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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5542431" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 231: July 1996part 5/8Tales of the fifth age: Measure of the home guard by J Robert King. Another story in Krynn where the lesson is neutrality, be my good. For a certain value of neutrality. Which really depends on the assumption that going out and killing bad guys is more what the good gods want to see than staying at home and taking care of your friends and family. Which in D&D world, is quite possible. But it does make for some very interesting philosophical questions. Is proactivity really a good thing, when all is said and done. In an entropic universe, everything you do contributes in a small way to the end of everything. In a world threatened by regular apocalypses, both good and evil will want to preserve the status quo, even if it may be out of selfishness. Is it better to work with enemies who will probably backstab you the moment the crisis is over, or stand by your principles even if it means everything going down in flames? What do you do when things change so much that what was once a good and sensible thing to do (be fruitful and multiply) becomes an active liability. (overpopulation) So this story asks hard questions and answers them in a poignant manner. If there's anything that the new setting and system ought to facilitate, it's issues like this, rather than the dungeon crawling D&D is obviously designed for. Game wizards drops it's definite article. They really are making a habit of that, over the years. You'll already have heard by now that Dragonlance is coming back under a different game system, but here's the official promotional article. People in setting have had enough time to adapt to the lack of gods and figure out a new magic system, which does seem like a bit of a compromise, but there's plenty of radical elements here. Actually, the decision to make it card based and narrative focussed is a blatant attempt to follow in the footsteps of Everway and the WoD, respectively, but there's nothing hugely wrong with that idea. And the way the cards draw upon existing lore does allow them to do things with the mechanics that would be impossible in an all-new setting. There's a lot of interesting things to be said about this one, which of course makes the fact that it doesn't do particularly well all the more regrettable. So it's with decidedly mixed feelings that I say hello to this. At least it's an actual other roleplaying game, unlike all this blood war and dragon dice crap. But it's not as innovative as it would like to think it is, and is marketed in a somewhat newbie unfriendly way, which pretty much ensures it's sales will only ever be a small fraction of AD&D's. I'm sure they could have done things differently and better, even if I'm not absolutely certain how. Forum slowly shrinks. Combined with the larger font size, it's definitely passing a lot quicker these days. Tim Merritt points out some more problems with S&P subability scores. It's all too easy for them to wind up as almost pure benefit if you build your characters suitably specialised. No wonder this is one rule that didn't make it to the next edition. Dale Donovan steps into the ring to defend TSR's creating rulebreaking characters. Story purpose and coolness is more important than strict adherence to the rules, especially for NPC's. Plus you have to make sure rules lawyers don't get smug and overconfident. I don't think he's one of the people who survives the takeover, is he. That kind of change it just to spite them attitude'll be falling out of favor soon.  Steven Shaffer thinks each demihuman race should have at least one class with unlimited advancement. How simultaneously progressive and old skool. This will of course strongly encourage multiclassing with it, especially now XP isn't still split amongst maxed out classes slowing you down like 1st ed.</blockquote>

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