Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992

part 4/5


Role-playing reviews II: Two review columns this month? What, couldn't Rick and Allen agree to take it in turns like usual. Are they really such a popular part of the magazine? Perilous line, my dears. Anyway, along with his fiction contribution earlier, Allen Varney has decided to stick his two cents in about the cyberpunk genre. It's a troublesome one, in that far too many of the things in it actively undermine the original message of it's originator, making dystopia and loss of humanity cool instead of a warning. Like the World of Darkness being played as superheroes with fangs, this may be fun, but isn't going to make the world a better place. What are we to do with them.

Cyberpunk 2020 falls prey to the excesses of pretentiousness rather badly. Big guns and attitude, these are the things that are good in life. It also has some inconsistencies and way too many typos. On the other hand, it's a vast improvement mechanically over the first edition. Mike Pondsmith may be a magpie, but at least he's stealing from good sources.

Night city is the big setting expansionbook for Cyberpunk. Like Marvel and DC, Cyberpunk and Shadowrun seem to have taken opposite tacks on the real/imaginary city question. It goes into quite ridiculous amounts of detail, with little entries for every single city block, and tons of building layouts to make running adventures a snap. It really useful not only for Cyberpunk, but any modern day game.

Hacker: The computer crime card game gets one of their odd context heavy reviews. It's actually Allen's baby originally, so reviewing it feels a bit odd. That said, he freely admits Steve Jackson Games have improved substantially on his original submission. But it's still not really good enough to compete with Illuminati. Send it back to the development labs!  


A storytelling game of savage horror! W:tA gets it's byline. And the system gets it's name. Well, when you only have one game for a system, you don't need a generic name for it.


The game wizards: Not content with trying to make the old basic rules more accessable in a new boxed set, TSR are now trying to get into some of that lucrative HeroQuest market by making Dragon Quest, another game that bridges the boardgame and RPG classification, and hopefully will make a good entry drug for young players. As you might expect, this is the usual mix of behind the scenes and promotion. Buy it for your kids, or your little siblings! Hope they actually bother moving on from it instead of just playing a few times and losing interest. Hrm. Like the Collectable Card stuff, this feels like a slightly forced attempt to expand their scope and get into new markets. Good luck with that. And with a little googling, I see that that impression is actually rather disingenuous, as it's actually a resurrected SPI property that they only did token promotion on. Or maybe that's the last edition, and they just slapped the name on an unrelated product, it's hard to tell. In any case, my skepticism level is rather high here. I shall watch with interest to see if this disappears without a trace.


The role of books: Jaran by Kate Elliot gets a positive review for it's interesting take on worldbuilding. Complex cultures are created, set in conflict, and then our normal human PoV character is dropped in the middle. Y'know, some people would make it accessible enough that you don't need that gimmick.  

Dragons over england is a set of short stories from the TORG setting. It doesn't get a very good review. The design feels more like a sourcebook than a novel, and the stories lack any kind of consistency. The problems with a kitchen sink setting is that it can wind up not feeling like a setting at all, and the editing certainly doesn't help that. You can't just plop in whatever cool stuff your writers come up with, however good the ideas might be individually.

Jumper by Steven Gould is of course a book that has gone on to be a movie a few years ago. And from the sound of this review, it quite deserves it, as it succeeds both on a character-building level, and in how he logically exploits and develops his teleportation powers. Sci-fi doesn't have to be all high concepts and rayguns. And psychic powers don't have to turn into a kitchen sink of mind control and telekinesis.

Court of shadows by Cynthia Morgan is a swashbuckling elizabethan espionage romance. With memory loss, dueling, and a strong chemistry between the female lead and the main villain, it also seems good fair for a movie conversion. Can't happen to every good book, can it.

The Catswold Portal by Shirly Rousseau Murphy gets a negative review for trying to juggle one plot too many for it's length. Not a bad attempt, but needs a better editor.

Sahara by Clive Cussler gets a mixed, but overall positive review. Yes, it's terribly formulaic as a spy thriller, and doesn't quite have that bondesque elegance, but it does demonstrate how the espionage genre has a future in the post cold war era. Keep the popcorn popping, and the airport shelves full.

Fire in the Mist by Holly Lisle, like Jumper, is a first book from a new author that scores quite well by putting a distinct spin on familiar ideas. Gender segregated spellcasters and prodigies with incredible but not fully controlled powers certainly aren't new ideas, but when the delivery is at the right pace, and the worldbuilding is good, the reviewer isn't going to complain.


TSR Previews: So much stuff coming next month that they drop the this month ones completely. This is gonna be another loong ploughthrough.

The Forgotten Realms is focussing on the Drow this month. Menzoberranzan gets a big boxed set letting you adventure the hell out of it. Whether you play as Drow, infiltrator, or adventurer trying to attack (bad move if you ain't epic level) there's lots of stuff for you to take advantage of. Meanwhile, Menzoberranzan's most famous prodigal son is doing so well, his latest book gets published in hardcover. The Legacy sees Drizzt about to have his newfound happiness shattered, again. Onward, building up ever more Aaaaangst!

Al-Qadim experiments with the formula of it's supplements. Mini boxed sets. Slimline, with all sorts of odd bits and pieces. The first on is AQ1: Golden voyages. Follow in Sinbad's footsteps and lose your ship repeatedly. Invest your treasure wisely and leave it at home, for losing all your stuff is very annoying.

Dark Sun expands some more on the veiled alliance, in DSR3. The degree that all the city states have become rotten and ready for a good revolution becomes increasingly clear. The preservers are all over the shop, just waiting for someone to get their acts together. Are you that someone? It also gets The Amber Enchantress, book 3 in the prism pentad. Wait, what? Cleric quintet vs prism pentad. Settle on a name for your 5 book series. Not sure what to think about this.

Dragonlance gets a second introductory level module, DLQ2: Flint's axe. I suppose it fits with their obsession with prequels. You can still move onto the original epic module series from here, I hope.

D&D is quite busy this month, with several very different products. The Haunted Tower adventure pack sees them concentrate on undead, with another bunch of mini adventures assisted by a ton of gimmicky props. Now there's one that would be a lot less thrilling if I downloaded it in .pdf. PC4: Night howlers makes werecreatures available as PC's in D&D. Been quite a while since they had new stuff in this series. Cool. Not so cool is their saying the first D&D novel is out. Um, are you forgetting Quag keep and Trollshead back in the 70's? Looks like the current management have either forgotten about the early years of the company, or are a bunch of lying liars who lie. Anyway, The minted Sword by D.J Heinrich is the start of the Penhaligon trilogy. This is rather a mixed blessing to the setting. Do we really need more metaplot mucking intruding here?

Gamma world gets the Gamma knights boxed set. Wear powered armour and pilot giant mecha! I remember when Jim did an article on that, back in issue 101. Hoo boy. That's a substantial change from the normal playstyle. And it includes a boardgame too. This may be contentious.

Marvel superheroes celebrates spiderman's 30th anniversary by releasing a supplement devoted to him. A bit trickier thinking of stuff to fill this out than for the X-men or Dr Doom. Oh well, he's got lots of plotlines and a big rogues gallery. I'm sure you'll be able to get some useful ideas out of this.

Finally, it looks as though Buck Rogers' gameline is still limping along at the moment, with Nomads of the sky by William H Keith jr. RAM are still trying to dominate the solar system, and not having an easy time of things.

Dragon Magazine Issue 185: September 1992

part 5/5


Forum: Alex Skrabut finds that the sense of accomplishment gained from worldbuilding pales in comparison to the amount of bloody work needed. He'd much rather just make it up on the spot as much as possible. Or so he says. Since he also wrote a computer program to generate a world's topography, I think the man doth protest too much.  

Matthew W. Grieco points out that even most of the articles for specific campaign worlds are easily adapted for other games. This is particularly true of the Forgotten Realms stuff, which is pretty generic anyway. People grousing about them having no place in the magazine are just being lazy.

Kevin Costello thinks people are overestimating how hard it is to design a setting. Just draw a big map, make rough sketches of what's where, and then only fill out the areas your players seem likely to go to. It's easier than you think, and then you won't have to worry about players knowing whats coming up. (unless you leave your notes lying around.)

Jeff House reminds you that most campaign maps have plenty of empty space that you can fill to customise them with without departing from canon at all. Even a single city can provide enough interesting stuff to do for a lifetime in reality. There's just so much more detail you could add.

Barry White loves using both his own world and pregenerated ones, and the characters in his campaign regularly flip from one to the another. It's all good baby. We're versatile.

Lawrence Hurley is one of those in favour of using official campaign worlds. It cuts through the boring design bit and gets straight to the fun playing. It's also easier to improvise off a solid base.

Ross A. Isaacs would feel like he was cheating if he used a prefab campaign world. Stealing stuff from sourcebooks, even non D&D ones and making it your own, on the other hand, he highly recommends. Integrity is such a tricky thing to maintain, and everyone has their own line they don't want to cross.

Jim Gonzalez has two big problems with prefab campaign worlds. 1: Other players read them and know what's coming. 2: TSR blatantly favours some worlds over others. Yes, that's because they sell better. How hard is that one to understand? They are a business, remember.  If you don't like it, just don't buy them.


Dragonmirth makes a dreadful mess. Be glad you don't have to clean it up. Yamara's enemies make a pleasing discovery. Oh paladin, what art thou good for? Meanwhile we have more romance in extremis in twilight empire. Couldn't you just go on a rollercoaster or something.


Through the looking glass joins in with the theme, unusually. Ral Partha give us some official Dark Sun minis to have a look over. Sadira, Neeva, Rikus, and a whole host of classes and races including the new ones like gith and mul are covered. They get 5 stars, being very faithful to the illustrations and lacking in ugly molding artifacts. Seems like another positive step in building up their multimedia empire. Now all they need is a computer game.

Lots of other stuff, as usual. A Griffon. A tower keep which looks like it may be the start of an epic castle for your minis to fight on. Some banquet tables with included chairs (that none of your minis will be able to sit on) and various bits of ornamentation. A rather cranky looking pair of middle-aged nobility that could well make good antagonists. A full selection of skulls on spikes to put around your evil overlord's base. A winged skeleton with a scythe that should put the willies up inexperienced adventurers. A whole company of goblins riding giant spiders, including a spellcaster. They also seem like a good market for skull on spike decor. To take care of the spiders before they hit you with instadeath, there's a company of elf archers. But they too will fall before the Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua. As will some basic orcs which look rather boring in comparison to the last few. Funny how that works out. In any case, this is an above average selection to read about.


Drizzt finally gets enough prestige to go hardcover. See kids. This is what making angst glamorous can get you. Keep your eyes on the futility prize.


With the start of a classic column series, and lots of other cool bits and pieces, this is once again an upswing after a couple of rather dull issues. The focus on specific campaign worlds is fairly welcome and useful this time round, rather than being just promotion. And since the survey seemed to indicate lots of people like this stuff, we may well be seeing an increase in it's frequency. Roll out those changes folks, you won't regret it.

Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992

part 1/5


124 pages Boo! Jesus christ don't disintegrate me it was only a joke! Clerics these days. No sense of humour. No wonder they can't get the congregations. So anyway, we've reached another october. And as usual, that means the boogeymen are creeping out from every tomb, and it's up to adventurers to save us all from doom. We've got a well worn formula going now, and all the kids would cry if it was cancelled. So let's show them not that monsters exist, but that they can be beaten once again. Even if they will be back next year. But then, recurring villains are more fun than an endless cavalcade of one-shots.


In this issue:

Letters: Another regular occurrance, someone asking if their old issues of the magazine are collectors items in any way. You might make a profit on them, but I wouldn't bet on it.

And someone complaining that there's too much stuff in the magazine that requires various supplements and campaign worlds, and they'd rather get back to basics a bit. Roger reminds him that even the stuff that has specific trappings is generally pretty easy to convert. Look past the labels. We do need our variety. If we made everything corebook only that would be considerably duller. Once again we face the problem that you can't please everyone all the time, especially if trying to cover lots of bases.


Editorial: The ghost of conventions past once again haunts us in Roger's editorial this month. Physically, they may leave a room with little more than a stale smell of sweat and mountain dew, but it's the memories you take with you that are the cool things. And the freebies and shiny new or rare books, of course. As usual with these things, the busier you are and the more you engage, the more fun you'll have. Course, being a TSR writer and personally knowing half the people there puts you at a substantial advantage. You have to do far less waiting in line, and can join in the really silly games. Certainly seems like they had no shortage of spectacular props this year, with cardboard castles consuming the booths, Aztec Mecha, people dressed as Drow, giant dice, mini cthulhus, balalaika, Spiderman and Jim Ward in a suit. Damn that sounds like fun. Another reminder that since I'm doing this in such a serious way, I really ought to get out to them, actually meet people in person. I will not go mad, I will not go mad. I will find ways to keep this entertaining 'till the end.


50 Castle hauntings: What, couldn't you find 100, then we could use one dice roll instead of breaking it up into 4 little tables? I suppose real world legends do start repeating themselves if you hit the folklore books for too long, just like everything. Still even with only 50, you're unlikely to exhaust this, unless your players are stuck in Ravenloft, where there's a crumbling castle with baneful inhabitants with tragic backstories atop every precipice. And some of them are pretty good, particularly the temporal shifts, which are full of stuff that you can't solve by violence and could have significant effects on the campaign. Yet another encouragement for me to fill large quantities of my own game with horror themed stuff, as you could come up with random weirdness on the fly for quite a bit before repeating yourself with this. Now what I need is a random castle layout generator, which would synergize very well with this. A pretty strong start to the articles, as it should be with the amount they have to choose from.


Mission: Impossibly dangerous: Forward we jump to do a bit of providing for the fast growing modern day horror market. Concentrating on the Dark Conspiracy game, this stuff is pretty much system free, but very strongly focussed on the setting of that game. It'd certainly take a bit of work to adapt to Shadowrun or the world of darkness. It does reveal quite a bit about the assumptions of the game, possibly more so than the actual review, with a definite emphasis on reactive mission based adventures rather than active player agency. This obviously isn't my usual style, but it does make this article useful to me on two levels, as well as being quite interesting reading and covering a game they haven't done before. Quite pleasing overall, even if it doesn't actually make me want to buy the game.


The dragon's bestiary has three new varieties of hard to pronounce undead for your delectation this halloween, courtesy of Spike Y. Jones. Just as with dragons, these guys pile up, year upon year. The horror, the horror, I embrace it.
 
Cariad ysbryd are one of the vanishingly rare varieties of good undead, who keep their wrath focussed on other violators of the natural cycle. What a heartwarming tale. Not everyone gets trapped in cycles of brooding negativity. Course, being undead, they do still have personal initiative issues, but we can work on that.

Memento mori finally give us an insubstantial low level undead variant for clerics to create as a guardian. Woo. With no long-term memory, and a very limited amount of power, they're not that hard to beat if you know their quirks. Better hope you have a supergeek player or some equivalent of 3e's knowledge rolls, since they're from such an obscure source.

Tymher-haid are our only truly malevolent delivery this time. Created when lots of people die together, they're vulnerable to normal water, so they don't tend to last long. Another decidedly quirky little thing that'll be as much a puzzle as a combat challenge. And doesn't that fit the mood of most ghost & vampire stories better than big ugly battles.

Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992

part 2/5


Welcome to the neighbourhood: A curious little bit of worldbuilding here, providing us with a few more city districts and locations for your players to enjoy. Consciously trying to avoid rehash, much of this advice is specific to D&D style fantasy, especially the stuff involving demihumans. Much of this is stuff you'd figure out yourself, so it's mainly useful in that it gets you to ask the right questions and serving as a mental checklist. It also has plenty of ecological and logistical thoughts, some of which are quite clever. Overall, I think I quite like this one, even if it's not as groundbreaking as it wants to be. Roger's still trying hard to pick out articles based on innovativeness as well as quality. It's hard to succeed completely these days, but you can come close.


Role-playing reviews I: Looks like reviews are on the up again, as they indicate multiple sets of them are to come. This is a slightly worrying development. However, a closer look reveals that the number of reviews in each one are fairly small, so it's just that the number of reviews is being spread around more people. That's not so bad.

Lost souls is a game of playing ghosts trying to resolve their problems. It seems to be both less angsty and more focussed upon living/dead interactions than Wraith, with everyday human blundering a big, somewhat humorous issue. With quick character generation and reincarnation, it doesn't look like long campaigns with the same characters would be easy, and it probably needs a few supplements to flesh out all the off-hand ideas, but it should be fun for a halloween one-shot. Which makes it the perfect kind of game to review this month.

Aquelarre gets one of those interestingly mixed reviews that reveals quite a bit about company attitudes. Lester wants to like it, but finds it both alien in attitude and far too heavy on the satanicness and nudity. We're trying to move away from that round these parts. As is often the case where they try and play up the noncommercialness of the product, this actually makes me more interested. What will the public really think?

Pentacle is a card game of dueling wizards. Summon nasty stuff to kill or drive insane your rivals. Hmm. Why am I getting deja vu? Oh, I'm sure it'll come to nothing. It's only some small press game.


The voyage of the princess ark: From the bayou to australia. Once again we see how real world cultures are stolen and jammed into Mystara in ways that don't entirely make sense. And guess what. Haldemar gets embarrassingly separated from the rest of the crew again, this time by being turned into a frilled lizard, and knocked out by a boomerang. Fortunately the Wallara shaman realizes the problem before turning him into dinner, and he gets taken to /ayers rock/ to get the curse lifted. During this process, he gets more psychodrama dreams warning about the impending doooooom of alphatia. Guess he'd better get back to warn the empress. The endgame of this series approaches rapidly. Will it be decently climactic?

For the 4th time in a row, we get stats for a new race, our chameleonic friends. Once again we have a new variant way in which they become spellcasters, and a decidedly interesting set of special powers. With their concealment and short range teleportation, they'd make a great scout for a party, even more so than rogues and halflings. We also get the usual geographic and historical overview. Forced into a state of artificial primitivism by an Aranea spell, they're a wise but fairly inoffensive bunch, at peace with the land, and their neighbours. As is often the case, events won't make complete sense unless you know about the immortal politics influencing the nations. While it's obvious where big chunks of the source material for this entry come from, it's still a quite interesting one, that manages to combine those elements in interesting ways.


Sage advice: Does the initial cost of a power sustain it for the first time increment. (probably)

Can you scry a place not known to you psychically (if you have a defined spacial relationship with it. You can't pick a named place if you don't know where it is. )

Do light weapons used telekinetically suffer THAC0 penalties (no)

How is animate object modified ( simply)

Are control body and life draining sciences or devotions. (use the place in the list, not the description text )

How high can flames go.( Not nearly high enough. )

How hard is creating sound (pretty tricky)

Does inertial barrier protect against magic attacks other than disintegration (only if it has a physical component to block.)

What's the point of absorb disease. Cell adjustment is quicker and cheaper ( Hmm. Skip'll fudge something up to hold them till we can retcon it. Skip suspects this may be like the gauntlets and girdles dilemma. )

Can you start regenerating with cell adjustment straight away (no)

Can you use body equilibrium while partially submerged in quicksand (sure)

Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992

part 3/5


Novel ideas: No surprise that with the first new D&D book released, this column promotes it this month. So say hello to D J Heinrich. He didn't have a particularly easy time writing the book, but it was worth it in the end. The fact that it's the start of a new line automatically gives it an extra degree of publicity it wouldn't otherwise have, and despite the battles amongst the executive, the D&D coreboxes at least are still good sellers. He's in a good position to make a profit, assuming they pay royalties on novels rather than commission fees these days. So lets hope he can keep the plot on track and finish off the other 2/3rds of this trilogy in decent time. A fairly typical bit of interviewing/promotion that maintains the optimistic tone while saying little of real substance. Neh.


TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms buzzes onwards. FRQ2: Hordes of dragonspear gives you a new high level adventure, and sneaks in some more setting detail. Get ready to fight some scary yet familiar monsters. The harpers also get their fifth novel. The ring of winter by James Lowder. Seeking a device that brings a new ice age in the jungles of chult? Makes a certain amount of warped sense. Someone who misses winters is going to want to bring one to a miserable steamy disease infested jungle.

Spelljammer is also busy still. CGR1: The complete spacefarers handbook brings kits to outer space, along with new PC races, and all manner of other crunch. Om nom nom nom. Can't say I have much of an opinion on this one. The cloakmaster cycle reaches book 4 as well, The Radiant Dragon by Elaine Cunningham. The big aspects of the setting are namechecked again. Is space not big enough to find some new stuff?

Ravenloft also has a load of bits and pieces delivered, in their case in a boxed set. Forbidden Lore has 5 little books, filling in setting and rules details plus a set of Tarroka cards. If your players are rules lawyering to ruin the horror atmosphere, this'll help keep them in their place.

Greyhawk also gets a new boxed set, in their case the new core updating things in light of their recent wars. From the Ashes changes a good deal, once again contentiously. Doing change right is hard.

Dark sun gets DSQ3: Astilican Gambit. Off to Gulg to be envious of the people who still have decent vegetation, and become pawns in some nasty intrigues. Sounds like it could get railroady. Just apply a few fireballs to mess up their plans.

Lankhmar gets LNQ1: Slayers of Lankhmar. A slayers guild? Man, that's so cute. What's this adventure like, and what do they get up too?

Dragonlance finishes it's current selections of short stories, with The War of the Lance. Yet more small perspectives on the epic battle of good vs evil. Every one matters in their own way. For we must all choose to be a heeeeeeroo, every heart must reach for the sun!! :epic guitar solo:

Our generic AD&D product this month is HR3: The celts. Another historical era gets lots of setting info and some crunch to help you play it. Seems reasonable, when you consider the number of classes that have strong celtic influence.

And finally, D&D gets AC1010: the Poor Wizard's Almanac. Like Oerth, they've been shaken up and moved forward in time. This means they can sell a whole load of books detailing the changes. Metaplot is now well and truly at full power, completely dominating all their settings. How long before it starts strangling them, rather than fueling them?


D&D, warriors of the eternal sun! I remember playing that. It wasn't bad, even if missile weapons were completely broken in the underground sections.


Give your villains a fighting chance: Hmm. This is an interesting and new observation. One interesting facet of lots of supplements coming out for a game is that they tend to advantage the players more than the DM, as they only have one character that they can carefully lavish attention upon, picking and matching the best bits from all over for greater badassery. This is doubled if the DM uses modules a lot, as they rarely give their characters stuff from supplements. This is an excellent reason for you to start drawing upon supplements yourself, and redress the balance. Yes, this is indeed a tricky one. If the designers do go the other way, then it seriously pisses off people who don't want to collect 'em all. And we know that'll become a very real problem in a few years. I suppose it's a good reason not to rely on prefab stuff too slavishly. Very interesting. This is a thread of thought I came up with independently back in the day, and it's nice to see it in the magazine. As games develop, new problems turn up, and you have to develop new solutions to them. And as a DM, this is primarily your job. Hopefully this is one that got people to step up their game in the past. A very good one to be reminded of for me in particular.

Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992

part 4/5


The marvel-phile: Sorta in theme, this month's marvel-phile tackles some of the more obscure giant monsters that have plagued our heroes over the years. Gomdulla, a giant alien mummy with an off switch on his foot who tries to assemble a cult around him where possible. Groot, a space travelling giant plant creature that can animate other plants to do his bidding. And Zzutak, a creature that stepped off the page due to magic paints being used in it's creation. All have a rather awkward tendency to cause mass devastation that somehow results in very little loss of life before being stopped. They may also laugh maniacally and explain their plan to the tiny pathetic fleshlings, but that's entirely optional. An above average entry, as it has both a decent amount of creatures and some campaign advice about creating and incorporating similar things into your game. They may not be traditional horror, but giant monsters are definitely a topic which can make for fun games. We probably have room for a few more of these in D&D as well.


The game wizards: Hmm. A second article on the playing of villains. What's brought this on? Still, where the last one was largely examining new mechanical considerations, this is a more typical roleplaying one, with a particular emphasis on horror gaming. Well, that genre does tend to have more enduring and compelling villains. Not sure why this is under this column, as it doesn't seem to be anything to do with official TSR stance or upcoming products, but it's certainly not a bad article, even if it is a bit short. Maybe they couldn't find one that was the right size in the slush pile, so they got a staff writer to fill the gap again. Another minor mystery for the ages, I suppose. Have fun creating suitably nuanced enemies in both the mechanical and personality arenas.


Forum is having another round of the sexism debate. As usual, this ironically brings a far larger proportion of female participants than is standard for this magazine. After all, if we've learned anything from sexist jokes, it's that women love to bitch about stuff. Still, I can't see violent protest working very well on this topic. Can we not just get back to playing? That'll work far better, really.

Caroline Bussey thinks that it's the shame that's putting girls off. You shouldn't hide your hobbies. The censure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Learn from the example of Oasis. You get less derision if you act like an asshole openly and then laugh about it than if you try and hide your depravities behind a saccharine screen.

Donna Beales thinks that it's bad marketing that's primarily to blame. That and the silly little things like pronouns and cheesecake minis that make women feel subtly unwelcome. You will never attract the female demographic as long as they feel patronised. Strange that this should be such a problem with a female CEO. But I supposed Lorraine :rumble of thunder, howl of wolves: makes everyone feel patronised.

Elysa Moulding gives us her own patronising story. Women don't take pleasure in bickering and violence for violences sake. Damn right, they have more important things to snipe at each other about, like boyfriends, shoes, weight loss and fashion. It's so easy to be cynical after a sex and the city DVD marathon.

Halina Adamski thinks all the women getting worked up over pronouns should lighten up. There may be real reasons for complaint, but this isn't really one and the fixes just look clunky. Just enjoy your playing.

Mathew W Hurd brings the male perspective to this. He doesn't see why girls think it's boys stuff that isn't worth their attention. Join in the games!

Helaina Martin attacks the ghastly cheesecake art. Alias ought to have died of exposure long before finishing her first adventure. The contents of the novels are generally better than the covers. She also attacks agism too. Kids should be allowed to play as soon as they can read the rules. Treating them like they're dumb will not help them develop skills and confidence.

Colleen Fireely praises Dragon for their persistence in tackling the sexism problem. I may grow bored, but you do need persistence if you want to make an impact.  

Frederic Bush also brings up the agism problem. As a 15 year old who's been playing for 7 years, he feels quite capable of mature and nuanced roleplaying, and was rather annoyed to be told he couldn't DM at a convention until he was 18. Age ain't nothin but a number.

Steve Giblin goes back to the wizards sucking at high levels issue. They really really don't, unless you have no tactical sense at all. Learn your spells and what they're good and bad against. Your party will thank you.

Michael Thomas heaps disdain upon TSR's current family friendly stance. Evil is quite depressingly capable of working together and prospering, as the real world demonstrates. They're far more interested in money than artistic integrity! Well, duh.

Chris Roberts also thinks Skip's ideas of good and evil are stupid and unworkable. Remember how real world tribablism works, allowing people to be kind and compassionate to those in the in, while also classifying others as nonpeople who can be killed without a twinge of conscience. How does that fit into your alignment system, huh?

David Howery, on the other hand, supports TSR's family friendly policy. There should be plenty of evil in the world, but that's just to give the PC's a better challenge and make their victory more heroic. Choosing heroism as the default is a perfectly valid choice, as most books and movies do it.

Dragon Magazine Issue 186: October 1992

part 5/5


Role-playing reviews II: The popularity of horror is once again reinforced. There's so much good stuff that Rick and Lester can both have decent columns full.  Horrifying, isn't it.

Call of cthulhu 5th edition sees Rick give it a 5 star result as it continues to succeed against the odds. Characters are a little more competent this time round, but really, compared to the creatures they're facing, they're still going to be chow soon. Everything else is just the way you like it. BRP has pretty much reached maturity as a system, there's lots of great adventures and advice on making your own, and the presentation is still improving. Everyone should try it at least once.

GURPS Horror 2nd edition, on the other hand gets the usual competent but dull result they give them round here. Pick your elements, and put them together. They're all there, it's just up to you to figure out what you want. You know the drill by now.

The Apparitions, lycanthropes and vampires sourcebooks for Chill get mixed reviews. The interesting design makes them fun reads, but they aren't hugely innovative. Vampires gets the highest marks, with it's large quantity of individual named vampires tackled, while werewolves comes out the loser, with ridiculous amounts of whitespace. So it's not just TSR that's using that to pad out their books then.

Interestingly, we also see the first hint of backlash against the IC narrator device, with rick finding it unhelpful and distracting in Van Richten's guide to Ghosts. Just give us the crunch. Hmm. Sorry, I'm afraid that's going to get much more frequent before it starts going out of fashion. Guess you'll just have to be ahead of the times for a while. That's one for the notebooks.


Dragonmirth has some ghostly romance. Some people just can't let go. What ever happened to till death do us part? Yamara gets rather swept along by events. This is what happens when the PC's are aware of the metagame. The twilight empire guys are still split up and not sure what to do either.


Through the looking glass skips the introductions so as to fit more actual minis in. Unsurprisingly, many are horror themed. Werewolf, wereboar, wereape? (don't see many of them in D&D. Who's idea was that?) A whole undead army including boss, minions and standard bearer to serve your liches and necromancers. A wraith, a mummy, and for those of you who want something a little exotic, a two-headed zombie ogre. If this lot win, then you can make lots of use of the Impaled Victim mini too. If you'd prefer your horrors to be the stay at home sort, there's several that come with their own homes. A mysterious horror busting out from a tomb. A lich lurking under a mausoleum archway. A gravestone with amorphous spirits seeping out. You won't be short of spooky setpieces to lurk in your dungeon. Plus there's some more skeletons and zombies just to make sure you don't have too many duplicates, and some official ravenloft figures, including various darklords, and a vistani dancer. And finally, just to redress the balance a little, there's a mob of villagers. They're totally going to die, aren't they. Tee hee. It's not like in the movies. D&D is not merciful to the overconfident commoner. And that sure aint changing next year either.


The reviews in this one are a bit weak, but otherwise, it's a very consistent issue, full of crunchy stuff that's useful for D&D, and advice bits that are handy for most games. Guess it's another instance of the regular topics getting lots of strong articles over the year for the editors to choose from when the time comes. Which means next year should be pretty decent too. You can always rely on horror to be a good seller, so you can always rely on them to produce it. Gotta keep making that money, after all.

Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992

part 1/5


124 pages. Hmm. Composite anatomy is a problem here. If that griffon flaps, he'll smack his rider in the back and really mess up his lance aim. The perspective of the various bits and pieces doesn't quite add up, giving me eye strain trying to parse the image. It looks nice on a casual scan from the newsstands, but I can't rotate and inhabit this landscape like you could an Elmore piece. It's all subtly annoying. Also subtly annoying is that this is another generic wilderness one. Can't you focus on a specific terrain for a change? Or will we have to wait for 3e to do entire books on specific terrains to scratch that itch, which may be a bit excessive. Oh well, the sooner we do this, the sooner we'll get to those too.


In this issue:


Letters: Some commentary on issue 184. Surely that's Jack Nicholson! Nope. Purely co-incidental, dear readers. It is however, staff self insertion of the highest cheesiness. Surely they could at least have done something about his receding hairline and stubble, features elves are not noted for in most portrayals. Many photoshopped fashion magazine covers are less realistic these days.

Someone asking if the D&D cartoon is available on video. It is now! Don't expect any new episodes though. And don't ask us about a movie either. We'd rather forget about those days, frankly. It's too soon for nostalgia.

Some more amusing tales of dice quirks. If you have dice chewers in your group, make sure you have spares around. Uh yeah. :backs away slowly: I shall say no more on this topic.

Someone asking them to put godzilla monsters in AD&D. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of you. They've been there since '85's Oriental Adventures, unsurprisingly. Buy moar supplements.

A letter clearing up the confusion about pegasaurs and pegataurs. Roger doesn't hesitate to insert a little humour into the situation. Some of the most memorable ideas were produced by someone running with mistakes and making them into something new.

A letter praising Ed's new wizard meetups, and criticising their errors in insect anatomy. Roger can afford to be smugly tight-lipped about this, knowing he's got quite a bit of coolness in the bag to let out soon.

And finally, some more tedious weapon quibbling. Yawn.


Editorial: Paper is a fragile thing. A little water or fire and the valued work of centuries can be lost forever. Computers aren't much better, particularly while turned on. It's an interesting question. Just how ephemeral are the fruits of our civilisation going to be? What will be lost when the servers crash and the file formats are outdated? What will happen to civilisation once the fossil fuels are exhausted? If we don't figure out renewable energy now, it's going to be a lot harder for our descendants to rebuild technology. But I digress. Looks like there was another fricken hurricane recently, and some poor gamers have lost all their cool stuff built up over years. Send generously! Escapism is as important as ever in these conditions! It's at times like this I'm glad I live in the UK, on a hilly place, with my books split between two locations and my .pdfs triply backed up. (although not as regularly updated as I ought too.) The chances of everything I own being wiped out in one go are considerably less than my odds of simply being killed crossing the road or something stupid like that. (Touch wood) Anyway, maintain compassion, but avoid complacency, yadda yadda yadda heal the world, make it a better place etc etc. You know the drill by now.


The wild, wild wilderness: Oh great, here we go again. Another round of the "Don't underestimate real animals" line. Someone ought to make a plaque and put it up on the wall so you don't forget it, because all too many people still do. David Howery warms us up with another article that feels more like an extended forum piece, and is all very familiar in it's advice. On the plus side, it gives rather more mechanical support than previous articles to the various ideas like enhanced senses, ambushing, strangling, trampling and other tricks real animals regularly pull when fighting. So it's neither badly written or useless, but does feel like a warm-up. The magazine's getting older, just like the rest of us, and has to consciously try to stay in shape these days. Stretch, lunge, twist, thrust, squat, lift, flex, realign the vertebrae. Now can we go on a run to somewhere new please?


Deadlier dinosaurs: Apparently not. Instead it's just another look at dinosaurs. Well, they are currently experiencing another upswing in public awareness thanks to jurassic park, along with quite a bit of redefinition of what they're capable of. So once again David Howery brings that info to the magazine, updating existing creatures with new tricks, and introducing the rather unrealistic giant velociraptors that appear in the book and film, along with a trio of other large vicious carnivores which'll make your players lives interestingly eventful. Once again this is useful, and a good reminder of where we're at historically, but not particularly interesting. Maybe I should go watch some pretentious avante-garde arthouse films so i can recover my enthusiasm for fantastical staples like dinosaurs and vampires again. 6 hours of watching paint dry while a naked dwarf recites poetry about the destruction of the rainforest in french it is!


Bazaar of the bizarre: Ooh. Magic items aimed at druids. As they say, you probably don't see enough of them. Course, many others would say that's because they're so powerful they don't need items to be competitive, they can comfortably wander around naked and still take on a fighter of the same level with a well chosen shapeshift. But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of things that would be thematic for them to have. And they're certainly quite capable of making this stuff themselves. Are you going to tell them they can't have it?

Amulets of transformation let you get around your number of transformations limit, which is always handy. Being able to leave in the same form you arrived definitely makes travel more convenient.

Claws of the bear let you do the slashy thing without wasting a whole transformation. They also boost your climbing ability, which would not be the case in actual bear form.

Mistletoe wands (not to be confused with cameltoe wands, which are an april fool contribution derived from Exalted I'd rather not think about) substitute as a spell component, as well as casting a bunch of low level utility spells. One for those who'd rather not have to worry about encumbrance.

Rings of the Hierophants let you skip ahead of your place in the druidic order and gain the ability to shapeshift into an elemental form. There's only one for each element, and they probably get given to the most promising young druids. Just be glad heart isn't an element in D&D.

Rings of the little people let you fit right in with the small folk, shrinking yourself down so you can frolic in their mushroom houses. Since they also shield you from the majority of their screwage too, they're well worth the cost to get hold of.

Sickles of the harvest can act like a dancing sword, but it's real value is in automated plant-cutting procedures. Better to have something thats a good tool and a good weapon than just a device for killing in their line of work.

Square meal seeds are another item that gives you an easy meal if planted. Seen them before, will likely see further variants again. Yawn.

Wooden armor of the East lets druids set their AC a little lower than they normally could. After all, it is natural and nonmetallic. Just because you're true neutral doesn't mean you can't rules lawyer to your advantage. A fairly average ending to a fairly average collection.

Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992

part 2/5


The ecology of the Dakon: Hmm. Our first ecology in well over a year. And it's one they mentioned as being in their slush pile ages ago. I guess they haven't been getting any submissions on this front, and they couldn't hold it in reserve any longer. Slightly worrying, that. This is a rather odd ecology, not really following the standard format at all. They eschew fiction and footnotes for a purely OOC anthropological study. In another rather distinctive departure, they also open them up to become NPC's and possibly PC's, with proper ability score ranges and class limits provided. The writing isn't particularly good though, this is obviously not from a regular freelancer, and they slip into cliches frequently. So despite having some laudable aims, this is a very problematic little article. Let's hope this reminds the other freelancers out there to send some more stuff in on this front, because I've definitely missed it.


Sage advice is still specializing in psionics, for the third issue in a row. Man, this might be an improvement on 1st ed, but it's still got a long way to go.

Can a wish grant you psionic powers (probably, but no more than it can permanantly increase ability scores. Diminishing returns will soon set in. )

How do multiclassed characters get psionics (Skip laughs at you! Just use your psionicist level. Simple and easy)

Can detonate be used selectively. (no. Like other artillery powers, you don't use it in melee, or you piss off all your buds. )

Can soften affect body weaponry. (only as much as polymorphing affects lycanthropes. It won't work long. )

What are the stats for animals. (Buy the monstrous compendia. We aren't relisting them because a power refers to them. Gotta get 'em all. :teeth ting:)

Does metamorphosis let you move at the assumed creatures rate (generally, yes. Unless their movement is magically based rather than physical. No beholder flight, for example. )


Arcane Lore: Not enough spells for elementalists? Someone hasn't got the Al Qadim stuff yet. Add that to the tome of magic and Dark Sun books and they're exceedingly well catered for. We've already fixed low level necromancers here. I think abjuration and divination are the schools that could most use a little sprucing up now. But anyway, here's a selection of new elemental spells, many of which have offensive uses. No matter what element you picked, (except heart) you're not going to suck at fighting, that's for sure.

Wings doesn't quite justify being more than twice Fly's level, but gives it a shot, with an array of minor tricks based on exactly what kind of wings you pick. Still, compared to the powerful shapeshifting spells you'll get at the next few levels, it seems somewhat puny.

Airball lets you unleash an outward hurricane somewhere in your vicinity, keep a load of spare air around for emergencies, or possibly set as a trap for the foolish adventurer. There's a lot you can do with compressed air.

Windwar is your basic 9th level mini apocalypse, whipping everything into the air wizard of oz style and doing considerable amounts of damage to everything in miles. One that fully justifies it's high level.

Stone Sleep lets you soothe golems and mud men with a tuning fork. Since they're immune to standard mindfucking, this is one of those boutique spells that'll come in handy occasionally, like invisibility to undead or animals. Nonelementalists probably won't bother.

Stone Drill is your basic tunnelmaker. Slightly different from Dig, it's the same level, and both still have their benefits and optimal uses. Battlefield control, particularly when prepared before the battle, remains a very smart thing to do.

Searing Serpent is a ranged whip attack for when fireball wouldn't be wise. It can still wind up setting your stuff alight, so mind you don't burn down the room by mistake.

Flame Chase is another distinctively shaped bit of firey destruction. Slow enough to terrify rather than just bringing the pain right away, it's another one that's probably not the most optimal spell for it's level, but is good for the sadism. You don't become a fire elementalist without at least a moderate love for new forms of burning and blowing stuff up.

Liquid Orb is another spell which creates raw material, which it is then up to you to apply creatively. Since it can create liquids other than water, your imagination can get quite creative. But of course, it's always good against fire things.

Shark Bolt creates a whole load of mini energy sharks to nom the enemy. Now that's a nice visual. Even more nice is the fact that you can sorta parry them,

Steam Blast is a new 3rd level spell that actually rivals fireball and lightning bolt. Add this one and you'll have a cone shaped AoE spell to go with your ball and line ones, and brutalise the enemy with great efficiency. I strongly approve.

Deep Delve gives you a semi-permeable bathysphere so you can take the whole group miles underwater and still interact fairly freely with the locals. Pretty impressive really, and a nice one to open up new adventures. After all, there's some pretty weird shit down there. Who knows what the Aboleths and Morkoths are cooking up.

Power Word, Liquefy is a slightly weaker, but more gruesome variant on power word kill. And let's face it, it will make bringing the killed back to life a lot harder. So it's probably one you use to scare the locals rather than for fighting equals. Pretty typical of this collection, which is a fun read, but tends to err on the side of underpoweredness. Guess the game isn't going to be broken by incorporating this lot.

Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992

part 3/5


The voyage of the princess ark: Bruce takes a break for a third time. The progress of this series really has slowed to a crawl this year. At least we're getting filler material in the form of more letters and answers, rather than nothing at all. What have people got to say for themselves this month?

Where are the stats for normal demihumans. (Right there in the book. Normal demihumans are 1st level. Yes, that means every single NPC elf knows basic magic, and they're all half-decent fighters. Humans have to really work at it to surpass them. )

Is the create food table wrong (yes. So much for your army logistics)

What's the base damage for striking (none. When you do fistfights, you don't want to kill people)

All the optional rules in the sourcebooks are making D&D too complicated (Only if you apply all of them at once. And since they're meant to apply only to their respective regions, you shouldn't be doing that.)

Who are the guys on p148 of the cyclopedia (Good question)

Will you do maps for the new areas covered in the ark's travels. ( I hope so. It'll be tricky to squeeze everything in though. )

The amount of text in recent supplements is decreasing! Also, why are modules so much more expensive than Dragon magazine when they have way smaller page counts ( We pay freelancers by the word. So when Lorraine ( :Organ music, roll of thunder: ) said we had to cut costs, we decided to pass the shafting on to them. As for modules, it's an economy of scale thing. We have guaranteed sales and distribution for the magazine. We do not for modules. )

Where do Mystics fit in. (Like AD&D monks, not everywhere. If you really want to play them, there are enough places they could feasibly be natives of. )

Where are all the gnomes (Good question. Maybe they're all living underground right next door. )

Can Shadow elf shamen wear armor ( Maybe. As long as they also wear their robes. )

What happens if you cast continual light on a beholders eyes. (Depends which eyes. You can't cast it on all of them. )

What happens when an invisible creature eats (the food disappears. To do otherwise would be grooooss)

How the hell do dominion holders stay out of debt. There's never enough money to go around. (Welcome to the wonderful world of geopolitics. You're absolutely right. You've either got to keep adventuring to get more treasure, sell some valuable resource to other countries, or make huge compromises in terms of budget allocations. If you don't, the banks will be happy to lend you money at substantial interest, making things even worse in the long run. Hey, maybe this economic system isn't so unrealistic after all. )


Forum: Dorian Loeffler sparks off a round of the metagaming question. You know, it's not metagaming when your characters can clearly see one option is more effective than another IC and choose accordingly. Still, that can be a fine line, especially when playing newbie characters with experienced players.

Lawrence Davison sparks off another issue, that of limiting your player's choices so as to give them a coherent background, and help find reasons for the party to get together. This causes pissy players, which is no fun at all. This is why you should choose not only the system, but who you invite to your group wisely.

Micael A Lavoie debates the same problem. You do need reasons for them to get along. These can be obvious or surprisingly obscure. Remember, often it's the differences people have that make them complement each other well. Good roleplaying goes a long way.

Russell Dewhurst thinks crossbows should be more powerful. Once again I yawn. D&D lowballs this stuff for a reason.

Andy Shockney complains at length about the imbalance found in multiclass demihumans and their various kits. Some choices are simply better than others in all ways. Something needs to be done. Yup, this is a fairly substantial problem alright. Good luck houseruling it to your satisfaction.

Nicholas Abruzzo complains that a DM expected him to play lawful good as lawful stupidly merciful. Ah yes, another problem that won't go away, and will eventually be "solved" by taking alignment out of class requirements instead. As long as there are bad DM's and players, people will disagree about morality.


TSR Previews: Ravenloft is their biggest export this month. RQ3: From the shadows sees Azalin exert his power to manipulate the other domains, using the PC's as pawns. Join the dots, and you'll see another big metaplot event approaching. Meanwhile, in Heart of Midnight by J. Robert King, an unwilling lycanthrope schemes revenge. Ironic vengance approaches for those who made him suffer. Will he give into evil in the process?

Spelljammer gets crossoverlicious again, in SJ6: Greyspace. See their solar system, and show just how much spaceships would change the nature of the war down on Oerth. This should be interesting.

Dark sun reveals The Dragon. Borys, the only defiler/psionicist to make it all the way to 30th level. DSR4: Valley of dust and fire. He doesn't need a city state. He just takes what he wants from the other sorcerer kings. Maybe if they all worked together, they could kill him, but good luck with that. Scary place.

The Forgotten Realms gets FR15: Gold and Glory. A sourcebook on mercenaries? Well, adventurers often run into them. Sounds like it could be useful.

Our generic products continue to resurge. HR4: A mighty fortress brings swashbuckling to AD&D. Dueling, muskets, mass combat, and various bits of renaissance technology. Have at you, power creep! We also get GR3: Treasure maps. Another way you can facilitate adventures, with prefab maps that aren't entirely accurate, leading the players into all kinds of fun.

Meanwhile, D&D is very much not generic. HWQ1: The Milenial Scepter. The hollow world is having it's own metaplot events, and you're invited to the party.

And finally, our standalone book this month is Half-Light by Denise Vitola. Some complicated intrigue and interdimensional strangeness seems to be involved. Hey ho. So many books, so little attention to give to each of them.

Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992

part 4/5


The lonely harpist and the lady rogue: Another set of Ed Greenwood NPC's with not a single ability score without a bonus. Dear oh dear. Looks like once again he's serving up a cheese dish a little too pungent for my tastes.

Mintiper Moonsilver is one of those high level npc's who's received a mysterious blessing from a dying plot device character that makes him near impossible to get rid of permanently. This of course means he's had all sorts of adventurers and seen more than his fair share of companions lost around him. This may cause a certain degree of angst, but certainly doesn't stop him from adventuring.

Asilther Graelor is a slave girl rescued by Mintiper. She has the terrible problem of not being taken seriously as an adventurer due to her attractiveness, which seems rather out of character with the general portrayal of gender dynamics in the Realms. This makes me go o_O a bit. What's going on here then? Is Ed starting to succumb to the dirty old man brain-eater? But he's only in his mid-30's. Really not sure about this, not sure at all.


Fiction: Dragon scales by Eric Tanafon. Another dragon hunting story with a twist. Two actually. Both the result and the method of said dragon's pacifying are quite amusing, resulting in a situation that seems a lot more sustainable and interesting than recent ones where dragons are a dying race. The humour is both clever and properly integrated into the story, and the danger seems quite real. I think this is another pretty decent result for the fiction department.


The role of computers returns. This of course means the decision on what games to cover in their limited page count is an even trickier one than usual. This isn't helped by the fact that the number of games released continues to increase, and the cost of systems continues to decline. Before long, computer games'll be overtaking movies, books and music in terms of profitability. What then? A tricky question when this magazine is supposed to be primarily about tabletop RPG's.

A-train is a rather challenging sim game of railroad management. Not too hard to start, but a real bitch to finish, especially as it isn't always easy to tell how near you are to failing. Expect to reload it quite a few times before you get good.

Battletoads, of course, is renowned for being tricky but fun, and these reviewers hew to that conventional wisdom. Keep on trying, maybe you'll make it in the end.

The four Crystals of Trazere gets middling marks. Overhead land adventuring, isometric dungeons, and the usual set of attributes, spells, treasure, etc. Just another party based computer RPG.

King's Bounty loses marks for an annoying copy protection scheme and wonky controls, but other than that is a decent enough strategy/adventure game where you have to build troops, fight monsters and find the macguffin. The kind of thing that gives you lots of resource management choices, so you can experiment with playing it through in different ways.

Super Space Invaders just gets poor marks because for all their gimmicky attempts to modernise it, it still feels stuck in the 70's. True nostalgics will probably prefer the actual original, and others might as well not bother.

Ultima Underword: The Stygian Abyss gets our second ever 6 out of 5 result, putting it up with Wing Commander as a game that both lives up to it's predecessors and advances upon them in terms of visuals, challenges and control scheme. Just make sure you download the patch for your inventory so you can store enough items. Ahh, the joys of the internet. Letting coders get away with sloppiness after the fact.


The marvel-phile: Looks like spiderman is once again suffering from foes that have complementary themed powers and work together to make best use of them. Deathweb, are a pair of gadgeteers and a mutant, all with varying spider themed abilities. This is obviously a bit embarrassing for your friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler, and the rest of the Avengers got involved in foiling them. They were eventually foiled, but they may well have achieved what they planned anyway, it's hard to tell. In any case, they're currently locked up, which means they can escape pretty much any time another plot has a use for them. Curiously, a quick googling reveals this isn't the case, and these guys have pretty much disappeared into obscurity. Hey, guess the system can work. It's only where celebrities are involved that it falls down, just like reality. Another fairly average entry in this department.


The dragon's bestiary: Still just about in theme here, with two wilderness based monsters. Kruel are corrupted (and rather creepy looking) fae things that'd fit right into either of the World of darkness changeling games. They can shapeshift, but have a tell that gives them away, and some amusing quirks of behaviour and ecology. Halfway between raiding goblinoids & trickster fae in function, They're another one to give your low-mid level encounters a bit more variety.

Pardal are another demonstration of Spike Y. Jones' talent for putting a new mythic spin on things. Big cats with hypnotic coats, they're actually comparatively weedy if you can shake off the hex and fight back against them, but if not, you'll be dinner. One that's a much bigger threat to small parties, as with any creature with a save or be temporarily incapacitated effect that then kills you while you're indisposed. They can also serve as magic item components or a pet for the more extravagant evil overlord, so there's plenty of reasons you could encounter one. Looks like he's still full of cool ideas.


Troubleshooting your game: Another article born from the forum debates of late. They really do pay for themselves in terms of producing stuff tailored to the current issues that are important to gaming. In this case, it's keeping the game from falling apart under stress. Annoying players can kill things all too easily if you don't nip them in the bud. What are we to do. You can't kick out everyone who isn't exactly to your tastes, or before you know it there'll be no game left. But you do need to sort out the twinks, the party disruptors, and the people who act like idiots without expecting consequences. Yeah, this definitely feels like a forum letter bumped up to full article status, albeit deservingly. As this is one of those cases where it's not that the article is bad, it's just that the information in it feels very familiar, I shall just chalk my lack of enthusiasm up to my own jadedness. Not a lot I can do about that, as far as I can tell.

Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992

part 5/5


Role-playing reviews: Shadowrun second edition is our only big review this month. As one of the biggest and most groundbreaking successes of recent years, they've decided it merits a little more attention than a cursory review. In fact, it's so popular it's seeing backlash from pretentious purists. You know an act has it made when that starts to happen. Not that it isn't a mishmash of cool elements thrown together, but that's precisely why it's so successful. By blurring genres in a cool way, you can wind up picking up fans from both sides of the divide. Anyway, it seems that second edition couldn't come too soon, and has made significant improvements to the rules and visuals, while also moving the timeline along at the same rate as reality. It looks like you'll be having a good deal of fun with this, and isn't that more important than some kind of ideological purity.

Course, they've also managed to put out a pretty decent number of supplements too, and these don't go unexamined. The adventures don't come off too kindly. Only a couple of years in, and they're either incredibly formulaic Mr Johnson betrays the party plots, or metaplot stuff which doesn't reveal even to the GM what's really going on, promising to deliver that info in future installments. This is very deserving of snark, and Allen delivers with panache. The character and location books come off rather better, even if hackers get the obligatory complaint about how using their niche disrupts everyone else's play. The problems of this system were obviously fully present and spotted by other designers right from the outset. Still, it'll give you plenty of time to figure out how to overcome them.


The game wizards: Another perspective on convention season here for some reason. Thomas Reid follows in Kim Mohan's footsteps by telling the story of his first con experience. And it seems they remain just as exhilarating and bewildering over a decade later, if not more so. After all, gaming is considerably bigger now, and so the workload on the poor staff is pretty mental. Food remains likely to upset a sensitive stomach, and three days of being on your feet may stress the sedentary gamer, but these are crosses you'll just have to bear. The whole thing still corroborates Roger's story that plenty of fun was had there, and the TSR crew still have plenty of leeway to be silly in the way they promote the game and interact with the public. Just don't piss off Jim Ward. He's still got the murderous monty haul touch. Yeah, this series is definitely getting better at making you forget it's a promotional tool, with no obvious plugs here, just lots of fun being demonstrated. Come next year, my pretties, oh yess. We will have such sights to show you. :steeples fingers: Yup, I think I enjoyed reading this.


The role of books has an unusually high quotient of collaborative works this month. That's an interesting theme to choose.

The forever king by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy gets a rather negative review. A good idea is nothing without proper characters and execution. Yeah, we've heard that one before. Learn from your mistakes and hone your craft some more.

Knights Wyrd by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald also gets a mixed review. The fantasy and real world elements of the story don't mesh perfectly, even if some of them are quite good. Still, this is one case where the reviewers quibbles don't seem like something I'd have a problem with. Heros completely bucking the rules of their society and not having role models is a perfectly reasonable method of generating dramatic tension.

Catwoman: Tiger hunt by Lynn Abbey and Robert Asprin is a licensed batman book that doesn't make very good use of the property. With the titular character both poorly characterized and only playing a small part in the story, I suspect an existing idea of the author roughly shoehorned into the DC universe as a quick moneyspinner. In any case, the editors should probably have rejected it, or at least made some serious edits to make it fit with the other stuff coming out at the same time.

Dark force rising by Timothy Zahn is one of his licensed Star Wars novels. This on the other hand does manage to capture the right style and characterization.  reasonably well. Of course, we know now what an continuity nightmare the EU will become over the next couple of decades, but hey, it's not all his fault is it. Except maybe Mara Jade.

The crown of columbus by Louise Erdrich & Michael Dorris starts a whole section of colonial books. (well it is the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering America.) Trouble is, it's a rather dull one, with characters that the reviewer finds unbelievable. Again. Sturgeon's law in fully in place this month.

What might have been: Alternate americas, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H Greenberg, on the other hand is another solid anthology from the king of them. As usual, he's quite capable of both getting the big names in, and ensuring quality and diversity in the writing while staying on theme.

Yesterday we saw mermaids by Esther M Friesner finishes things up by going above and beyond the formula, producing something that's both experimental and high quality, while still being fun reading. Guess she knows what she's doing.

We also see Terry Pratchett mentioned here for only the second time. He's been busily adding to the Discworld series in the past 4 years, and is about to reach his creative peak with Reaper Man. Not that this reviewer realises that yet. Funny how that happens. I wonder if he'll ever get a proper feature.


Dragonmirth has a joke that actually surprises me for a change. The good guys start watching the events in their crystal ball this time round in Yamara. Meanwhile the plot seems to be simplified, but then gets a lot more complicated again in twilight empire. Shapeshifters mean you're never quite sure what's going on.


Through the looking glass: As with the computer games column, they have more than enough material to review here, so no point wasting time on preamble. A mechanical drill vehicle thing like the TMNT one to burst out of your floor and unleash who knows what enemies on the battlefield. A mounted chaos warrior and an infantry one, possibly usable in tandem. A skeleton riding a motorcycle. Heavy metal Death approves. A young dragon that has recently kicked the butt of a knight. A drunk guy. Not very impressive in the circumstances. Fortunately the town watch are here to escort him away. There are three different elf models from different companies, a couple of dioramas, another dragon, and more adventurers and monsters than I can be bothered to list. Yup, this is another bumper christmas. Whatever the state of wargaming, minis are still a thriving industry. Looks like this column isn't going anywhere, even if they seem to be running out of fun framing stuff to write. Let's hope they can find something to keep it interesting next year, because this isn't as varied as it used to be. Come on, give us some painting and sculpting advice again.


Another issue that feels very much like business as usual. Quality is as high as ever, but returning to the same old topics again and again does result in a feel of diminishing returns and filler. They'll have to get in a regular supply of new young players if they want to sustain the magazine in this style. I suppose it works for many companies as a business model. But it does remind me that I eventually lost interest for quite a while, and there was good reason for that. Oh well, I'll keep on sifting for forgotten gems anyway. Far too much invested to quit now.

Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992

part 1/5


124 pages. Speak of the devil. Larry Elmore shows up again this christmas to show us how it's done. And for once, he's not painting the same model That's a pleasant change. For christmas, it seems we have another round of roleplaying advice for both GM and player. Do they have any new ideas, or will it be the same old homilies to character building and respecting the feelings of others? I think I need a little something beyond the basics this far in.


In this issue:


Letters: We get a belated obituary for Fritz Leiber this month. Alas, we knew him well. Fare thee well, old rogue. Your legacy remains every time they run a collection of magical items here.

We also get an official confirmation of demise for Top Secret support. The writing has been on the wall for some time though. It managed a good decade of fairly regular articles, but the will just isn't there when the public buy D&D products in several orders of magnitude greater numbers. Bah. Must try harder.

A letter complaining about how kid-centric their recent survey was. See, it's not just me suffering from this! Roger admits that their current marketing policy is indeed to catch 'em young, trap them for life. But you do also need to keep exiting players for that to work.

A letter from someone who's forgotten who or what the thendar are. This also completely stumps the TSR staff. Fortunately, a simple keyword search allows me to solve this problem in a second. Issue 101, the creature catalog III.  Ennuii ridden astral planar guys with galactus hats. I love modern technology.


Editorial: It's been a long time since you could send in an article to the magazine anonymously and have any hope of it getting published. Here we see them getting a little more bureaucratically entrenched and hard for a new writer to break into. Not only do you pretty much have to do the SASE thing if you want to avoid the norkers dressed as ogres eating your hard work, you have to ask them before sending in the article if they're interested. That should be pretty offputting to those of thin skin or short attention span. It may not be the best way to nurture talent, but as long as they can choose from dozens of articles for each one published, they can get away with treating their freelancers like a cattle market. Man, I can't wait for the internet to be adopted by business, at least solve the problem of basic return communications being horribly expensive stuff that we bear the cost for. This is exactly the kind of crap that makes people want to see big businesses taken down a peg or two.


That's role, not roll!: Or let's make that cliche a little more overused until everyone's sick of it. And gee, can you guess which side they come down on? It's not the side that kills everything and takes their stuff. Although they do warn you not to overdo the roleplaying, particularly when shopping, this is mostly encouraging you to increase your character's connection to the world, and player immersion. It's all fairly familiar, trying to get you to strike the right balance of danger, challenge, NPC detail, etc etc to make your game fun. And as ever, they can explain the equipment, but you really need to try out the tools and figure out exactly how much of each is ideal for your group and the current situation, because it'll always be a little different each time. So as usual when they get to the system free roleplaying advice, this is useful first time, but not so much for me anymore.


Be nice to your referee: And so we move onto some advice for the players. This is largely metagame stuff. Even if the DM is often the adversary within the game, that's all the more reason to treat them with respect IRL. Basic stuff, like showing up on time and calling to apologise if you have to cancel. Paying attention and not digressing into chitchat, reminiscences or mucking around on your laptop. Making sure food is sorted out before the game begins. Having all the relevant details of your character and their current stuff sorted out ready to roll. And generally planning ahead in a round situation while everyone else is going so you don't waste time when it gets to your go. If everyone does considerate stuff like this, your game experience will be both more pleasant, and a lot more will get done. In contrast to the previous article, this is one that is incredibly unambiguous in how to apply it properly, and has some ideas the magazine hasn't aired before. This is definitely one to take to the group and have a good hard talk about if your group isn't quite working as it is. Of course, you may need to kick out one or two of the worst offenders to really make sure the rest take it on board, but that's the kind of discipline you need to keep a group healthy. So yeah, this is a pretty good one. They've redone the basics, now hopefully they can fit some advanced tricks in before the issue's over.


Roles for role-players: The idea of a Caller and a Mapmaker are well established in old skool gaming. In a large group where each individual may well get limited screen time, the idea of giving players additional specialised roles to ensure they have something specific and useful to do increasingly seems like a good idea. In addition to the existing two, this article also suggests the idea of having a dedicated timekeeper, to help rounds go smoothly, and story chronicler to make sure everyone can check what went on without the DM doing all the work of writeups. On top of those roles, you can always assign players the role of temporarily playing particular NPC's, particularly when their actual characters are indisposed or the party is split. While short, this is a nicely limit-pushing article that should help you think more about the technical details of how you organise your sessions and ensure all the players are invested and involved in the game. Hopefully the forum'll have a few follow-up ideas for this one, as it definitely a cool one that's over all too soon. Easily the most useful of the articles from this themed section for me, as it isn't covering ideas I've heard already.

Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992

part 2/5


The wizards three: And then there were three, and another classic series truly begins. Toril, Oerth, Krynn and our own world are all represented now. How Ed's avoided being killed or turned into a small furry animal with all these superpowerful wizards visiting regularly I'm not sure. But his gain is also our gain, as we get to read the stories of him stuck in a suit of armour while three archmages bicker and exchange stories. Well, two and a half, as El and Mord would say about Dalamar. It's a hard life, stuck on a tiny little world where the gods don't let you go above 18th level, and there's hardly any CR appropriate encounters for you to try anyway. Everyone hears about the cool toys months before you do, and when people get famous, they move away and never come back.

Even more than last time, this also becomes commentary on recent metaplot events, with Ed setting this instalment after Vecna Lives, where Mordenkainen got killed in the intro. (Remember folks, always back up your memories regularly and keep plenty of clones in storage. Guess D&D and Paranoia have more in common than you'd think. ) He also refers to several other creatures he's invented, and other articles from this magazine, making this extra entertaining now I've read all those. And the new spells and magic items are incredibly mean, once again cementing Ed's ability to create tactically intelligent effects that screw over the standard countermeasures and further humiliate those attempting them. Since these are advanced techniques, you should be wary about using them regularly, and make the players really work to add them to their spellbooks, but it's still highly entertaining. He's not only lasted longer than most writers, but continues to go from strength to strength, just like his insanely high level NPC's.


Forum: Steve De Young thinks fighters are still a valuable member of the party, particularly at low levels. Yes, but rangers and paladins are still even better, and can get most fighter kits and a whole bunch of exclusive ones each. Reliable damage output and toughness is rather a one-trick pony business.

M. J. Simpson, on the other hand, supports the complaint that specialisation just isn't enough as a nice protection. Hardly anyone in his game plays straight fighters any more. Even adding extra incentives aren't doing the job.

Selman Halabi also thinks more needs to be done to make fighters interesting. Unfortunately, his solution involves removing more stuff from other classes, rather than adding it to fighters, which isn't going to make them more interesting now, is it.  

William De Pretre, on the other hand is on the side that thinks they're a valuable, nay, essential part of the team. I can see this one running for quite a bit.

John Duffin thinks having a bog-standard class which is easy to master is good for the game. Plus, this means you can role-play them in pretty much any way that you like. He does have a point. Accesability is important, and doing one thing well can prove a lot more profitable than doing many things ok, as many real world businesses can attest.

Andre Costatini also thinks that the fighter classes openness is what makes them exiting. Remember, most real world famous people would be fighters, and they certainly weren't all alike. You can certainly follow in the footsteps of Conan or Robin Hood.

Rick Tazzle deals with the Swashbuckler problem in some detail, including a few new optional uses for weapon proficiency slots. You know, maybe that is part of the solution to the boring fighter problem. After all, they do get more slots, although probably not in quite sufficient quantity to make up for their lack of other stuff.

Michael Satran extends the debate by pointing out how much better paladins are than rangers. Since they use the same XP table, this isn't entirely fair. With extensive bullet-pointing, it's hard to argue with him. Still, I hope someone will take up the debate. I certainly think that when you factor in their respective kits and other splatbook stuff, rangers get more customisability than paladins, catching them up a bit.


The voyage of the princess ark: The team split up again in the final installment of the adventure. Haldemar takes a planar trip to get back to Alphatia quickly, leaving the Ark behind. This does not go quite as planned, but the diversion proves useful, as now he has solid evidence with his own eyes that the Glantrians are planning to somehow drain magic from the world. Not good. He tells the Empress, but she of course has to deal with politics. Here we run into the problem that their future is now predetermined, with Alphatia's destruction in the Wrath of the Immortals metaplot. It just hasn't happened to them yet. Bruce drops a number of rather obvious hints in here, in another case of the big setting reveal being spoiled where it probably shouldn't.

Meanwhile, back at the Ark, the rest of the crew run across the Phanatons. Despite being cute little gliding things, they still prove more than capable of capturing the crew. Proving that they are friendly turns out to be a rather testing experience, involving lots of spiders used in a rather witch-hunt-esque manner. Charming. Still, all's well that ends well.

Having covered a new race in here, Bruce of course elaborates on their history and culture, and makes them available as PC's. Since being uplifted by the immortal Ui, the Phanatons have been a persistent thorn in the side of the Herathians, given their tendency to hunt and eat giant spiders. They aren't the scariest race, but in a forest environment, they can be very effective, shooting things from above and gliding from tree to tree. Like Kobolds, they can take down much tougher creatures by use of hit and run tactics, poison and traps. They get the usual shamanic option, and here we see an AD&Dism creep in, as they get different powers depending on the specific immortal they follow. Are dwarves and halflings the only races that don't have spellcasting as a standard option?

And that's the end of the series. It really could have gone on longer, after all, there's the entire arm of the immortals and most of the southern continent still left uncovered. And up to a few months ago, Bruce certainly seemed to think it would continue. But I get the impression that the management didn't want the series continuing in the past when the timeline in general has been moved on, and Bruce didn't want to send them into the future again, to see the aftermath of their nation's destruction. After all, Haldemar doesn't seem the sort to take that lightly, and if allowed to continue as a protagonist, he might mess up the metaplot. And we can't have that, can we. Another case where a good series is hampered by overall management. Such a downer of an ending.

Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992

part 3/5


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another article following very directly in Ed's footsteps. Idiosyncratic magical swords? Of the Realms? Issue 74 would like to have a word with you, whippersnapper. As ever, the difference between a homage and a rip-off is purely a matter of quality.  

Calathangas turns both the wielder and those attacked into wererats. This may or may not be considered a good thing. It also lets you control normal rats, which probably is handy. Better get practicing that control shape skill.

Dyerwaen makes you highly popular with elves and lets you fit into the forest as well as any ranger or druid. Whether you use that responsibly is up to you.

Equillar lets you change shape, can change it's own shape, blocks mind-reading and disrupts the shapechanging abilities of others. You can slice through intrigue with ease and finesse. Useful here, and even more so in Ravenloft.

Evithyan's Blade is an elven sword designed to kick drow ass. Like Glamdring, just seeing it'll have them quaking in their boots, such is it's reputation.

The Heart of Stone lets you cast stoneskin on yourself, and petrifies enemies with a crit. Cheesy or what? It does have a teensy little drawback, but that's only a problem if you don't do your homework. And I do so love putting players in situations like that, so I approve of this.

Ice Claw is an intelligent frost brand that wants to kill dragons. Don't we all mate. And with an ego like that, you aren't going to be saying no to it any time soon. Have fun being dragged along in search of foes to valiantly slay.

Neekar lets you speak and read any language. It's intelligent as well, so it'll help you by explaining the context of stuff you still don't understand, and quite possibly being a general right-hand diplomat whispering in your ear. A sword that likes preventing bloodshed? Next thing you know, we'll have an axe that encourages you to plant trees.

Nightwatcher lets you see in the dark, and alerts you if set properly while you sleep. Solo dungeon crawling is always a mugs game, but this is a good bit of gear to have if you really can't find a team.

Swords +2, shock blade add extra energy damage to your hits above and beyond their regular plus. Ahh yes, this became one of the great cheese exploits in 3e, particularly Neverwinter nights. Add a whole bunch of 1d6 elemental/energy damage effects (and permanant true strike if you want to be really cheesy) and the weapon becomes a lot more deadly for it's GP value. That's what happens when you put item crafting in the hands of smart PC's.  

Swords +2, Vampiric regeneration do exactly the same as the ring of the same name. Not sure why they bothered to specify the exact plus, and that's easy enough to change anyway. Really, that ability could be applied to nearly any item. Not the most imaginative ending to the collection, but they all seem pretty handy anyway, and have enough quirks to keep players on their toes. It's much easier to follow a trail than it is to blaze it.


Shadow knight supplement for Amber! With lots of glowing quotes and a questionnaire. You don't normally get those for palladium products.


The role of computers decides to fill their page count with more smaller reviews. In the process, they stray ever further from their original remit to review things from the perspective that this is a roleplaying magazine, and the games chosen and criteria they're examined with should reflect that. Another thing that has gradually been diluted over the years to the point where it's pretty much forgotten without actually being consciously abandoned. And more cause for long-term concern. Complacency is a persistent challenge that never gets any easier to deal with, just like creativity.

Aces of the Pacific is a WWII flight sim. It's pretty easy to learn, and reasonably fun. But they don't give much info about it, apart from stuff on what your computer needs to play it, which is a section that hasn't got any shorter under their new format.  

Darkseed gets another review driven strongly by complaints and system requirements. Annoying copy protection plus a crap instruction manual drag down it's marks.

Falcon 3.0 is another flight sim, this time more modern. This gets a little more detail,  and a general recommendation, although they once again complain about the manual. They're computer programmers! They may work in larger teams than in the 80's, but the days of each program being a massive project with space and budget for dedicated music & manual writers is still a few years away.

Minotaur is a multiplayer fantasy adventure game where you're put in a maze and have to compete to find weapons, spells, etc to beat the other players and escape. Treacherous alliances and brutal deaths are the order of the day. The online arena is progressing nicely these days.

Prince of Persia gets 5 stars, kicking off another long-running series with a bang and much frustration. Once again they complain about the copy protection. If you lose the manual, you're in trouble. Play it on a console instead.

Red Baron is a third flight sim, this time concentrating on WWI. Man, what has this got to do with roleplaying? I suppose it draws on the wargaming link, but we haven't see much of that round here in years. I am left vaguely bemused again.


Fiction: Something familiar by Eliza Erskine. Another tale of wizardly hubris and comeuppance this month. You try and steal from a thief, and who knows what they'll do to get revenge. Well, the same applies to stealing from wizards, as we've seen before, so the results are usually interesting whichever side wins. As usual where magic is involved, the punishment is suitably ironic and quite mean. About average for fiction around here, which still means it's reasonably entertaining.


This year's statement of ownership shows another steady year. With an average of 93,371, and a last month of 93,545, it looks from a casual inspection have a consistent fanbase at the moment. Delve closer, though, and the number of subscriptions has declined by more than a thousand and a half, while the number of newsstand sales is down by over 800, and the surplus is a large number of undistributed copies. This is interesting statistically, if not that pleasing. They'll probably sell those eventually as back issues, but in the meantime they're hanging around eating up warehouse space. Another subtle sign of slow decline.