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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5463056" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 222: October 1995part 5/8Roaming the Realms: Another IC narrated bit of Forgotten Realms setting building. Those are generally pretty entertaining. Curiously, it's not by Ed or one of his regular sidekicks like Jeff or Steven. It is however quite high density, fitting in stuff about a whole bunch of elf settlements, their cultural quirks and significant NPC's. Exactly who the narrator is isn't revealed, although we do get some hints. This isn't bad at all, although unlike with Ed's stuff you don't get the impression that all the hints connect up to a bigger world out there. I suppose that's another sign of how big the realms has become, and how many people are playing in it these days. It might not all add up, which means you'll have to choose which ideas to give priority. And if there's a conflict, I'm afraid I'm probably going to go with Ed's vision. Overall, this article'll just have to join the many in the middle, not having anything to mark it as brilliant or terrible. Fiction: On the scent at slab's by John Gregory Betancourt. A belated third appearance in the magazine for this series. (see issues 105 and 126) I get the impression that there may be other stories in this series published elsewhere, and a little googling confirms this. I must pick up that anthology at that point. Once again this manages to be both funny and creepy, with the ghosts both interestingly alien in their actions and all too human in their motivations. By this point, I suspect he has a fairly good idea of the world around the tavern, even if the details were originally invented just to serve the stories. It certainly seems like a solid enough place to game in, even if it doesn't exactly fit D&D or wraith rules. In any case, it's both a welcome returnee, and a good story in it's own right, with plenty of room still for further follow-ups. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we get another instalment, so I'm a little disappointed. Guess it'll have to go down as another unfulfilled opportunity. Will anyone ever overtake Niall's record of 8 stories in the early years of the magazine? They've got a pretty steep hill to climb. (Or they'll need to bribe the editors. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) Dragon interviews Steven Brust: After statting out Vlad Taltos a couple of issues ago, we now get to see the man behind the books. I suspect they might have been intended to go in the same issue, but you know what it's been like around here lately. Still, this is a very interesting interview, as we get to see a lot of the interplay between what someone intends to write, and what actually comes out. It does look like his writing involves quite a bit of conscious examination of fantasy, and his own tendencies, and then deliberately undercutting overused tropes so as to keep things interesting. He also reveals that he's toying with his audience as well, telling the stories in the books from the viewpoints of the characters, and intentionally misrepresenting certain details due to their biases. It's all very tricksy, and he certainly seems to be having fun with his writing. It's fortunate for him that writing what he likes resulted in the public liking it too, and playing with author voice didn't make them complain about being deceived and railroaded. Much of it comes down to not forgetting the core elements, like action and snappy dialogue, whatever experiments you're trying out in the larger scheme of things. That even carries over into the interview, where he manages to communicate a lot with fairly curt answers. And since he's still going today, he's obviously managed to find the sweet spot between giving the people what they want, and what they don't expect but will wind up liking anyway. I approve of this interview, as it's fun to read, is of a gamer, and gives us lots of tricks to play with, and possibly try in our own games. It's certainly much better than most of the Novel Ideas interviews.</blockquote>

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