert, and try and keep as much of your stuff as possible along the way. Why have a merchant kit if players aren't going to use it? Ravenloft gets it's third monstrous compendium appendix. More undead variants and other things that go bump in the night. Never let your players be certain of exactly what they're facing. The forgotten realms has yet more bloody Volo. This time, it's the Sword Coast he's all over like a rash, the cheeky beggar. Seeya later, alligator. Dragonlance gets something nasty called The Medusa Plague, part two of the defenders of magic series. Yeah, if that illustration is right, limbs turning to snakes is pretty worrying, and very much needing of an epic quest to fix. Dark Sun finishes the tribe of one trilogy. The name turns out to be cleverer than we thought, as our protagonist finds out he is just one part of a greater being. And with that knowledge and regained unity, he gets to become really badass. Athas is going to become a better place. Our generic products this month are HR7: The crusades, and the Deck of Psionic powers. Pretty broad field then. Will you go for gritty religion based conflicts, or for quick reference of your mental powers. Or maybe both. This has easily been the first month where I actually bought the biggest proportion of the products released at the time. Interesting business. As usual, the october issue is considerably above average quality for the magazine, which feels particularly dramatic in this case, thanks to the modernist advice from Spike, the conclusion of the classic series by Moldvay, and the two and a half (counting the forum piece) pretty good articles from Greg Detwiler. I think Greg'll have to take first place, but it's a close run thing. Lets hope they have another store of good articles for christmas as well.</blockquote>

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