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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5519329" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 228: April 1996part 7/8Yamara's world finally gets a map! Any resemblance to events and people that actually appeared in the comics is purely coincidental <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=";)" /> Venturing into the city: Adventures in the city? We've had entire themed issues on this before. (issues 136, 160) And as is usually the case when they try and cram a topic like this into a single article despite having done whole issues on it before, the article comes off as a lot more basic. In this case, it does seem to be aimed specifically at people who have never run a city adventure before, and are daunted by the prospect. So this is clear, step by step, and rather basic advice. It's one of those cases where it's not that I have a problem with the material, but that it's not aimed at long-term readers at all, and so makes me zone out as I read it, experiencing a strong sense of deja vu. The hobby was attracting new players in greater quantity when the magazine wasn't nearly so focussed on catering to them, which is a great and rather depressing irony. What are we to do with you? Dragonmirth deals with bureaucracy and comes off the loser again. A familiar scene of tragedy in Swordplay. The Knights of the dinner table engage in some hard negotiation over their social contract. Floyd is in so much trouble right now. This is what happens when you don't do your research before going into the dungeon. Nightspawn becomes Nightbane. Curse you, Todd McFarlane! :shakes fist:Tales from the 5th age: Mission from kendermore part 2 by Harold J Johnson. Once again, this is more a collection of vignettes than a proper story, as the Kender team encounters various challenges and falls prey to attrition, one by one. Although none of them actually die onscreen, and whether they do or not is very uncertain. Which really does make this feel like a bait and switch for those looking for a bit of sadism. I know you have the whole family friendly thing to consider, but this is almost as bad as an 80's cartoon in it's avoidance of directly showing consequences. So once again, I'm going to have to pronounce this series as interesting, but deeply unsatisfying compared to the usual fiction they give us. This just violates too many rules of how to write a good story which engages the reader and makes them care about what happens. You''re a third of the way through this themed year already, you'd better start giving us some payoff for sitting through this soon.</blockquote>

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