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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5813316" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999part 1/7116 pages. Volcanos! Jungles! Savages! I can certainly see the thematic links there, even if they don't actually spell out the issue's theme. It's time for a journey into the rougher side of nature, the bits the druids don't talk about when they're trying to recruit newbies by talking up how awesome maintaining the balance is. Or maybe they do, because you want a certain number of people who don't mind blowing stuff up with lightning bolts, earthquakes and flame strikes. I guess you've got to tailor your spiel to your audience. Guess I should see if they've tailored this issue to my preferences. Scan Quality: Excellent, indexed. In this issue:The wyrms turn: Another double length actual play story this month, as Dave tells us a particularly entertaining tale of the DM introducing special guest star PC's who may or may not be traitors, and the effect this had on the game. Since these guys are consummate professionals, this actually went pretty well, and when taken over by dopplegangers, they took to their new roles with sadistic glee. So this shows that despite recently saying you should always play heroic characters, deep down, they want to cut loose and do horrible things when they can get away with it as much as anyone. It's also a strong reminder that you can have sex, gore and PvP in a game and have a lot of fun as long as everyone can handle it. You can't spend all your time in safe happy parental guidance land. (and even there some shows slip quite a bit past the censors) Take some risks, do something that they'll definitely remember, even if you aren't certain they'll like it. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than hang around bored. D-Mail: We kick off with a letter about MUD gaming. It's not doing too badly for itself, although it'll never really become a huge mainstream thing, and as the internet becomes faster and more commercialised, they eventually get sidelined by more visually flashy mediums. WotC never do do one, although White Wolf had a rather busy one on their site back in the day. I do have a certain soft spot for them, although really, I do regret losing a couple of years due to MU* addiction back then. Oh well. It's not a proper vice if you don't regret it, and I always did suck at the sex, drugs and rock and roll thing. We follow up with some general praise, with a minor criticism. While modern art looks better, it's not always as useful as functional diagrams and maps. A very important lesson. Why spend all that extra money if it doesn't benefit the player? Then we have a letter from someone who's found Dungeoncraft very useful in their actual play experience. The kind of letter that encourages them to keep it on next year when they look at their roster and consider a revamp. A little more cliche twisting is added to the mix, hopefully giving us some more ideas to use in our own game. A really interesting idea to create a computer-aided module that automatically scales with your characters, with computer aid. Not too hard to implement, really, but they'll stick to regular paper ones that don't do this more than a couple of levels up or down. And finally, we have a complaint about them cropping their cover images and plastering them with promotional gumph. Sorry, their covers are just going to get more irritatingly cluttered in the next few years. Apparently they need all that promotion. Nodwick faces his most encumbrance-busting lift yet.</blockquote>

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