Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993


part 4/5


Novel ideas: As usual for the first instalment of this column of the year, it's time to see what books are coming out over the course of the year. As you's expect, they lead with their strongest lines. The realms is getting a good 8 books, including 3 Salvadore ones. Not for nothing is he the master hack. Dragonlance is getting 6 novels, plus a rerelease of an old favourite. The people have spoken, and they want poetry! Dark sun, Ravenloft and regular D&D are getting 3 books each. Ravenloft is even getting a hardback, despite being the one that's skipping the trilogies and bigger series. They must be doing particularly well for themselves. Ahh, the joys of horror bringing in a different demographic to exploit.

Course, it's not all good news, although they try and spin it all positively. Spelljammer is finishing the end of it's only series, and they have no plans for another one. They've given no hints what's coming after this year for the basic D&D line Similarly, the XXVc line is limping out it's final products on greatly reduced print runs. And the generic line is not only down to 4 books, the same as last year, but two of them are follow-ups of previously successful stories. They really do want to cut their risks in that department. Still, overall that's 30 books mentioned, one more than last year. On the surface it all looks pretty stable, unlike last year, there's few major changes in their lineup. Whether that will result in diminishing returns for sales yet I'm not sure. Anyone with inside knowledge here?


Sage advice: Where is Zalchara ( I dunno. But if you want Zakhara you turn south at Toril, and keep going until you get past the pretentious guys with the skyships, then take a 45 degree turn left. You can't miss it, since it is an entire continent. If it's not there, go back a hundred years and try again. If it's still not there, then it's been retconned, and you might as well play cards in limbo with all the people punched by superboy prime)

What's the level limit for halfling sha'irs (10)

What do rings of wizardry and other magical items that boost your memorization ability do for sha'irs (not a lot, in most cases. Like a mule with a spinning wheel, your best bet is to sell it on for a good price. )

What's with the reference to segments in Wall of Ash (Another case of the writer not keeping up to date with rules changes.

Why are descriptions of the Baazrag so contradictory (good question. Unfortunately, Skip doesn't have a good answer, so Skip will give you two mediocre answers instead. Hopefully that'll be satisfactory.)

Tinker gnomes have been nerfed by Tales of the Lance! (Yes. We're subtly trying to keep you from playing one, so groups don't have to deal with them as PC's. )

How much damage does a sashik do. (It's a bloody kender weapon, so Skip'll take the least favourable option. )

I don't understand the cleric spell lists (They do need a bit of clearing up. That is Skip's job, so Skip will do it )

Reorx and Sargonass' turning abilities are a bit odd (Not all evil gods like hanging around with undead. And is it so wrong for some gods to give alternate turning options? Things get very boring without variety. )

The dates on the calendars contradict each other again. ( Tracey! Margaret! Please report to Skip's office on the double. No excuses and no lallylagging. )

High level sword knights can't fill up their spell list in one go. (Yes. This is an intentional bit of design. Lets them have occasional access to high level spells without stepping on clerics toes. )

How many legs do displacer beasts have (6, unless some were chopped off. Or it could just be artist incompetence, as usual. )


The game Wizards: Oh no. No, no no no no. Iiiiiiit's Volo! If you thought Elminster was irritating, you ain't seen nothing yet. Ed Greenwood reveals his new finely veined, not quite fully matured cheese on the public. The little gobshite gives them an excuse to revisit previously sourcebooked areas of the realms and give them a second going over. After exploring north, south east and west, introducing three new continents to Toril, they're starting to close in and eat their own tail. Come on, there's plenty of place still to explore, we don't need to go back to Waterdeep yet. And do we really need so much info on the eating habits of various places. I suppose there's still more in Ed's personal notes that'll never see the light of day, and they want to get them out somehow. I do wonder who suggested this part IC format though. Since Athas, Krynn, Ravenloft, Planescape and Mystara would all use it at various points in their life, it must have been pretty popular in the TSR offices. It probably got overused over the years, and this is definitely one of the signs of that. Not an article that fills me with warm and fuzzy feelings, to say the least.


Sounds of wonder and delight: Jeff Grubb follows in Ed's footsteps. In issue 123, Ed detailed the musical instruments of the Realms, now we get the same treatment applied to Zakhara. Most of their instruments are pretty clearly based on real world ones, but there's always a few weird variants. The vast majority of them are small enough to be portable, with stringed, wind and light percussion being the most popular families. Not too surprisingly, there's also magical variants. The nay of the Djinn, The Riqq of the Efreet, The 'ud of the Marids, The Rababah of the Dao and the Qanun of the spirits are a themed set of musical instruments. Each has a couple of minor powers when played alone, but if you can gather all 5, you can summon a genie army. This is obviously a big plot device to place in the campaign, and players and bad guys can compete to gather one, while genies try their hardest to make sure no-one ever does. I think that'd make a pretty decent central plot for an entire tv show, or at least a season, so despite the mundane aspects being a bit predictable, this is a pretty decent article.

Dragon Magazine Issue 190: February 1993


part 5/5


Unique Unicorns:  'Ello 'ello. Wot 'ave we 'ere then? A full dozen variant unicorns, doing for them what previous articles have done for dogs, imps, dinosaurs and of course Dragons. Well, it's an ideal choice if they want to appeal to the female demographic more without being too obvious. And exactly what powers unicorn horns have differs from myth to myth anyway. That leaves them with room for quite a few variants, at least one for each alignment. Another fairly obvious one they haven't done yet, so yay.

Alicorns have a twisted horn, and all the usual powers plus charming and the ability to ride on air. This obviously makes them even harder to catch or kill.

Bay Unicorns deploy the dread power of shaky-cam to win battles against their enemies. Oh, and fire based magic too. They're not very nice creatures, and like to live in volcanic caves. Sounds like a nice surprise for people who think unicorns are all sweetness and light.

Black Unicorns are of course utterly eeeevil and will eat your flesh. They radiate silence, can both become invisible and generate darkness, and have poisonous horns. Way to bring on a cheap death. Poor spellcasters just won't know what to do!

Brown Unicorns read your mind and put people with hostile intent to sleep. Very faeish. I quite approve.

Cunnequines are shiny, and can turn undead and invert your alignment. Since they're good guys, they'll generally use that to make people change their ways for the better. Unicorn hunters really are biting off more than they can chew.

Faerie Unicorns are the perfect mount for pixies and the like. If their natural concealment and mind-control isn't enough, they can summon animals to help out. Good luck trying to keep them in a snare when the squirrels and bears are around.

Gray Unicorns are of course true neutral. In the interests of balance, they have that classic equalizer the ability to make you suffer any damage you inflict on them too. Once again the dramatic irony is strong in this one. Welcome to the justice zone, fae style.

Palomino Unicorns fill the LE alignment axis and have fire powers. They probably won't get along with Bay unicorns then. Natural rivals and all that.

Pinto Unicorns ejaculate shoot rainbows from their horns. How very very my little pony. They also generate illusions, making catching them a crapshoot between humiliation and death. Send all the twee lot to the Gray Waste.

Sea Unicorns are the equine equivilent of selkies, able to assume a narwhal like form or a horsey one. Like a disproportionate number of water monsters, they can control the weather, so expect ship-destroying storms if you mess with their herd.

Unisus are a crossbreed between unicorns and pegasi. Flutter Ponies! :fangirl squee!: Sorry, no avoiding that this is one of the most obvious cheese ideas evar.

Zebracorns take their camouflage abilities to a logical extreme by being able to shapeshift. They may even assume human form and walk among us. While not evil, they're as stubborn as natural zebras if you try riding them. They'll go when and where they wanna go.

As with the earlier sea monster collection, this is a nicely mythic collection that manages to both seem logically derived and still pull a few surprises, as well as having the just about right quotient of cheese for my tastes. I think this lot would be quite usable, really making people think twice about trying to hunt unicorns. Oh, the cautionary tales that would be told. Hee.


Too Bizarre to be magical: Looks like psionic articles are increasing in frequency. Another sign of their attempts to tackle neglected but needed topics. So here's a bunch of psionic artifacts. Since each one is intelligent and unique, there's room for a lot of them.

Devan's Force of Nature is a fake wand, with a bunch of elemental effects. It can be a real pain trying to remember convincing spell components, so faking a single command word is much easier. Unfortunately it's a bit of a homebody, so adventurers will have to put up with it whining about wanting to settle down. Ah yes, the danger of comic relief sidekicks. I suspect we may see a few more of these in this article.

Fleshcrawler is a playful stone that likes to shift your form. It'll be more likely to be beneficial if you actively ask it to turn you into bizarre and amusing forms. Yup, once again with the goof negotiations in a pinch. Psions need to get a better hold on their subconsciouses.

Ynilgeira's Instrument of pain and misery is a chaotic evil soul trapped in it's own ossified heart. It drains life force from people, and generally causes paranoia and misery. You know, you ought to just kill them. This causes more trouble than you'll ever get in benefits from it.

Malgovich's Portrait puts itself in the possession of politicians and manipulates it's way down the generations. I wonder if the Baatezu and dopplegangers'll suspect the paintings when they realize someone else is doing the subtle grandmaster thing on the same turf.

Mana-Ken is a nasty little voodoo doll that lets you mentally control and torture things, but then lets them free at a time very inopportune to the user. Another one that's probably more trouble than it's worth.

Tawnwater is an immortal psionic falcon with lots of psychometabolic tricks. It'll pick you more than you choose it, and join in in your adventures. How very literary. Roll on psicrystals.

Pennison's Light of Truth reveals the truth without pity or bias. This may make people uncomfortable when it's their dirty secrets being spread to the world.

The Slumbering Ferry of Al-Colgia is all about the dream travel. It's secretly a romantic, facilitating trysts and getting you back before the morning. Don't wear yourself out too much, and remember that your magic items are watching you.

The Arbiter is a silk judges robe. Enforce the law in comfort with telekinesis, body enslavement and disintegration. Unfortunately it doesn't have any information gathering powers, so you'll have to make sure it doesn't jump to conclusions and get overzealous. Yup, I think this lot'll liven up your game too, even if you don't have any psionic characters. Managing your intelligent items and familiar equivalents does make for fun, if sometimes goofy games.


Dragonmirth blurs the boundries between the eating and the eaten. Yamara gets kidnapped. And now for the news. Twilight empire finally starts making sense. But now he'll have to defeat his own wife. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAngst!


Through the looking glass: A collection of the weird and gruesome here this month. an alien that likes to infect your brain, and the rather startling final result. An adorable baby dragon and it's owner's warning sign. An alchemist mixing the wrong potion and a wizard summoning the wrong demon. Some cyborg commando mutant turtles, not derivative at all, scouts honour. A similarly cybernetically enhanced ninja, ready to sneak in and sabotage shit. An undead skeleton that'll lead you astray, will-o-wisp style, and a more conventional skeletal warrior. A truly awesome robot riding a cybernetic cat. Some boring zombies. Some very much not boring officialy licenced aliens from the movie, including facehuggers and queen. An also rather interesting cave giant plus trophies. And some amazons in chariots pulled by tigers. It'd never work in reality, but it does look cool. Still compared to the previous ones, unreality is the least of your problems.


Quite a few good articles in this one, but also signs of the larger problems starting to develop in the company management. The game wizards and known world grimoire stuff are particularly damning in that respect. The reviews were also pretty lame, generally being pretty bland in their methods and conclusions. When the end of issue filler articles from unfamiliar names beat those of the established regular writers handily in terms of entertainment, I think I can say that your formulas are becoming more of a hindrance than a help. Fight the system from inside, don't become just another cog in it.

I finally got a USB cable for my Kindle DX. This has allowed me to place all the Dragons from the Archive on it, which will make referring to them so much easier. This thread has given me the motivation to go back through the run of the magazine and re-read some stuff. It's amazing what a wealth of material it is, even if one no longer plays the editions of D&D from whatever given era a given issue is from.

Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993


part 1/5


124 pages. PETA girl (aka Robin Wood) provides this month's cover pic. La la la, sweet music and harmony between all creatures.  Sparkly sparkly flitty flitty IT'S A TRAP! And while this may not be a themed issue, looking at the contents, there certainly seems to be plenty of faeish whimsy inside too. And more real world cultural stuff too. As long as the cheese is kept in check, this could be a great deal of fun.


In this issue:


Letters: A letter interpreting issue 188's editorial as a cry for help. Funny, it read to me as almost the opposite, saying we have more than enough people trying to help, so you'd better do it right. The reality is somewhere in between, as Dale gives a lengthy reply explaining himself, and justifying the inclusion of campaign specific stuff, as well as the ease with which it can be adapted to other worlds. This is a struggle that's going to get worse.

A letter on the issue of getting hold of D&D cartoon videos. As ever, they're more likely to do so if they think there's demand out there. Don't hesitate to call and pester them.


Editorial: Oh god, Paladins and the proper roleplaying thereof. There's another almighty pain in the butt people keep complaining about. You think it's simple, that everyone should automatically know what's right and wrong. And then people inject all these grey areas. Sometimes I think they're doing it deliberately just to try and annoy you into falling, as these situations are astronomically unlikely to happen in a real world situation. But I do know that I'm less certain about what exactly is right and wrong now than I was at the age of 3. And I also know that there are a whole load of choices that have very little relevance to your personal morality, and those are the areas in which even paladins and saints can have plenty of variety. They can't control where they come from, or what they have to work with, but they can choose their actions. And without evil around them, they'd have no need to be fighters anyway. Which means they might be lawful good, but they may well often be in conflict with the actual rulers and mores of the land, which are not nearly so virtuous. Damnitt, I guess it really is that complicated. It's at time like this you wish you could just wander around using detect evil and mowing down everyone who pings as positive. So this seems like the kind of thing that's likely to stir up more forum debate than settle it. I guess Roger's got to keep people engaged and writing in somehow. I think this is a reasonable success if that was his goal.


Horses are people too: Horseys again! Well, the last time they gave them serious attention was 1989. Not at all an unwarranted topic, given how important they were to real world medieval society. This is mostly comprised of a slew of random tables for quickly individualising any encountered horse in appearance, personality and capabilities. This is mostly what you'd expect, with a few amusing surprises thrown in. ( I didn't know you could teach horses to moonwalk. ) As with most of these random tables, it should help you keep things moving in actual play quite a bit, but isn't that interesting to read. So I guess this is more of a warmup first feature than a straight off spectacular. Let's try and bring this up to a canter for the next article.


Open your mind: Psionicist kits! Now there's a much needed article. This one goes for an interesting mix of adding new kits, and adapting existing ones from the other Complete Handbooks. Many of the special benefits and penalties can be applied to another class without the game breaking, and this helps further blur the roles characters can play. Once again, the deryni get mentioned as well. It's certainly not a complete collection, but this should spur people's imaginations. and help them customise their characters. Hopefully there are some more to come in the future.

Berranie Seers are psychic gypsies. They favor the traditional mind-affecting and divination psychic powers, and justify people's suspicion of them with access to rogue proficiencies. Way to pander to stereotypes.

Thought Agents are easily the biggest and most customised kit of the bunch, with a whole variety of minor special benefits depending on if you want to be a nice guy or a mindreading fascist enforcer. Yeah, that's a perfect job for a psionicist. What fosters justice like reading minds and spying on people in their bedrooms?

Ascetic Warriors are psionic Monks. They get moderate unarmed combat bonuses at the cost of armour and wealth restrictions. Sounds about right, if very unimaginative. You'd rather still be back in 1e, wouldn't you.

Healers try and give clerics a run for their money. That'll please quite a few parties sick of the proselytising. Course, the oath of pacifism thing may be almost as irritating to groups who just want to hack and slash. That's the kind of thing you'll just have to resolve IC. So these kits are definitely on the lower key end of things, like the first few splatbooks. You won't be encountering many problems, but at the same time, they won't revolutionise your playing either.  


Rifts England! Druids and new camelot bring hope in a dangerous world :rolleyes:


The elven pantheon - Completed!: A little bit of cut material here. For various reasons, Rillifane Rallathil fell through the cracks in the editing of monster mythology, and so there were still mentions of him, but we never got his actual stats and specialty priest details. Since we already got alternate updated stats for him in issue 176, this isn't such a big deal for regular collectors of the magazine, but here we go anyway. And as before, there are some pretty substantial differences between the two interpretations, in requirements, restrictions and granted powers. Curiously, I think I actually prefer this one this time around. While both versions have substantial similarities with druids, the granted powers are more distinctive in this one, and set them apart better. Plus of course, there's the Avatar stats. So this is a fairly handy little bit o' filler from the official writers.

Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993


part 2/5


Different totes for different folks: A second load of lists and tables this month, courtesy of Vince Garcia. This initially seems like just a reprint of the PHB equipment tables with a few additions, but it's actually a lot cleverer than that. It then provides you with sample standard equipment lists for each of the major classes. This is very handy, both for getting your character up and running initially without all that faffing around shopping, and in allowing us to analyze the differences in needs of the classes. Elves come off worse by a long shot, with their multiclassed natures conspiring against them to really eat up their funds, and their spellbooks being shockingly big and heavy. Nature oriented types like druids also require a surprisingly bulky and complex set of equipment, at least until they're powerful enough to live off the land comfortably via magic. In most cases, a week's rations is one of the bulkiest parts of your gear, showing up just how inconvenient being an adventurer can be. A timely reminder that 50 pound loads are actually a pretty big hassle to carry, let alone fight in. It's also significant in that this kind of list became standard in 3e, with one for each class along with the default skill and feat picks. So this is one of those articles that is a lot more impressive than first glance would indicate. Very much one for the historical notes.


An African Genesis: Our african renaissance this year continues with an article on their gods, complete with full speciality priest stats. Like Kits, this is a rich ground for new crunch that they're only now starting to exploit to it's full potential. Since I seem to get more written when I break these things up, I think I'll do do here as well. Let's see how well designed these godly renditions are.

Olurun is one of your creator/sky deities, who has since become distant from humanity. This makes his clerics quite rare, and with restrictions that keep them from being adventurers. With flight powers, they'll have little difficulty maintaining their distance from humanity as well.

Otabala is Olurun's earthly counterpart, who's priests are a lot more involved in the community, and frequently rather wealthy, thanks to the smithing/creativity sides of his portfolio. With the ability to cast all earth related spells at double size and duration, his clerics can be pretty badass battlefield controllers. It'd be a pleasure to have one onboard.

Orunmilla presides over the spirit world. With nearly free mindreading, and a hugely expanded range of other divination spells, plus 4 free nonweapon proficiencies, her clerics are another group with abilities that are quite powerful, but'll still give them a distinctive approach.

Olokun is a rather unpleasant goddess of the sea. Like so many of them, she seems likely to send storms and sink ships if not properly appeased. Unsurprisingly, her clerics are highly focussed on water spells, and also have a strong piratical bent, raiding and slaving. They sound like a good choice for adversaries.

Ala is the goddess of the circle of life, giving her clerics enhanced powers over both sex and death. Man, regular necromancers attract enough fangirl goths. Just HOW much action will these clerics get if they use their position properly? And on top of that, they get druidlike shapechanging too at higher level. Yeah, these'll be a wet dream to certain players.

Eshu is our travelling taleteller and trickster, well known to Changeling players. His clerics have the interesting distinction of being forbidden to do anything for someone else for free. With minor roguish abilities, luck manipulation, and telepathic emergency messages, they aren't as powerful as many of the preceding priests, but are still eminently PCable.

Shango is the god of storms, and like the goddess of the sea, is violent and unpredictable. His clerics also have quite nasty necromantic abilities along with the expected electrical attacks. You can expect them to terrorise places with dramatic thunderclouds behind and maniacal laughs. A very playable collection, if a touch more powerful than most of the ones from Legends & Lore and the Complete Priests Handbook. They might even be competitive with ordinary clerics and druids The lack of access to Tome of Magic spheres is a bit on an oversight, and of course, this barely scratches the surface of the deities of Africa, but it's more than good enough for now. Like the psionicist kits, I hope we have a few more instalments in this vein to come.  


Forum is fairly small this month. Erol K Bayburst has an interesting compromise on the mapping precise dimensions problem. Tell them precisely what's going on, but don't let them record it in detail until later. Having a mapmaker draw out each room painstakingly in detail as you get to it will slow down play something fierce.

Mark C. Francisco picks apart the problems with the psionic twinkery scenario in even more detail than I did. They are not total gamebreakers, especially when they fail at a critical moment. And social penalties can balance out any level of mechanical advantages! Send a witch-hunt after them!

Charles E Borner also goes into considerable detail on this. This is why the DM should make an effort to learn the powers of all their PC's, no matter how obscure a splatbook they come from. That way, they can't put one over you with unfair tricks. Looks like this is going to get a similar treatment to the Jedi problem.


The known world Grimoire: Bruce continues to work hard on making the dominion level of D&D play more fleshed out. Having waffled on about economics for a couple of issues, it's a somewhat more interesting subject. Raising armies. People are willing to put up with a little logistics if it means a more epic asskicking or similar spectacle. So let's figure out just how much you can afford to spend on your army, and how big you can make it. As usual, you get what you pay for. You can conscript huge proportions of your able-bodied population, but don't expect them to be loyal or well equipped. This is particularly an issue if you go elsewhere and enslave the natives. Whatever your political system, you still have to pay people according to their talents, or risk revolt. Even theocracies can't make everyone work together purely for the greater glory of god. It's all rather troublesome. Bah, this has got boring again. He really needs to get his groove back, as this is rather tiresome to deal with, and I suspect most players will agree.

Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993


part 3/5


Fasa give is a rather interesting teaser. What have they got up their sleeves this time?


A magical personality: An article I expected to turn up sooner or later. In issue 163 we got advice on the respective power levels of various specialist wizard types. Here we have roleplaying advice for them. Abjurers tend to be cautious and reactive. Conjurers are pack-rats and social butterflys. Diviners are always well prepared, but can wind up stuck as observers. Enchanters are charming but pushy and egotistical. Illusionists are a bunch of liars. Invokers are blunt and impatient. Necromancers are a creepy lot. And Transmuters could be nearly anything, but do tend towards obsessiveness in whatever they do. No great surprises here, since they are stereotypes. You know, you could have also done Elementalists and wild mages, since this isn't a particularly long article. I guess the question becomes if you're going to stick to the stereotypes or buck them. Really, this is a little fillerish. In a lot of worlds, wizards will be rare and obscure enough that the various subdivisions simply won't have room to build up their individual stereotypes. And as many campaign worlds have their unique magical divisions that are much more important than school, (Krynn, Athas, Zakhara) and games other than D&D use completely different magic divisions, it won't be useful that much of the time. It's more an example of just how easily you can build up stereotypes from tiny datasets (see also the various white wolf splats) So it does raise some interesting issues, just not the ones it thinks it does. Does the nature of your abilities really shape your personality that much? Do we really derive stereotypes of a whole group from the first individual of that sort we encounter that easily? Does that reflect well on humanity as a whole? Man, you could do a whole sociology dissertation on this topic.


Master of the blade: From personalities of wizards, to the personalities of their created items. This is another interesting and potentially problematic issue, albeit for quite different reasons. If you play them too actively, then they may well really start to bug the PC's. If you don't, they may forget that they are sentient. And if they take your character over, then things really get hairy. There's also the issue that they're usually being created by classes that can't actually use them themselves. So they may well be designed with effects not entirely beneficial for the owner. With a revised system for determining their mental scores, and a good runthrough of the various kinds of purposes these items can have, this is another pretty decent article, with a few ideas that I'd managed to miss. It doesn't completely solve the problems these devices present, but it does help.


The role of computers: Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen is the reviewer's new favourite RPG. With a familiar playstyle, but good graphics and sound, and plenty of challenges still to go, they've been spending many hours on this one. In addition to the review, they fill the entire hints column with highly detailed advice for getting through this, up to the 5th mine. I wouldn't be surprised to see this continued next month.

Discovery: In the steps of Columbus, on the other hand, seems fairly mediocre. Trade, settle and kick native butt. With unskippable cut-scenes. Sounds like many a resource management game.

Legend of Kyrandia is a point and click adventure game where you solve puzzles to defeat an evil clown. Another fairly good little challenge for you to get your teeth into.

Ultima VII: The Black gate and Forge of Virtue get a rather more interesting and lengthy review. They've brought out an expansion pack for the game that serves as both an errata patch and a whole load of side quests, opening up new maps, and giving you access to powerful new items that'll make completing the main adventure easier. This is a decidedly interesting marketing strategy, but not without it's flaws. The new stuff doesn't appear to have been designed with quite the same care and attention, as is often the case for add-ons they know are going to sell less than the core. But despite these mechanical flaws, it's still a worthy addition to the series, and a laudable experiment in programming that'll become more popular over the years, with both neverwinter nights games getting add-ons in this style. Well worth noting from a historical perspective.


Campaign journal: Oooh. Another attempt to start a regular column, focussing on expansions for their existing game worlds. Like the new kit stuff, this reads as a deliberate result of listening to their readership and trying to fill in the areas people said were lacking. It is nice when they do that. Course, stuff like this is dependent on getting good submissions, which will always be a problem. So it's no surprise that they start it off with a contribution from a staff writer. After all, even the ecologies took 3 kick-off articles from another magazine before they could stand on their own feet.

So we start off with a primarily promotional piece from Carl Sargent to fill us in on the recent changes to Greyhawk. There are plenty of ways you can handle this. You can ignore it. You can play out the wars using the wargame, and use the result. You can play them through IC, but not let your players make any real difference on the larger scale of things, or you can do a timeskip. There's also plenty of room for different tones, from gritty and beleaguered to high-magic mystery. And of course, there's adversaries suitable for all levels. It all feels a lot more calculated than it used to. Greyhawk, like Mystara, started off as a bunch of adventures thrown together as Gary tried to stay one step ahead of his players. It never really got the same kind of primary company focus Krynn and Toril managed in different eras. So this does feel like a substantial shift in tone, an attempt to make it competitive and distinct in this era of fast developing, varied campaign settings. Well, he certainly succeeded in making it distinct. Competitive? Um, er, :shuffles away awkwardly: Maybe it would have worked better if they'd also rebooted the novels, given us some new characters experiencing the wars to get attached too. But no, they didn't even try. Man, Greyhawk's novel line was third rate. Even Ravenloft and Dark Sun did better in that department. Still, let's not disparage the usefulness of this article, which has both roleplaying advice not found in the book itself, and errata for it. It's actually quite good. It's just that the historical context surrounding this one lies so heavy it's hard to be cheerful about it. I guess it's up to us to take this turbulence and make fun games out of it somehow.

Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993


part 4/5


White wolf rolls out the splatbooks with clanbook gangrel. Rawr, rawr, feel my claws. Don't use their clan weakness as an excuse for playing supa-kawaii catgirls. We have enough trouble with the fishmalks.


Fiction: The barber, the thief and the smith by P Andrew Miller. Ironic comeuppance time here. Does that ever get old? Well, I'm asking the question now, so maybe it will eventually. I suppose like everything else, it's a question of not doing it too often. This is one of those stories which is the setup to a joke which seems obvious in retrospect, but good luck figuring it out beforehand. At only a page and a half in length, it doesn't bother much with fripperies and just gets straight to the point. Not terrible, but not brilliant either.


The role of books: Demons don't dream by Piers Anthony is one of those books that it's a struggle for them to recommend. On one hand, it's very good if you like that sort of thing. On the other hand, it has all his usual flaws in tone, characterisation, perversion and excruciating punnery. You really should know by now if this is to your taste or not.

Deus X by Norman Spinrad is a story of transhuman rights. As is usual when a method of immortality via computer upload is developed, this opens up an almighty can of worms, both legally and theologically. The church and big business both have plenty to prove, including the existence of god. The result seems to be a brisk bit of sci-fi that makes you think about these issues. That sounds pretty good to me.

Slay and Rescue by John Moore is a romantic comedy where our protagonist Never. Actually. Gets. Any. Fucking. Action. For all the attempts at lecherous shenanigans, things stay resolutely light on actual money shots. This is most frustrating for our reviewer, who hopefully retains some sympathy for the many poor geeks reading the magazine. Cockteases sustained too long just aren't interesting or pleasant.

The rebirth of wonder by Lawrence Watt-Evans is an interestingly contrasting little duo of stories. Going from low key mystery to fast paced swashbuckler, it manages to do pretty well at both, proving his versatility.

Assemblers of infinity by Kevin J Anderson & Doug Beason, on the other hand, really doesn't hold together. People fail to act in a realistic manner, too many subplots are jammed in, and the whole thing fails to maintain narrative coherence. Ouch. He actually seems to be going downhill as a writer. When did he start doing the Dune sequels & prequels that I've heard are so reviled.

All the weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, unlike Piers Anthony's offering, actually advances the series in terms of both plot and style. With new technology introduced to the world, and big plot threads resolved, it makes for a satisfying conclusion, while still leaving things open for yet more sequels. Maybe you should have gone out on a high note.


Sage advice: What the hell has nature got to do with the elements ( This one is ridiculously obvious. Skip is going to just stare at you until you go away. )

Wahh. You're a big meanie, putting all these restrictions on dimensional door. ( Skip is firm but fair. Skip merely points out the rules that are already there. Just because Skip's the private sage who puts the pages in the mages and the broomstick between the witches legs, that does not mean you can pressure Skip into making a wrong ruling for your benefit. Skip will cap yo whiny punk asses if you don't shut the fuck up and act like proper men.)

Why is chain mail cheaper than plate mail. (less raw material, less customization required. )

Can athasian or spelljammer characters be transferred to ravenloft (Sure. Culture shock'll be a bitch, but that just adds to the fun. )

Can defilers cast preserver spells from scrolls (Maybe. Skip isn't sure if the energy is collected at the item creation time or not, which would make the point moot anyway)

What happens if a defiler goes to another world. Do they still fuck up the environment (probably. They will of course face opposition from any druids or other nature concious characters who find out about them.)

I miss half-orcs. Are they ever coming back? (Sure. Buy the complete book of humanoids :teeth ting: Aint we nice. We're still gonna completely sweep the rape issue under the carpet though. )


Rolemaster gets an oriental companion, and shadow world gets an underworld with a hard to pronounce name. Oh joy.

Dragon Magazine Issue 191: March 1993


part 5/5


Role-playing reviews: Over the course of doing these reviews, I've become accustomed to the sensation of moving through time at a somewhat accelerated pace, with occasional hops back and forth. But as we've seen before, time travel in game can be a seriously headache provoking experience. To make it work, you either need very careful recording of events, or the ability to make shit up on the spur of the moment that nevertheless feels right on an intuitive level. But anyone can play let's pretend. The important thing for RPG's is how the rules support it. As usual, let's see if the current crop have learned from the lessons of their precursors.

GURPS Time travel, as usual, does this topic comprehensively and in a modular fashion, providing you with a ton of options, which can be used on their own, or combined with other GURPS books. (and of course, this lets you tie together adventures in all those other milieus. ) But unlike too many GURPS supplements, it isn't dull at all, with a well built up sample metasetting with inherent conflict built in. The whole of history is up for grabs, and two competing secret societies try and get control of it. Sounds like a dry run for 4e's infinite worlds setup, which isn't a bad thing.

Time riders is for Rolemaster, and takes a rather more rigid view of things, making changing events nearly impossible. Despite this, there are again several time-spanning conspiracies, trying to make sure things always have been in their favour. The result is rather thematically vague, and more focussed on setpieces than metaphysics. It all feels a bit strained to me.

Timelords is our most mechanically focussed offering, with dense rules that offer a quite effective method of quantifying temporal disturbances. It's also pretty crunchy and modifier heavy in other departments too, such as combat. The setting, on the other hand, is pretty skimpy, and probably needs a supplement or two to flesh it out. One for the expert GM who enjoys tinkering, and maybe grafting the time-travel system onto another general action system they're more comfortable with.


The dragon's bestiary has another pair of fae creatures for our delight and quite possibly irritation this month.

Faerie Phiz are magical faces that grow on trees, and sometimes other wooden objects. They can't move, but are tough, quite good spellcasters, and have plenty of ancient lore. This means they're perfectly suited to being almighty pains in the ass to adventurers seeking stuff, in Labyrinth-esque fashion.

Asrai are the even weedier relatives of nixies. All it takes is direct sunlight or removal from the water to kill them instantly. Poor little things. They'll never be able to break out of their habitat and become adventurers. So they'll just frolic in the water and provide you with a flavour encounter. Bleh.


Unearthed Mundana: Aka don't make all the cool treasure magical. Be it mechanical, highly valuable in terms of materials, or merely the information contained within, you can add more contrast to your game by not falling back on the lazy option of giving it plusses and a pretty glow. Still, this does seem more focussed on wizardly types, with scrolls containing various kinds of esoteric info having a very prominent place in it's lists. The remainder seem well suited to roguish sorts, with plenty of things with hidden compartments, tricks, and subtle ways of enhancing your offensive capability. Like the intelligent items article, this is a decent reminder of one of those things that is fairly obvious, but can sometimes get lost in the pursuit of shinies and the need to escalate your campaign to keep the players interested. You need the low key stuff to provide contrast, and make the special bits truly special. Don't forget it.


Dragonmirth upgrades their crystal balls again. Yamara continues to be dreadfully meta.  Twilight empire looks like it might get to the climax soon. But will Robinson's daughter want to go back to earth and live a normal life anyway?


Through the looking glass has painting advice again, for the first time in rather too long. Unfortunately, it falls prey to their current push to go back to basics, get in the complete newbies. So here we have advice about the essentials of what you need to buy, how much it will cost, and what exactly you do with it, taking you from beginning to end, and including photographs that document these steps on a minotaur warrior wielding a big red shield. Which means that it's both quite well done, and more than a little tiresome to me. When I remember the quite advanced bits of painting advice from the early 80's, this just doesn't hit the spot by comparison. The mental equivalent of another grotty goblin fight after saving the world repeatedly. Give it to someone who needs the XP.


TSR Previews: Al-Qadim gets another boxed set, A dozen and one adventures. Guess their budget doesn't run to the full thousand. As is often the case with these products, the adventures can be played one at a time, but have easter eggs that combine to a bigger whole.

Speaking of a bigger whole, north in the forgotten Realms, they're reaching the 6th book in the harpers series. Crypt of the shadowking by Mark Anthony (srysly?) The Zhentarim are actually being surprisingly successful for a change. Guess the harpers'll actually have to do some work foiling them.

Dark sun sees the PC's having to do some nasty compromises in DSM1: Black flames. How does a would be Dragon position itself as the lesser evil? I'm interested in finding out too.

Greyhawk finally gives us a whole sourcebook focusing on Iuz. WGR5: Iuz the evil! Well isn't that nice. Another enemy you aren't supposed to be able to beat, but really should. I'll bet the Dark sun head honchos could kick his ass without breaking a sweat.

Dragonlance, having milked the origins of the heroes dry, now focusses on the villains. Before the Mask by Michael and Terri Williams shows us the origin story of Verminaard. What childhood tragedy drives his evil? Who did he screw over in his rise to power? Can you be bothered to find out?

Generic AD&D stuff this month is GA2: Swamplight, and the deck of magical items. Another little standalone adventure, and another compilation of stuff making it easy to find and equip items for the anal or just fast and furious among you.

D&D has DMR2: Creature catalog, and part 2 of the penhaligon trilogy, The fall of magic. Didn't they just lose all magic for a day recently anyway? Anyway, with lots of monsters being reprinted as well, this doesn't look very imaginative. They seem to be a little unsure what direction to take this in now.


A fairly good issue, with plenty of neat stuff to offer, especially in the features. They're once again trying to ensure that they deliver new crunch on uncovered topics, keeping the magazine useful for even long term readers. Obviously they don't always succeed, but this time I found there was rather more successes than failures. Plus with the start of a new column, and a less obvious, but still significant historical development, this is another above average one in terms of actually progressing D&D's history. I guess I'd better see if next issue is another arc episode, or just goofy filler, quite possibly involving hot springs.

Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993


part 1/5


124 pages. It's a trap! Again! Oh, I love this cover. Why do people harsh on Tom Baxa so much? Yes, it's april fools time again, and they make that pretty clear right from the outset. So you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, or you'll be the butt of every joker nearby. Humorless twits are the biggest targets. Let's get ready to turn the joke back on them.


In this issue:


Letters: Ah yes. It's time for the yearly round of laughing at the readers, or at least the ones who sent in stupid letters and submissions that were illegible, ludicrous, impossible, or merely utterly irrelevant. Nigerian king kong obsessives, Voyeur and Nymph classes, (which cancel each other out nicely, methinks) Dwarf throwers. Prostitute, Seducer and Wench classes, all rather too long and coming pre-illustrated, much to this editor's distress. (and to think he's the one who wrote sex in AD&D 10 years ago) A submission on Led Zeppelin fantasy, whatever the hell that might entail. (shoddy levee building as an adventure hook, I'll wager) Origami magic. (now that could actually work as an article. After all, they've done feather magic before. ) The usual cross-breeding suggestions. A module based on a Smurfs episode. And a rather disturbing prediction that probably didn't pan out. There's a lot of weird people out there. Thankfully, now we have the internet, so we can find this stuff in places like B. J. Zanzibarrs, instead of it languishing on paper or being thrown away by the editors. Because we all love a good laugh at the unfiltered crap of others every now and then.


Editorial: Roger reminisces about campaigns past and characters killed. Amusingly, the characters killed this time belonged to all the other members of the party, while he survived. This serves as an object lesson in never giving up, and also, paradoxically in running away and living to run away another day, which far too few adventurers do. What are we to draw from this? Fortune favors those who favor themselves? Never take shit from the GM? The rules keep things from being totally predictable for both the GM and the players? I suppose real events don't need to have a moral, they just kinda happen. And so the lesson you get from the same event can vary widely from person to person. So you may well get something different from this one to me.


Mage gets it's first teaser in the magazine. What will it's tagline be? I'm sure most of you already know the answer to this. Still, they've got 3 more months to elaborate on this before it comes out. How will they pique the reader's interest in that time?


Don't you dare!: Spike Y. Jones once again uses this time of year to give us advice on what not to do, just as he did in 1989. This time, it's played fairly straight, with the  potential pitfalls pointed out precisely in bullet pointed form. It's not actually particularly funny, but it is very useful stuff. If you want you comedy to be universally funny, it doesn't pay to get too highbrow, and sticking too closely to rules or plot will only dampen people's spirits. A semi-improvised, knockabout style will fit perfectly with a lot of actual comedy shows. (Rik's the controller, Vyvyan's the striker, Neil the defender and Mike the leader. ) And if things go off the rails, make them worse. But avoid the dreadful puns, please. All advice I quite agree with. If you're aiming for comedy in your game, you would do well to heed his words.


What in the H...?: It's crossword time again. Also, another opportunity for Roger to thumb his nose at TSR's censorship policies, with their complete removal of certain D words. With tons of Baatezu references, plus plenty of other D&D monsters and game conceits, this isn't one for the nongamer. It's actually a lot easier than most of the previous crosswords for me though. Not sure why this is in the joke section. I guess it's an example of being able to slip subtle political stuff under the radar as humour.


Band on the run: Ahh, filking. We've seen mercifully little of you in the past few years. But all good things must come to an end. The Beach Boys, Van Morrison, The Beatles and Queen are all the subject of this year's round, which makes this seem rather dated even for the era. Come on, did the early 90's have nothing worth parodying? Achy Breaky Heart? Ride on Time? Considerable quantities of Michael Jackson's oeuvre? I guess the writers aren't particularly up with modern musical trends. Well, as we saw earlier, there are still people obsessed with Led Zeppelin writing in. They're probably still stuck in the first summer of love, and never even noticed the second one. So this is rather excruciating to me on multiple levels. Particular demerits go to the Bohemian Rhapsody one, which has some really tortured scansion. Make it go away.

Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993


part 2/5


Weapons of mass destruction on sale now: From one joke about the gnomish space marines to another. Blarg. Still, this is the only joke article this year that also has usable crunch. 5 scary, if rather unreliable bits of gnomish machinery that you could add to your spaceship. Or possibly your normal ship or ground based siege engine. Mechanical flails (based upon that popular joke monster, the flail snail. Fire and electricity blasters. Mass launches of buzzsaws and crossbow bolts. All almost as much a danger to the user as to the enemy. These could fit into an otherwise moderately serious campaign, just as normal Gnomes and Kender do. So it's easily the best of the bunch this year from a usability point of view.  


The Dragon Project: Oooh. Another new column starts off. Welcome to the last resurgence of non TSR RPG material, courtesy of a conscious push by the official writers. This has been gradually drifting downward since the start of the decade, due to lack of submissions, and they're not particularly happy about this. And of course, the less they publish, the less people send in. It's a vicious circle. So they hope to reverse that trend by asking writers for other gamelines to send stuff in. Not a bad idea at all.

We start off with one for TORG. Dragons fit in pretty well in fantasy universes, but struggle a bit in sci-fi ones. How to integrate them? Cyberware! As if they weren't scary enough. With a history that serves to reveal a bit more of TORG's interesting history and political dynamics, and a statblock that shows it uses a system in which skills are keyed off particular attributes, this feels a bit artificial, but in an appropriate way. I'm still not sure how they'll compare to PC's in overall power, but I suspect one will be a suitable challenge for an entire group. In any case, this is another cool move by the editors, and shows that as is often the case, they're actually more progressive than their average readership. It's also a sign I should enjoy this while I can, for it will be gone all too soon. Born to blossom, bloom to perish. Compost to grow the next generation.


The known world grimoire: Bruce finally gets his groove back, in what feels like it would have been a continuation of the Princess Ark series, situated directly southwest of the last instalments as it is. Previously, we've had dog people, cat people, turtle people, spider people, several variants on lizard people, and flying squirrel people. Now, it's the Manscorpion's turn. Course, PC's with at will instadeath poison is not something they're wiling to allow, and so that aspect of them gets a good nerfing. On top of that, mystaran manscorpions have the dreadful indignity of being vulnerable to sunlight, courtesy of a magical curse. They can still go out in the sun, thanks to developing incredibly thick all-over makeup vampires would probably pay quite a bit for, but it does make integrating with groups of other species pretty tricky. They're obviously intended largely as antagonists. But it does have to be said that they're antagonists with style and plenty of built up setting detail. You aren't going to be able to wade in an exterminate the whole nation, even with a few landscape destroying spells to expose them to the sun and make them fry like bugs under a magnifying glass. They have a higher level limit than demihumans, and there's hundreds of thousands of them. Like Iuz's dominions, settling this tension is the work of a whole epic level campaign. A pretty awesome return to form for this department.


The marvel-phile: No surprise that this column still has a few april-fool suitable characters that they haven't had the chance to cover yet. Such as Slapstick. He's basically a living cartoon, made out of the same stuff superhero costumes are made from. And I suspect that in terms of character, he has a lot in common with The Mask and Freakazoid, two other zany characters who are near omnipotent and indestructible as long as their actions are funny. Which means the humourless everywhere should walk, not run away ASAP, for trying to fight him is like hitting a mirror. It'll only get turned back on you, and the harder you hit, the more likely you are to wind up with a bleeding hand. His primary adversary is an 8 year old mad scientist, presumably even Marvel villains have enough common sense to steer clear of this. Better pray he doesn't get too many crossover appearances and wind up joining the great lakes avengers, for him and Squirrel girl seems like a pretty unstoppable combination. (and let's not think of the children) A pretty typical contribution from this department, I can't say I have strong feelings on this one.


DC heroes gets a third edition. Man, seems like both the comic companies original games enjoyed long fruitful runs. What went wrong?


In praise of one night stands: Hee. As if we didn't have enough dirty stuff being suggested in the letters page. But a piece on why one-shots are a good idea is exactly the kind of thing the magazine should be doing. It gives you a chance to experiment with new systems and ideas without ruining continuity and thematic consistency of your long-running campaigns. It lets your regular GM take a break and players experiment with holding the reins without having to build a whole world. And if the regular DM flakes out, having a back-up plan is always a good thing. Only a page and a half long, this mirrors well how it's subject matter should work. Get straight to the point, don't overwrite, and make sure you have cool ideas ready to go right away. Which makes it one of those supposed filler articles that's actually a good deal better than anything in the main featured section. Model your game on movies rather than series, and provide a full setup and payoff in a few short hours. Just don't fall into the trap of doing a sequel just for the money, when you don't have a good idea for it.


Forgotten Realms new campaign setting coming soon. Well, they've got six years of metaplot to incorporate. Not everyone's been buying all the supplements. Cyric is the supreme god of evil now!

Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993


part 3/5


The role of computers: King's Quest VI gets one of those 5 star reviews where they praise it as both a game and a technical feat.  And in the process remind us how far we've come since then.15 megabytes? I've got single photographs bigger than that.  We used to manage classic games with mere kilobytes. Time ticks onwards.

Battle Chess Enhanced CD ROM is yet another game that tries to make chess cool. With speaking tutorials, and a wide range of difficulty levels, it doesn't do too badly. But chess really doesn't need the gimmicks anyway. It looks like it'll be around long after civilisation collapses and both computers and roleplaying are forgotten.

Cobra Mission gets a complete fail completely on the crappiness of it's content, rather than due to buggy programming, which is pretty unusual for them. Yikes. Plus it's not kid friendly at all. Come now, that'll just encourage prurient teenagers to waste their money.

Kingdoms of England II: Vikings, Field of Conquest sees you fight a bunch of other would-be kings to take over fair albion. Sounds like a fairly typical strategy wargame.

Miner 2049er doesn't get a rating, but it's review is quite positive nonetheless. One of their few game boy reviews, it shows the gradual takeover of consoles. Even these guys have to heed it, although they don't seem that keen on doing so.

Quest for Glory III: Wages of War also builds upon it's previous instalments, and manages to surpass them, in these reviewers opinion. You can even import your character from previous games, which is always a nice touch for this kind of epic RPG. Does sound like there's quite a bit of resource management though, with keeping track of food supplies a vital part of your adventuring.

Shadowlands has some spectacular visuals and interesting ideas based around light sources and the manipulation of shadows to complete the adventure. Unfortunately, its hindered by a clunky interface that can result in your death as you try to engage the right actions mid battle. Always a danger for complex RPG's, especially if they don't have pausing.

Waxworks is much easier to play, using the increasingly popular point and click play method. Video games are definitely becoming darker and edgier these days, as this is another one full of gory thrills. Visuals are finally sophisticated enough that you can do this without looking stupid.

Wolfenstein 3D is duly recognized as an excellent, if rather bloody game, offering you plenty of freedom of movement and a spectacular array of weaponry. You'll need it of course, particularly against the bosses, which are right SoB's at higher difficulty levels, and neither trading shots face to face or turning your back to run are wise choices to beat them.


Novel ideas: Ravenloft's novel line continues to grow in prestige amongst the department, as befits it's sales. This means it gets better authors in, including some previously published names who have fanbases of their own. Elaine Bergstrom and P. N. Elrod are both about to produce pretty big books for the line, and they're pretty confident that the results will let them go to another level critically and commercially again. Which is actually a fairly accurate prediction for a change. Dragonlance may have peaked and gone into decline creatively, but Ravenloft and the Realms keep on building. Like the Dragon Project, this is a good reminder that there's still plenty of cool things to come before the company goes completely off the rails. You've got to separate the politics from the product.


Fiction: The heroes of weefield by Mitchell Diamond. A reminder why the stalwart knight single-handedly fighting monsters is considerably less effective than a bunch of adventurers with varied skills, who attack with teamwork, magic, missile weapons, flaming oil, etc etc. You really can't afford to play fair, particularly with creatures much bigger than you that'll deal out and take more damage than even the most badass mortal man can manage. This is even more the case in a system where the ageing and advancement rules are more realistic than D&D's. But still it's not just kill or be killed. And so we have a story in which sympathy for the monster results in them sparing it, despite the fact that it may well kill again. Actually, all sides in this story are pretty sympathetic, even when they're being idiots. The plot is a bit insubstantial, but it's still a decent enough read, with good character banter.

Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993


part 4/5


Sage advice: What does a nilbog do to a spelljamming helm (Not much. It may make the user fly it somewhere unwise though. )

What's a ziggurat. ( A really scary monster. Second only to the Gazebo in it's power to terrify and confound players. )

Can you turn a staff into a morning star (not without ruining it. Wood is not the most flexible and resilient of materials. )

What happens if you turn someone to stone, then turn the statue to mud, resculpt it, turn it back to stone, then turn it back to flesh. (Oooh, thatsa nasty tricksa. I'll seta de godsa on you and theyla smita you for crimes againsta nature. )

What ToM spheres do the forgotten realms deities grant (Hmm. This is gonna take up quite a bit of space. Better get cracking.)

Would breaking a staff of the magi permanently destroy a vampire (possibly. Their indestructibility isn't as good as the tarrasque's)

Can spheres of annihilation permanently destroy the tarrasque (no)

How much alcohol do you need to get an umber hulk drunk. (They're about 3 times as heavy as humans, so Skip will make a wild guess and say three times as much. This may get expensive. )

Can you teleport inside a creature (no)

How far can you jump while wearing a girdle of giant strength. (36' plus 2 per point of strength above 18/00. Not that impressive really)

Are trained falcons really more expensive than war elephants (yes. Elephants are easy to train, and expensive to keep. Falcons are not. So there's more demand and less supply. )

What is a lair. (Anywhere I hang my hoard, that's my lair :fingerciicks: )

Can you enlarge something, cast permanancy, then enlarge it again (I'm afraid that falls foul of the no stacking the same kind of bonus rule. Or would, if we'd properly standardized that yet. )

Can we make a rope trick permanent and then take it with us as a storage method. (no, twice. It is neither sustainable or portable)

How do I measure east/west on hex grids (counting from the middle. Don't tell me that's hard for you.)

Do you reroll all your hit points when you gain a new level (Not officially. You can play it like that if you like, and the game doesn't break though. )

Why did you change THAC0's for the new edition (simplicity.)

If you wish for extra arms, can you wear extra magical items on them (No. Skip will not budge on this one, even if other writers do. Beware TPKing mariliths.)

Which speed factor and damage do small creatures wielding bastard swords have. (the worst ones)

How does poison work (Fucking witcha biochemistry. They can pull some pretty nasty tricks. )

Can a troll die from starvation. (Eventually. They may not obey the law of conservation of mass, but they still need refueling sometimes. )

Can you recalibrate your aim on a wand of wonder once you know what it's about to shoot. (No. These devices can not be relied on in any way, shape or form. Skip laughs at your attempts to mitigate it's consequences.)


Role-playing reviews decides to go the lycanthropic route, apropos of nothing.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse gets a fairly long and not entirely positive review. Rick still isn't keen on the idea of entirely nonrandom chargen, which reminds us how long ago this is now. And he gets a quite substantial number of cracks in at their Metallica obsession and overall melodramaticness. Lars Ulrich really really isn't all that. And WW's editing sucks, as usual. But as with Vampire, he's still impressed by the underlying ideas. Fix the Mechanics!

Night howlers is the D&D offering. It's both less impressive, and less mechanically problematic, and focusses quite a bit on infected lycanthropes learning to control their condition. This takes quite a bit of work for players, but seems like it could liven up an existing campaign.

Rick also directs his amusement at death cheese, and other excessive setting building of recent books. All sorts of systems are getting into it, from D&D to shadowrun. As usual, some do better than others. Watch out for both silliness and dullness, sometimes at the same time. How does that happen? Mostly when you have page count to make up, so you throw in any ideas you can come up with without editing to pad it out.


The ecology (love life) of the lamia: Brendan Farwanderer returns for a third time, with the author finding yet another way to twist the traditional series title. Even more so than yuan-ti, lamias are an inherently degenerate race, requiring regular infusions of human seed to keep their progeny from becoming sterile animals. Since they're also bugfuck nuts with hair trigger tempers, and they drain the common sense of those they touch, this is almost a textbook recipe for a dysfunctional relationship. (I will kill the first person to say they've been out with girls like that. ) Once again Spike delivers an excellent bit of fiction, combining titilation, horror and humour with aplomb. And their new ecological cycle is pretty distinctive and nifty as well. This adds new depth to them without upsetting previous assumptions. He's definitely proving himself as one of the best ecologists currently writing in. Now, if only he'd do so a bit more frequently.

Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993


part 5/5


Forum continues with much the same topics as last time round.  

Philip Edwards is one of those who thinks psionics is indeed overpowered. It needs more saving throws, more playtesting, more checks and balances! You know that stuff slows things down if done wrong.

Jon Winter gives a full bunch of rather official sounding nerf suggestions for psionics, some of which would be incorporated later. He's particularly keen on psionics-magic transparency, which does help, after all. Again, watch out for the play-slowing finickiness.

Shlomi Chetrit thinks that balancing psionicists is easy. Just enforce training rules strictly and force them to find someone to teach the powers they want. Never mind that that isn't particularly in keeping with the literature, which often has them manifesting new powers abruptly. But training times might well be a good idea, especially at higher levels.

Jason Jex doesn't think psionicists should have restrictions just because wizards have them. After all, clerics don't have the same ones. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need a little nerfing. Balance must be struck, but the game must also be kept interesting and varied.

Charlie Frye has a bullet-pointed list on how to deal with monty haul cheaters. Just make sure you have copies of their character sheets, and all the dice are rolled in the open. That keeps the worst excesses under control.

Justin D. Somma also offers point by point advice on how not to deal with Monty Haul characters. It's not easy to take stuff away without them complaining to high heaven. And make sure cheaters don't prosper. There's nothing wrong with kicking them out the group.


Dragonmirth really needs to sort out it's fashion and design habits. Yamara finds out what her husband got up to before he married her. Hee. Finella decides to bite the bullet and get married as well in twilight empire. Man, they're having a lot of relationship dramas these days. And many of them are inter-racial, too. Interesting, that.


Through the looking glass: Boo! THE LEAD BILL GOT PASSED. All Robert's work over the last year or so has gone to waste. Now they're going to have to put up with crappy pewter, tin and plastic. Such a tragedy. And on top of that, people are giving him gyp about the poor photo quality in the column. You shoulda seen them 10 years ago. Roll on digital photography. He's obviously not in the best of moods. Better not disturb him

Our reviews, as a result, seem to be on autopilot, with everything getting 4 stars. A flying pig, to minor humour. Another pair of elves for those who still don't have enough unique ones for their army. A wizard and his familiar. Some adventurers trying to steal an idol, and facing skeletons as a response. A completely lead free monk. Plenty of weaponry, both futuristic and medieval. And a selection of general props. Zzzzzzzzz.

The review of Battletech 3rd ed isn't particularly interesting either, being very dry and technical. The rules are good, the prepackaged mechs, less so. Oh well. Can't blame him for being off his game given the circumstances. But life goes on. We'll adapt. Like banning smoking in pubs, before long we'll wonder why it was ever an issue.


TSR Products: Dragon Mountain takes top place this month. See Tuckers Kobolds totally canonised in this epically brutal dungeon crawl. Just getting there is hassle enough. As for getting through it. You'd better get smart or you'll be dying a lot of times against enemies with a tenth your hit points.. Speaking of kobolds, you can now play them to somewhat higher level than you could last edition, thanks to PHBR10: The complete book of humanoids. 30 races, old and new, weak and strong, and some moderately lame kits to keep them in their place. Humans are still supreme!

Ravenloft builds up the epic rivalry between Strahd and Azalin even more in RQ4: Roots of evil. Who will come off better from the fight? Either way, ordinary people are likely to suffer. Miserable job.

The Forgotten realms shows us FR16: The shining south. Well, with Al Qadim doing well for itself, it would be a good idea if we knew what we were traveling though to get there, just as with the Horde set and Kara-Tur. (which we haven't seen anything on in a while. Guess they've decided that was played out. ) So Halruua, Lurien, and the other weird nations down there get fleshed out for you to enjoy.

Spelljammer is up to book 5 in the cloakmaster cycle. The Broken Sphere sees Nigel Findley try to finish this particular epic. Can he find the Spelljammer once and for all?

D&D has Rage of the Rakasta. Everyone's favourite cat people get a bit more attention. Serving as both adversaries and allies here, you'll have to do some puzzle solving to keep them from attacking.

Gamma world tries to make itself more suitable to extended campaigns, with GW2: The overlord of boniparr. An evil mutant overlord. Just the thing to make blasted post apocalyptic world even more annoying. Any resemblance to Iuz is purely coincidental.

And finally, our novel department produces Naked came the sasquatch by John Boston. Modern day comedy fantasy? That's an unusual one for this bunch. Will anyone be intrigued by this strange title and pick it up?


In case you didn't get the message in the last article, Dragon mountain! Well, it's a lot snappier than really unfair kobold infested mountain with a dragon at the end. Egads, that had some annoying bits in it.


A decidedly subpar april fool this year, both in terms of laughs and usability. Somehow, they've managed to be both less goofy and less crunchy at the same time than the last few years. There's still a couple of cool articles elsewhere in the issue, and the new Dragon Project stuff is definitely a cool idea but the weak theme, combined with the lead bill hassle makes this a bit of a depressing one overall. Things certainly aren't all going their way. You can't ever afford to get complacent, especially when you're working in the realm of ideas. Keep trying to expand their minds, Roger.

Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993


part 1/5


124 pages. Tying in with their new Dragon Project column, they have a whole bunch of covers featuring dragons lined up and ready to go. People do judge magazines by their covers, and this seems like a good way to reaffirm their core intent. Course, that still gives them plenty of freedom in terms of colours, shapes and surroundings. Such as down in the underdark. In reality, there aren't many places a full-grown dragon could fit, and it's not optimal for their mobility either, but D&D will favour drama over realisticness sometimes. And those are often the most fun times too. Hopefully there'll be some fun to derive from this issue.


In this issue:


Letters: A letter from a brazilian gamer who wants to write directly to games companies to get stuff not available in shops round his neck of the woods. This is a relatively easy request to satisfy.

Another of those letters complaining about people who perpetuate the crappy stereotypes. We wouldn't dream of killing cats, and anyone trying in our vicinity is going to get a pretty stern talking too. To be frank, that's more likely to provoke general rage than a crime involving other people.

A letter asking exactly what languages D&D has been translated into. The answer shouldn't be hugely surprising. Most of the big european languages, plus mandarin and japanese. And hebrew, for some reason. Didn't know roleplaying was particularly popular in Israel.

And an amusing letter about figuring out if you're an unfair DM. Muahahahaha. Thanks for that. I think most of us know if we're doing something like that.


Mage focusses on the technomancers in this months teaser.  Pleasing to note white wolf are already fully aware of the internet. This aint your fathers magic system, or game company.


Editorial: Roger celebrates his 10 year anniversary of becoming an official member of the TSR staff. This gets a relatively short bit of writing because after all, what is there to say? He's been living the dream for 10 years, even if it has been much harder work than you'd think it would be. And like many people who've been living the dream for a while, he feels the urge to pass on the mantle. Course, kids will rebel from their parents, so expecting them to follow directly in your footsteps when there's so many shiny new things out there is a moderately futile task. Have half a dozen of them, you'll be lucky if one becomes your true successor. And before you know it, you'll be looking at the new fads the kids are following in disgust and incomprehension, saying that's not real music/tv/roleplaying. Don't expect things to stay the same forever, and try and appreciate the new for what it is, not what you think it should be. Here's to many more years of entertaining articles.


Dungeoneering 101: Steven Schend has learned well from Ed, as he strikes out on his own in creating fictional characters that break the 4th wall and interact with the author, representing their writings as mere recountings rather than actual creative works. Which from one perspective, is doing your talent a slight disservice, but on the other hand is usually pretty fun to read. So say hello to Essimuth the dungeoneer. Unlike most of our transdimensional visitors, he's not a high level wizard, but a hard-bitten illiterate roguish sort who learned all his wisdom the hard way. Which means he's been at the sharp end of more traps than you can shake a stick at, lost a limb without being able to get a decent replacement, and learned all about how inconvenient encumbrance actually is when you don't have a bag of holding. Just the kind of guy you need to teach you adventuring isn't all shiny magic and level appropriate challenges. This reads like a love letter to old skool brutality, written in a very new skool way, so as to reintroduce more recent DM's to the idea of running games full of traps, air supply issues, darkness with monsters lurking within, slimes and oozes of many colours, and inventive ways of surviving said challenges to make your fortune. It's not quite the equal of Ed's top articles, but its a strong combination of practical information and fun writing method that make this entirely deserving of pole position. Now what he needs is the ambition to go solo, create his own campaign world.


The amazing engine, coming soon. TSR begins the promotion for their attempt at making their own universal system. I bet we'll be seeing some stuff for that in here. Lets hope it does better than buck rogers did. Man, that went down like a lead balloon.


Live statues and stone men: Or lets have a few more Golems. They don't need food and other regular maintenance, so they can hang around underground for ages just waiting for adventurers to turn up and kill them, and the DM need worry not about ecology and all that irritation. These three all turn up in later monstrous compendia, as monsters in the magazine are increasingly likely to do these days. Brain golems also get quite a few appearances in other books. I guess illithid's strong connection with the magazine continues.

Brain Golems are ridiculously macho looking for something made entirely out of brains. They are rather smarter than the average golem, just like most illithid creations. And of course, they don't break out of control on an irregular basis like mindfucked members of other races. So they tend to get fairly good treatment for a slave.

Hammer Golems are dwarven creations designed to crush their racial enemies with great prejudice. They also work pretty well as miners, making new tunnels almost as fast as a dwarf can walk down them. With one of these, you really could excavate a dungeon a day. Monte Cook would approve.

Spiderstone Golems are Drow creations, unsurprisingly. With lots of limbs, climbing and web powers, they're well suited to taking on larger parties. Their chaotic evil origins make them one of the less reliable varieties of golem, prone to breaking free and killing their owner before going off to become a lurking tunnel predator. Still, they're neither as scary or unreliable as clay golems. They might well last a while as long as they're properly taken care of. And Lolth cares not that they'll turn on her own race, as her willingness to create things like Driders shows. These three are all pretty reasonable new creations.

Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993


part 2/5


Role-playing reviews turns it's eye on small press games. This is interesting because they're the ones that benefit most from a review in a major magazine. A good one can boost their sales by several orders of magnitude, while even a bad one is better than no publicity for a tiny company, and gives them a level of legitimacy it can be hard to feel when you know them personally, and it's just a couple of guys laying things out in their basement in their spare time.

Bloodbath is one of those simple but fun games with a few obvious holes in it's rules. Pure hack and slash, with setting entirely subordinated to that goal. Everything uses d6's, and you have an actual bloodlust stat which ha a significant effect on your actions. Perfect for if you want to play an all-barbarian game where life is cheap and limbs fly like confetti.

Bloodchant introduces magic to Bloodbath. The spells are just as gruesome as the combat, and the descriptions are just as florid and technically dubious. It all sounds like it was written by a teenage boy who has too many heavy metal albums. Are you ready to breathe the miasma of DISPAIR!

Advanced Phantasm Adventures is a translation of a fantasy game that's apparently big in japan. It gets a rather long review, explaining the rather crunchy system in detail. Unfortunately, despite it's high detail, it has rather slipshod editing, which is a bigger crime than in a rules light game it's easy to modify and hopefully fix. It does have some cool ideas, and is impressively open-ended, but doesn't really feel like a finished game. Maybe it lost something in translation, or maybe it was also problematic in it's original language. After all, Original D&D was pretty sketchy too ruleswise. I have to wonder how well that was translated into various languages.

Duel seems to be trying to fill the gap left when The Fantasy Trip evolved into the insanely crunchy GURPS. At 36 pages, it's small, but pretty versatile, with 3 main stats and 5 magic aspects covering most of what you'll want to do. The main complaint of the reviewer, ironically, is the base dice system. Lester likes his bell curves, it seems. And there's the constant temptation to load it down with expansion crunch. Oh, woe is you.

Toy war is even tinier, at a mere 12 pages. It gets a similarly tiny review. It works with nearly any toy, and has a mere 2 stats. It's actually surprisingly elegant really. You can have quite a bit of fun with it, especially if you have a big toy collection. Like clay-o-rama, this is barely a step up from let's pretend really.

Critter commandos is another fun minis game, designed to evoke a cartoon atmosphere. This has obviously been quite successful actually, with a supplement, and conversion rules to bring Warhammer 40k characters over, quite possibly to get a good cream pieing. It also has it's own suitably silly setting. Like Toon, this is an entirely viable niche to carve out in the market, even if it'll never be huge.


Palladium fantasy takes us to the island at the end of world. Now with extra metaplot. Everyones doing it. You don't have to copy them.

Traveller the new era! Now compatible with Twilight:2000 and Dark Conspiracy. Another company making attempts at giving all their games a universal system, it seems.


The known world Grimoire: Logistics, logistics, again there are nitpicks. Bruce goes back to the domain management stuff yet again in an attempt to singlehandedly support that playstyle in the face of widespread apathy. This time, it's the question of what you need in a castle to turn it into a self-sufficient mini community that can withstand months of siege. You need enough living quarters for an entire army, and storage space for food for said troops, plus toilet facilities, heating and general servants to maintain the place and feed everyone. Even a garrison of a hundred troops requires easily that again in support staff, and substantial daily expenditure. You know, someone ought to do a cost analysis, figure out exactly when it becomes more profitable to create undead and golem servants than train up and employ living ones. It'd probably come surprisingly quickly, especially for long term projects. Anyway, this once again slips quite heavily into dullness. Graah. Surely there must be some way of making ruling nations and commanding armies interesting, and not too mechanically onerous. Anyone? No wonder it fell out of fashion at this rate.


Fiction: Bainnor's last ballad by Ralph W Bundy. Or how to learn to sing the blues, D&D style. In this world, all it takes is a lifetime of poverty, heartbreak and alcoholism. There, rather more killing things, taking their stuff, and losing loved ones when monsters do likewise is involved, as an inevitable result of the XP system. So yeah, technically skilled but cloistered bard learns some hard but crucial lessons that you need to actually be able to sing with feeling and get the public engaged. No great surprises. The monsters are a bit vague, but it's all about the relationships built up and broken along the way anyway. Fairly average overall.