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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5852667" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000part 2/7Forum: Thomas B. Knoedler thinks that it's not that thieves are too weak, it's that you don't know how to play them properly. Right back atcha, shifting blame like Margaret Thatcher! If ma flow is ill it's 'cause the beat was crapper. Justin Bacon doesn't think characters should be defined purely by their combat roles. Thieves may not be great in combat, but they are invaluable out of it. They should actually be useful more of the time than fighters. After all, you only spend a tiny amount of time in combat, and what good are they out of it? Chad Atkins wants casting spells to consume calories. Tee hee. Losing weight based on how powerful a spell you cast? That would be a damn good variant kit for Dark Sun, but seems a bit silly otherwise. Emaciatomancy? Bulimeamancy? No, I don't think I could quite take this seriously in actual play. Gregory Rick thinks clerics shouldn't have to memorise spells, but instead call upon their deity on the fly. Sorry, it's arcane casters that are getting that option first. You'll have to wait a few years for Favored Souls to come along.  Christian Tomsey has great praise for his player's between session activities. The web is full of mails of events, background materials, artwork and even poetry. This proves exactly how invested they are in the game. Mucho envy to you guys. Cory Herbst has a campaign where kobolds are the supreme civilisation, and humans are tribal guys raiding them. His players are having a great time as the underdogs. Don't be afraid to make your world drastically different from the norm. James Sheppard is one of the growing number of people who wants to see energy draining sorted out. It ruins campaigns, and bears little resemblance to mythological bloodsucking. There is a reason many Ravenloft variants exchange it for some other power. Joseph Herpler argues against increasing ability scores as standard. You ought to have to work specifically for them, independent of gaining levels. Perfectly reasonable view, if more suited to a skill based game where everything is improved independently. ProFiles: Rob Lazzaretti is this month's profilee, with a rather wide-boyish photo not showing him at his best. He started out as a general artist, but somehow became most well known for his maps, with the planescape ones in particular being his distinctive handiwork. Stretching to two pages, this profile goes into rather more detail than most. They use this column as yet another avenue for promoting the new edition, with plenty of talk on things like his favourite new class and upcoming things he's working on. Still, the format continues to improve, with a proper list of his gaming credits as well as plenty of hints for aspiring artists. Make sure you integrate with the rests of the adventure, otherwise it becomes just pointless eye candy. This is still a valuable part of the magazine. Up on a soapbox: Having talked about fanboys, geeks and nerds, Gary now looks at the definition of munchkin. People who play overpowered characters, and steamroller the opposition via rules lawyering and min-maxing, or simply because their DM is similarly generous with the opposition and treasure. Now, it does have to be said that there's nothing inherently wrong in system mastery, it's all about how you apply it. But that's not the real crux of his argument. No, the real danger to roleplaying is the sophisticates and one true wayers, who sneer at any other playstyle, and drive out people who don't meet their standards, making the game as a whole inaccessible. After all, the fact that people are playing is just as important as how they play, and if you don't get new players in, then roleplaying's demographics will gradually age and shrink. A statement that seems all too relevant these days. How many younger people have you recruited in recent years and how did they play when they started out? Really, this is a strong reminder of two things. If the game isn't fun, there's no point in playing, and if there's no-one to play with then roleplaying games don't work very well, because they're an inherently social hobby. Plus, playing obscene power can be very fun indeed. So once again he's asking us to think hard about our basic assumptions, and whether they'll really make for good gaming in the long term, for us and other people. After all, as the creator of roleplaying, he wants to see his hobby flourish. Now he just needs to get people to listen and put some of this stuff into practice, which is far easier said than done.</blockquote>

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