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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6043074" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 297: July 2002part 8/10Elminsters guide: Most of these guides are illustrated in friendly nature tones, greens, blues, yellows and browns. This month we go for a rather starker palette, a snowbound cavern in the far north. Given the hostility of the surroundings, you might well take shelter in it on the way to somewhere else, which leads to more complicated adventures. Especially if your players take the prophecies delivered by the cryptic oracle at the bottom seriously. That will only have funny results for they are very much false. Once again, the fact that Ed is the only one with enough detail in his worldbuilding to hide amusing red herrings amongst the significant parts of his world and have it feel natural is fairly significant really. What other settings have managed this kind of detail. Maybe I should look into the more obscure supplements for Glorantha or Tekumel, since it's been a long time since either of them appeared in the magazine, and I know they've had tons of development over the years. Surely someone else is managing the same kind of detail, albeit with a different flavour, and I think I'd like to sample that for the variety. Campaign news: They continue to tweak the Living Greyhawk rules, in some ways becoming more restrictive, and in others less. The rules on living in a particular real world region to run an adventure in a particular Greyhawk one are causing problems, so they won't be strictly enforced for large conventions. However, magical items are now a bit trickier to make, requiring you to actively collect appropriate ingredients in your adventures, and the number of adventure formats is being reduced. Shows once again that they don't always get it right, and a living game needs constant adjustment to stay functional. For the moment, the overall trend is towards more rules. Will that ever reverse? Looking at most governments, it seems unlikely. Champions of vengeance: Our other greyhawk article this month is another prestige class, along with the extra history and sample characters they can get away with thanks to it being anchored in a specific world. The Knights of the Chase are basically chaotic good rangers (although it's pretty easy for other classes to get in too) who specialise in tracking and punishing miscreants when they catch them. Basically divinely empowered bounty hunters, they gain two appropriate animal companions, enhanced throwing skills, and the ability to magically enforce their punishments. They seem decent enough, especially since their spellcasting at 10th level is equal to a 20th level paladin or ranger, giving them plenty of room to get a few levels into another prestige class before hitting epic levels. After all, every group hates it when an adversary repeatedly escapes and becomes a recurring villain, especially if they use cheaty tricks to accomplish it. I can definitely see players wanting to specialise their builds in making sure that doesn't happen again.</blockquote>

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