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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6278199" data-attributes="member: 27780">Best of Dragon Magazine 5part 3/4Keep 'em guessing: Now this is an interesting one to be reminded of. Ed Greenwood's piece on keeping all the rules behind the DM's screen, so the players can concentrate on playing their character rather than number crunching. (and the DM is completely free to fudge for the sake of story whenever they feel like it) That's not something that would have flown in the days of competitive wargaming, and shows how the influx of people who saw it more as an acting and storytelling experience than one where how much stuff you could kill and take was the primary measure of success and advancement changed things over the years. It also foreshadows his love for superpowerful characters who could do things that regular PC's simply couldn't, and trying to fight was a mug's game. So this is definitely one of his more controversial pieces, depending on if you think following the rules, or doing what's best for the story is more important in an RPG. Let the debate rage over the decades. The real barbarians: Katharine Kerr's contributions once again seem fairly dull in hindsight, devoted to realism, maybe with a bit of rose tinted spectacles, as she talks up the merits of so-called barbarian cultures. Having less of a preserved knowledge base does not mean the people there are dumber, as if anything, they actually have to think for themselves more. Knowing violence is only one insult away leads people to actually be more polite and serious about honouring their commitments. The really important thing about wealth is not how much you have, it's what you can afford to give away. It is a fairly substantial change in mindset, but calling it better than modern day thinking is very questionable. Still, it's preferable to just giving your heroes modern morality, when that would be utterly illogical given the situations they've experienced. More detailed knowledge of reality helps you make your fantasy more fantastical. Tarsakh showers: Ed Greenwood's final little contribution here is his most explicitly Realmsian, giving us the calendar for his world and some important days in it as an example, while encouraging you to make your own one, quite possibly even more different from the real world. After all, 365.25 days per year is not a mathematically elegant number, and there could well be more or less satellites around your world (and you could be on a large moon orbiting a gas giant, a dyson sphere, or a non-spherical world that doesn't fit real world astrophysics.) They might not have known how big it was going to get, but even before Gary left, they people in the offices would have been wondering about the Realms, and just how much more Ed had to show of it. Putting this article in the best of feels like a good bit of foreshadowing for that, so this certainly has some historical significance. The humanoids: This article probably should have gone in the 3rd best of, along with all the demihuman expansions. Guess they underestimated it's popularity, or the tendency of readers to want symmetries completed. And since the main difference between the many low HD humanoid races was initially a matter of a few HP and AC points, giving them different racial personalities was a pretty substantial help, particularly when it comes to Orcs and Hobgoblins. As with the full profiles, there's a fair amount here that stuck, and still has influence in their portrayals today. Roger may not have stuck around quite as persistently as Ed, but his output is still pretty significant in hindsight, and the way he affected humanoids is just as important as the way he affected demihumans. Best wishes: Wishes keep on being a pain in the ass that shows up in Sage Advice, so I'm not surprised they reused this one, even if it's not a particularly fun one to read. Still, at least it merely advises you not to make them too powerful, and able to accomplish multiple things with a single wish, not to twist the intent of the caster to screw them over. (which should be reserved for wishes granted by genies, not your own spellcasting capability) That's a lot nicer than they could have been. I'm slightly less irritated by this than I was first time around, having seen more alternatives along the way, but it's still not exactly interesting reading. I could have skipped it without feeling I'd lost anything.</blockquote>

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