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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5782220" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999 part 6/7Dragon's bestiary: Back to the computer game conversions this month it seems. Myth: The fallen Lords is a game that draws quite heavily on D&D, so converting creatures back seems a little incestuous. Still, they have some neat ideas of their own in many cases. Let's see if D&D can learn from it's descendants this time. Ghol fill the role of semihumanoid predators. Like Krenshar, they look pretty gross, but aren't hugely powerful beyond those basic tricks anyone can use. You'd better hope you have the advantage of numbers, for they have speed and climbing capability on their side, so the terrain will more likely be in their favour.  Fetch are your basic arrogant isolationist demonic creatures from another plane. They don't have the magical versatility of most of their D&D equivalents, and so aren't hugely interesting to me.  Barrier Wights are another creature that is easy to kill, but explodes with pestilent effects when you do. Seems like that idea is on the up these days. It does liven up games where ranged attacks are the primary weapons of choice. Trow are big clumping humanoids who kick you around the place if they get too close. Since they can move quite fast as well, you'll have to be a pretty good dodger, or split up. They certainly seem designed with cinematic battles in mind, and would fit well in an Iron Heroes style game. Shop keep encourages the ultimate battle of the geeks. Dungeon Mastery: Blaaah. It's another article telling us to make magic items more special by reducing their power and frequency. Been there, done that, got the magic T-shirt that protects me from douchequake once per day. As much as less is more and learn to appreciate what you've got are valid philosophies to live by, they're inherently built around compromises. And really, we have to do so much of that in reality that I really don't want to have to put up with it in my escapism at the moment. Maybe if I was a multimillionare rock star I'd be a little more secure and sanguine about this. But no. <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=":)" /> you. Gimme my lightsaber that can extend far enough to cut the world in half. This does nothing to improve my mood. Marvel super heroes: Back to the old Marvel-phile style articles comprising largely of character stats here. Jean Grey and Rachel Summers are both home to the Phoenix, which is ridiculously powerful, but also utterly amoral, and quite happy to destroy entire solar systems to satisfy it's hunger if not kept under control. It's a deeply unsafe deus ex machina that is dangerous to tap into, but impossible to destroy, giving you a ready made source of conflict amongst the heroes and general angst. Of course, the way it's owners deal with it differs quite a bit, and they have other issues to deal with, given Marvel's twisting continuity, soap opera romances, and time travel plotlines. So this new system leaves them free to cover the big guns again for a while, before they have to go into all the obscure minor characters again. (of which there are quite a few more since last time) That's the joy of reboots. Will they last long enough for diminishing returns to set in this time round? It shouldn't be too hard to find out, really. Role Models: This column is once again worried about finding minis suitable for  Alternity games. Steal bits and pieces from Warhammer and White Wolf, and you should be able to pull it off, especially if you're willing to do some customising. It then provides a mini scenario for the game, while talking about how to paint camouflage in the sidebar. This split focus makes each of these three topics even smaller than usual, so there's no room to get bored, but not much depth either, especially with the amount of illustrations. Once again, I think this column could benefit from being a bit bigger without losing it's ability to deliver lots of stuff. It's as if the writer has too many ideas to properly use, not all of which fit easily into the remit of the column. So this is fun but unsatisfying, like a single piece of chocolate when you'd like a whole bar.</blockquote>

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