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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6126242" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 316: February 2004part 7/8Countdown to Eberron: The attempts to sell Eberron as a highly inclusive setting where any of the standard stuff can be used continues. This time, they talk about all the standard classes, (including psionic ones) and introduce the Artificer (although they only fully detail the first 5 levels) to us. Each has setting material aimed at them, and specific places they can come from. In addition, they talk about their overall philosophy on PC classes in the setting. If you belong to one, even if you're low level, you're still already a cut above the norm, with most NPC's belonging to less impressive NPC classes like expert or magewright. They've learned the lessons from bloated metaplots of the past, and newer games like exalted that let PC's feel like big players right from the get-go. Even low level D&D characters get superhuman pretty quickly. It's only the even more powerful opposition that makes them still feel small. You've just got to get your demographics right. So this is pretty interesting, because it shows once again how different their design process is these days, compared to the old ones where every single setting had to have an advancing timeline, novels, and iconic NPC's who got to do cooler stuff than you, because that was simply an automatic assumption by the writers after it worked for Dragonlance and the Realms. The setting should support the players, not overshadow them. These do seem very much like positive changes. They might not be giving the old settings much attention, but at least they're thinking carefully about what to do with the current ones. DM's toolbox: The toolbox this month covers that old headache of character intelligence vs player intelligence. Which should take precedence when you encounter an IC puzzle? Johnn decides not to be judgemental on this matter, but instead present a whole load of hybrid options that make your intelligence score still significant, but not a carte blanche solution in itself. Keying the amount of time they have or number of clues, give them more probable possibilities for the consequences of their actions, allow for more OOC discussion with other players, and being more generous when it comes to reminding them of previous campaign events are various ideas floated that'll give mechanical weight to your stats while not allowing the players to abstract everything away. After all that's the essence of a roleplaying game, it bridges the gap between freeform let's pretend and purely mechanistic boardgames. As usual, this column has some pretty decent advice that's worth listening too.</blockquote>

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