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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6268761" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 2part 2/6The Ninja: And these, like samurai, serve to remind us that orientophillia was common in roleplaying right from it's birth, since martial arts movies were big in the early 70's. For whatever reason, people just couldn't resist making oriental classes more powerful than their western counterparts. So it proves here, with another article that's a grab bag of cool powers in no particular order, and some seriously messy mechanics, like the strange HD progression and small chance of fooling alignment detection. Anyone who tried to play one of these in a party with other classes would be most irritating. It just rubs in once again how much their writers and editors had to learn about making rules that not only held up under examination, but were easy to read in the first place. And this is supposed to be a best of. I got nuthin. The new, improved Ninja: And a year later, we got another load of powers, nearly all of which are simply added onto the existing class, and accessible from 1st level, making them even more powerful with no price or drawback. They're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. I find it very odd just how inferior the collection of classes here is compared to the last best of, where they all made it into the official books. They really ought to have given it 3 or 4 years to get more good material, instead of rushing them out as fast as they could, and in the process bringing back lower quality stuff from the same issues as before.  FROM THE SORCERORS SCROLL: In the early years of TSR, Gary had to put in a LOT of work to keep things going. This included the magazine, where he contributed something pretty much every issue. Of course, not all of it was good. Ed Greenwood eventually came along, outmatching him in both quantity and consistency, but up to 1985, Gary's columns were one of the most talked about parts of the magazine. So like the classes, I'm really not sure if I'm going to like this, but I'm pretty sure it'll be interesting, because Gary was always forthright with his opinions. Let's see which ones they picked as worth remembering for the ages. D&D Relationships: A whole and it's parts: Ah yes, the whole D&D vs AD&D rigamarole. That confused many people over the years until they reunited the streams for the new millennium. It's no wonder Gary had to explain it. And it's also no surprise that he keeps schtum on the real reason it happened, the disagreements between him and Dave Arneson, and desire to keep him from getting as big a share of the royalties long-term. Not that they didn't need to make a new more self-contained version of the game aimed at new players who had never wargamed, and didn't have the Chainmail booklets to draw upon, but that certainly wasn't the whole story. So this article definitely feels a bit disingenuous in hindsight. Can't let the punters know your weak points. Sigh. Ground and spell area scales: Another old thing that is no longer relevant after several rules revisions and thankfully so. Spell and movement rates being different depending on if you were above or below ground was an awkward kludge that stemmed from D&D's wargaming roots. Even vastly scaled down to 25mm, some things, like bow ranges were still a problem to fit on a table, so they had to fudge things. This is why just using your imagination will always seem more epic. As long as you're using minis, you're bound by their limitations, and the most gargantuan, unstoppable instakilling city-threatening monster they'll ever face will be the family cat. Very glad that I never bothered with them. Realism vs game Logic: Looks like we're going to go through these columns in chronological order, as the first two were from issues 14 & 15, and this one is from issue 16. However, while the first two seemed laughably dated, this one remains very relevant, as it is a war still fought upon internet forums daily.   People claiming a supernatural being or magic system isn't "realistic" are kinda missing the point, since it's supposed to be unrealistic, and working too hard to make a game realistic sucks out the fun anyway. There's a ton of little digressions that aren't so relevant to the current situation, but the big underlying principle remains the same. Just seems to be part of human nature to tinker with the rules, try and make them what you want to do better, and often making a dreadful mess in the process when you don't understand the knock-on effects your changes will make. And as long as we have people dying off and new ones coming in, the same old mistakes will be made again.</blockquote>

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