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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5650078" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon magazine annual 1997part 4/8Rogues Gallery: Hey ho. Time for another instalment in this column statting up the characters of their recent novels. How's that working out for ya? Cheesily, if the past  is anything to go by. And since this involves a newly ascended Forgotten Realms demigod, I don't have great expectations. The things they do with their powers. :shakes head:Joel the rebel Bard is an illegal alignment for a bard, so I guess his name makes sense. From a long line of talespinners, this makes his a major disappointment to his family. Like many young protagonists, he's managed to rack up a list of heroic deeds in an improbably short period of time. Course, he'll only keep that up if the writers stay interested and produce another book starring him, which seems less likely under the current climate. Jas is a fighter who's acquired wings under embarrassing circumstances. Yes, they are fairly beautiful, although the precise details vary from plane to plane. Joking about them may result in abuse or dive-bombing. This is of course extra funny and meta in the internet age. Jeff is truly ahead of the times here. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Holly Harrowslough is a 16 year old 5th level paladin. Another alumni of the fast track adventuring advancement system, including the stereotypically tragic loss of her parents. She's a little less naive than the average 16 year old or paladin though. Guess she gets to be the voice of reason for this party, which is indeed fairly cheesy. They know their audience, and hit those story points pretty regularly. Dragonwyr: Well, this is a welcome bit of continuity. We not only have another module in the annual this time, but it's a follow-up to last year's one. I strongly approve. Not only does it let us have more info on the conflicts hinted at last year, but it also caters for higher level parties than most of their adventures. There does seem to be a stronger default path for the plot to go in this one, but you could probably still go off the rails and give this a rather unexpected outcome. It certainly makes allowances for the PC's to fail, and things to go horribly wrong for the village they're supposed to protect and the plot to go on from there, so it's not a railroad. The fact that the two combine together makes me especially keen to use them in actual play, as that's the kind of thing I encourage. And maybe they'll even make a trilogy out of this next year. Guess that's another pretty good incentive for me to keep reading. Cry Havoc: We're having another extensive set of articles for each of their campaign worlds this annual, but thankfully this time they aren't wasting an extra page just talking up the settings for noobs. Instead it's straight into the action with an article showing us how to convert between Birthright's War Cards mass combat system and the old Battlesystem mechanics. Since it's been years since we saw anything on that, and I suspect it's out of print now, that's quite welcome in a quirky way. Unfortunately, as I'm not really familiar with either system, I'm not really in a position to judge the quality of the crunch, but as with many of the old non D&D articles, that's really not the point. It still makes for more interesting and varied reading than another wodge of monsters and magic items and reveals quite a bit about both. And if it gets people to buy one or both of these, then it's been a success for them in a larger financial sense.</blockquote>

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