It was nice to hear of 'Tim Kask's' view of players; it tells me to avoid his games. To be specific, he blamed his perceived decline of the entire game hobby on 'the players'. He had four accomplishments in his bio, none later than 'Early TSR'.

Alan T. Grohe, Jr.'s collumn was useful information on ideas for creating dungeons that changed, along with the useful advice to not hit your players with this until they have enough experience (IC and OOC) and IG hints to guess what's going on. It was refreshingly conversational.
His personal bio came with an impressive list of accomplishments and awards, as well some personal info.

Kellri's collumn on a new Necromancer class was interesting, including the type of spellcasting used. However, although I didn't read the whole article, I noted two errors and a missing spell - I couldn't find 'Beckon (Undead)'. Since I couldn't find any 'Summon' spells, that seems to be a name mis-match. Also, the level of the powers should have been included in the description.
Just to note, I do like the class and class idea - If I'm ever running a S&W campaign, it *Will* include a Necromancer.
And, just in case you're wondering, these aren't 'cute and fuzzy' misunderstood necromancers. These are small animal and people sacrificing necromancers who sold their soul to arch-devils. Also, Frankenstien references. Classic.
Several good...Er...Evil items are detailed; each alone would make a good...Er...Evil decoration for a necromancer's lair and tell you you've run into a Villain of the highest order. No 'anti-hero' here.

James Maliszewski presents a Paladin class; it's pretty much Paladin-normal. Fans of 3e will find little suprising here. It seemed more than a bit front-loaded and the experience to level table doesn't make sense, mathematically. I do like the restriction on magic item ownership. It's an ok paladin class, but no more than that.

He also presents a Monk class. Mathematically, the experience table looks better. However, I do not understand/agree with the decision to allow all weapons - although it may be a flavour choice, I prefer monks being restricted to 'traditional martial arts' type weapons - Staves, nunchucks, certain swords, etc.. Monks also have a restriction on magic item ownership. But, again, this is no more than an ok class.

He has a personal bio. It's...Well, sorry, but bland.

James Carl Boney presents a page of advice for adventuring. It's all good, general, but not detailed, advice.

Gabor Lux presents the adventure 'Isles on an Emerald Sea'
The adventure is a small island with two mountain peaks. Without giving anything away, it's for high-level PCs, an odd choice for the first magazine. Escaping the isle is...Well, railroad if you intend to get to the next part of the adventure.
The next part of the adventure takes place on another isle, which is measured in...Stadion. I have a vague idea that it's a roman measurement. However, note to the author? There's no romans anymore.
It's basically overgrown parkland and villas. 'Bizzare' is the order of the day.
The adventures are good (I'd treat them as seperate, even if one follows the other), but the players must be self-propelled.

Mike Davison presents a comprehensive advertisement for Ruins and Ronin - Basically, fantasy gaming in Japanese 'History'. It left me wanting to buy the S&W supplement.

Akrasia presents 'Fighters with Flair', an addition that adds mechanical differences to five types of fighters - Berzerkers, Swashbucklers, Weapon Masters, Unarmed Combat and guys who like shields.
His personal bio was amusing.

He also presents 'Class-based Weapon Damage', which removes damage from weapons and places it in the class. This is a want that's been wandering around my head for a while.
The addition also ups the fighting abilities of non-fighters, since they can now use any magic weapon. He notes this and suggests adding a counter-balance, along with ideas - Only one of which is his 'Fighters with Flair' article.

The Random Hireling Generator, by Robert Lionheart, will create interesting, generic hirelings/NPCs, with a little GM work.

...And it's two hours later than when I had decided to go to sleep. Goodnight until tomorrow.

So you're telling me Tim Kask hasn't changed.

Quote from: Old Geezer;307651So you're telling me Tim Kask hasn't changed.

:heh:

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;307608It was nice to hear of 'Tim Kask's' view of players; it tells me to avoid his games. To be specific, he blamed his perceived decline of the entire game hobby on 'the players'. He had four accomplishments in his bio, none later than 'Early TSR'.

He also has an issue of Fight On! dedicated to him. That's something, right?

QuoteThe Random Hireling Generator, by Robert Lionheart, will create interesting, generic hirelings/NPCs, with a little GM work.

I loved that article. Actually used it, too!

Quote from: Old Geezer;307651So you're telling me Tim Kask hasn't changed.

Well, I haven't been with the hobby near long enough to remember him from the TSR days, so I can't really tell you that.
So a more accurate phrase would be 'You're telling me he was the same back then?'

I think Tim is planning on releasing a series of adventure modules.  I played in his game at the North Texas RPG Con last weekend, running through the first one, and had a good time.

(Continued)

Jeff P. Talanain and Mathew Stanham are producing a new FRPG called 'Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers'. As of this magazine, it is not out yet, but it's 'compatable with Swords and Wizardry, OSRIC and other systems'.
Jeff Talanain presents an adventure for the game, Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent. It's for 4 to 6+ characters of levels 4 to 7. A thanks to his business partner is included.
The adventure is a swamp and dungeon crawl. Maps are provided. It's good, but could use some fleshing out.
...That's not a deliberate pun.

Micheal Curtis presents 'The Dungeon Alphabet'; an 'A to Z' of things found in/about dungeons. It's got good ideas in it, but...Well, the writing is a bit too bland.

Salvatore Macri and Matt Finch present a different type of Masterminds and their Minions each; The Shadow Kin are living shadows, raiding or trapped in the 'material plane'. Interesting enough, but unfortunately overshadowed by 'The Artificers of Yothri' - Alien, ancient, incomprehensible minds. Using their eldritch magic-science, they project constructs into our reality to accompish their strange designs.
Both, however, only present three type of adversaries.

Matt Finch presents 'How in the ____ do you open this thing?!', a 3d50 table of 'How to open something'. The results are universally interesting, funny and/or to a character, potentially terrifying.

The Thrall class is presented by David Bowman; it's a twist on playing a 0-level character. For a risk of dying horribly before you can do anything but Gofer, you gain a permanent benefit. More than that would pretty much reveal the whole idea.
It's a good and interesting one.

We finish with some adventures,k a comic and the Knockspell OGL.

I disagree about the Dungeon Alphabet piece.  I thought it was pretty cool, it seems like it would be very useful to folks who just started with the hobby.  And the book Goodman games is going to make out of it has the artists to illustrate the cool idears in it pretty fine I reckon.  If they pull it off I think it's going to be awesome.  Neat review, Narf!!  Did you get Knockspell #2 yet?  Melan's adventure in #2 is really, really cool in my opinion.

Yes, I did. However, my brain is currently 'review-fatigued'.
The dungeon alphabet would be useful, I don't argue that. It just put me to sleep. *Shrug* That's pretty subjective.

I think it's an fair and honest opinion. One hopes one's efforts are never considered bland but its impossible to please everyone. Sorry you didn't find the Alphabet more to your tastes, Narf. Maybe "Dungeon Oddities" in Knockspell #2 will be more to your liking.

No problem; I was dissapointed to give it that bad review. The material itself was good.

The cover for "the Dungeon Alphabet", by Erol Otus, is rocking pretty hard I reckon.  I think it's pretty groovy anyhow, and the writing didn't turn me off at all.  The prose has a really good picture-book vibe to it, which I think lends itself to the material in a very fresh way.  It's a neat idear, and I can't wait to see it illustrated, especially by those artists...!  

http://www.goodman-games.com/4385preview.html

Subjective schmujective.  It was a good review, I hope you give #2 a shot when you recover from the case of reviewititus!!

Cool review there! Thanks. WRT my adventure, the two islands are interlinked, but it would be easy to treat them in a modular way. I am not sure it is very high level - I could see a cautious 3rd or 4th level group surviving and achieving good results, while an overconfident high level company might just get killed... most of the scenarios I write try to be sufficiently open-ended to accommodate different power levels and approaches.

Also...

Quote from: Old GeezerSo you're telling me Tim Kask hasn't changed.

Too funny.

Yeah, putting the islands into a small archipelago would work for keeping them one adventure without railroading from one to the next.
Maybe it's later-edition D&D poisoning my brain, but if I see monsters in an adventure, I assume the PCs are going to fight them. That, I think, did contribute to my idea of the sort of party needed to survive it.
But yeah, a lot of the dangers can be skulked around.

Well, in my game, that was how they were used - the characters were (accidentally) transported to the Isle of Birds without provisions or a boat, and from that point, it was up to them how to explore an entire archipelago of mostly self-contained island scenarios, which range from two-sentence notes to fairly elaborate setups.

Ours is a fairly high level group (6th to 9th by now) with good equipment including a whole battery of lasers, but they did a whole lot of skulking, especially early on. Running a fairly unforgiving campaign makes your players think twice about getting into hazardous confrontations even when they are powerful compared to their environment. I am not sure it is a system thing; I was using the same approach when we were playing 3.0.

But I ramble. The best way to use these scenarios is probably to drop them somewhere in an ongoing campaign and see how the players deal with their situation. The Isle of Barzon from Knockspell #2 is a particularly good example of this philosophy, I think - it could go any way depending on player motivations, willingness to engage with a dangerous environment and so on. Also, anyone who has KS #2 and wants a player map of Barzon should send me a PM with an e-mail address.