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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6052445" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 299: September 2002part 3/10Campaign Components - Knights: A 22 page special feature? Well, they definitely have a lot to say about knightly stuff then. Methinks they're trying to create another special feature that'll have people talking about it for years to come. Course, there's a leeetle problem with that. The likes of the Nine Hells or Man vs Machine were packed with personal inventiveness by the writers involved. This is a historical conversion that's carefully designed to be as modular as possible, provide a bunch of tools that'll help you achieve your vision, rather than providing one for you premade. Which means it runs into the kind of problem you get contrasting a point buy system like GURPS to one heavily married to it's settings like WoD or Palladium. The mechanics may be better, but the result is far less interesting to read. This is not helped by the fact that their new Campaign components structure is trying way too hard to please everyone. Want to run a low magic medieval game? You got it! Want to put a bit of knightly stuff into your existing campaign? You got it! Want to know how to adapt the basic idea to other worlds and cultures, You got it! Want to have a more elaborate knight-centric morality system that's blatantly ripped from Pendragon? You oh so got it squire! Basically, this article is the written embodiment of the nice guy who's trying oh so hard to win a girl, buying her tons of stuff and following all the rules on how romance is supposed to work, only to see her go home with the goth bad boy at the end of the night, baffled why all his hard work didn't pay off. I know I ought to like it, and I could take it home to meet my parents with no problem, but I can't stop myself from yawning all the way through, with occasional giggles at how pathetically eager it is. It's appropriate, in a way, given the topic, but also very frustrating. Still, it is their first time. Those are often a bit messy. There's a good chance they'll do better with their next themed issue in this vein. Oath & Order: The accusation that they're spending a lot of time on tie-ins continues to hold a fair bit of weight, with this little article detailing a couple of prestige classes from their latest novel. Turns out, Nerull has an order of monks devoted to killing <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=":)" /> and subtly corrupting other orders of monks. While he might not be lawful himself, the same one-step rule that clerics use applies, so it's not impossible for lawful evil monks to decide the god of death might be leading the winning team, and become zen about the concept of everything eventually becoming corrupt and decayed. And besides, there's always kidnapping someone and alternately torturing and talking to them until stockholm syndrome sets in. So there is indeed a lot of fun flavour text with this one, and the powers are a pretty good diversion from the regular monk selection, with the ability to deliver scythelike crits and possess people in a very similar way to Yak-men. Less of a departure is the Monk of the Enabled Hand, who'll trade off the higher level transformative powers for the ability to smack enemies around in more versatile ways. Since they're not too hard to get into, they may tempt at lower levels, but I don't think it's the optimal long-term path to enlightenment. So one good prestige class, one meh, that's a solid enough batting average.</blockquote>

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