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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5453910" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 221: September 1995part 5/8Rumbles: You know, Wolf just told us he was leaving in the editorial. We really didn't need it as lead news here as well. Slow month? Or just self-aggrandisement. Actually, it's quite a busy one. TSR loses a second tim, (brown this time) but is getting a Dragon Dice computer game and a new Forgotten Realms computer game as well. There's another new gaming magazine out, d8, which will die in just over a year's time. GDW has sold the licence for a Space: 1889 movie, which is another spinoff that never seems to have come to fruition. Cthulhu is getting a collectible card game, which just depresses me, as is Marvel Comics, FFG, and WWII, of all things. Well, it was popular for wargamers. Why not try recapturing that market? Even more strangely, Mortal Kombat is hosting an entire stageshow featuring tons of real life martial artists. I guess when you're making money hand over fist, you get a little extravagant. In general, it seems like what's going on in movies and computer gaming is more interesting than what's going on in RPG's. Maybe they need more high profile designer drama or something to keep people interested. Floyd: Another new comic starts. Annoying ginger apprentice wizard loses his master due to magical politics. Wackiness and big explosions ensue. His life is about to get very interesting. Forum: Michael A Fiorentino comes to the defence of TSR's current trends in adventure design. Gamers are bored with just wandering around, they want story! Yes, but a story where you can choose what happens would be nice. Jason Johnson rules that haste may drain your lifespan, but that's due to stress rather than actual aging. That reduces quite a lot of the pure logic stupidity. Ed Freidlander contributes for the first time in a few years, to talk about the human weight and body composition. This is another area D&D isn't too realistic on, and could stand to revise it's formulae for next edition. Hussain Adulhaqq finds that his characters refuse to pay for anything, preferring to rob and kill all the shopkeepers. You know, they really ought to bite off more than they can chew at some point. And if they are too powerful, there's been plenty of advice on how to deal with that over the years. Steven A. Greenfield hasn't found female gamers have any problem in his games. Guess this is another annoying thing with lots of regional variation. Koby Bryan is another individual who feel TSR's output has really gone downhill in recent years, and is more concerned with making money than encouraging creativity. We don't want to be hemmed in, and we don't want style over substance. Smarten up, or many more people will leave the fold. J. B. Pollard has more advice on dealing with powergamers. A shapeshifted dragon in politically powerful positions means brown trousers time if they try to completely mess up the status quo. Even ridiculously tough characters have issues with that kind of damage output. Steve Bitz thinks we ought to have sentient armor as well as sentient weapons. It's a lot easier to have them take over in amusing fashion, and should liven things up. I quite agree, as I have said before. The dragon's bestiary: Ahh, yes, the Slaad lords. Created by Charles Stross way back in the fiend folio. Course, that's long out of print, and unique enemies seem notably rarer in 2nd edition, Ravenloft excepted. A few of the old de :shut yo mouth:   (hey, I'm talking about Graz'zt here) lords have come back recently in Planescape though, so it seems that this is no longer a strict policy like it was around the changeover period. And since so many people won't have access to the originals, like a few of the ecologies, reprinting the stats seems a good thing to do. And indeed, this was where I first read about these guys. This will be an interesting one to revisit now I've actually read the FF. Ssendam gets some fairly substantial changes, including a gender switch ( <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="O_o" title="Er... what?    O_o"  data-smilie="12"data-shortname="O_o" /> Can a giant golden amoeba really be said to have a gender? ) and serious behavioural tendency alterations along with quite a bit of powering up in general (apart from the nerfing of it's energy draining ability <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" />) It all feels like more of a rewrite than an updating, and I do wonder what the motivation of the writer was. Ygorl isn't powered up nearly as much, putting him firmly below Ssendam whereas before they were pretty near equals overall. He's also considerably less changed, with all the fluff from the previous version updated and expanded upon. When contrasted with the previous entry, that makes this whole seem even more curious. Chourst, on the other hand, isn't rehashed. He is however a personification of the lulz school of chaotic neutral, as also practiced by the xaositects and fishmalks. This also makes him seem rather annoying and out of place in these more serious times. Rennbuu is slightly less goofy, but probably even more annoying. Randomly changing your colour is like girdles of gender changing. Statistically, it may mean nothing, but few are the people who will be happy about their character becoming purple with orange pinstripes unexpectedly. In short, it seems that this is an article that has not aged well, and didn't have respect for it's source material either, leaning quite strongly towards the kender side. Bleah. I want to wash my hands after reading this.</blockquote>

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