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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6133886" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 319: May 2004part 1/891(108) pages. While the Realms may have by far the most material, it looks like Athas is still on top in the number of specials it's got in the magazine. And for all that food is supposed to be scarce on Athas, they sure do manage to produce some serious beefcake. I suppose no matter how tough the world, the people on top will always be able to commandeer an amount of resources orders of magnitude greater than the huddled masses. Whether they use it for good or evil is another question entirely. And of course, there's the question of how much they'll focus on the gritty aspects of the setting, given that 3e is generally less interested in fine setting details and low powered NPC's. Guess it's time to brave the harshest wilderness of all again, and hope we can sniff out water before the defilers ruin the remaining oases. Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, ad-free scan. In this issue:Wyrms turn: The editorial, as is often the case these days, seems to be actively going against the things they put in the articles. This time, it's giving the players fair, CR appropriate encounters. Safe to say that they sometimes get thrown into situations that are way above their power level, and are expected to actually pay attention to warnings of certain death. Another example of how they have to write 3e articles aimed at a different kind of play, and lower expected skill levels than they have themselves. Which is probably a frustrating business in general. They can't just make adventures and campaigns that they'd want to play if they were in our shoes. So we get to read about the fun they're having, and then figure out how much of the rules to ignore to get there. It's not surprising I get fed up with them having to deal with this. Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who really enjoyed the Novel themed issues, and wants some more of them. They decide they'll go for greater quantity and less depth, and institute a regular column on converting book stuff to D&D in the same way Silicon Sorcery does. That way they have another easy method to get ideas and fill a few pages each month without wearing out their welcome.Secondly, we have a letter complaining there's too much disconnected crunch in the magazine at the moment, and not enough expanding on existing things. We can only use so many prestige classes at once. They accept that yes, they may have gone too far in one direction, and will look towards swinging the other way this year. And so the wheel of creativity continues to turn. Third, we have a generally positive letter that suggests they ought to do more fiction again. This they're slightly more cagey about. They intend to stick to stuff by established authors only from now on, so you won't be making any fresh young discoveries around here. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> Finally, we get reminded that once upon a time, there was an AD&D Trivia Game. There were also colouring books and calendars, you know. They produced a lot of cheesy crap back in the day. Some, they still do.</blockquote>

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