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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5432078" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995part 1/8130 pages. An extra $2 is added to the newsstand price because they include a CD with this one. And once again, they can't be bothered to have a theme for their features section. I guess with Roger well gone, no-ones pushing that as an idea very strongly. Still, better to try and celebrate the new than mourn the old. I'm certainly interested to see how they'll fare with this format experiment, with the rather faster turnaround a magazine has to contend with compared to their supplements. In this issue:Letters: The theme of this column seems to be people complaining about missing stuff. Fiction, comics, cards and ampersands, of all things. People really don't like having their routines disrupted, do they. It's not even as if their recent special features have been special enough to justify it. As always, they'll try to give you what you want, presuming they can find it somewhere in the first place. Plus a letter asking for a Yamara anthology. It's already here. Just contact Steve Jackson & co, they'll sort you out. Editorial: A bit early for a day in the life editorial. You've only been here two months, and so's your publisher. That's hardly time to have settled into a tedious workday routine in my book. Nevertheless, here we go. It's not really groundhog day, given the weird stuff that happens, but it can feel like it given the way the deadlines cycle on a monthly basis. We get brief introductions to each of the other editorial staff, and find out that Dragon actually gets more fiction submissions than it does everything else put together. It's no wonder that department is maintaining a consistently higher standard than the rest of the magazine. And of course we have to listen to complaints at their computer woes. Are they finally catching up with modern technology in that department? Not sure what to make of this. Mostly, it helps me get a bit more of a handle on Wolf's writing style. Still, it seems like they have decent supplies of whimsy remaining. It'll be a while longer before they fall prey to the cutbacks at this rate. First quest: Ah yes, Mike Nystul. He hasn't actually been a TSR employee, (he wasn't even in high school when the 1st D&D books were published) but he certainly left his mark on AD&D. And it's certainly left it's mark on him too. His introduction to gaming came due to having a father who was an insider, allowing him to get in from the very first releases. Still, there were plenty of flavours of the week he passed up on along the way. And I suspect that plenty of people exposed to D&D in those early years did pass it up for something else more interesting to them. But anyway, this is a good example of the fact that the imagination really needs to be properly primed for roleplaying to properly take root. If someone doesn't think the idea of pretending to be something else is cool, no amount of persuading is going to work. So if you want to introduce your kids to gaming, make sure they're excited by the subject matter first. There's quite a bit you can do to actively ensure you have new players, and this has a few good pointers. At sword's point: The swashbuckling style has plenty of fans. This is another one I'm surprised they haven't done an article on before, especially since Red Steel accommodated it so well. Guess the magazine is behind the times again. So yeah, a little history, a whole lot of talk about style, and how to get the right one for a swashbuckling, high action campaign, and a bit of crunch involving unarmed combat and improvised weaponry for those delicate situations where you can't take your heavy armour and magical weapons. Almost exactly what you'd expect. Actually, D&D isn't too terrible at this playstyle anyway, especially when you use the right options from the complete handbooks. After all, after a few levels, fighters can pull some pretty over the top tricks. You've just got to narrate them right. Might be a good idea to skip the one hit and your doomed phase of the adventuring career though. So I approve of this, even if it isn't particularly mind-blowing.</blockquote>

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