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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5385350" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 212: December 1994part 1/6124 pages. Monsters breaking down the door? I don't think they're bringing us any decent christmas presents. Death and destruction, more likely. But probably not rape, since this is pretty much the middle of the 2e era. Curiously, they have a featured articles section, but no particular topic for the articles within. What's up with that then? Did they run out of money or space for intro artwork? (as they do seem to have a general theme of being adventure designing advice for the Dungeon Master. ) Don't tell me they're already feeling the pinch round here. Stuff like this is only going to get more frequent in the near future, isn't it. <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=":(" /> In this issue:Letters: A public service announcement from the runners of Gen Con that if you want to be involved next year, you'd better let them know pronto, for the deadline is surprisingly close. Given their size, a 6 month lead-in time is now needed. How very tiresome. A letter trying to find the article on fighter assassins. Issue 172'll do you good. A question about the probability of being published in the magazine. For your first article, not great. Do not let that deter you though. A letter asking for help converting the FR Novels into adventures for their players. They keep wandering off the track. You know, railroading is generally considered a bad thing. We've had articles on this before. Trying to put players up against fictional characters usually has unexpected results. Editorial: In a year which has seen their quotient of blatant promotional articles increase, Dale ironically tries to avoid that by pointing out the nonmonetary ways to facilitate gaming. Driving people to the game, providing the snacks, space, and DM'ing cost relatively little, and help make the whole experience so much more pleasant. Gaming is a fundamentally social hobby, and if no-one does these things, then campaigns are likely to be short and awkward. Creating a game club or convention may well be even more effort for you, but it has definite benefits for gaming in your area. Hmm. I think he may underestimate how much these things cost. Conventions in particular require massive outlay, even if they have a chance of making it back with profit at the end. And as a terminal cheapskate who managed to get through further education without getting into debt, (not easy at all these days) I've calculated exactly how much these things add up over the course of a year. Course, forgetting little courtesies like that which other people would consider necessities so I can afford to save to buy equipment to pursue my dreams may well be a part of why my social life is so messed up, but that's largely my own fault. This is an uncomfortable reminder that I've been living in my own world for far too long, and may not have been treating the people around me very nicely in the process. I'm going to have a good hard think about this. How much do we pay for the things we don't consider, that make the world work? How much do we get back for them in intangibles such as friendship, company and the practical favors people who know each other do when asked? What am I actually gaining and losing by living this way? Bah. I made the decision to put my creativity before my humanity a long time ago. I can put my life back together after I finish this work. (at least, I hope I'll be able too) Onwards! First Quest: Tim Brown? Don't remember that name. What did he do? Greyhawk Ruins? Dragon Kings? Ok, that's not too bad. In fact, he's done quite a bit to push interesting epic games. It's mildly ironic, then, that the experience that hooked him on roleplaying was killing a single skeleton and barely surviving. Goes to show, it's the human element that's most captivating, whatever the supposed power level. He manages to get the balance between what leads up to his first encounter, the big event itself, and the rest of his early gaming experiences down pretty well. It also seems he likes quite a variety of stuff, with third party rpgs, wargaming and PbM all part of his youthful experimentation. This is definitely one that gives me a good picture of the man behind the writing, and his general approach to the world, most of which I quite like. He's probably been reading the previous instalments of this column and learning from their mistakes.</blockquote>

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