Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6139148" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 320: June 2004part 5/8Elminsters guide to the Realms: It can't be easy to keep coming up with fresh material for a world that has literally hundreds of sourcebooks and novels. Case in point, what we get here is yet another tavern. A rowdy place with overpriced drinks and lots of gambling, designed to keep adventurers away from "decent folks" and make sure their sudden influxes of money don't destabilise the economy. The Realms being fairly adventurer heavy means any authorities that last develop ways to keep them from causing too many problems without presenting an obvious target to overthrow. The illustration is particularly good this month, really making the place look simultaneously impressive and debauched, and detailing the various games and sports you can blow your money on. And as he has done before, Ed also provides details on the games which make the world feel like a real place where people do things other than adventure and whatever is needed to survive and make a living. Looks like he still has plenty of variants on the theme of living, breathing adapting world to give to us. Dragonmarks, dragonshards and dynasties of power: Eberron is out now, so they drop the teaser format and go to regular articles. Last month we heard about how magic is integrated into the setting, despite PC class wizards not being hugely common.  Magewrights were one part of that, letting the working man use magic routinely without the vast flexibility and offensive power being a wizard would give them. The other is Dragonmarks, which represent the advantage you have being born into a bloodline of power, and feel like an attempt to synthesize the disparate themes of Red Steel and Birthright while also making the result more robust and balanced in terms of rules. As most of the members of a particular house gain a consistent set of spell-like abilities, this means they have a natural advantage at appropriate businesses, and since they already have relatives in the field, it's easy to get in, make money and stay on top. Nice to see they're not afraid to deal with real world issues of nepotism and guild legbreaking. <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=":)" /> If you want to focus on these powers, you can spend feats or take a 5 level prestige class to get more, more powerful, and more frequent related powers. This is another article that feels pretty cool, showing you just how many new options the new setting gives you to build interesting characters with, while also keeping it from being a prejudice free utopia where everyone gets along regardless of species. Some people being born with a big head start in the race of life is a strong motivator for plots, whichever side your characters are on.</blockquote>

Verification