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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5854482" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 269: March 2000part 4/7Fiction: All too familiar by J Robert King. An intelligent animal features in this story, so it's just about in theme as well. And it is a pretty entertaining one, amusingly free of angst, but with a decent amount of whimsy and plenty of action and plot twists. Technically, if anything, the bad guy wins, but in a practical sense, his own hubris turns out to be his undoing. Which is exactly the kind of thing that makes for good reading, as it avoids the more obvious cliches and goes down it's own route, and does it with style. Just like a good cat would. You know how unpredictable they can be, even if you get them as a litter and raise them the same way. So this is pretty entertaining, and not weighed down with continuity despite being from one of their regular writers. Don't let the marketing people turn everything into a tie-in fest. You know what that did to comics. Arcane Lore: Another one with a single new spell, and a ton of setting blurb. Murq's Mystic Missile is just another variant magic missile. How many of those do we have now? Coming near a dozen. The setting stuff is rather more interesting, with this being another long established but left vague Greyhawk character getting their lives and times (and diabolical plots) filled in. Actually that does seem to be becoming a distinction between Oerth and Toril. Even though Gary may be sorta back, he's no longer in the driving seat of his own world, and other people are working via forensic expansion rather than wholecloth creation. And that's not a distinction that flatters Oerth, really. Plus, overall, this is a continuation of the abrupt drop in usability from last year. I'm really not happy at all about this development. Dragon's Bestiary: Demihuman pets. Now there's an odd omission considering we've seen dwarf bred spiders, gith dogs, Troll dogs, Ilithid baboons, elf enhanced squirrels, and quite a few more things created to serve other things over the years. looks like this is another last minute filling in of symmetries here, for those who'll stick with the old stuff instead of leaping straight to the new edition. Yyllethyn are elven horses. Like most things elf, they're smarter, prettier, longer lived, and slower breeding. Crayghe are elven hawks. Exactly the same proviso as previously apples here. Byut are elven deer, and are too fragile and ethereal to survive in the wild. Useless things. What value is beauty without any practical use? Pennig are halfling ponies, and like their breeders, are amiable, tough little things that can go anywhere there's decent food. No surprises here either then. Twill are our first interesting delivery. Little marsupials domesticated by gnomes, they fill the same role as the little creatures in the moties stories. Able to carry tools in their pouches and reach places little stubby gnome hands can't, they can be a big help in creating incomprehensible and unreliable machinery. <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" /> Stoight are forest gnome's pet of choice, and similarly adorable and quirky. They can scare animals much bigger than them with their sheer speed and viciousness. One of these would make a great pet for an adventurer. Brak Twan are dwarvish digger dogs. They have infravision and typically dwarven tenacity as hunters and guards. Nothing too surprising here again. Guttar are underground oxen that graze on fungi. Don't we already have those, detailed ages ago in Drow of the Underdark. So many supplements to keep track of. Once again, I'm not surprised they've wound up repeating stuff. So I guess the gnomes are the only ones that come out particularly well from this little business. It's easier to avoid getting stale when you don't get as much attention anyway. The ecology of the pseudodragon: Can you guess which set of regulars is most likely to deal with a creature that can become a wizard's familiar? I think you can. It's the monster hunters guild again. And once again, they find themselves at odds with one-another, as the more principled members of the group would prefer that good creatures not be captured and dissected to make magical items for profit. And at least with PvP, one side of the group actually gets to win. Their bit part cast members are also increasingly becoming recurring characters. It all ends rather comically, yet again, with them not dead, but rather humiliated. And no better off financially either. Guess they'll keep muddling along until something stops them for good.</blockquote>

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