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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5945062" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 281: March 2001part 1/7116 pages. Here comes the psionic issue. It's popularity may not have been the greatest ever, but it did have more than enough fans that it was near the top of things they wanted to revive for 3e. Course, they made some pretty substantial changes in response to the many people saying psionics was unbalanced before, in the process rendering them much closer to ordinary spellcasters. As with the sorcerer special, that makes it very unlikely the contents of this issue will be rehashed, because even if they do return to topics, they'll have to implement them in very different ways. Once again I can go into this issue feeling fairly positive about the outcome. Don't let me down. Scan Quality: Excelent, unindexed. In this issue:Wyrms turn: Unsurprisingly, the editorial tries to sell you on the new psionics system by talking down the old one. It was unbalanced and didn't interface well with the rest of the system. Which is entirely true. But it was also far more distinct from magic than the new one, able to do things magic couldn't while not doing quite a few things spells handled easily. And if you don't make new classes different from the current ones, there's little incentive to buy the books they're in. Balancing acts are hard work, and sometimes a game is more fun if you don't bother with them at all. I am left suspicious again. This sales pitch is all too familiar, and I can see the strings behind it. Scale Mail: Our first two letters see Monte Cook and Tracey Hickman pitted directly against one-another, trying to sell the case for their playstyles to the general public. They're actually in agreement about far more things than they are conflicting, but that doesn't make a good headline, does it. And in the process it definitely makes for a good story. Who will you side with? The current new hotshot, or the one who created Dragonlance and Ravenloft. Both have fairly substantial fanbases, so this could get ugly. We have another request to convert some more stuff from the old edition, particularly old races and the siege engine rules. Yeah, we could do with some decent mass combat and domain rules for 3e, couldn't we. No arguing there. Similarly, some generic bits of setting, like taverns, castles, shop etc would be quite handy. They may well have something in the pipeline. Got to keep variety up in the content they give us. And finally, we have a rather interesting elaboration on the rudiments of the dwarven language they gave us. With a sufficient vocabulary, you can construct compound words that fill all your other descriptive needs, except perhaps brevity. PROfILES: James Wyatt is a pastor turned D&D writer. Another reminder that for all the accusations of satanicness, both the founders of D&D were Christians, and plenty of it's other important writers have been over the years as well. He had a tricky job getting into the company, as he tried to join up just as TSR went <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> up, but persevered, played the freelancing field until he'd built up enough respect to get in. And now he has a whole bunch of projects in the works, including the second splatbook, the FR monster book, and something top secret (although not actually Top Secret) that he can't talk about yet. He's one of those people who delights in breaking stereotypes, and is very pleased by 3e's massive increases in flexibility. And he's another person who's best work is still to come. We'll be seeing him around these parts plenty more these next few years. Up on a soapbox: Last month, we had a fairly clear delineation between the common and rare elements in people's games. This selection muddies the issue a bit. Exploration and Intrigue both get fairly high marks, while Economics gets a low one, but Politics is somewhere in the middle. Seems to me that is't pretty difficult to do politics without including elements of intrigue and economics as well. After all, if there's nothing to gain or lose, then you're just engaging in social sniping for the hell of it, which even vampires have reservations about. Once again, it shows that going out and seeking adventures in odd locations is still the core play experience, despite all the diversification that's taken place. An adventurer might settle down temporarily, but as long as there's life in the old dog, part of them'll still itch to leave it behind see what's over the next horizon. Of course, if the country you're in tries to restrict travel, that makes adventuring inherently political.  But how many DM's put their players through highly realistic problems like that? So once again, Gary's ruminations have been the spur for a fairly interesting chain of thought. It's good to have things to debate about.</blockquote>

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