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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6148634" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 323: September 2004part 4/8Demon Stone: A second computer game article in the same issue? Looks like they need to keep up their quota of self-promotion. Unlike Silicon Sorcery, this is pure teaser material for their latest action-focussed D&D conversion. Featuring R. A. Salvadore's Drizzt, real-time control of three characters simultaneously, and lots of cut-scenes to advance the plot! Sounds very of it's time, as they're selling mechanical elements that are now fairly mundane as if they're a big deal. Looking at reviews shows this was another decent success, but not a breakout like the Neverwinter games, in part for being just too short. If you try too hard to make it about a linear story, people won't make it their own and build upon it in interesting ways. This applies to computer games just as much as tabletop RPG's. Seven deadly domains: The NWoD was launched last month, making Virtues and Vices an integral part of your character in the same way alignment is in D&D - an important choice, but too broad to completely define your character's nature. Given their leadup times, it's an interesting co-incidence that they do an article on the 7 deadly sins here as well. And just like there, while indulging in them may be bad from a moral point of view, it's good from a story point of view, and even many good gods have particular flaws in their personality, so there's a lot of drama to be found in incentivising being naughty mechanically. Which in a roundabout way, leads us to these 7 new themed domains for your cleric to take, most of which have at least one new spell not normally on their list, plus an appropriate granted power that'll make being bad feel a little sweeter. They add them to the domain lists of plenty of existing gods, so it's not hard for you to take them if you feel the desire, and many of the new spells are available to other classes as well. This is another interesting article that gives me plenty to talk about, so It's another success in my book. See no evil: A second examination of the nature of sin and how it should be handled in D&D. Detect Evil can be a problem in campaigns because it can wind up as an excuse to kill people just because they must be guilty of something, even if it's not the specific crime you're thinking of, and because morality is an incredibly subjective business that can cause endless irritating debate. There is a very good reason that they flat-out stopped it from working in Ravenloft. So this article introduces a selection of interesting substitutes that you could put in your campaign. Detect Attitude lets you tell if someone is friendly or hostile to you personally, which is actually pretty handy in political situations, but not when dealing with strangers who haven't had a chance to establish an opinion yet. Detect Guilt lets you tell if someone has misdeeds eating them up inside. Of course, this means you're more likely to wind up punishing the good people who make occasional lapses than the true bastards. Detect Heresy only works on someone who follows your religion, (or is pretending they do, in which case they glow like a sore thumb. ) and detects how well they stick to it's specific strictures. This is again quite subjective, as it keys off your specific denomination, so catholics and protestants can still wind up fighting without god stopping them. Detect Violence lets you analyse how recently and often nasty stuff goes down in an area, but leaves out the whos and whys. So they're all much easier tools to adjudicate than detect evil/good, while having specific issues that mean you can't just use them to solve a plot effortlessly. You've got to select the right tool for the job, and having several at once won't be redundant in a social heavy campaign. A very interesting article indeed. Why couldn't they have had mature, thoughtful articles like this in issue 300 instead of going for the gross-outs?The ecology of Chokers: Hmm. They don't normally use the plural in the creature title for these articles. How quirky. In any case, chokers are one of those creatures that has come off pretty well from the edition change, increasing in popularity and widespreadness of use. Amusingly, this is reflected in setting, with their being a relatively recent and spreading introduction to the underdark. In contrast to last month's ecology, they get a quite dry and utilitarian description, and since it's pretty dumb, they don't bother with the team tactics bit this time round. Not a particularly enthralling ecology, with no great surprises or new insights. The main notable point is that they start using the lists of specific knowledge DC's to determine just how much you know about the creature, that also became common in books around this time. I suppose that's a fairly decent refinement. I wonder if they'll remember to do that reliably.</blockquote>

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