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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5633070" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 241: November 1997part 3/8Chronicle of Cerilia: Or oh yeah, this line's been cancelled, and we still hadn't got round to putting a timeline in the books. Guess it's the magazine's gain again. And as usual for a D&D setting, the beginning of recorded history is actually surprisingly close to the present. Elves & dwarves have been around for ages, but history only gets going a few thousand years ago, and the current political system, with empowered bloodlines and everything that goes with it is only 1,500 years old. And really, how do you expect democracy to gain root when they are so obviously and demonstrably superior. Maybe if someone exercises their droit de siegneur a little too much, so a larger proportion of the public have at least some bloodline abilities. Keep harems for greater justice in the future! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> But I digress. While not as detailed as the Realms timeline is by now, this is still pretty detailed, obviously drawing on not only the whole range of supplements, but also the magazine articles for the setting. In a way, that makes it very much a capstone on their output as a living setting. There may be a few more articles coming after this, but we won't see timeline advancement or big metaplot upheavals anymore. Which is a bit sad in a way, but given how much metaplot annoyed people, might be for the best. At least this way, it's memory will remain unsullied amongst those who cared. Legacies of the Suel imperium: Hmm. New PC races with a greyhawk slant? Well, we've had spellbooks and magical item collections. The main issue here is that as the original generic AD&D setting, what creatures feel distinctively Greyhawk rather than just D&D? That's a tricky question to answer. The approach here seems to be to go for a bunch of stuff from all over the place, with an emphasis on the old school. Well, I guess the old modules that got retroactively incorporated into Greyhawk were rather a grab-bag too, so that makes as much sense as any decision. Derro are of course interesting because of their unique Savant class. Unfortunately, this article takes an old school attitude towards this, and spends a big proportion of it's time telling us that behaviours that are quite normal for the race should not be allowed when they're used as PC's, and making sure that we can't play the most interesting parts. This makes it deeply unsatisfying. Lerara are ……. Holy <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />!!!! Remember Elayne Mystica from issue 139. One of the most obvious examples of cheesy mary-sue background this magazine has ever produced. Well now you can play another member of the race of albinos that she came from. Only you'll never be as cool as her, as they're given a charisma penalty that retroactively makes her an illegal character. Now that's either insulting or just incompetent. Drizzt doing stuff that's impossible in game and then making new rules to make that legal is one thing, but making a character that's basically legal, if very cheesy, and then retroactively invalidating them is just nasty. Major mechanical fail, as well as a delving of ancient lore that really should have remained buried, thank you very much. Skulks are always thieves, although a few of them have minor multi-class abilities. Stereotyping much? Still, since all their racial abilities are focussed around greater stealth, would you really want to take another class? On the other hand, playing against type is a great pleasure of roleplaying. And on the gripping hand, making them lose their special powers if they manage to get over their racial cowardice makes this another deeply problematic one. Mandating good behaviour or you lose your powers causes enough problems with bad DM's. Mandating bad behaviour or losing your powers just seems custom designed to blow up in your face in actual play. So that's 3 fails in a row. I'm not optimistic about the rest of this article. Jermalaine are another one that are pretty much restricted to a single class, as they don't have the strength to become fighters, or the magical aptitude to become wizards, and their priestly skills are pretty pathetic too. This is one of those times when I can't wait for 3e to come, and sweep all this arbitrariness away. Su-Dopplegangers are new, and drop even the pretense of class choice, essentially being a full-on return to Basic D&D race as class design. That said, even though they only go up to level 8, they're a lot more powerful than halflings, with their innate AC and damage dealing abilities scaling with level. Unsurprisingly, their ESP power gets nerfed. Blah. Who made this? Roger Moore?! WTF man. I thought he liked his gonzo. This has been one of the most persnickety and restrictive set of new races I've seen, and is easily the worst article he's ever done. This is really the kind of bad article that only someone on the inside could get away with writing. Just as Gary's new classes that then got put into Unearthed Arcana were more mechanically problematic than most of the classes sent into the magazine by freelancers back in the day, this is the kind of bad writing that only gets through because the editors have a personal connection to the writer and aren't judging their work with the same kind of critical scrutiny as everything else. Epic fail.</blockquote>

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