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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5592989" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Annual 1996part 5/8Gem of the north: Hmm. A description of Alustriel's palace. You know, a map would only take up a page or two, and help quite a lot, especially for adventurers who might want to get a little combative. But no, instead we have to visualise it all ourself, and accept that there's great wodges of stuff that we're not being told about, as they want to maintain the supreme power of mystra's chosen, and that means always being able to pull another deus ex machina out of their arse. So while there's a good deal of cool descriptive detail in this article, it is very much part of the problem, both in the 2e sense of putting description over stuff that will be useful in actual play, and the Realms specific issue of tying everything down and making it feel like the PC's can't really affect the world. I don't really feel comfortable reading it. Dragonlance fifth age: Now, the Realms started slow and gradually built to dominance, but was a success from day one, and never really flagged in popularity. If anything, it's supremacy over the other D&D settings is all the more obvious today, as it's the only one getting repeated support in 4e and fairly regular novels anymore. Dragonlance, by contrast, started in a big fanfare, and then really, it's been mostly downhill from there. Still, that means they've been less afraid to shake things up, for it's less of a cash cow to kill in the first place if it does fail. And next year they're really going to go to town filling in the 5th age. After all, they have to get this stuff out quick, for things aren't great in the company, and if it doesn't sell, this setting'll be put on the backburner for good. Once again, this does make for slightly depressing reading in hindsight. Oh well, at least they went out experimenting. Between the ages: In which it is revealed just how long it took for things to reach their current state. Sure it seems like everything has changed. But when you lived through it day by day for 30 years, it doesn't seem so bad, especially when you remember these events are scattered across the entire continent. But it does show just how annoying the dragons are being at this point, and how many there are. I guess the important thing this once again demonstrates is that this is the setting made to showcase the Dragons in D&D, and they're making substantial attempts to make them bigger, scarier and more integral to the setting. It also puts the 5th age stories from the magazine into better context. Really, there's a 27 year gap between the 1st and last ones. That's longer than, say, the whole real world history of D&D at this point. So this makes their actions over the last year seem a little more palatable to me. There was a bigger plan in their redesign of the setting. We just don't get to see it until after the fact. And hopefully that'll make it a little easier to run a game here, should I ever decide to do so. Ravenloft: as befits the gothic setting, Ravenloft is really starting to be weighed down by it's history at this point. After all, like the Forgotten Realms, it started off slow, and built up popularity by proof of demand for quite a few years before getting a full gameline. But like Dragonlance, it's actually changed quite a bit as time went on. The geography has gone through a full-scale rearrangement, and they've also killed off the biggest good guy NPC and city in the setting, thus really driving home that no-one and nothing is safe here. Just about the only thing that remains constant is that it's near impossible to get out of here. And now it's getting it's third core set. Even the Forgotten Realms hasn't got that privilege yet. Goes to show just how popular and enduring horror is, and how many writers in the TSR stable want to put their own spins upon it, dragging the setting in different directions in the process. Just how much more stretching can it take before it too is torn apart by nerdrage over it's metaplot choices?</blockquote>

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