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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5802727" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 263: September 1999part 7/7The world of the Tsa: Another race that's already got the spotlight in the magazine gets a second one. The Tsa's notable features are their speed, short lifespans, and large broods, which result in a fast developing society with complex social structures that can leave humans confused and worried they're going to be outcompeted. After all, they're the only race that went interstellar on their own, and can fill up a world far faster than we could. Fighting a long-term war with them would be a losing proposition. Good thing they're so skilled at making friends with other races as well. Sincere sociability'll beat being a machiavellian manipulator more than half the time. So it seems plenty of thought has gone into both making their culture fit their biology, and making sure they aren't too disruptive to a group. They don't want to make the Kender mistake again. Although maybe they should have, given the two properties respective success levels. :/ Oh well, this is a pretty good article, like most of those in this series, with several interesting bits of crunch along with the setting expansion. With plenty of planets to come from, they can avoid monoculture as well. With another year to go before they get rid of this column, they should have a few more good articles for me yet. This months design contest is for gods. You get a full 1,500 words for this one. How generous of them. Dragonmirth mocks the modern youth. The puzzles are particularly devilish this issue. KotDT fail their min-maxing rolls. TSR Previews: Council of Wyrms gets rereleased. Vaguely surprised this one was popular enough to merit that. I guess new PC types are always popular. In a similar vein, our new generic release is Warriors of Heaven. Celestial PC's for those of you who find paladins aren't uptight enough. <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" /> The Realms gets a double helping as usual. The Wyrmskull throne takes you under the sea of fallen stars to deal with the titular dubious artifact. What unfortunate effects does owning this one have? Meanwhile, R. A. Salvadore is going pretty high up in The Spine of the World. Wulfgar and Drizzt continue to have their issues. Will they get over them, or will it be left on a cliffhanger for the end of a trilogy to resolve? Dragonlance gets The Siege of mount Nevermind by Fergus Ryan. Dwarves and gnomes working together. An unbeatable combination, even if more than few bad jokes will be told in the process.  Alternity tries to boost it's popularity by releasing a fast-play thingy to help you get new people in. Incident at Exile gives you another simplified setup you can probably do in a single session. Anyone try this? ProFiles: Bill Slavicsek is definitely one of our big names these days. Star wars, Torg, Council of Wyrms, Dark sun, Planescape, he's produced a lot this decade, and got his finger in all sorts of pies. He's been a writer, an editor, a designer, and now he's one of the head directors, putting him in a good position to put his stamp on the development of the next edition. Was his influence one of the things that helped draw people back into gaming? Or is it dragging things in a direction you hate? He certainly believes in what he's doing, and will continue to experiment with   design and pushing the limits of what you can do with gaming. And if you don't like it, the old games are still right there. One of our more interesting interviews from one of our more notable interviewees. So yeah, I think this definitely counts as a significant issue, and one that's going to get quite a few responses in the next few months. It can't be that huge a surprise to most people, but everyone wants something different from the next edition, and there's everything to gain or lose. And as the rest of the issue has one of the highest rehash counts ever, I think I can say that it hasn't come a moment too soon. I just hope that they can manage at least a few cool new articles before the next edition drops, and I won't be dealing with a whole extra year of boredom. Well, let's continue the countdown.</blockquote>

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