Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 1/8


76 (108) pages. A proper scene with stuff happening on the cover instead of one character posing! And they've scaled back on all the promotional blurbs so you can see it clearly! What there is looks pretty promising too. Wenches · Tricks · Wandering Monsters · Ale · Traps. That's a proper old school set of themes that I can instantly see the links between. Let's put a little more grime back in our dungeoneering, and see who stays heroic, and who flunks out because they just can't take fighting oozes with a hangover after a night in the local festhall.


Scan Quality: Excellent, unindexed, ad-free scan.


In this issue:


From the editor: Unsurprisingly, the editorial reminds us that going back to the dungeon was the tagline for 3rd edition, and it should be the default adventure type for most D&D parties. It's the easiest type of adventure to run, and presents the most obvious physical challenges to the players, which makes coming to a decision far easier than a city, where you can go anywhere, talk to anyone, and have no idea who the good and bad guys are. (and even if you do, you can't just barge in and kill them) D&D is not just a straight world simulator, it has a very specific and distinct slant to it's design that pushes you towards tactical site-based scenarios, thanks to it's movement, resource tracking and combat systems. The World of Darkness doesn't give costs for 10 foot poles or torches, or track exactly how much everything weighs, and so people don't worry so much about their inventory when playing it. Runequest makes even non-cleric characters take their religion and culture more seriously than D&D ones. And truly generic point buy games make people obsess over character building to the point where they can actually spend more time creating their character than playing it. If you don't want dungeon-crawling to play any part in your game, you have plenty of better options, instead of trying to fight the system like so many 2e settings did.


Scale Mail: No surprise that the format changes provoke tons of letters, both positive and negative. First up is someone bemoaning the departure of Gary. That was his choice they're afraid, insomuch declining health can be considered a choice. Mind you, given the sheer volume of forum posts he managed right up to a week before he died, many of which were on similar topics, it may have just been being tired of fitting his stories into the one page format instead of being free to ramble.

Similarly, the removal of a regular monthly dose of realmslore causes much distress to it's many fanatics. If it's no longer popular enough to merit an appearance every month that's because you at WotC have actively worked to downplay settings in favor of genericness. The audience has fought you every step of the way on this one, and it's only the fact that they're divided amongst themselves that let you win.

We have another letter from someone who was a reluctant convert to 3.5, but liked it when they did bite the bullet. Releasing new editions too soon is a problem even if their contents are good, it seems.

We also have a letter from someone who doesn't get to play, so they mainly buy the magazine for the fiction and setting stuff. They have to remember to cater to that crowd as well, and they do forget sometimes.

The format changes continue to attract huge amounts of controversy, with another 4 for and 3 against. What they've gained in readability, they've sacrificed in flavour, and there are plenty of people who don't like the new layout or columns at all. Still, at least this shows lots of people still care. The question is if it'll increase or decrease their readership overall, as that's the only metric that really matters in the end.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 2/8


First watch: As is often the case, January means a slump in the number of products released. In this case, not a single official WotC one. How very problematic for them. The only RPG book they decide to promote is Mike Mearls' Book of Iron Might. The precursor to Iron Heroes, and containing quite a bit of the same material, this aims to make fighting more tactical and dramatic. Now there's a thread that will definitely run through the next few years in an interesting way.

A couple of interesting gaming related products as well. Incredibly useful, especially when combined with Tact-tiles, are Dungeon stamps. These allow you to set out landmarks on your grid quickly, reusably, and most importantly, in fairly unlimited number. Much better than faffing about with little models in things like Heroquest.

They're still covering quite a bit of useless peripheral stuff though. Fuzzy dice? Cthulhu themed filks?! :eek: (double the SAN loss in one package there.) A documentary on gaming? Dear oh dear. What are they thinking. Don't they even have any novels they could be promoting. A couple of years ago they were releasing more novels than game books, but they haven't mentioned any at all since starting up the previews again. This does have some rather perplexing choices.


Player initiative: Two years into their life, Paizo finally get round to putting up their own message boards so they don't have to rely on the WotC forums or general ones like rpg.net and enworld for feedback. (and can ban people who sign up just to bitch about them ) Will this help them make the magazine better, or will the noise overwhelm the signal? It's a constant danger with the internet, as it lets everyone with any creative skill at all put their work up and potentially reach millions. Which means you have to be your own gatekeeper, instead of just picking a channel or two and sticking to them. This is certainly the case for our other two topics, a deluxe gaming table and a renowned filker. Whether you'll get any entertainment value out of those will be exceedingly subjective based on taste. I'm not sure they know what they want to do with this column, and it doesn't surprise me that they're dropping it when it has so much overlap with First Watch.


Under command: A second article on campaign play in a row for the minis guys. This time, they decide to go back to issue 303, and reuse their ideas on running a gladatorial campaign. This was great fun to read about under D&D, and if anything, it's even better suited to the minis game, where you can build new groups of characters for each round quickly and easily. They spice things up further by making a rule whereby the position of mad overlord (arena designer) rotates from round to round, and you spend money on bribes, equipment & healing and can bet on matches to add a strategic element to play between the actual fights. That definitely seems a good way to fill a few evenings, especially if you've gone to all the effort to build a colosseum on your gaming table and don't want to break it down again too soon. Absolutely no hesitation in trying out this one if I get the chance, like many of the old games they used to put in the magazine.


Silicon sorcery: World of Warcraft is finally out! The MMO that would dwarf all other MMO's and still dominates the landscape and makes Blizzard ridiculous amounts of money a decade later. Since WoW isn't that different from D&D in general design principles, right down to the alliterative name, the material they convert fits right in here. Two feats which boost your ability to have monstrous pets and animal companions, which most nature based characters consider taking once in a while. One that makes you inflict more damage on creatures that just hurt you, which is neat but not world-shaking. And one that increases ALL your movement speeds by 10 when wild-shaped, which is pretty awesome, given how hard it is to increase your movement rate, and how much wild-shape already increases your mobility and combat options. Like the ability to cast spells while wild-shaped, that seems like a no-brainer to an optimisation-loving druid. Be afraid.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 3/8


A novel approach: This column goes for the lazy option of promoting their own Forgotten Realms books again. Time for another metaplot event which is too big for you to make a real difference too, apart from maybe saving whatever village you're in at the time. The dragons have all woken up at once and they're swarming again, like locusts, only even more ecologically devastating. You wonder where they all go, don't you. Unsurprisingly, our mechanical conversions are two of the heroes who will actually get to solve the problem and let them get back to sleep. A Song Dragon who's halfway between age categories, and has a few other little statistical quirks to fit the books. And an embittered dragon slayer who lost limbs to one, and will probably have to go on an emotional journey along with the physical one to learn to accept them and judge them as individuals. Neither could quite be replicated using the RAW. They may have decided to skip this in Eberron, but that just leaves them freer to indulge in the Realms, because that's what people have got used too and they'd complain if they stopped. Mind you, people complain about the metaplot events as well, but I suppose that just means they still care. No matter how busy the Realms gets, they have to keep adding to it, and at least with stuff like this they can kill a few NPC's and raze a few villages in the process to make room for more developments.


Zogonia has a deeply worrying development. Giger would be amused. Nodwick reaches the very bottom floor of the deepest dungeon. There are easter eggs contained within. Dork tower ought to realize computers are a lot more expensive to replace than dice.


The dungeon delvers guide: Not too surprisingly, we kick off the theme with basic advice on the procedures of dungeoneering for those who think they can just charge in and kill stuff until a place is cleared out. (and may well have been getting away with it if the DM's an amateur as well) There's a whole bunch of stuff on marching order, equipment, mapping, making sure all your party roles are covered, tactics, dealing with traps, etc etc. It demonstrates that 3e isn't actually badly suited to this playstyle at all, even if characters are likely to level up several times in the middle if you make a dungeon complex too large. (and you can slow that by re-instituting the training to advance levels rule from 1e, or making the situation lethal enough that hirelings seem like a very good idea) It still has all the gear, nearly all the monsters, all the traps, and now you have solid skills to find out if they're screwed in a situation or not. All it needs is the right kind of DM, and hopefully this has reminded both new and old players just what D&D was originally intended to be. Many of the tricks are familiar, but a few aren't, which lets me give this a positive result overall, as it's not just for the newbies.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 4/8


Down the drain: Sewers are a perfect source of dungeons, even if they're a bit more grimy and cramped than people in plate mail would prefer, as they're full of life, and the organic way they're built up over time along with the settlements above gives you plenty of room for hidden or collapsed bits that no-one knows the layout of, regardless of what the maps in the town hall say. I'm very surprised indeed that they haven't done an article on them before, with the closest thing being a collection of sewer monsters in issue 238. So this is another one they can afford to be fairly system-light on, going into both historical detail, and how to make sewers fantastical for a D&D campaign. In a world which has plenty of ruins from magical civilisations past, you have plenty of freedom to make them both bigger than the surface town they abut, and very weird to PC's ignorant of engineering principles. (watch out for the one that feeds all the pipes to a sphere of annihilation deep beneath the city. It may seem like a good idea, but it'll ruin the ecosystem in the long-term. ) There's tons of adventuring hooks you can get from this, both the obvious ones while down there, and the less obvious ones where you travel through the sewers as a means to an end. (quite possibly using shrinking magic to come up someone's toilet at the other end) Any adventurer who's afraid of getting a little stinky is definitely missing out on a prime source of XP. Are you going to be that party who falls behind or fails the quest because they weren't willing to hold their nose in the pursuit of good deeds?


Get Lost: Labyrinths are a more classical inspiration for D&D dungeons. Unlike sewers, mines, or ruined buildings, they're intentionally created to be challenging to navigate, by tricks like making everything look the same, layouts that naturally tend to draw your movements back to the way out, subtle slopes throwing off attempts to map by actually having multiple levels, and the ancient greek method of making sure people are hopped up on drugs before they can even enter in the first place. Unlike sewers, where adventurers might balk at first, but'll soon find plenty of stuff down there to occupy their attention, they'll probably jump at the the chance to explore a labyrinth, but might well find themselves getting bored once there, particularly if the place is low on landmarks and wandering monsters. As with the Tomb of Horrors, you really do have carte blanche to be as sadistic as you like with the design of these places, as mundane considerations like living spaces and toilets don't apply, and there are some people with ridiculously huge budgets and twisted senses of humour out there, who know how to set things up so trying obvious solutions lands you deeper in trouble. If you want to make the dungeon impossible, you can do so easily. The question is, can you make it seem impossible, yet remain interesting enough that the players will press on and solve it anyway, and will you fudge things if it looks like they're having it too hard or easy, or let the dice fall as they may and watch them slowly starve to death if they can't find the way out again?


The ecology of the rakshasa: Hmm. Technically, we haven't had an ecology on this creature before. However, in all but name, we almost have, in Scott Bennie's article in issue 84. Still, this does take a quite different tack to that, leaving their origin mysterious,  and engaging in the usual focus on their psychology, society and combat tactics. Seems like they have rather more societal variants than most creatures, adapting to different worlds and even planes almost as well as humans do. Since they're yet another monster for whom sneakiness is paramount, the tactical advice is once again focussed on outmaneuvering your foe on both sides of the battle, with half the war even figuring out what you're facing. This does throw into relief the fact that since the revamp, the ecologies have been increasingly metronomic in their hitting of particular beats, and very precisely bounded page count, going from one topic to the next, always in the same order. With a creature like this, which could definitely stand a more detailed examination, this is a serious flaw. If all the subsequent ecologies are like this, I'm definitely going to start struggling for new things to say about them.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 5/8


Spellcraft follows immediately after the ecology, as it has every issue since the revamp. Once again with the metronomic nature of the magazine's design. This is another selection of cantrips. Since we last had these exactly 2 years ago in issue 302, I shall glare disapprovingly. Surely you could have at least picked a topic from 2e years to rehash instead.

Fleeting Fame is another skill buffer we had a pretty much exact analogue of last time. Meh.

Groundsmoke makes smoke from a fire fail to rise normally. The kind of low key comfort and potential lifesaver cantrips should be used for.

Necrosurgery isn't the awesome Exalted stuff, but just a roundabout way of helping you resist disease. Once again with the meh. Wizards are supposed to suck at healing.

Nosy Neigbour boosts your listen skill a bit. Once again, superceded by issue 302's general skill booster cantrip.

Seeker's Chant is yet again superceded and worse than last time. Bonus on search checks? Already covered.

Shadowplay lets you do impressive looking but harmless stuff with someone's shadow. Another potential cantrip staple to frighten those with no knowledge of magic.

Vengeful Mount makes the victim unnerving to animals. You don't want to turn someone into a vampire just for that, do you. I thought not. No, this collection isn't nearly as big or good as the last cantrip collection.


Magic shop is also repeating a very familiar theme, nature based magic items. As long as two core classes key off magical connection to nature, there'll never be a shortage of people inventing variants on this theme.

Acorns of Clarity give you an instant connection to nature as long as you're holding them. Better not drop them, because it'll be a bigger finding them again in the woods without that extra skill.

Arboreal Armor grows it's own berries, letting you hide out in the wilderness as long at you like in addition to it's actual protective value. Careful how you sleep, as you don't want to wake up in a puddle of wasted jam.

Briar Staves control plants, and intriguingly, can be recharged by burying them for a few months, which is definitely a good way to teach PC's about conservation and crop rotation. Cycle your resources, and you won't be so predictable to enemies either, as they can never be sure what tactics you'll be using this time.

Deluge Rods summon acidic mist, fiendish sharks, and generally chill the area. They also make the wielder feel perpetually cold and clammy though, so many people will consider them not worth the bother. Even liches have to look after their bodies, for bits dropping off is a pain in the ass.

Eagles Cry Bows do indeed make a sound like an eagle when you use them, which makes them pretty obvious to everyone around. If you're not a friend of the elves, you can expect parties of them to come along soon to retrieve it by force. They can be even worse than githyanki at tariffs and protectionism.

Rods of the Wild let you pick from a bunch of different animal types and gain themed buffs. Choose wisely, as you can only have one at a time.

Sylvan Cloaks are updatings of your basic elven cloak as owned by every LotR reader at some point. No real surprises here, apart from the greater ones that let you teleport through trees or bring them to life to fight for you, which'll put a crimp in any orc's day.

Thornblades are another one that you can't really get by killing things and taking their stuff, as they whither away once separated from their bonded owner. So much for the adventurer's circle of life then. Hypocritical elves.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 6/8


Heroic feats: This column only gives us 4 feats this month, but they're longer than usual. We've had full books on the paragons of good, and evil, and the cool feats, prestige classes and spells they can purchase. Similar stuff for lawful and chaotic characters seems entirely logical. Of course with chaotic characters, you don't want the actual abilities they get to be too boring and logical, and unfortunately, that's exactly what we do get here. 2 feats which work like Practiced Spellcaster for Barbarian or Bard class features, the ability to always have certain skills as class ones, and a seriously nerfed version of the old Wild Mage ability to control magical items with random effects. Very disappointing and rather formulaic. Surely you can come up with something better than this for your champions of chaos.


Gaining prestige: When taking a prestige class, you always need to ask if the abilities you gain from it are better than the ones you would get from staying in your regular class. This is particularly the case with partial spellcasting progressions like this one, which cause you to give up your 9th level spells. The Shaper of Form is a specialist in shapeshifting magic, both organic and inorganic. This does give them a sufficiently different niche from the druid that both could fit into a party. They also get permanent body changes, including the ability to easily change race or gender, which is obviously a good target for people who want to play trans characters, and don't want to revert to their birth biology every time an enemy casts dispel magic on them. Overall, I think this probably comes out slightly suboptimal, since they give up 4 levels of spellcasting, but still only have an 1/2 BAB, so they won't be able to take full advantage of their physical enhancements to compensate for that.


Winning races: This column introduces another set of gradual progressions for templates, to reflect gradually picking up a connection with other worlds rather than being born with it. This time, it's the half-elemental ones. Each of those 4 CR+2 templates becomes a 3 level progression, gradually boosting the degree of elemental resistance and number of spell-like abilities you can access. Like the bloodlines in UA, these work best if you take them gradually alternating between regular levels, with the final one somewhere in your early teens, rather than all at once in a way that makes you fragile at low level. As this definitely makes it easier to take these thematic abilities while remaining balanced overall, I have to approve of this particular bit of mechanical development.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 7/8


Class acts: Fighters get Two Swords are better than One. Given their number of feats, a fighter who specializes can actually end up better at this combat style than rangers. Don't discount it just because Drizzt made it thematic for another class and everyone was dumb enough to copy him.

Clerics get 7 new flaws. Some interesting, and rather brutal flaws that really cut at the heart of their class features. I definitely approve of anyone brave enough to take these and deal with the consequences.

Wizards get The Necromancer's Primer. Unless you have supplements, there aren't nearly enough low level necromancy spells, so you have to choose carefully or wind up underpowered. Such a hassle. Here's a little advice to take the sting off it.

Rogues get 6 new special abilities to choose at higher level. Now this is more like it. Just what you need if you've played the game to epic and want some more tricks to fill out your set or surprise the players with. I particularly love Swift Kick. Great way to make your trap disarming more cinematic.

Barbarians get Strong Strategies. Hit em fast, hit em hard, and remember, you can afford to soak more damage than anyone else. Some very 4e-esque advice we have here. How curious.

Druids get The Wild Side. Ahh, the joys of wild shape letting you outclass any warrior or rogue. And who needs wizard spells anyway? Do we really need another reminder just how awesome 3e druids were?

Sorcerers get a load of advice on their equipment. Their probably low strength and need for mobility means overloading them is a bad idea. Choose carefully.

Rangers get 5 new fighting styles. Just the thing for when the fighter's just taken the 2 weapon fighting schtick. Wrestling, mounted fighting, piscator, throwing weapons, these are pretty neat, and should help you avoid getting stereotyped.

Paladins get a bit of fluff on their historical antecedents. Charlemagne's peers and the knights templar. Yet again, they are reiterating stuff tackled before in more depth. These really are dreadfully shallow a lot of the time.

Monks get A Matter of Style. Talk about martial arts styles, and real world examples of such. More shallow reiteration. I pity the people who have to write these.

Bards get Magic & Music. Bards really shine as a social and support character. So use them like that! Don't try and be the big solo combatant. Help people out, and you'll both be much happier. Another bit of advice they would code into the next edition much more strongly.

Dragon Issue 326: December 2004


part 8/8


Sage advice: How many HD does a 1st level pixie rogue have (2. He's at a big disadvantage in an ECL appropriate party, yess. You stab him, he goes splat, teeheeheehee)

If a spectre hits him, does he lose 2 ECL's, or does he die (He dies. Ssserves him right, collins collins.)

How do you deal with the LA from gaining a template mid game. (You won't gain any more levels until you pay it off. But you get to be stronger than your friendses for a while.)

Do creatures with special powers increase their DC's when they gain class levels (No. Less and less useful, collins collins. Thats why there's the buyoff option in unearthed arcana)

If you shapechange into a creature with special powers, how do you calculate the DC (Usual creatures HD, collins collins. )

Can a half celestial gain the dragon type from dragon disciple (No, its lower on the type hierarchy, collins collins. Still get all the special powers though.)

Why do things get ECLs higher than their CR. (Many abilities are more useful when PC's have them. Very annoying, collins collins)

How do CR's for traps work. Why don't they go above 10. (ssame challenge as similar monsters, yess. Hard to make traps above CR 10 without making them instantly deadly, or too easy to a prepared party. Too much swinginess bad in encounters, yesss? )

How much XP is a EL 5 encounter worth. (Depends what's in it )

Should you increase a monster's CR if it has powerful magic items (Maybe, collins collins. Not too much, though. )


Coup de grace: Player Tips and Adventurers Tricks breathed their last last issue, and this column ironically gets the coup de grace delivered to it this one, showing that they're already starting to struggle to maintain the same set of little columns every single issue. Maybe they're regretting showing what's behind the curtain, because this is one by Mike Mearls on how he became a professional writer. Basically, there's three steps. Treat it like a real job, sit down and write a certain amount every day, no matter how rubbish it is, and then clean it up in editing. (or put it in magazine articles anyway and let it cause massive nerdrage ) Remember to make time to actually play, as it'll stoke your creativity, and make sure the new stuff you come up with gets stress tested. And make sure you submit your work to anyone who's remotely likely to be able to use it, and then pay attention to their feedback and try again regularly even if they turn you down. As with most of the other times they've talked about this, they make it quite clear that natural writing talent is secondary to drive, persistence in the face of adversity, and ability to connect with the right people, and that getting on the first rung is probably the hardest part of getting a job. Whether that gives you hope for your chances or not is very much up to you.


Looks like things are already starting to change again around here, as they react to feedback on their new format, just as they did with the more dodgy fonts and layout choices immediately after 3e's release. That gives me hope that even if the individual columns remain hit and miss, and often very formulaic, the overall presentation of the magazine will continue to improve, so they can go out on a high. Let's see what surprises the last three years hold for me, if any.

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 1/7


100 pages. Looks like we're still in general dark dungeoneering mode on the cover, with an illustration that's very similar indeed to issue 322's. There's only so much you can do with with close-ups of covered faces. Let's hope we haven't run out of new ideas to put down there, just as they're making a load of effort to reaffirm that as a playstyle.


Scan Quality: Good, unindexed.


In this issue:


From the Editor: After barely a year, we once again switch editors, as the previous one promotes upwards to the R&D departments. They might start off enthusiastic, but monthly deadlines soon grind them down, particularly when the stuff they're releasing from one month to the next is so similar. You have to work to keeping it interesting for you as well as the audience. Fortunately, our new boss is made of sterner stuff. Erik Mona has shown himself willing to do this job for free for years, creating the Oerth Journal as an online magazine to keep Greyhawk alive in the dark times of the mid 90's, and then getting to go official when WotC brought it back instead of just getting threatening letters from Rob Repp. Since then he's moved through Polyhedron, the Living Greyhawk Journal, to Dungeon, and now to here. In fact, for the next couple of years, he'll be the lead editor on Dungeon and Dragon simultaneously, which is longer than Roger managed before getting burnt out.  So yeah, he's a genuine enthusiast, and hopefully his obsessive attention to Greyhawk's setting detail will apply to other ones as well. This is definitely a good way to start a new year.


Scale Mail: Our first letter is from someone who found the lovecraftian material came at just the right time for his campaign. Given how popular Lovecraft is, this bit of synchronicity was almost inevitable.

Not quite so lucky is someone who forgot where the quasi-elemental genasi were. Fortunately, there are detailed records in the magazine to remind them. As long as the internet remains, none of this will be lost.

We get some old school whimsy, protesting against the atrocity that is summoning and binding elementals to serve as industrial power sources.  Using them like pokemon is bad enough, but working for years with no hope of release? Inhumane! A very valid issue, and one I'm sure you could have a lot of fun with in game.

We also get reminded that while roleplaying as a whole may be male dominated, there are a fair few groups that are female only or have them as a majority. Remember, women buy far more books in general than men. It's quite possibly a fluke roleplaying evolved primarily from wargaming rather than literature and wound up male dominated.

Rather more prosaic is a basic bit of errata. Same as it ever was.

A lot of the time, getting hold of the magazine overseas has been a problem for people. However that doesn't stop it from turning up for sale in the oddest places. Even Afganistan gets a few, partially thanks to the soldiers stationed there.

Another obvious letter is nitpicking about the difference between england and great britain, and the way people from other countries can conflate the two. Yawn. I can't get worked up about this, but then I am english, so maybe it's just majority privilege speaking there.  

The revamp and it's masterminder get praised again twice. Since he just left, that instantly makes me wonder if they'll like the next set of changes Erik will make.

And finally we have yet another person asking how you get into writing role-playing games. Since we had an article on that just last issue, I'm forced to sigh at the being repetitive again.

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 2/7


First watch doubles in size this month, and we get to see the names of the people responsible for writing it. Guess it's got a quick and pretty positive response from the readers, despite (or maybe because of) it's sometimes odd choice of products to cover.

Our actual D&D product this month is Complete Adventurer. Rogues, bards, rangers, and anyone else who'd like to get into the skillmonkeying. This means it's focus is a bit vaguer than the previous three, especially in the prestige class area. Still, it does bring back the scout and ninja classes, which have always proved popular. They're also releasing the D&D monster calendar. Interesting. In the past, it's been the Realms or Dragonlance that get pretty add-ons like this. Guess it's another sign of their declining interest in settings. Still, at least it's being released at the right time of year for a change.

On the 3rd party D20 side, we have Firey Dragon's Battle Box. A whole array of little items to make your play smoother and more convenient. They seem to be focussing on these quite a lot. Ahh, the joys of making your game crunchy and buff-heavy. It gives you more excuses to sell even more stuff.

We also have a report on D&D online, their MMO. Much enthusiasm here, as they aim to create something that'll blow neverwinter nights and baldur's gate away. Oh well, so much for that plan.

Hybrid is not the RPG, (if that got mentioned in here, it would be very amusing) but a board game where you battle advanced super-soldiers. Hmm. Seems decent enough. And therefore a bit dull, ironically.

There's also some odd stuff, as seems to be their wont. Plush gaming gear, which it seems people are buying for their baby geeks. Excuse me while I have a biological clock moment here. :sigh: And a bunch of net videos. Dungeon Majesty? Hmm. I may have to check this out. Tee hee. This reminds me why I don't watch TV much (aside from the obvious of doing this thread for years. ) Amateur stuff is often more entertaining anyway, precisely because of the obvious flaws.

Beyond even that, there's some talk about stuff that isn't exactly products. The issues surrounding their recent attempts at getting into the .pdf market. Ah, yes, DRM and pricing issues. I remember those flamewars. And then the even bigger flamewars when they pulled their stuff again. That was not very cleverly handled. And some promotion for Winter Fantasy, and the RPGA in general. These, on the other hand are not very interesting to read about in hindsight.


Tomb Raider: In a sign of the pendulum swinging back a little bit, we start off with a system-light, historically focussed article on real world tombs that's useful for games other than 3e D&D. Egypt was the biggest draw for potential tomb robbers, with their thousands of years of spectacular pyramid building, but china probably has the biggest single one, filled with terracotta solidiers and other weirdness, including quite possibly the bodies of the architects. The trouble with these kind of dungeons is that many of them have already been cleared out, and those that aren't are either obscure or well known, and any attempts to break into them will result in trouble with the law as well as whatever monsters and traps are inside them. So unless you're in a place where people regularly make more, or discover an entire abandoned town to investigate, you will have to move on fairly soon after a few big raids. The life of an adventurer in the real world is not a stable one. Best to hope that you can make a big profit on one or two big ventures, and then invest it well if you want to ever retire.

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 3/7


The spoils of war: The straightforward dungeoneering advice continues with a piece on how your group should divide it's treasure. In the real world, this is often where a perviously successful unit falls apart, as some people want equal shares, while others get greedy and think their contribution is more important than other people's (which may well be true) so they should get a bigger share, and a few simply nick choice bits from the hoard and don't tell everyone else. If you make a formal agreement about this beforehand, you'll probably save yourself a good deal of stress later on. It also reminds us that treasure hoards can be big, heavy, and a nightmare to transport and store. Even if you take encumbrance into account when initially equipping your character, it can be easy to lose track when you're going from room to room, merrily killing and looting as you go. And then there's all the hassle of storing, selling, investing and capitalising on this stuff. Some people really enjoy this, while others would rather just handwave it, and if you leave it in the hands of one person, they'll probably wind up profiting the most. Do you have what it takes to play a party splintering as their success pushes them in different directions while keeping the actual group of players solid OOC? Or would that be a little too close to reality for comfort to be escapism. Either way, this is a solid reminder of how you can vary your playstyle while still remaining within the core dungeoneering experience.


Fiction: The silverfish by Richard Lee Byers. Time for another good ol' murder mystery. The kind of thing that works very differently in the Realms due to the combination of divination magic and the lack of modern policing and judicial process. On the plus side, that does mean someone who sincerely believes in proving guilt or innocence in a case can go private investigator, and get away with causing a fair amount of havoc in the process as long as they get results, because the ends justify the means. This does very much feel like the kind of story that would happen in actual play, and as with his previous work, hews very closely to D&D rules in terms of spells, character classes and setting integration. If you want realism, this isn't the place to look, but for a fast paced adventure full of twists and emotional drama, he still provides the goods.


Paranoia has upgraded to XP edition. Be very thankful it never updated to Vista. It would be terrible to have to choose between being treasonous because you didn't upgrade, and being treasonous because the computer keeps on crashing when you try to use it.

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 4/7


With friends like these: Or surviving your group turning into jackass central, and still having a functional game. Both unbendingly good characters who refuse to pay attention to the realities of a situation and compromise, and nasty ones who either engage in PVP or act like brooding loners can be a real problem. This kind of conflict is incredibly important in creating a good narrative, but not so great when you need to have all your resources working together at maximum efficiency to get through a dungeon. Trouble is, the kind of people who are good at finding exploits to create ridiculously powerful characters are also the ones likely to hog the limelight and get away with being a pain, as you need them. Unfortunately, this article isn't so much about solutions, as simply presenting the diversity within these two categories, with examples for every class to show how they could become annoying in either direction, which means people are actually more likely to create problematic characters after reading this rather than less. Oh well, it wouldn't be too terrible to go back to the 2e ways for a bit, as long as we know there's other places to go as well these days. Variety is important, after all, and it would be dull if all characters had blandly nice personalities.


Oop. I've managed to spot another statement of ownership. Looks like things have declined quite a bit in the past year, as they've dropped below 60,000 again. That's not good. No wonder they wanted to do a revamp last year.


The ecology of the grimlock: Ooh, good old sonarfaces. Not hugely smart or tricksy, their complete lack of eyes, and reliance on other senses still makes fighting them seem distinct from the other hordes of low level humanoid races. Also distinctive is that they seem less prone to the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! :shakes fist:" syndrome, regularly forming symbiotic relationships with illithids, aboleth, medusae and other oogy horrors of the underdark. And they certainly have the potential to be more, with their ability to develop art and culture with their enhanced senses that most creatures couldn't really appreciate. They can be a fun race to pit against players. Another decent but unexceptional, highly formulaic entry in this series.


Winning races: Diaboli! Now there's a turnup for the books. Also one that's never going to survive the transition to 3e unnerfed. Complete immunity to magical effects from creatures native to the normal 3 dimensions? That aint going to fly. They even take away their other signature move, the double speed cartwheeling trick, which hardly counts as gamebreaking, and nerf their poison tail. (which was already incredibly weak by BD&D standards) I think those two could easily have fit in if they were willing to make them an LA+1 race. But no, it seems they're prioritising being sensible over being unique. The setting detail survives slightly better, with the changes to the cosmology presented as gradual things rather than retcons that create more plot hooks. (even creatures from the dimension of nightmares are scared of the Far Realms' sanity destroying oogyness) So this could have been worse, but definitely isn't my favourite updating, as it makes an incredibly interesting race with tons of plot potential slightly less so. Disappointing.

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 5/7


Bazaar of the Bizarre returns. Magic shop indeed. :pff: It's one of your most recognised brands, even if it was originally nicked from Lankhmar. What were you thinking trying to genericise it? Anyway, this issue's topic is magic as technology. We've had that one before, but of course computer technology has improved at such a breakneck speed that stuff now would seem like sci-fi in the 80's, so this is well worth revisiting in an ironic way. Course, even more amusingly, much of this technology has advanced quite a bit in the intervening years since this issue. This stuff already seems horribly dated.

Figurines of Delivery give you instant UPS to anyone in the world. And unlike the real thing, delivery times and costs aren't an issue. Just pay them once and get a-rocking.

Gems of Location give you a zoomable map of an area. Unfortunately, it doesn't update like google earth. If you find this in a treasure pile it may be laughably misleading.

Horns of Recording are basic all in one recording devices and gramaphones. They can store up to 2 hours, which is better than old tapes and CD's, but nowhere near modern portable players. Ho hum. Gotta draw a line somewhere.

Memory Crystals are one-shot cameras. On the plus side, that means you don't have to worry about developing and printing. On the negative side, duplication is pretty much a no-no. If they get smashed, that's your valuable crime evidence screwed.

Mirrors of communication are video phones with very very limited networks. A dozen or two people at the most. They don't even have proper split screen conference calls. I'm not impressed.

The Slate Folio is your basic PDA or e-reader. Unfortunately it can only store 100 pages in black and white, but on the plus side they can be spell formulas. Again, I'm not very impressed. Let's hope someone advances these as fast as they do real world memory sizes.


Silicon sorcery: We visit Everquest again in these pages, with the PS2 game Champions of Norrath. As with Warcraft, it's once again very obvious that they've taken inspiration from tabletop roleplaying, so taking a little back in return is no problem at all. 7 feats that make D&D dark elves more like Norrathian dark elves? They're a fairly interesting selection too. 4 which involve channeling negative energy to make the lives of enemies a misery, and maybe restore you a little in the process. Undead control for non-spellcasters. And the video-game ability to carry far more than a character of your stats should, which always amuses me. Most of these scale according to the number of racial feats you have, which gives you lots of incentive to go the whole hog with them if it fits your build. These are far better than the bloodline types that only have a couple of things attached to them in previous issues. Once again, having a good source to steal from really helps the design process.

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 6/7


A novel approach: Frankenstein! There's a classic we could do with revisiting, since ravenloft hasn't had much play for quite a while. So here's three options that you can add to your unholy experiments against nature, making them more scary at the cost of a fair amount of money and xp. Boosted control over them, or increased intelligence. And that great staple of mad scientists, adding extra limbs on. And then that's it, which is a real shame given we've had long and imaginative articles on customising your undead. This is not a good use of your frankenstein, monster or doctor. Double the size of this, and maybe we could actually get somewhere.


Under command: The last couple of times, we've been talking about campaign play with a greater degree of character building and continuity. Now they go the opposite direction, and talk about introducing old school random elements to your warband building. While they maintain overall point buy restrictions, they relax the usual alignment ones so you can wind up with quirkier combinations of creatures that may or may not work well together statistically. As usual, there's a fair few variants, from giant monsters to hordes of smaller ones, and card shuffling to auction bidding, which means this little article can get a fair amount of use before you get bored. Good to see them supporting multiple playstyles with the same basic game.


Sage advice: Can you tumble while prone.( Sskip thought so. Andy doessn't. Andy iss stricter than sskip. No pessky cinematics in Andy's game, collins collins )

Can you jump as part of a charge (Yes. Quite ussefull. )

How far do you fall in a single round (All the way, ussually. You have to be very high up to not hit the ground in a ssingle round. )

Can you overrun multiple opponents in a single round. (Only if you miss the firsst one. Once you hit someone, you've got to sstop.)

Can a hiding character with spring attack attack, then hide again (Very tricky, collins collins. Need lots of feats and powers to make that viable. Andy does not recommend it. )

Dragon Issue 327: January 2005


part 7/7


Class acts switches things around so it's all in alphabetical order, instead of the core 4 coming first. No more favouritism for you!

Barbarians get The canny barbarian. Go on, go against stereotype. You don't get to survive in the wilds alone for long if you don't have a certain degree of smarts. Thog  smash is not the only thing you have to show. You have plenty of skills and tricks that you can use where a fighter would just do the boring thing.

Bards get Bards from History. As with last month's paladins, this covers their historical antecedents. This is rather easier, as traveling musical types show up in every culture.

Clerics get Tokens of faith. Like backgrounds, this is an excuse to squeeze out yet another minor benefit to a specific ability. Innocuous in itself, every little extra counts to the dedicated twink, so watch out.

Druids get 3 new animal companion options. Flying squirrels (not carnivorous, unfortunately. ) Moose, and giant seahorses. 3 HD creatures are CR 1 these days are they? Hmmm. This needs thinking about.

Fighters get the multiclass advice baton passed to them. Fighters really work best as a 1, 2 or 4 level dip for some other combatant class (6 at absolute most for the save symmetry), but they can't go as far as to say one of the core classes is outright crap, so this is a slightly awkward bit of advice. A few levels in ranger, rogue or paladin seem to be the best options for a primary fighter.

Monks get Ranged Monks. While it may be going against stereotypes, like two-weapon fighters and cunning barbarians, this is surprisingly effective. Shuriken, high dex, lots of speed and mobility. You can really ruin someone's day, attacking when they can't reach you, and grabbing their return shots out of the air and sending them straight back. A cool course I hadn't considered before.

Paladins also get their stereotype attacked. Awesome paragons of law and good don't have to be knights in shining armour. Yawn. Heard it all before.

Rangers get Building a better Archer. Another load of feat and equipment advice that does exactly what it says on the tin.

Rogues get Art of the sneak attack. Unlike previous editions, you really want to be doing this as often as possible, and actively creating opportunities to put the enemies at disadvantage so you can deliver the smackdown. Here's a quick checklist of the basic ways to do this. Obviously not aimed at the experienced rules lawyer.

Sorcerers get hit with the flaw bat this month, with 5 ways to make your magic less convenient. Most of these are applicable to any spellcasting class, so this is a generally useful selection others might want to browse as well.

Wizards get Survivalist spells. While wizards aren't limited in their total spells like sorcerers, they should still choose wisely. This is another one that seems curiously prescient of 4th ed thinking, playing up their controlery options. Hmm. Interesting.


Dork tower suffer from gaming withdrawal symptoms. Nodwick & co get to create a lich's tomb for one of their former associates. Nice to see them planting the seeds of adventures for future generations to face up against. Zogonia does the right thing, and is punished for it.


This one's pretty dull. Doing the same theme two issues in a row? That's a new low in repetitiveness, even if they have dropped a few of the regular columns that were already outstaying their welcome. Let's hope it's not too long before they can put together something different and interesting again, because I can only go back to the dungeon for so long at a time.