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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6082398" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 307: May 2003 part 2/9Zogonia engages in epic fail. Guess the party hierarchy is staying the same for the time being. Up on a soapbox: Gary brings up another benefit of having a stable of players that delves into the same megadungeon, but not in the same combination each time. If one team gets killed or captured, another one can go in and rescue them, thus preserving continuity and allowing the campaign to continue onwards despite losing an individual encounter. Plus it definitely makes for good stories where everyone gets to laugh about it later, despite it being terribly harrowing in actual play, and one character rescuing another is a very bond-forming experience. (which will hopefully lead to them returning the favour in the future, not becoming bitter and betraying them because they're sick of always living in their shadow. ) So as with the editorial, this reminds us that you can run formats other than the 4 player team which never splits up, and your game will be the richer for it due to the multiple perspectives. Keep fighting against attempts to homogenise the rules and playstyle. That way leads only to boredom and diminishing returns. House rules: Our house rule this month is one that was pretty much canon in previous editions. Racial reaction modifiers. Like Weapon speeds, and modifiers vs specific kinds of armor, this was partly dropped because it was often ignored in actual play, and partly because they wanted to encourage greater variety in races between campaigns, and a relationship table just for all the monsters that can become PC's in the first MM would sprawl over several pages. And to be honest, not one I can see myself bothering with. I've never been a fan of monoculture, so I'd only use it when it looks like the players are going to stop in a particular area for a full adventure or more, where there is a definite set of racial demographics and regular exposure for stereotypes and conflicts to develop. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort, and I can quite understand why they didn't keep it in the 3.0 revision. Open skies: Another chunky guild article is our first feature this month. In issue 304 we had an article on intelligent flying mounts, and how to use them in your game. Now we have a guild full of them and their riders. There's a lot of attention paid to the politics of this, with an insistence that the rider and mount are equal partners who both have things to contribute. Which also means they have to fight a constant battle against quadruped bigotry and enslavement in unenlightened regions, which is both amusing and provides an endless source of adventure hooks. The history and setting detail makes this particularly easy to insert into any campaign, and they have a solid selection of new spells and feats that are well suited to high mobility combat, plus reprints of the stats for air infused creatures, half elemental, and air genasi to keep this accessible to those without supplements. It's a good reminder that you can make life an adventure by actively trying to change the world for the better, not just hunting down and killing those who would take over the world and change it for no-one's benefit but their own. And that nearly anything can have sex with anything and produce offspring in 3e, even humans and sentient columns of air, (maybe they got the idea by watching Marilyn Monroe standing on a grate) which can also lead to tons of adventures just trying to figure out how to raise the kid properly. If any cause is worth adventuring for, it's racial equality and (fully consensual) kinky interspecies sex. I officially endorse this guild. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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