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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5416312" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995part 2/8Boons & Benefits: We've had quite a few articles on unorthodox treasures before. Gems, books, maps, title deeds, plants, poisons, works of art. There's no shortage of things you can give your players beyond money and magic items that let them kick more ass. This pushes that idea a bit further, with the concept of treasures that are largely intangible. Titles, memberships in secret societies, medals, honorary degrees, a well paying sinecure of a job, huge discounts at the place saved, (or maybe just tax breaks) undefined favors to be called in at a future date. Here's 126 ideas, nicely divided into semirandom tables. Once again, we reinforce the fact that we have more ideas from the magazine than we can ever use. Still, there are a good deal wider ranging than most articles of this sort, and it's a good reminder to put different stuff into your game. I approve, even if I'm not blown away. Behind enemy lines: Hmm. Another quite good and somewhat different idea here. And another one that might be tricky to implement. Just as many players will look at intangible rewards and thumb their noses at them, trying to run a campaign where you're right in the middle of the bad guys, and there's far too many to kill your way out of the problem may prove a problem for some groups. Be it because they don't have the tactical and roleplaying acumen, or they're now high enough level that instant teleportation or easy flight is in their reach, this might be tricky. Since D&D is more prone to both those problems than the average RPG, this is one that might be better suited to another system. Not a bad idea, though, and certainly easier to get a group into than the horrible A4 captured and stripped of all your stuff setup. So this is a second article I have mixed feeling about. I suppose we exhausted most of the easy adventure ideas a while ago, so I shouldn't be surprised we're getting into ones that are rather harder to run successfully. Two heads are better than one: Now this is one of my personal favourite ideas, that I've used personally to great success. Sharing DM duties makes things a lot more fun. (provided you like the other person and have time to meet up with them outside the game to prepare for the next session) You can split the party, you can bounce ideas off each other and edit them better, you can divide labor in ways that play to both your strengths. Two heads are very frequently better than one. I have absolutely no reservations about recommending this article to everyone, whatever system or genre they're playing in. It may be short, but you can get a good deal of joy out of trying it, and may even find it becomes your default way of working if you can get a good enough partner. The smallest ideas can have the biggest repercussions, because they're most widely applicable. Class action!: Oooh. Another idea that really should have got an article much sooner. They are stepping up their adventurousness in terms of rules and playstyles. Let's see what happens when you break D&D's usual niche protection, and have a party comprised largely or entirely of one class. While campaigns certainly won't be the same, they can still be entirely viable, and possibly even more interesting. And you can still find ways to differentiate them. Warriors can wield different weapons and work on their formation fighting skills. Wizards and rogues can really focus on getting good at their specialities. And bards can play different musical instruments. <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" /> As white wolf games show, a game can thrive by focussing on one thing and doing it well, and then highlighting the more subtle subdivisions within that area. (savage vampire, imperious vampire, shadowy vampire, mad vampire, pretentious vampire ) You really will need to create adventures tailored to your party though, otherwise they may die horribly (apart from clerics. A good set of different speciality priests hardly needs other classes, as they admit here. <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" /> ) With a sample adventure for each class group, this is both strong and fairly innovative. You could potentially get 4 whole campaigns off this one before rehash set in, so I'm definitely voicing my praise for this article.</blockquote>

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