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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6034203" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 295: May 2002part 9/10Command points: The new emphasis on many player battles continues in this column with some more tactical advice, graded by ease of use and effectiveness as per last time. The first bit of advice is the most useful here. Maximise your action points so all your units can do something each round, as in a multiplayer fight, you're particularly susceptible to ganging up, so you won't get that many rounds. Setting things up so you can make enemies rout, and then take them down and win the game while they're at a disadvantage is the other big tricky one, requiring knowing your enemies stats, and good use of positioning. The other stuff seems fairly common sense, apart from the reminder that you can move over knocked down models, which is the kind of little rule you can forget in the heat of the action. It seems likely they'll be sticking with this topic for a little while longer, so I'm wondering what else they can do with it. I suppose the more variable you introduce, the more permutations you can create. What else are they discovering about their game that they didn't intend when designing it? The play's the thing: Robin continues from last month, by showing us how different people would describe the same event with lots of examples. Of course, these are less variable than real people writing about the same event because they're all from the same perspective, and all vetted by a professional editor for comprehensibility, so it's not a perfect example. If he really wanted to illustrate this, he wouldn't have written those bits himself, but farmed them out to his players to create. I guess that shows how hard it is to truly get outside your own head. Even professional writers are limited by their own experiences and research, and it can be almost as hard to write below your current skill level as above it. If you want to become a good novelist, working on your ability to think in multiple voices and slip between them is a skill that will serve you well. Once again, Robin is writing filler for this column to make up the page count, but it's still got a fair bit of useful information that you can learn from in there. Silicon Sorcery: Even this column is in theme, talking about using computer design applications to put together your strongholds. Be they simple overhead 2d ones, or the more sophisticated 3d designers that are gradually coming into existence, they can be quite handy in helping you get an idea of proper placement of various elements. Unfortunately, a lot of the time they can also wind up leaving out elements that would be essential in a real fortress. (The endless dilemma of finding a place to go to the toilet) So choose wisely. The eponymously named Stronghold seems to be their favourite, although they point out 5 other options as well. This is one of those articles that definitely feels it's age, with the graphics looking more mid 90's than early 2000's. Maybe there's a difference when things are in motion, but I'm not particularly impressed with how this looks. Makes me wonder what current apps are out that can do this sort of thing, as that'd probably be more useful than trying to hunt down decades old software.</blockquote>

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