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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5878748" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 273: July 2000part 1/7132 pages. Arr! There be pirates on this cover! Don't recall them doing that before. Space pirates, (issue 217) but not regular ones. Guess they're still not completely tapped out for the final 2e issue. Inside, it looks like the theme is swashbuckling, which is another popular topic that maybe hasn't got the coverage it could have, with just a half-hearted theme in issue 219 and a few other articles through the years. We've revisited the sky and ocean recently and found new things to say, now let's blow a kiss to the audience, sweep our cloak dramatically, and leap out the window into the darkness!Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, centrepiece missing. In this issue:The wyrms turn: In one way, time is linear, and you can't really go back (because if you do, it causes all manner of causality problems. In others, a lot of it is cyclical, and you do the same things with minor variations on a regular basis. In a monthly magazine, those cycles are a little longer than some jobs, but they are there, and do become routine soon enough. And eventually, you have to take a break from them. Which may become a routine in itself, such as taking yearly holidays. Which establishes another new cycle you'll eventually have to break. Life is complicated. Even chaos naturally falls into certain patterns. But at least we're about to see some pretty major changes around here. Yup, we're in philosophical mode again for this editorial. After all, they're worried if they're making the right decisions, or it'll all fall apart in their face. Well, it's too late to turn back now. Even as we speak, the books are shipping to game stores across the world. All you can do now is keep looking for errata for the next printing to fix, and get to work on those first few supplements. D-Mail: We start off with the quite valid worry of how easy 3e will be to teach to newbies. Good question. Increasing the consistency and organisation of the rules does have it's benefits. But we're still talking about hundreds of pages over 3 books just to play the core game. It's probably better than AD&D, but nowhere near as easy to pick up as the old basic sets. We then have to deal with the old problem of specific vs general articles. They have to balance the problems of getting wide appeal with not repeating themselves, and there's plenty of people on both sides of the argument. Next we have a letter from someone who seems to want half the regular columns cut, particularly those that don't provide more gaming stuff. You know that's a dangerous path. If you cut out everything that you think is filler to only do the most popular stuff, you may well wind up with a smaller audience, not a bigger one. Man can not live on gold alone. Another couple of mostly positive letters with minor nitpicks follow. One wants Greyhawk to get coverage outside the RPGA, while the other wants the return of reviews in the magazine. Neither are going to get their wishes. The ways of the company are strange and inscrutable, and they don't want to pretend to objectivity anymore. A letter from someone who loves what they've seen of 3e so far, and can't wait for it to arrive. I think most of the readers are in that boat by now, even the ones who aren't sure just want it over and done with. A year is a long time to build anticipation. And finally some good old fashioned historical nitpicking. Will we ever know for sure what happened in ancient egypt? Would it stop the arguments if we did develop a device that let us open a window to the past and see everything? Probably not. There'd still be too much data to get an unambiguous result. Nodwick gets examined for his serious case of nasal expansion.</blockquote>

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