Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6270141" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 2part 5/6MONSTERS AND MISCELLANY: Our first two chapters definitely showed the quality hit from sticking to a theme over simply picking the best articles. Since this last one is just another collection of general stuff, hopefully that won't be the case here. Still, they have only had two years to pick up more, so I'm not hugely optimistic. It may well have been just too soon for a second best of. Theory and use of gates: Our first Ed Greenwood piece to make the cut, reminding us that he started making his mark as soon as he was published. This fun little romp certainly fits the bill, taking us through the worlds of Michael Moorcock and Philip Jose Farmer, both of which have plenty of inspiration for your fantasy campaign. Universe-spanning adventures are challenging, but they give you the widest range of options, especially as a DM, and allow for really long campaigns, as you can switch things up whenever they get boring, and put people in universes where their old tricks don't work when they get too powerful. If they're truly an incarnation of the eternal hero, they'll find a way to accomplish awesome things regardless. The whole multiverse is your oyster, get out there and grab some pearls from it the way Ed has. Inns and taverns: Back down to the ground with a bump, with a little general setting stuff. Since PC's will have to stay in inns and taverns unless they have contacts wherever they go, the skill to live off the land, or the magical power to conjure their own lodgings, you do need some info on how to handle them as a DM. As Gary included some stuff like this, complete with price list in the Keep on the Borderlands module with the next D&D basic set, it seems that advice was taken on board as they tried to make the game more user-friendly.  After all, it doesn't take too much space, and it comes in handy pretty regularly, so it makes a lot of sense to keep it in your toolkit. Good evening: Len Lakofka was making contributions to D&D since the Strategic review days, but this was the first one under his Leomund's Tiny Hut column. Since this still feels like an extended Sage Advice piece, nerfing the vampire wherever there is any ambiguity as to the extent of their powers, I'm not very impressed by it, just as I wasn't back in the day. They could definitely have put a more constructive article in it's place. Varieties of Vampires: The sheer number of bloodsucking monsters from myths around the world still amuses me, and this article reminds me that their popularity started before D&D came out, and has never really gone away. Vampires are no more a fad than sex, chocolate or cars. Maybe at some point in the distant future they'll fall out of fashion, but only if the world changes substantially and something else takes their niche in the public consciousness. In the meantime, this collection of 14 variants are easily adapted to other systems, given the small amount of detail each gets, so this article remains useful as inspiration even all these years later. A look at Lycanthropy: This one also seems pretty relevant, given the wide variety of lycanthropes we've seen in fiction, and how the different degrees of transformation and self-control can be multiplied out by the number of animals you could turn into. Even if some bits of the rules are D&D specific, it's another one where the basic concepts serve as a good checklist for other systems, so you can tell the kinds of stories with infectious shapeshifters that you really want too. Course, if you want the hereditary ones, you'll still want to go with White Wolf, but that's a story for another time. We can't work miracles in a two page article. Blueprint for a Lich: Unlike vampires and werewolves, liches are very specific to D&D, and the method for creating them especially so. As with Shades, they prevent them from gaining levels after transforming, which seems to be put there mainly to discourage PC's from becoming one, and would be rapidly thrown out in later editions. This along with all the other fiddly bits here, very much lacks iconic resonance, and it's no surprise that later methods of eternal life are a little easier and less risky. It's very much a means to an end rather than an end in itself, so there's no reasons for wizards to get hidebound about their procedures. Movin' on up.</blockquote>

Verification