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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6100840" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 311: September 2003part 2/9Zogonia want to be an equal opportunities team. Yeah, they'll need to do some serious affirmative action for that to work. And then they get a second strip, where another joke is punctured. Purility sucks. Up on a soapbox: Gary's been off for a good few months, but it's like he was never away, with another comfy old story about his adventures with his kids and friends. This time, it's Luke, aka Melf, that gets the spotlight. Being one of Gary's kids, this obviously meant he got to be one of the most frequent players, and attain some of the highest levels in the entire campaign. But he had his share of challenges and setbacks along the way, including the permanent loss of some of his best magical items. It's a reminder that a campaign shouldn't just be a constant accretion of new gear with higher and higher plusses. You should be using up scrolls and wands, spending money on hirelings and parties, and sometimes having stuff stolen and needing to deal with that. Yet again, the lesson here is not to spoil your players. Sure, they should usually win overall, but losses and casualties should be a very real threat that force them to keep their game sharp, lest they find themselves thrown back to the rookie leagues by a few spectres. And if that does happen, you shouldn't let it deter you. As long as you're alive, you can claw your way back up again. Even injuries and losses that are crippling in reality can be fixed with the right magic. Persist, and your victories will be all the sweeter. Sneak Preview - D&D Miniatures: Chainmail ground to a halt about a year ago after only a couple of supplements. Now it looks like they're relaunching the D&D skirmish game without the setting, and with the rules even further simplified for larger scale action, plus a greater emphasis on the collectible side of things. While Chainmail might not have been a success, they obviously made enough money from selling the minis to give them another try, only with broader, more generic targeting. While they're trying to create a cool set of teasers here, there is that real elephant in the room that WotC hasn't been as good with settings as TSR, and is a lot more ruthless about dropping them when they fail to perform, even if their sales are on a level a smaller company would be absolutely ecstatic about. And since I did like what I saw of Chaimail's setting quite a lot, that's particularly disappointing here. Sure, you can probably still use the old minis with the new game and vice versa, but the romance is gone, and all that's left is the challenge of collecting 'em all, which no longer really does it for me.</blockquote>

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