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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5958619" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 283: May 2001part 4/7The D&D player's movie marathon: A little while ago, we looked at appropriate music to soundtrack your games. We continue that new interest in multimedia by looking at fantasy movies to draw inspiration from. Of course, there's the problem that a lot of these old movies are pretty cheesy, and even the ones that looked good at the time have not all dated well. And that tastes are very subjective. So this devotes as much time to going over the bad as it does the good, with films that you'll want to laugh at, or maybe with, as well as the serious epics. The two writers disagree with each other on numerous points, especially Highlander, and use this rivalry to make the article all the more interesting, adopting a conversational style that the simple but expressive art style reinforces. If this was done now, the list would be very different, given the number of high budget fantasy films that have come out over the last decade. (although not as much as the upswing in films based on comic books) So this is a little dated, but still a very entertaining article indeed, that adds a lighthearted touch to the magazine even though April is over, and reminds us that we really do have it better than we did a few decades ago in terms of media. Now the real challenge is finding the time to watch everything good that's out there, which is hardly a tragedy at all. My character would do that!: Once again Robin Laws encourages you to metagame to make your play experience better. Don't just decide what would be in and out of character for your character in vacuum, and then be obstructive when the plot doesn't go your way. Talk to the DM and other players, and figure out a compromise that satisfies everyone. And that doesn't mean just figuring out a reason to follow the DM's plot of the week. It means making clear what you characters would like to be doing beforehand, so they can have appropriate material prepared next week. It means knowing the other players, and what they're likely to do in a situation. And yes, it will mean accepting you can't have it all your way all the time. Basically, it's about accepting that a few OOC spoilers won't enjoy your enjoyment of the plot, and may actually enhance it, and that resolving things through rational discussion is usually preferable to being a pretentious auteur with an Artistic Vision that you're not willing to share for fear or ruining the mystique. Put that in your swine pipe and smoke it. Once again, he's got some pretty good ideas you ought to pay attention too. Fiction: Garden of souls by Richard Lee Byers. One way the 3e realms will differ quite a bit from it's 2e incarnation will be a greater interest in what happens to people after they die. This is one of those stories, where an evil force is hijacking souls from their natural destination and trapping them in a demiplane for it's own nourishment, and the protagonist has to solve that, despite being underpowered, without equipment in an alien landscape. This means there's plenty of drama and high emotional stakes involved, cool action scenes, and a moderate amount of philosophical stuff too. So this is one of those cases where I'm suspicious of the overall design direction, knowing how much drama the wall of the faithless caused later on, but won over by the writing. Codifying what happens in the afterlife for a setting closes more plot avenues than it creates, but those ones can be more interesting than the generic ones we deal with in stories set on earth. Class acts: Another odd duck here, with the flame steward, another primary fighter and spellcaster with their own spell list, that really requires you to dip through another spellcasting class first to get into it. (although you could theoretically avoid it if you played a ranger or paladin and sucked up the cross class skill ranks. ) Like with the psi-hunter, this is probably worth it, as not only do you get lots of thematic flame based powers, you also get to turn half your fire damage into divine damage, so your theme doesn't get ruined by the many monsters that are immune to fire based attacks. Which is an important trick, and one we'll see over and over again. Another pretty decent entry, albeit still not one that can compete with a fully buffed CoDzilla. Then again, people would probably complain if it was, so there you go.</blockquote>

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