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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: 5783840" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 261: July 1999 part 7/7The twilight jungle: We've already had the spotlight on the Seshayans once, in issue 251. Now it's their turn again under their original Alternity rules and setting. This is actually surprisingly similar, as on their homeworld, they're still animistic primitives, and it's only due to the uplifting efforts of a megacorp that they've been exposed to interstellar civilisation. Of course, this isn't remotely altruistic, and they don't react well to attempts to break their contracts and leave employment, setting things up for a rather interesting campaign focussed around civil rights issues. Or you could do the usual ones of exploration and killing things and taking their stuff. They do make rather good assassins, after all. So not only do they have a fairly distinctive appearance, they also have a pretty good selection of inherent plot hooks. And with several new monsters, weapons and careers statted out, this is a pretty good mini splatbook. Roger Moore's legacy to the magazine continues. Dragonmirth takes an innovative approach to castle defense. KotDT degenerates into player bickering again. TSR Previews: A very busy month this time round, although I suspect some of that may be formatting errors, given the positions of various things in the surrounding issues. Oh well, it'll give me a proper workout anyway. Three of these are CD based computer products. The digital core rules get a ton of splatbooks added to them. Enough kits, spells, races, and other goodies that you should be able to generate complex and twinked characters at high speed. There's also the Dragon Magazine Archive. If it weren't for that, I'd never be doing this. Course, they didn't get it perfect, with a surprising number of little bits left unscanned, but hey ho, slightly less work for me. Still a ridiculous amount to go even so. And the Realms finally get a complete atlas, with a ton of maps from the supplements compiled, plus virgin continents given an overview for your players. Now you really can go all around the world. Can you you you, you find your baby there? The realms is pretty packed in print too. Baldur's gate by Philip Athans is a novelisation of the computer game. Ahh, still doing this a decade after Pool of Radiance. Was this one any good? And on the gaming side, we have Sea of Fallen Stars. They've already covered the cultures around it. Now they take you under the water. I do enjoy it when they do that. Dragonlance tries another way to get some gaming stuff to sell remotely as well as the novels. The Odyssey of Gilthanias is a mixture of fiction and game stuff for both systems. Lots of new locations, oh, and probably poetry. Ho hum. They're also getting another straight fiction anthology, Heroes and Fools: Tales of the 5th age. More stuff from when the magic is gone and people have to build new lives. Greyhawk does a double rehash. Against the giants appears both as an expanded revised module and a novel by Ru Emerson. The first modules, and for some people, still the best, it's no surprise that they're part of the silver anniversary celebrations. Alternity gets Star Compendium: Systems of the Verge. More places for you to explore, new aliens to meet, and possibly kill and take the stuff of. Marvel Super Heroes gets The Reed Richards Guide to Everything. A whole load of cool optional stuff presented in a humorously IC manner. Nice to see them using that approach here as well. ProFiles: Fred Fields is not dead. He's not even gone away, as this month's cover proves. He's one of those people who started doing art young, and just kept going, improving his abilities and sending out stuff persistently until he got picked up. As ever, we are reminded that that is one of the crucial ingredients to success. But other elements can vary. In contrast to the last few artists profiled, he usually works from models, sculpting them up to then draw if needed, and drafting in the people around to pose for him. Takes all sorts, doesn't it. In any case, it's worked for the last decade, and he hopes it will continue to work. Now, if only he could get royalties from the people ripping off his work in tattoo parlors. <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" /> Another moderately entertaining profile. Once again, this issue seemed to go by a lot faster than the ones before they reduced the page count, even though it's only a small change really. On the other hand that was because this had a pretty high quota of insubstantial articles, as ironically befits the theme. They may have more colour in the illustrations, but they don't have as much contrast in the articles they have each month, with the same regular columns showing up nearly every time. Well, at least we still have a few non D&D ones a month at the moment. On we go, knowing that soon they'll be gone as well.</blockquote>

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