Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5875471" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 272: June 2000part 5/7Oh, this is a terrible advert for die, vecna, die! You really are not selling us on it by trashing the old edition, even before the new one is out. The ecology of the hydra: Looks like the ecologies are eager to make the changeover, with this one dual-statting all it's crunchy bits. Other than that, it's business as usual, with the association of monster hunters being their impetuous and arrogant selves, and suffering rather for it. High intelligence, looooooow wisdom. And terrible at dealing with women. With social skills like this, who needs vows of celibacy? As usual, plenty of research on the creatures mythical antecedents is done, as well as extrapolation on it's capabilities as a multiheaded creature. Thankfully, like ettins, brains are not among the things it's many heads grants it, so it can be defeated more easily than say, a dragon. A fairly average ecology, this pretty much sticks to the usual formulas for this group, although it does introduce what looks like a new recurring character. Gotta keep the dynamics from getting stale somehow. Shop keep does the pedant thing. The new adventures of Volo: Another chance here for Ed to demonstrate his ability to whip up cool stuff in such quantity that there's no way it could all fit into a conventional book format. All those little quotes he's come up with from various characters that never got incorporated into novels, or put at the beginning of chapters of sourcebooks get offloaded here, lightening his pile of unpublished stuff a bit more. Like Oscar Wilde, it seems he has quite the supply of pithiness, and has invented a ridiculous number of fictional books written within the setting. We know by now the Realms has basic printing press technology, and a long history, so that's not too credibility stretching. A more interesting question is how many of these authors actually have histories, stats, and mentions elsewhere, and how many were just names made up on the spot. Lots of geeky fun combing other books and articles to be had here then. Not only an amusing reading, but one that looks like it'll get extra value with a bit more hindsight. Gamma Squirrels & Mutant Moose: They're referencing the old Rocky & Bullwinkle RPG TSR did in the late 80's? They never mention that! Even more than Buck Rogers, (but not as much as the All my children RPG, which was never even mentioned in the magazine ) this is something that gets left out of a lot of histories. But they're not actually converting any setting material from the cartoon, just using it  as a secondary reference while they give us gamma world material, which is a slight disappointment. Of course, rules for creating mutated anthropomorphic animals can be applied to many settings, so it's easy enough to genericise this material. This certainly looks like another article that'll help you play Alternity for a while longer, and do different things with it. My main issue is with the sudden mood whiplash between the gonzo artwork and intro, and the dry and serious contents. Methinks whimsy is not Andy Collins forte, and he was forcing the tie-in a little. The wisdom of (Corey) Solomon: Oh dear. The guy in charge of the D&D movie is a first time director who's been trying to get it off the ground for nearly 10 years. And they're apologising for the low budget. However you spin that, and they're trying hard to be positive, it doesn't make this look like a promising prospect. Also, casting Tom Baker as an elf? That didn't really work, did it. Richard O' Brien as a master thief who sends the heroes into a maze though, that was just obvious in an amusing fashion. They're also making it obvious that there'll be a fair bit of cheese involved (which really, you should have figured out last month when they said a Wayans brother is involved. ) Already, our hopes of getting a serious treatment of the subject matter is fading. You think this will sell us on the movie? Even without the knowledge of hindsight, this would make me skeptical. This is going to be even more of a struggle for them than I thought. Wizards live: Virtually every day apart from thursdays is packed this month, although once again, more than half of it is TCG material, which shows how much of their market share that makes up. Skip does Sage Advice live again, which must be a fairly popular one, and Monte Cook explains the new barbarians in a bit more detail. Nothing particularly surprising here, so I have nothing more to say. Just another promotional article.</blockquote>

Verification