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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6161267" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 327: January 2005part 2/7First watch doubles in size this month, and we get to see the names of the people responsible for writing it. Guess it's got a quick and pretty positive response from the readers, despite (or maybe because of) it's sometimes odd choice of products to cover. Our actual D&D product this month is Complete Adventurer. Rogues, bards, rangers, and anyone else who'd like to get into the skillmonkeying. This means it's focus is a bit vaguer than the previous three, especially in the prestige class area. Still, it does bring back the scout and ninja classes, which have always proved popular. They're also releasing the D&D monster calendar. Interesting. In the past, it's been the Realms or Dragonlance that get pretty add-ons like this. Guess it's another sign of their declining interest in settings. Still, at least it's being released at the right time of year for a change. On the 3rd party D20 side, we have Firey Dragon's Battle Box. A whole array of little items to make your play smoother and more convenient. They seem to be focussing on these quite a lot. Ahh, the joys of making your game crunchy and buff-heavy. It gives you more excuses to sell even more stuff. We also have a report on D&D online, their MMO. Much enthusiasm here, as they aim to create something that'll blow neverwinter nights and baldur's gate away. Oh well, so much for that plan. Hybrid is not the RPG, (if that got mentioned in here, it would be very amusing) but a board game where you battle advanced super-soldiers. Hmm. Seems decent enough. And therefore a bit dull, ironically. There's also some odd stuff, as seems to be their wont. Plush gaming gear, which it seems people are buying for their baby geeks. Excuse me while I have a biological clock moment here. :sigh: And a bunch of net videos. Dungeon Majesty? Hmm. I may have to check this out. Tee hee. This reminds me why I don't watch TV much (aside from the obvious of doing this thread for years. ) Amateur stuff is often more entertaining anyway, precisely because of the obvious flaws. Beyond even that, there's some talk about stuff that isn't exactly products. The issues surrounding their recent attempts at getting into the .pdf market. Ah, yes, DRM and pricing issues. I remember those flamewars. And then the even bigger flamewars when they pulled their stuff again. That was not very cleverly handled. And some promotion for Winter Fantasy, and the RPGA in general. These, on the other hand are not very interesting to read about in hindsight. Tomb Raider: In a sign of the pendulum swinging back a little bit, we start off with a system-light, historically focussed article on real world tombs that's useful for games other than 3e D&D. Egypt was the biggest draw for potential tomb robbers, with their thousands of years of spectacular pyramid building, but china probably has the biggest single one, filled with terracotta solidiers and other weirdness, including quite possibly the bodies of the architects. The trouble with these kind of dungeons is that many of them have already been cleared out, and those that aren't are either obscure or well known, and any attempts to break into them will result in trouble with the law as well as whatever monsters and traps are inside them. So unless you're in a place where people regularly make more, or discover an entire abandoned town to investigate, you will have to move on fairly soon after a few big raids. The life of an adventurer in the real world is not a stable one. Best to hope that you can make a big profit on one or two big ventures, and then invest it well if you want to ever retire.</blockquote>

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