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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: 5785976" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 262: August 1999part 1/7116 pages. Time for halflings and gnomes to have to share a themed issue again, just as they did their splatbook. They're just not popular enough when compare to elves & dwarves, are they? You're all a bunch of sizeists! :shakes tiny fist: Get back here so I can headbutt yer balls! Mutter grumble mutter, humans these days, no respect for an ancient fantasy archetype. And don't you dare start on the red pointy hats. Red pointy hats are cool. And you can store all kinds of stuff in them as well. Like to see you try that with a baseball cap. Let's show them the meaning of affirmative action. Scan quality: Excellent, indexed.In this issue:The wyrms turn:  Dave decides to take to the stand in defence of cliches. The reason they became cliches is because they work. Where you really go wrong is using them in isolation, or a too familiar combination. The nature of combinatoric math means that you can easily get a unique result if you incorporate enough elements in different orders. Trust me, I've done statistical analyses based upon the number of people in the world, number of stories written, and number of archetypical tropes. It's easier than it seems, especially if you don't know the rules in the first place, so you aren't adhering to the established rules of form for whatever creative medium you're working in. It also helps to have an exceedingly strange mind, which I think we've already established I've got, for better and for worse. Don't be afraid to use the rules. If your ideas are strong enough, they'll till turn out unique despite playing within a framework. D-Mail: We start off with a letter praising articles that tie into other ones. Those that notice it are unanimously positive. It's just when the tie-ins are too long and complicated that people get confused and pissed off. I suspect this is why Adventure paths work. A year long subscription is about the right length where taking a decade to know the whole story isn't. Second, we have a request for them to put more old stuff out on CD. It's sold quite decently, so they fully intend to have a few more products in that vein. Two more letters in praise of Bruce Cordell's machine work, although they both include the caveat that maybe Dragon is being a little too Wizard-centric. I think we can say that's an accurate criticism. As ever, the fact that they're the ones writing the story also means they get the greatest amount of cool new stuff. Some nitpicking over biology terms. The usual thing that shows up whenever someone tries to bring real world elements into the fantastical universe. And finally, a letter of generalised praise. Because they still need their ego boosts. Keeps the office running more smoothly than if they're beset by nitpicking fanboys who seem impossible to please, yet refuse to actually go away. Nodwick stands by his principles in a world where henchmen are becoming commercialised and bastardised. They know nothing of the true spirit of henching! <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" /> Aaron Williams delivers another amusing illustration in quick succession. He is doing rather well at the moment. Forum: Jennifer M. Formosa describes some cool locations from her own campaign. These are decently linked together by the story's thread. Don't see stuff like this much round here. Kevin McMahon is one of those people who sees nothing much wrong in the system as it is. Wizards are neither over or underpowered. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="O_o" title="Er... what?    O_o"  data-smilie="12"data-shortname="O_o" /> David R Boruch is another person who wants the custom class creation rules from the DMG (and issue 109) made into the standard method of customising your character, with the standard classes merely as examples of those maths. Daniel Thomson points out that all the new rules for greater weapon specialisations reduce the role of magic plusses in the game. Whether that's a good or bad thing is still very much up for debate. Rex V. Settle thinks substituting prepared for memorised would be the right terminology for spellcasting. Just don't expect any royalties for it. Mike Walko thinks thieves are the class that most needspowering up, particularly in terms of combat prowess. They ought to be highly accurate, damage inflicting monsters. The change to strikerdom begins. Dirk Keaton thinks monks really need a special power that reflects how much faster they can hit than someone with most weapons. You may well be in luck, depending if you think the solution they give goes far enough. Colin Daniels thinks AC ought to start from 0 and go up. Lots of people would prefer ascending AC's it seems.</blockquote>

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