Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993


part 3/5


The role of computers has one of it's spates of many small reviews. This is a bit tiresome.

Amazon: Guardians of Eden takes you into the rainforest to find your brother and solve the many puzzles of the deep jungle. With puzzles, arcade action sequences,  cut scenes and bits where you control other characters, it's a big and varied game. Even more than usual, saving regularly is important, with backups several stages back handy for making sure you get everything you need without starting all over again.

Castles II: Siege and Conquest expands on the original to enable you to administer kingdoms and attack other people's castles. This actually means you'll spend less time building castles than in the original, but such are the perils of making your game more generic. As we saw in the minigames reviews, it can actually take away what makes you special and unique and interesting in the first place.

The Incredible Machine is a game where you create incredibly elaborate cartoon like machines to solve puzzles. That's a fairly original idea. With a ton of different pieces, it's easy to start, but hard to master, and produces funny results even when you get it wrong. Sounds like you could have hours of fun mucking around even ignoring the supposed objectives.

Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis once again shows lucasarts knows what they're doing with a multi-pathed, fully original follow-up game. With plenty of different ways you can complete it, and high quality cut-scenes, it's a good attempt at having a cinematic atmosphere, while not compromising the game aspect. I seem to recall there being plenty more in this vein to come over the years.  

Lemmings gets a pretty good mac conversion. Psygnosis have had several years to get this formula really working, and they have the brutal puzzles down to a tee. Remember, Blockers are vital so you can experiment without losing everyone.

M4 has you commanding said class of tank in WWII. Unlike many sims of this sort, it's actually fairly accessable, with point and click making things far easier than old programs where you had to learn hundreds of button commands. Convert the newbies! Gotta keep wargaming alive in some form!

Push-Over is a tremendously fun variant on dominos, where you control an ant trying to set things up so that when you push, all the pieces fall in the right order. Since some of the pieces do weird stuff, this can be a real brain teaser, but you can skip some levels if you do well enough in others. This sounds pretty familiar.

Space Legions lets you play the bad guys from the previous games in the series. Invade and conquer planets with great brutality! Failure will not be tolerated! It doesn't take itself too seriously, obviously.

Carriers at War is another WWII game this one focussed on the navy & air force. Well, I guess the 50th anniversary of various WWII events are passing as we speak. That probably contributed to a resurgence in interest.

Eric the Unready is yet another game that they can't really recommend wholeheartedly due to the magazine's family friendly policy. Toilet humour is not to be tolerated around here, no matter how much people may be laughing. :sticks up nose:

Paladin II feels several years out of date in terms of graphics and gameplay. One for adventure genre addicts.

Task Force 1942 gets a buggie. It simply didn't work on their system. You suck microprose, and need to fix it.


The druid gets a life: Oh, not again. Are people still perpetuating stupid put-downs against druids. Quite possibly the most awesome class in the game, with full spellcasting, decent weapons and easy shapeshifting on top. And, in these editions, a fairly strict charisma minimum. If they're social outcasts, it's because they choose to be, not due to necessity. And let's face it, they can achieve balance between man and nature much more effectively if they involve themselves in the affairs of both. There's also the interesting fact that they're one of the few classes that has an overarching organisation that they have to be a part of, and this makes them very able to co-ordinate their actions should it become necessary. By providing magical assistance to the common man, as long as they're acting in a nature-friendly way, with the threat of taking it away present in the background, they can subtly become a fantasy mafia that surpasses even the thieves guilds. This is the kind of thing that makes a political campaign seem rather more appealing than Bruce's contribution this month. Politics means little without agendas and means, and the fun is in just how subtly and obliquely you can fulfil your objectives, preferably via masterstrokes that accomplish several things at once while also turning your enemies against one-another. This is a very pleasing article. Plus on top of being likeable, this has a nice array of spells which serve to expand their everyday usefulness. Keep fighting the stupidity.

Fertility is one that'll let even a single 1st level druid make a real difference to a whole community over the course of the year. Once they have a few more levels under their belt, they can wander across a whole country. It really will take surprisingly few druids to make a huge impact on a society with tools like this.

Heal Plants is a lot more effective than the human cure wounds spell of the same level. At higher levels, it'll fix an entire blighted field. It's reversible too, which'll let you ruin a recalcitrant farmer's life as quickly as you saved it.

Ripen lets you cheat the seasons, presumably in case of emergency. Because regular use would probably result in disapproval from the hierarchy and possible power loss.

Firebreak stops nasty creatures from setting fire to the forest. Watch them look thoroughly bemused as it just doesn't work. Whether you choose to reveal your presence will obviously depend on what they do next.

Spring lets you conjure water from the ground, presuming there's any to conjure. Probably wouldn't work too well in athas. Still, you can get more than you would conjuring it wholecloth if you choose your location well. Both approaches have their place in a well rounded repertoire.

Heal Trees is a higher level variant of heal plants, able to affect the largest of plant-organisms, including intelligent ones. Meh.

Insect Ward is handy on several levels, as it can fuck up an ecosystem as well as make life more pleasant. With a duration of months, this is another one that can change the life of a community for better or worse. And isn't that a lot more interesting than another combat spell that's over in a flash.

Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993


part 4/5


The game wizards: Time for the collector's cards to get their now regular promoting in here. And oh god, the statistics are more complicated than ever. They now have both the regular gold bordered cards, and considerably rarer red bordered cards, explicitly made just for the purpose of giving people who really want to collect them all a real challenge. They've started hand-sorting the packs to make sure the distribution across the country is truly random. And there's several visual gimmicks like prismatic cards, stickers, and exclusive stuff. Amusingly, they point out their own errata here as well. Sure they've made a few mistakes. But that just makes those runs even more collectible, honest! As one of those articles that started off as an interesting diversion, but is now becoming routine, this is rather less interesting than last year. Statistics can only sustain my interest if I have some attachment to the underlying topic. And that's not really the case here.


Forum: Karen Remick is yet another person organizing their thoughts on an issue into numbered points. Seems to be becoming quite the trend. She's another person trying to address the twinkery problem, often by oblique methods. Remember, the less they know about the rules and their character's statistics, the less they can twink them. If you have to change system to regain that air of mystery, so be it.

Warren Tilson is even more keen on removing the statistics from the player's annoying grasps, having them define their characters narratively and just build from that. It forces them to roleplay, and speeds up character generation considerably too. Get back to roleplaying's let's pretend roots, not it's wargaming ones.

Randy Hunt yet again says the DM should be the one keeping the character sheets between sessions. I'm starting to think that should be standard. After all, if a player doesn't turn up, you can still run that character accurately as an NPC. If the DM flakes, everyone's screwed regardless. In addition, make sure you present options other than combat to your players.

Bill Heron also encourages number-pointing your ideas. Oh, and actually communicating with them, and establishing what people want out of a game. Passive-aggressive nerfing mid game is no fun for anyone.

Matt Martin advises you not to follow the treasure tables to the letter, or allow every optional rule into the game. These are sure paths to overpowered characters. The imbalance is inherent to the system, and you must actively work to prevent it.

Jorge Hernandez once again brings the mean solutions to the table to make sure no overpowered character escapes. As with the jedi stuff, at this point you really have no excuses but your own incompetence and cowardice for letting payers get away with this shit.

Ed Pflager tries to be reasonable about age restrictions on gaming conventions. Yes, a flat limit is a bit unfair. But in a public convention, how are they to know if you're mature enough or not. Best to be on the safe side.

Thomas M. Heckmann (is that bowdlerised? ) explains exactly why SARPA have an age restriction on many games. As usual, its the parents that are the problem, not the kids. You have to take precautions in these litigious times. Yes, it is a bit of a tiresome business. The alternative is worse.


Sage advice: Do dex and cover bonuses stack (Nah. If you're hunkered down, you can't dodge properly. )

Do dex bonuses stack with the shield spell (probably.)
What other magic stacks with the shield spell ( stuff that adds, not stuff that provides a new base. )

Can spectral hand be used to deliver cure spells at range. (Technically no, but you probably should. )

Does word of recall transport other people with you. (As long as they're not too heavy. )

What's padded leather armour. (A no longer extant type of armour. Like assassins, it was deemed unnecessary.

What happens if you roll higher than 23 with a vorpal sword. (You can't. The math does not parse like that. It's like rolling a 7 on a d6. )

Do all big creatures suffer penalties against dwarves and gnomes (no, only the ones listed. )

Can you use granted priest powers after being at deaths door. (no.)

Why do weapons do different amounts of damage to different sizes (to give you interesting tactical choices )

Why does thunder rift use AD&D stuff when it's a D&D adventure. (When in doubt, blame the editors. Writers get the praise, editors take the blame. Who made the rules like that? Some questions even Skip won't answer.)

If you create a giant zombie is it harder to turn (no, but you can't turn as many )

Can find traps figure out what a contingencies trigger is (not usually)

Do shamans and wokani have armour restrictions (yes, but not the same as normal clerics.)

How do I get a job at TSR. Will having a degree help. ( Keep sending in submissions as a freelancer. Persistence persistence persistence is waaaay more important than talent, especially if you listen to feedback. )


Shadowrun RPG for the SNES. I remember this as well. It took forever to complete if you didn't cheat. The amount of grinding I did to level up in that, and then lost because there were only two save slots, and someone saved over mine. :grumble, mutter:


The role of books: The grail of hearts by Susan Shwartz takes us across history in the wake of a female Wandering Jew, manipulated by the forces of evil as she tries to escape her fate.

Strange devices of the moon and sun by Lisa Goldstein doesn't do so well, with neither the historical worldbuilding or the fantastical elements brilliantly done.

Aquamancer by Don Calander has a rather mixed review for simultaneously being formulaic, and breaking several important rules of writing. Hmm. That doesn't sound right, yet somehow it works. I guess it's in the implementation.

Realms of Valor, edited by James Lowder brings us a whole load of Forgotten Realms short stories. Lots of familiar characters make appearances, including Elminster, Drizzt and Jandar Sunstar, plus a whole load of new smaller perspectives. There seems to be plenty of room in this world for further short stories, that don't take a whole novel to tell and have some significant effect upon the world.

War world: Blood feuds, created by Jerry Pournelle sees Larry Niven's frequent collaborator getting into the shared world business himself. And like the Man-Kzin wars, this involves both action and moral complexities, an overarching sweep of history bigger than any one story, and well done worldbuilding, even if some of the individual stories aren't brilliant.

The city who fought by Anne McCaffrey & S. M. Stirling comes close to being shared world too, as apparently McCaffrey is now leaving most of the heavy lifting to her younger collaborators. This makes it a little formulaic, staying well within the established boundaries for her world, but with a tone somewhat different from her own writing voice.

Dragon Magazine Issue 193: May 1993


part 5/5


The dragon's bestiary: Yay! more planar monsters! All ones that would later appear in proper MC appendices as well. Keep building that part of the setting up, we've still got a way to go until planescape.

Giant Nautilus are one of the few things that can go head-to-head with Kraken in both the physical and mental arenas. With 21 attacks per round, tough armour, plus substantial magical powers, they should also be able to deal with most parties too, should one be around while they do something bad for the environment. Not one to be casually trifled with.

Abyss ants are exactly what you'd expect. Giant malevolent twisted versions of normal ants, ready to melt your face off with acid spitting. As they're considerably less chaotic than most abyssal inhabitants, they can survive via co-operation in the face of the horrors of the infinite pit and carve out their own little safe regions. (for them) As ever, good luck turning them to your advantage, because I don't fancy your odds of killing them all unless you're a creature immune to nonmagical attacks that can just wade through them.

Incarnates are possessing spirits that epitomise the 7 virtues & sins.  They offer you appropriate powers at the cost of some of your free will. The good ones can be useful, while the bad ones are an almighty pain to get rid of. Now these can indeed be nice plot drivers. Are you willing to make that fusion willingly, and become a lot more like a White Wolf character? (what? Mage, Wraith, Changeling, Exalted, Mummy, Demon, Geist. All use variants on that theme. It does seem to be rather a habit of theirs. I do wonder why. )


Dragonmirth involves literal dungeons this time. And the same joke Fineous fingers started with back in issue 3. Ogrek continues to irritate everyone he meets. How does he get away with it? A spectacular arial battle fills twilight empire.


Through the looking glass: The hammer has fallen. Or has it. As usual, it's more complicated than that. It's only a few states in the US that are doing the lead banning thing. Some companies will still be producing lead minis, particularly ones overseas. And of course, with such patchy enforcement, it would not be a complicated matter to go out of state for your shopping, maybe do a little illegal importing for your mates (although as a pundit in a major magazine, he is contractually obliged to disapprove of that behaviour. ) It would be oh so easy to make a mockery of this, just as we did with prohibition. Plus it would make a great noir comedy. Wargaming importers and the hard-bitten detectives who try and track them down. Adversity does make things interesting.

Our reviewed minis this month are a mechanic with a gun, and a ton of little detail on his clothes that'll be a challenge to pain. Lord Soth in all his brooding glory riding a skeletal horse. Sir Bors from Arthurian legend, mounted or on foot. You think he'd stand a chance against Soth? Some modern soldiers with machine guns and missiles. Dwarves with polearms considerably longer than them. A wererat with a rather nasty looking sword. A completely nonchesecaky druid/ranger. And the token bit of furniture. Once again they fight to increase the legibility of the photographs, with mixed success.

We also get a review of Warhammer Battle Magic. It gets pretty good marks from Robert, with only the subtle niggle that the way they're dividing things up may be more based on getting you to buy lots of other figures than IC thematics keeping him from giving it 5 stars. Yeah, I think we know by now that Games Workshop are pretty ruthless and effective business people. They wouldn't have survived where all the other wargaming companies died if they weren't. At least someone's still around to push the mass market minis.


TSR Previews: Having had Top Secret grind to a halt in 1991, they make another, rather different shot at producing a versatile generic system. The Amazing Engine™. Base rules simple enough to fit in a 32 page booklet, and a system designed to allow you to switch easily between wildly different characters in wildly different milieus. Two of these are released straight away. For Faerie, Queen and country combines victoriana with a distinct flavour of open magic, while Bughunters is fast paced sci-fi. How many settings will they get out before this too falls by the wayside?

Dark sun is our top AD&D attraction this month. The Ivory Triangle is a big boxed set full of info on Gulg, Nibenay, and their epic conflict. Use it fast, because like everything else in this world, it'll be out of date and superceded soon. Much of this is of course the fault of Troy Denning, who completes book 4 of the prism pentad, The Obsidian Oracle. Tyr may be free, but the new boss'll become as bad as the old boss if he gets his way.

Ravenloft proves even Pinnochio can be made horrific, in The Created. A mad toymaker sends his creations against people. Guess it's foiling time again. But how many other suspicious characters lurk nearby to serve as red herrings?

Greyhawk follows up on a couple of months ago. WGR6: The city of skulls sends you to infiltrate Iuz's capital city. Can you make a difference to the big picture? Good luck.

Spelljammer gets SJR8: Space lairs. Another anthology of short adventures. Well, the standard ones don't work very well in space. Don't let your game grind to a halt because you're out of ideas.

And finally, we have another batch of trading cards. I can't even be bothered with the pokemon jokes anymore. Let's skip them until that actually comes out in a few years.


In contrast to the last issue, this one really flew by. Fortunately, that's because most of the articles were interesting enough that I could easily think of something to say for them even if many of them weren't actually that great. With Roger's 10th, and the lead bill kerfuffle, this is another one that both lets me really appreciate how far I've come, and how much further I have to go. And just how much work it's been. Eventually, it'll start getting easier. But knowing me, that just means I'll start posting faster again, making the workload just as hard. Let's hope that day isn't too far away.

Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993


part 1/5


124 pages So we're up to year 17. Many of the magazine's readers are now younger than it, including me. Feel free to shake your stick and try get us offa your lawn. As you'd expect, there's a dragon on the cover trying to do just that. Because let's face it, we're all youngsters to a fully grown dragon, even the elves. But I guess the important question is if they've still got anything to teach us, or their age has left them out of date and baffled by this newfangled technology. Since we have not one but two Dragon Projects this month, they do seem to have some genuinely new stuff to offer us. But on the other hand, they also have two game wizards articles, which generally aren't particularly useful. Let's see what the ratio of good stuff, filler and crap is this issue.


In this issue:


Letters: Praise for the african articles. Yaaay! Roger points out further reading. Actually, he doesn't, but it's the thought that counts. Coverage of african history and mythology is still pretty damn sketchy.

Uriah Heap? What have uriah heap got to do with D&D? A very good question that'll hopefully be filled in later.

A letter from a multiclassed gamer/akidoer. As with army people writing in, Roger gives this extra attention due to personal investment. Seems like lots of the TSR staff actually try to become badass ninjas in real life, with mixed success. Why do I find that more funny than I should?

A letter from someone who's found a misprinted trading card. Oooh. You can get more for them than the regular ones! Why do we even bother complaining about errata anyway when people fetishise it so.

A letter from Ann Dupuis responding to Rick's review of GURPS Old West. Man, political correctness is getting out of hand these days. Such was the 90's. Can't talk about anything real without offending someone. This is one reason why we retreat into fantasy worlds in the first place.


Editorial: From political correctness to more religious hysteria. Beauty and the beast promotes lycanthropy?! Ok, they're really really reaching for that one. I'm pretty certain some people just look for reasons to be offended by anything popular to get some attention. Roger treats this with the utter contempt it deserves. He really is getting more and more emotionally invested in this problem as the years go by. Still, it doesn't compare with the rage he feels at people trying to ban the diary of Anne Frank. That just says willfull eeeeeeevilness on a cartoonish level. Remember, a fairly reliable way of spotting who the good guy in a situation is the one who wants you to have access to information, and the freedom to make your own choices. It might not be perfect, but it'll be right far more often than not, until the bad guys wise up and feed you false info to make you make the wrong choices. And fighting censorship and government lies is something that remains incredibly relevant in the internet age. With video phones and instant uploads, we all have the ability to make a difference, ensure the actual truth on ugly events gets out. If that means we have to watch some poor quality, gruesome stuff, well, that's a price I'm willing to pay for freedom.


Dragon dogfights: We kick this birthday off with quite a neat little number. A simplified system for fighting in the skies? It's not nearly as silly as clay-o-rama, but that may well be a good thing. It does have stuff in common with it in that you'll have to supply all the raw materials yourselves, and the whole thing was a little thrown-together, designed so people could have a laugh at last year's conventions. Of course, deadlines like that often wind up working in the favor of usability, as you really have to stick to the essentials needed to get the game working. And the stress testing it got then probably gave them a chance to iron off a few more rough edges. The whole thing is tremendously easy to get into, and the rules could well fit on a single sheet of doublesided paper if they shrank the font a bit. This qualifies as a definite success, even if it's not as impressive a package as the old centrefold games they used to put in the magazine. I do rather miss those. We want more variety!


The details of the amazing engine and the way it will handle the core rules and settings is revealed. 32 page core rules and 128 page settings? Fight that bloat!


Dexter & Cornelius: Our first Dragon Project is for GURPS. An adorably naive young dragon and the conman who's exploiting him to make his fortune. There's an idea that can be translated fairly easily to other systems, although it may be out of character for some worlds. It actually sounds more like the plot of one of their short stories than an article, but since the fiction in the magazine is one of my favourite parts, that's no bad thing. The crunch takes up a pretty tiny part of the article, showing GURPS doesn't have to degenerate into a morass of special case stuff, and the central idea seems pretty fun as an adventure seed. I think this is a pretty good success in balancing their various pressures.


Dragonbot Ver 3.1: Ha. Paranoia time again. The computer is being so successful in it's attempts to root out and destroy mutant scum is so successful that you get the marvellous opportunity to employ its latest development, a mechanical dragon, to further demonstrate the perfection of the computer's engineering. It's the best yet, but all the older models were perfect as well! It has a cloaking system, and anyone who can see through it must be a traitorous mutant scumbag requiring immediate termination. Rather more specific than the other article, this integrates and punctures a whole bunch of D&Disms with a Paranoia spin, making it pretty hard to fit into another game. It does get rather silly, but you'd expect that. Maybe this should have been in the april issue instead. In any case, this is still an entertaining read, especially when you get all the references, but I can't see it getting that much actual play use.

Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993


part 2/5


TSR Previews: The game designers decide that maybe the loose leaf format for collecting monsters wasn't such a good idea after all, and release MCC1: Monstrous Manual. Still, they've collected creatures from lots of the compendia, revised them, and made all the artwork colour. And as noism's thread so epically indicates, there are a lot of people who remember this one fondly, probably more than the magazine. Rather less remembered is the Cardmaster Adventure design deck. Another way to facilitate quick easy design, I'm not sure how this one works. Spells, monsters and magic items are easy enough, but this seems a bit awkward.

Ravenloft is our double dipper this month. RM2: Web of illusions takes you to Sri Raji, to see the rakshasa. Or not, given their skills at misdirection. If you don't see through their deceptions and pack some serious magical heat you are likely to become dinner. Meanwhile, Carnival of fear by J. Robert King sees a bunch of carnival performers try and solve a series of murders. Somehow, I don't think these monsters will be Mr Jenkins the janitor in a mask.

The forgotten realms releases a new core boxed set reflecting all the metaplot changes, and incorporating a good deal of the material. Plus you can do some adventuring underneath shadowdale, fight drow and get saved by Elminster (and his little dog). Hey ho. Change keeps chugging along. Soon this too will be out of date.

Al-Qadim has a rather less hurried pace in City of delights, one of their bigger boxed sets. Ok, there is some stuff about yak men, and their plot to take over the city, but that's just an adventure hook. Enjoy wandering around a high magic city with plentiful elemental connections, and lots of colourful characters to encounter. Try not to get on the wrong side of the law, for many of the guards are also not your basic 1st level mooks.

Dark Sun gets splatbookalicious, with CGR2: The complete gladiator's handbook. You know the drill by now. Kits, equipment, roleplaying advice, all with that unique dark sun flavour (like barbecue, only drier.) mixed in. Don't be surprised if there's even more power creep than even this setting normally has.

Dragonlance reaches part 2 in the dwarven nations trilogy. Hammer and axe by Dan Parkinson sees hill dwarves split away from their mountain cousins. Cue monty python jokes about molehill dwarves, given how small the things they're disagreeing over are.

D&D has another tiny little adventure. In the phantom's wake is another 16 pager that would be rather hard to spot on a bookshelf. This format is starting to look seriously dated when contrasted with the 128 page splatbooks.  


Role-playing reviews decides to have a spate of sci-fi. People may not be sending in many articles, but they can still rely on their columnites to cover a wide variety of other companies games.

Battletech 3rd edition gets the full 5 star deluxe treatment, with rick praising nearly every aspect of it's rules and setting. Fasa have improved on the existing game both rules wise and in presentation, and look like they'll continue raking it in for a while yet. All power to them.

Gamma Knights doesn't get quite such a great result. It's decent enough for what it is, but there's a few bits of rules weirdness, and it doesn't really integrate with the RPG at all. That's more a marketing decision than having anything to do with the existing setting.

Orbit War also gets quite a bit of negativity. It was cool as a special feature in a magazine a decade ago, but on it's own, it seems both too expensive and terribly outdated. Once again the end of the cold war has changed the political landscape enough that this kind of thing no longer resonates.

Tyranno Ex sees Rick argue heatedly with his playtesters over it's merits. When a game's this innovative, you can forgive it a few rules flaws. Plus evolution is an interesting business that deserves more publicity anyway. I wonder what he'll make of pokemon in a few years time.


The known world grimoire: Sagin' time again in this department. Bruce still has many more questions to answer.

No magic at all?! That'll kill me! Really? No magic at all!1! (oh all right, there's a few exceptions, mostly purely internal ones needed for some creature's basic functionality. )

Any info on Minea out there? (Not really. Maybe some day. )

Are there weapon mastery charts for the hollow world stuff. (Go back a year and ask again)

How does Bekander get a manifestation. (For free)

Why haven't green slimes eaten the world. (Our ecology, it needs adding too. Maybe you could create the monster that keeps the slimes and oozes in check. )

Are charmed things freed when their master dies (Nope. Until they actually make the regular save, they will try to avenge his death fanatically. )

What's a Night Dragon (Shoulda started reading this magazine a few years ago)

Will all the princess ark series be fully compiled (Nope. Nearly half of it'll be abridged, due to space issues. Shoulda started reading the magazine a few years ago. )

Don't listen to the h8ers! The New D&D basic set kicks ass! ( Why thank you. :teeth ting: ) I'm glad someone's doing their part to grow the hobby instead of moaning about everything we do. )


Breaking them in: Ahh, another attempt to get new players in. And it does actually offer some new advice. Do some solo mentoring. Encourage them to prepare. And get one of the other players to take them under their wing. Interesting, if a bit insubstantial in terms of word count. Plus a half page header on a page and a half article? I suspect padding out to fit around the number of adverts. Still, better just a few new ideas than 10 ones that we've seen before all too often. And better they choose fairly good articles for their padding and twist them a bit with font size changes than bad ones that just happen to be exactly the right word count. Pretty mixed feelings about this really. Oh well, it adds a few more XP to my count. And the emphasis on personal tuition is interesting. In the old days we all had to learn together. But gaming has been around long enough now that this has become a viable path to get someone up to speed quicker. I guess we should take advantage of that.

Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993


part 3/5


Sage advice: What happened to the maps in WGR3 (Oops. Guess Skip will have to put the pages in the modules as well as the mages. )

Do hide in shadows and move silently work on undead. (Why wouldn't they. They may be immune to all kinds of stuff, but they still have the same basic senses. )

Can you sell a wall of iron for shitloads of money in athas. (No. It has a duration specifically to prevent that. You are so pre-empted.)

How do the veiled alliance interact with advanced beings (with great caution, like you do with anyone who can kill you with a word)

How many followers do avangions attract (everyone in the area who wants a better world for themselves, and their children, and their children's children. There are people dying. Spare a thought for the living. Make a better world, for you and for me. )

Do avangions eat and sleep (probably)

How do avangions use powers that requite them to walk (Shapechanging, duh. Does the concept of access 9th level spells mean nothing to you? )

How can elves be wimpy but live a long time (Horses and parrots. Cockroaches and china. Fast metabolisms burn themselves out. )

Why does the complete elves handbook have spells elves can't learn. (Just because they can't specialize in them, doesn't mean they can't learn them. )

What happens if you take plants spelljamming (you'd have to take a hell of a lot to balance up the breathing of a whole crew. )

Can a riddlemaster choose the right card from a deck of many things. (no. You can't analyze or game totally random results. That's a Wild Mage trick. )


The role of computers: Conquered Kingdoms seems pretty self explanatory. Take over places with your forces, and then deal with the hassles of managing them. Face off wizards & dragons, or maybe other players via modem. Not hugely innovative, but they enjoy it.

Lure of the Temptress gets a fairly good review. The interface, which brings up options via pointing and right-clicking, is relatively quick and intuitive for the number of options it offers. With plenty of different options for interacting with the NPC's, and an environment that changes quite a bit as you go through the adventure, it kept them interested throughout and wanting to try replaying it. Only a few stupid AI flaws keep it from getting 5 stars.

Realms is another one combining fantasy wargame and sim game, forcing you to master the finer arts of taxation and city building as well as battlefield tactics to win. As with most of these, this can eat up vast amounts of time mastering all the subtleties if you let it.

Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender is a point and click comedy adventure in the vein of the leisure suit larry games. Unusually for their reviewers, they don't object to the dirty bits, as they can be switched on and off quickly and easily mid-game and password protected, so your kids will not be corrupted and you will not be embarrassed.  Ha. They continue to amuse on this front. Why must family friendly policies produce such risible results? People just can't resist thumbing their nose at them.

The Summoning is a more action oriented RPG, sending you through a massive multi-level labyrinth, where you have to change your equipment and other complexities without pausing. In an other sign of advancing interfaces, they not only have automapping, but also let you print your maps off easily. The magic system is pretty cool too. Another one they intend to revisit in future hints sections.


Gamma Terra Revisited: Along with the Dragon Project articles, here we have a gamma world article. Only the 2nd one since 4e's release though, (and once again by an official writer) which once again goes to show how much they're struggling to get people to write in with this stuff. It's not a particularly surprising topic either. More Mutations? That's like saying more monsters or spells for D&D. The main question then becomes are they any good. Browsing through them, I can definitely say that these are more superhero powers than remotely realistic body alterations. Some even have the rather artificial limitation of 1/day, which further affects that feeling. Guess they're still playing on the gonzo side in the TSR offices. Pretty standard collection though. Extended lifespan, darkness generation, phasing through objects, flight, blasty energy balls. The main thing to recommend it is the well above average artwork. Otherwise, tis somewhat yawnsome. You won't be inspiring the freelancers with stuff like this.

Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993


part 4/5


Campaign journal: As with the dragon projects, we have our second wave of campaign boosters from the official writers this month. This time, it's Dark Sun's turn. Rich Baker sets about integrating kits into there, with a short bit of advice on good existing ones, and then launching into a whole range of new ones, 2 for each class group. That won't catch them up with Al Qadim, but it won't hurt, and shouldn't be too hard to retroactively integrate into your game.

Slave warriors have fairly substantial bonuses, but of course are slaves, which does limit their freedom quite a lot. And if they do escape or get set free, they'll lose the benefits and get a different set of penalties. Unless the owner is another PC (Which isn't impossible since there's a noble kit) this'll be rather a nuisance. Maybe an all-slave campaign would be fun for a bit.

Raiders are your typical bandity types. They get a substantial bonus to ambushes, but are obviously not very popular in most social situations. Better leave that to the other PC's while you lurk menacingly in the background then.

Veiled ones are preservers strongly on the in in the veiled alliance. This means they have other wizards to help them out and get half-decent spell choices, but need to spend quite a bit of time maintaining a cover identity and helping out other preservers. This'll create adventure options as well as restrict them, and the other players may well have to help out in your plot lines. Better hope they don't also have kits that demand a ton of their time.

Arcanamach's are their opposite halves, sorcerer-king's attack dogs. Which means they can operate openly, have extensive spell selections, and order around virtually anyone apart from templars, but they're feared, hated and regularly sent on missions by their boss. It's a stressful life, and not that great for PC's.

Chroniclers are priests who do historical research, a pretty rare commodity on Athas. They get Read Languages, rogue style, and an eidetic memory, at the cost of always having to try and recover ancient lore, which isn't really a drawback at all, although it may lead them into unwise situations. Ahh, the old swashbuckler setup.

Tribal Priests are another one with mainly social benefits and hindrances. Gotta take care of your congregation, no matter how it may get in the way of your adventuring. But much respect if you do.

Caravaneers get lots of bonus proficiencies and will never be short of a job, but like many travellers, will face scorn and distrust from people in any other situation. Gypsies and sailors get a bad rap but you can't really live without trade. Since their hindrance will mainly come into effect if they leave their job, this'll keep them adventuring.

Sycophants steal via charm and freeloading rather than blatant thievery, soon becoming able to juggle one friend off another and live virtually for free without anyone noticing. Course, this requires people not seeing them as a threat. They may have some mechanical backup, but they can still blow it by strapping on armor and looking like a professional adventurer.

Noble psionicists are pretty much the same as the kit for other classes. Extra money at the start, but they then have to maintain themselves in the style they're accustomed too, or lose the social clout their family connections grant them. Probably ought to be a non class specific kit.

Untutored ones break the normal psionicist rules and get a wild talent on top of their usual powers. They then pay for this over the course of their career by not getting free defence modes and being unpopular with regular trained psychics. This is obviously one rather dependent on luck, but in general, this will start out a fairly decent advantage and gradually become more and more of a disadvantage, so it's a good one to tempt players with.

So here we see an unusually high number of bonus proficiencies in many of the kits, and lots of purely social hindrances, some very strict. Ironically, this discourages everyone from taking a kit, for if they all did, their competing social requirements would tear the group apart when properly enforced. This is a definite design flaw that needs addressing. It's fine for NPC's to have issues like that, but PC's need to be able to keep the team together to survive and prosper. I am once again reminded of my own musical experiences, where one of the biggest obstacles to a band's success is the various life events of the members constantly getting in the way of actually producing anything. You really do need to be able to just say fuck 'em all and set off into the unknown if you want to make a huge life change. Integrating into the community can be a trap for the unwary that wastes your entire life in petty details. And I really don't want that incorporated into my gaming when it's precisely what I play to escape.


Castle Falkenstein! Another highly entertaining and idiosyncratic game gets teased here.


The game wizards 1: Promo goes into overdrive this month. The Amazing Engine was released last month, along with it's first two settings. And while it isn't getting the same kind of push as Buck Rogers, there's people here who want it to succeed. Particularly the ones who wrote the books, such as Lester Smith. Left to himself, he would have developed a rather crunchier system for Bughunters. But under Zeb's direction, he's kept it simple stupid and squeezed everything into 128 pages. Which since it's a game designed to model sci-fi military action stuff such as Aliens and Predator, is counterintuitive but probably more fun than something that details guns and equipment in fetishistic detail. (like the official licence, for example) Course, that isn't going to stop the whole thing from dying within a couple of years, but so it goes. The fact that settings are only getting a single book each and then it's on to the next one probably hurts the attempt to build up marketable IP. Still, the overall ideas sound good. It's a case where it's a little depressing how TSR's other RPG's kept dying. What could make a comfortable living for a smaller company was a gross waste of resources for them. It's all a little saddening.

Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993


part 5/5


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Spike T Jones takes a break from ecologising for a little itemising. He contributes an interesting grab bag of bottles, and things which fit inside them. Once again we see how a sideways theme can be more interesting and varied than a straightforward one.

Tenser's Tantalus lets you carry a whole array of potions and scrolls on it, secured and protected, but coming away at a touch ready to use. No more frustrating rummaging in backpacks in the middle of battle, like extradimensional storage, this'll change the life of adventuring parties to the degree that they won't know how they managed before it. Better make sure enemies don't smash or steal it.

Bottles of preservation keep anything in them fresh. Since some monsters are both highly perishable and can be used to make magic items, this could allow you to multiply your profit from an adventure, presuming the right buyer is available. Or possibly make prettier, better smelling flesh golems, if that's your perversion of choice. Brains in a jar make for good props anyway.

Bottles of trapping shrink you and suck you in, leaving you to be put on the shelf, complaining in a squeaky voice. No mention is made of it removing your bodily needs, so being a prisoner in a bottle may get rather humiliating after a while. It can also lead to some amusingly cartoonish scenes. Very mean.

Nerve tonic lets you stay completely calm. One that you could probably make lots of money selling to non-adventurers. Let's hope the ingredients can be farmed and mass produced.

Oil of monster repulsion does exactly what it says on the bottle. Course, it only affects a specific species, so it's hardly a great cure-all. Another one that'll be most handy when you can make it yourself, instead of just finding some random variant of it in the treasure pile.

Oil of neutral scent stops you from smelling, which is very useful when dealing with things like tracker dogs or grimlocks. The experience of being completely smell free may become addictive, which will be very expensive for the fastidious and paranoid. Just the quirk to give to your campaign's equivalent of Howard Hughes

Pox potion is yet another way your creative attempts could go horribly wrong. It won't be fatal to experienced adventurers, but it will make your life pretty unpleasant until you can get a cure disease in.

Ships-in-a-bottle grow to full size when you break them. Unfortunately, they can't be made to shrink again after use, so you're stick with a full size ship. Perhaps more research on this matter is needed. The solution is probably going to be expensive.

Skunk water makes whatever it's added too smell utterly foul. Do not drink under any circumstances, save possibly trying to blend in in troglodyte territory.

Smoke of fire quenching is another one-use item that may save your life, but only in very specific circumstances. Stock up on a whole bunch of them if facing fire elementalists then.


The game wizards 2: Hmmm. TSR's trying to get into the new FMV game scene. Stuff like Atmosfear started appearing a couple of years ago, and as with many gimmicky things that're easy to learn, they've sold like gangbusters, yet only been played once or twice before being relegated to the attic. Not that this bothers the manufacturers much, as we've already given them our money. This is in sharp contrast to AD&D, which is now pretty dependent on the return dollar (another reason why the non D&D RPG's keep getting dropped by the company) So Bruce Nesmith was the muggins who got tasked with developing a new boardgame at short notice to try and catch the money before fashion moves on again. Say hello to Dragon Strike! Created in a mere 3 months, it seems to have all the hallmarks of the genre. The tape is only 30 minutes long, so games should be easy to play, and it has enough variant adventures, random cards and shiny bits and pieces that it should manage a dozen or so playthroughs before getting repetitive. And hopefully by then they'll have read the advertising pamphlet and been lured into full D&D. Yeah, this is pretty blatantly another attempt to create a gateway drug. It's also interesting from a historical perspective as a precursor to the multimedia stuff they'll start including in AD&D products next year, First Quest and all the other things with Audio CDs that "enhance" the adventure. I guess from that we can assume it was at least a modest success. It does feel a bit odd for them to be so blatantly admitting that this is a gateway drug and produced on a worryingly short notice, but I guess the higher-ups don't mind that, for some reason. Not sure what to think about this one at all. I guess one important question is Was the game Fun? A lot of corporate crap can be forgiven if the final product is good.


With a bond of magic: Greg Detwiler's back again, with a moderately experimental little article trying to get round the problems giving out lots of normal magical weapons causes. Bonded weapons aren't exactly what you would expect from that name. The bond is actually to a particular element or concept, such as fire, fear, disease, magnetism, wood, etc. They bypass the usual plus structure, and hurt nearly anything, but don't have the usual bonuses to attack and damage (although the majority of them do extra energy damage of whatever type.) This means you'll rarely be completely helpless against a monster the way you can be when they're immune to everything below +3, but things with massively low ACs'll still be a very real threat. Mixing these with regular magic weapons in your party handouts'll be another thing that subtly livens up your game. Nothing wrong with that at all.


Novel ideas: As I've noted before, Dragonlance writing seems to be all about the male/female cowriter pairings. Particularly in the novels, it just works best when you have that particular kind of chemistry. It also helps if you have complimentary talents and work habits in other respects as well. Such as when one's a morning person and the other a night owl. Done badly, this can tear a partnership apart. Done well, people can set aside their egos for the sake of getting the product done quicker, better, by trading off work between them, and only actually working together for a few hours a day. Yeah, this all feels very familiar. A huge amount of my life, particularly the musical parts, are filled with annoyance at me being several hours ahead body clock wise, and a lot more reliable than anyone else. Learning to let go and allow them to run with it when I start to flag, because a lot of the time, they're just getting warmed up at that point is one of the lessons I've really had to work hard to internalise. Plus you want people who have talents that complement yours rather than compete directly with them, otherwise it is all too easy to get competitive, and that results in gradual resentment from the less talented partner which eats away at the relationship, while the more talented one can wonder why they're keeping these wasters around, they should just go solo and reap all the rewards themselves. It's all an incredibly complex issue. And here we see it played out in microcosm, albeit in a fairly harmonious manner, since it's also a husband/wife pairing that's being interviewed. It's all rather interesting, and definitely worthy of further discussion. How do you create a creative partnership that is greater than the sum of it's parts?


Dragonmirth is even more dragon-centric than usual. Yamara continues enduring the twisted drow interpretation of imprisonment and torture. Won't someone save her? The party is back together in twilight empire, but the big fight is still to come.


Through the looking glass: Is lead saved at the last minute?! Appeals are in process! You can still make a difference! Ah yes, the legal monster is a slow and sclerotic beast, and getting it to do anything takes months, if not years. This saga feels pretty sluggish to me going through the issues at this rate; it must have been positively torturous to live through. On top of the encouragement to keep fighting the appeals, Robert also starts motions towards setting up an underground railroad for existing lead figures, keep them in active use by the people who want them most. It's like a deliberate co-opting of classic social movement methods in microcosm. I can't help but smile.

Our minis this month have a pretty high proportion of underground stuff too, in a different sense. Drow and their spider mounts. Three different sets of dwarves. An ooze creature to schlorp your adventurers. An equally oozy pod which could contain all manner of horrors. Plenty of humans, mostly of the martial kind. One female fighter, but plenty of male soldiers, with crossbows, bows and swords. And some very 70's looking cyberpunk rockers. And some centaurs and a giant for your aboveground combat needs. Ready for action?


A pretty complicated set of issues raised by this issue. On one hand we have the substantial push to bring back coverage of non D&D RPG stuff. On the other we have the slick self-centred promotional stuff. Similarly, there's a definite tension between the bits that are business as usual, and the special features, and the bits where we see people trying to shut down our fun. Good intentions, but people pulling in different directions, and the whole thing becoming slightly less than the sum of it's parts. Is anybody really on top anymore? When no-one's on top, that leaves things open for someone unexpected to take charge. We shall have to see what happens next, because even if it isn't that unified, there's still lots of interesting threads to follow.

Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993


part 1/5


124 pages The draconic covers continue. This one is looking in pretty poor condition, but isn't out of the fight yet. Will reinforcements save the day? And exactly which side are the good and bad guys anyway? They're all warriors anyway, which puts them all in a fairly dubious moral position from a pacifists point of view. Good thing violence is a morally neutral act in D&D! Otherwise most of our characters'd be out of a job. Anyway, here's another fighter themed issue. I don't doubt we'll see more of those as time goes on.


In this issue:


Letters: A letter from someone annoyed at the number of powergamers out there. Where are the tales of the low level characters. Plane hopping is a pretty expensive proposition, you know. Anyone able to break the 4th wall is automatically going to be of a certain minimum bar. But yes, this could be rebalanced at bit in articles, as Roger admits.

Some more jokes of what constitutes an unfair DM.

A letter asking what the hell the symbols on the wizards spell cards mean. Buy the priest's spell cards to find out! Gotta collect 'em all!

A letter from a christian gamer asking if there are any christian specific games around. Anyone who's been reading this thread regularly will be able to point you to Dragonraid. Roger does exactly that, and then neatly segues into another discussion of the people trying to ban roleplaying for spurious reasons. A game like this splits their ranks quite nicely.


Editorial: Continuing on from the letters, Roger tells his own tale of how his non twinked characters not only survived but prospered, and had interesting adventures too. In famed third party product Tegel Manor too. The statistical intelligence of the character came second to the ingenuity of the player, and with a little help from her friends, she cleared out the place, and become landlord for a whole bunch of semi-retired adventurers ( in a place that huge, there's always going to be a few monsters you missed in the basement, or attic, or maybe a secret room, keeping you on your toes. ) If anything, it was more fun than later games where he was playing obscenely powerful characters. Goes to show. Greatness is defined by the adversity you face. Having a good, easily remembered gimmick doesn't hurt either. It's not the numbers, it's what you do with them. Goes to show. Reiteration of anything is more interesting with specific examples.


So you want to be a samurai?:It's not an easy life, you know. They have alignment restrictions forcing them to be lawful for good reason. The regulations put upon them in reality were pretty strict, and the only honourable way of protesting them suicide, which frankly is a bit iffy as it silences the protester's voice, leaving the daimyo free to continue being despotic unless the rest of his staff join in the protest. Independent thought was not encouraged, peasants giving you any lip were to be struck down without mercy. Unless you went ronin or had an understanding daimyo, adventuring in the traditional way would be rather tricky. No-one gets to have much fun in reality. One of those vaguely tiresome realistic history articles, in other words. I knew most of this stuff already, and the way it's presented this time isn't very exciting. Let's move onwards.


To all a good knight: Back west again to encourage you to give your fighters connections to the world here too. Knightly orders have quite a complex history in the real world. In a polytheistic one, this can be even more interesting, with connections to various gods, and quite different codes of conduct. We get a couple of real ones, and talk about how they would adapt to AD&D, and a new one from the writer's own campaign. While not bad, this is both more longwinded, and less mechanically innovative than a similar article from issue 125, so this once again falls into rehash territory, demonstrating how articles have become a good deal less experimental in recent years. Everything has to fit into the regular class and kit format. Is that another directive from on high, trying to get us to stick to the official rules, or are players just not monkeying around with the workings of the system the way they used to? Once again it is good reason for me to yawn and sigh.


TSR Previews: Dragonlance finally tries to move forwards again, having spent years prequelling the setting with increasing detail. PQ1: The players guide to the Dragonlance campaign may look like an RPG book, but it's pretty much system free, being a bunch of fiction and little essays designed to introduce people to the setting from a ground eye view. See, its not scary to join in instead of just watching. It also gets DLT1: New tales: The land reborn. You get to tag along with some of the characters from the books and clean up the crap from the aftermath of the war. Doesn't that sound like fun!

Spelljammer introduces a new area. The Astromundi cluster. Another boxed set opening up a place where things work a little differently. Which is pretty neat. Can you manage to live peacefully beside neogi and mind flayers?
 
Ravenloft continues to give Van Richten prominence in the setting with his guide to Werebeasts. If you don't think they can be scary, look again. The amount of mystery and suspense involved in finding one, and then dealing with them if they're unwilling, is quite substantial. These creatures are a lot more annoying here than anywhere else, and even powerful adventurers can feel the long term sting of an encounter with them.

Dark Sun goes back to home base, to show you what's changed. DSS1: The city-state of Tyr. Is it going to actually become free, or just another chaotic miserable shithole. You know the answer by now. Bloody happy endings mandate. How are we supposed to run a sustainable persistent world suitable for adventuring in if the good guys always win?

Greyhawk is still obsessed with Iuz, with the third product in a row focussing on his works. WGM1: Border watch sees the PC's trying to keep him from expanding his territory. Nasty business, but somebody's gotta do it. Don't you miss just going into the temple of elemental evil and killing everything in it. So much simpler.

The forgotten realms focusses on it's own villains. Prince of lies by James Lowder sees Cyric face some ghosts from his past. How long can he remain triple portfolio'd god of superdickery? Surely the other gods aren't going to put up with this upstart for ever.

Gamma world has the orwell inspired supplement GWQ2: All animals are equal. Mutant animals have taken over the zoo. What kind of society will they form without the humans?

And finally, even our generic novels get increasingly serial. Book of stones by L. Dean James completes the story from sorcerers stone. I don't even know about this to be properly snarky, so I shall say nothing.

Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993


part 2/5


Real warriors ride elephants: Off to africa again. Persistence is paying off in multiple ways, as this is also another collection of kits to differentiate the class that most needs it. It may not be hugely groundbreaking, but it's certainly needed. Let's hope the mechanics are satisfactory.

Ashanti Warriors dress brightly and ride horses, travelling across great distances and generally being showy and heroic. They seriously kick ass in the saddle, with both combat and social benefits, but if they lose their horse, they'll be out of action for ages. This is most likely to be a problem at higher level.

Benin Hunters are fierce trackers and protectors, an African spin on Rangers. They get improved stealth and favored enemy bonuses, but lose two weapon fighting, as there's no particular cultural tradition of that. This a pretty minor adjustment, about on the same level as wizards giving up a familiar for some other minor benefit. After all, many wouldn't use it anyway.

Bornu Horsemen show that chivalry is not a purely european invention, being the closest thing to knights. This makes them generally pretty popular and trusted, but they have to behave or become hunted down by their former companions in arms. The real benefit is  that they get to use heavier armour than any of the other kits round here, which is easy to overlook.

Kalahari Bushmen go around near naked in the desert sun, toughening them up, and making them able to survive their easily, but resulting in serious premature wizening. As this is a purely social penalty for substantial mechanical benefits, this is one of the more powerful kits here.

Kongo Pygmies are another set of shortarses, adapted well to the jungle. They get a whole bunch of woodland benefits that make them superior to rangers in some ways, particularly stealth, but all their initial nonweapon proficiency slots are eaten up by their requirements, seriously curtailing their choices, and they have a strength penalty to reflect their size, which is a pretty strong drawback for a fighter. I think that about balances out, but in an interesting way.

Kushite Elephant Warriors are the titular kit of this article. Of course, an elephant is both benefit and hindrance. It requires a ton of maintenance and won't fit in many dungeons. But on open ground it can trample most opposition into the dirt, especially if you have several of them in formation. Have fun.

Interesting to note how few bonus proficiencies these classes get, especially in contrast with the athasian kits of last issue. Other than that, they're pretty balanced, with the lack of armour an understated but omnipresent factor that'll actually be a pretty significant compensation for the benefits. I think this is a pretty good collection that'll add to your game without breaking it.


The game wizards 1: Dragon Strike must be quite a big part of their catalog, as they're giving it a second promotional article this month. While Bruce's was focussed on creating the rules, board and pieces, Jim Ward got to handle creating the video. This end was turned around on a stupidly tight schedule as well, with the reality of scripting, casting, costuming, makeup, special effects, editing, hitting them like a jackhammer. And I'm betting doesn't look nearly as impressive as they're selling it too, especially in hindsight. Computer FX in particular have come a long way since then, and I wouldn't be surprised if they look laughably cheap in actuality. After all, if many major motion pictures have that problem, what hope a little company from Wisconsin? Our imaginations are always going to be capable of greater special effects budgets than they are, which makes the rash of videos and CD games all the more questionable. And of course, making these things is still expensive even if they look cheap, so they have to sell quite a lot to make a profit. I have to wonder if this didn't make things worse for the company, by creating a whole bunch of products that didn't recoup their costs. The problems are mounting up, aren't they.


Sage advice goes back to 1st edition again, apropos of nothing. They really are still pretty friendly to previous edition stuff at the moment, even if the articles have tapered off.

How do you see using shadow walk. (You're moving at 126 MPH. Whatever you see is going to be pretty blurry)

Command dragon is virtually impossible to get the material components for. (Indeed. It is what we in the business call a plot device, not an everyday weapon. )

Does a periapt of wound closure work on damage caused by a sword of wounding (yes. Defensive powers trump offensive ones if they conflict. And you thought exalted was innovative. )

How long do familiars live. (about as long as their masters, unless magically zapped.)

What happens if you combine a bag of holding and a portable hole ( We've already covered this one. You get to take a quick one-way extradimensional trip through a spacial rip )

What's lawful about peace? (It lets you build stuff without it being destroyed unexpectedly. Peace is very conductive to order, if done right. )


The game wizards 2: Looks like the Amazing Engine is getting a second promotional article as well. You know, a good actual article with new crunch and fun writing would do more to sell it to me than half a dozen of these promo columns.  As with the Dragon Strike stuff, here we tackle things from a different angle to last month. There, it was Bughunters getting the spotlight, this time it's For Faerie, Queen and Country. Where that had substantial rules for tactical combat based on sacrificing movement points for various actions, this brings an open-ended magic system, and rules for all sorts of fae races and their human half-breeds. The whole thing is designed to minimise rollplaying and maximise roleplaying :rolleyes: Yes, seriously, they actually say that. Combine that with the general cheesiness of their actual play example, (Mister Wog the frenchman? :facepalm: ) and a lot of my sympathy over the game's failure is rapidly evaporating. I really shouldn't be surprised at whimsy in a game this fae heavy, but I still find the tone of this horribly grating. Definite fail.


Pandemonium! Adventures in tabloid world. I don't remember this one. Would someone be so kind as to shed enlightenment?


The marvel-phile: New Characters! Hot off the presses! Getchore new characters here! Proctor & the Gatherers. All dressed up, posing, going raar, and ready to fight your heroes! Manipulative psychic supervillain extraordinaire; his wizened, also psychic crone sidekick; a cyborg with mobility, sensory & shielding powers; a big amiable bestial lunk of a tank; and a shapeshifting creature that duplicates others. Pretty decent team really, not totally stereotypical, and with plenty of variety. And they have a pretty interesting storyline too. Heroes from another reality, they've found themselves in the antagonist role here due to their bosses manipulations. Which of them will do heel face turns is still up in the air. Although maybe less so now, depending on how fast the turnaround time for articles is these days. Will any of these characters stick and become recurring ones after their storyline is over? Or is this just another part of their endless attempts to keep up with the obscure parts of the Marvel universe? Either way, it feels very much like business as usual here.

Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993


part 3/5


Forum returns. Evidently they had so much stuff they wanted to cram into the birthday issue, something had to give. It is extra big this time, so that should make up for it.

Owen Muir speaks out against sexism and agism. But he does point out that Alias did have a valid IC reason for wearing impractical cheesecake armour. I suppose that makes it all better then. She was created to be an object of cheesecake IC AND OOC. There's so much wrong with that concept I'm really not sure where to begin.

Peter Rivellini praises issue 189. We need some more interesting themed issues like that. But anyway, there is some good mapmaking software out there. Feel free to order it direct, since it doesn't have major label distribution.

Cynthia Higginbotham has cheaper suggestions. MS Paint! Tee Hee. Frankly, that would be trickier and slower than doing it by hand for me.

W.A.N also thinks that shelling out several hundred dollars for the professional software would not be a wise investment. Think how many gamebooks you can buy with that! Yeah, some of these things can be pretty obscene. It's like academic textbooks. The development costs outweigh the demand, so they have to set prices far above the material costs of duplication.

John F. Wherry suggests getting some shareware. Ahh, this once again reminds me why I love the internet. And also why it makes such a mess of old commercial models. How can you sell stuff when people are giving it away, and also copying your stuff and giving that away for free too.

William B. Philips has yet another suggestion. Being in the army does have it's perks in terms of exposure to technology. No shortage of options then, as long as you pay the price.

Craig Judy recommends a bit of software that only costs $30. See, that sounds like a decent price to me. Now, how many copies would you have to sell at that price to pay for the developers and still make a decent profit?

Troy Herman goes waaaaaaaaay back, and tackles the issue of Paintballing prejudice. Really, they're in much the same boat as we are, and you shouldn't snipe at them. As with Jake and the LARPing crap, it's depressing to see our writers falling prey to the same prejudice that they decry in others.

Dennis Rudolph recommends you watch the antiques roadshow. No, seriously. There's so much cool stuff to draw upon. Tee Hee. History is not boring at all. Get your plot devices where your players least suspect.

Matthew W. Hurd has profited quite a bit from giving his address out in the magazine. Now he has a number of cool pen pals. See, the system works! The right combination of forcefulness and god manners gets you furthest with both genders.

Christopher T. C. Miller gives methods for encouraging a long campaign that keeps people engaged. You need to wind them along with carrots, not push them forward with sticks. And don't hesitate to draw upon realistic stuff to fill out background details.

Bryan Fairfield kicks the complaints about the complete bard's handbook into high gear, with some extensive statistical analysis of how powerful and versatile multiclass bards with kits are. His group is now comprised almost entirely of them. It's a big problem. He also suspects the complete book of elves will make things even worse. How very very perceptive of him. Get better rules editors for your splatbooks!

Vincent Nasso is another person who finds multiclass combinations generally turn out superior to single classed characters of the same XP total. It's all different facets of the same issue. How long will this breakout of complaints last?

Talus London Young has a whole bunch of mean nerfs for multiclassed characters, that probably go rather too far. 10% more failure on everything? Are the penalties from splitting XP and ability scores not enough? Yeeesh.


The role of computers: Quite an interesting introduction this month, as they wax lyrical over their new sound card. We're not quite at the stage where full CD quality Analog/Digital converters are available to regular consumers cheaply, but we're still making regular quantum leaps, and most of them can at least manage coherent speech. You can even record stuff through the line in, although hard drive space (and write speed) will still be a pretty big limiting factor unless you get a full pro tools rig, and quantisation distortion'll still be a real problem at that bitrate. I'm geeking out, aren't I. Oh well, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the obsessive geekiness of doing all this in the first place. Back to the main topic.

Night Trap takes full advantage of the new sound and video specs to fill up it's length with grainy low res movie stuff. You have to watch the video screens, and try to ensure people don't get eaten by zombies. This'll probably take a few goes round to get right, and it's long enough that it won't be completely lacking in replay value. There are far worse examples of this kind of game.

Dungeon Master moves from Amiga to PC, with corresponding increases in speed, graphics and sound while maintaining the good gameplay. Nothing much to say here.

Empire Deluxe is a sequel to Empire. (see issue 142) Among the updates include multiplayer online connections, a scenario editor, and the expected graphics and sound upgrades. This gives it pretty near infinite replayability, presuming you have someone who likes building maps and so forth. Games with an active mod community can survive for years.

Road Avenger, on the other hand, doesn't have much replay, due to it's linearity, and only takes half an hour to finish. Only for those who really want to show off the graphic capability of their new system.

Star Control II tries to take on Elite's mantle for a new generation of computers, with reasonable success. Collect minerals across hundreds of planets, deal with all sorts of alien races, and try to save earth from the evil Ur-Quan Hierarchy. You'd be disappointed if it wasn't ridiculously huge and open-ended, and this is very much the case.

Who Killed Sam Rupert? is another one that's good while it lasts, but doesn't have much replayability. Seems far too many games these days are concentrating on graphics over interactivity, trying to squeeze in FMV cutscenes that eat up tons of memory, forcing them to keep the overall thing linear. This sounds rather familiar. I remember complaints of developers favoring graphics over gameplay at the time as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993


part 4/5


Role-playing reviews decides to go for the small press stuff again, see if they can find some diamonds in the rough.

Legendquest definitely qualifies as one of those, with it's home-press origins pretty obvious. But Lester is quite pleased by the system, which packs a lot into it's page count, and has pretty good, not totally derivative rules. Looks like your basic point buy system with a few idiosyncrasies to me, particularly in the magic system. You're only going to break, break my break, break my heart.

Monsters & Slayers, on the other hand, just gets a painful review. It's amateurishly written, edited & drawn, doesn't do what it says it's going to do on the cover, and is frequently so stupid it's funny. (volcanoes in wales? Bendover the hobgoblin necromancer? ) Avoid, if you ever see it.

Legendary lives is from the Lost Souls team, and puts just as skewed a view on generic fantasy as they did on the afterlife. Fun races, elegant mechanics that emphasise speed over realism, it treads a path many indie hipster games will follow. The art is rather dubious though, and they could do with more spells. Don't hesitate to add to it.


The role of books: The boggart by Susan Cooper sees an ancient scottish fairy transplanted to modern day Toronto. Hilarity ensues, with electricity and the like giving it a whole new avenue for pranks. Both the creature and it's new victims PoV are explored. This seems like good fodder for a movie conversion.

Burning Bright by Melissa Scott depicts a future in which a single MMORPG has taken over the entire galaxy and become the primary form of entertainment. Amusingly, this has not eliminated the active participation of GM's (unlike in reality ) This premise stretches the reviewer's suspension of disbelief quite a bit. You'd think people would get bored, and monopolies naturally get complacent and bloated, setting themselves up for a fall. If you can swallow that bit, the rest of the plot is quite good, mixing real world and in game stuff quite well. Remember, it's science fiction. It doesn't have to be plausible.

Danger of the sixth by Michelle Shirey Crean gets a pretty negative result. Poor pacing, poor focus, iffy morality, uncertain ending. Work on all of these for the next one! :wags finger:

The dragon's tomb by D J Heinrich gets quite a good review, making interesting use of D&D's Immortal based cosmology, and giving the monsters proper characterisation as well as the humans. The plot doesn't play it too safe either, with mystara in genuine danger throughout the novel. Well, it is the first series. It's only when you have half a dozen authors writing semi-independently at once that you have to take care not to tread on other people's toes.

The starship trap by Mel Gilden is a star trek novel with a nice concept, but clunky characterisation and writing. We know who Kirk and Spock are! Get on with the story!

To green angel tower by Tad Williams is one of the more successful Tolkien imitations the reviewer has seen, managing to capture the scope without copying the details too much. They're always looking for a real epic, and this is one they can reccomend.


Palladium once again boasts about their amazing rifts sales. No-one else gives concrete numbers. What's all that about?


Overcoming obstacles: Another rather interesting superheroic article this month. Heroes with some kind of handicap as well as their special abilities are actually surprisingly common. Be it mundane stuff that they have to compensate for, like Daredevil's blindness, or more complicated issues deriving from their powers, like Cyclop's danger of destroying everything he sees, the best characters are ones defined by their weaknesses as much as their strengths. But as in D&D, it seems far too many FASERIP players don't believe in that maxim, and want everything to be average or better. Looks like it's time for one of those short filler articles that encourage you to make a well-rounded character and play them properly, for it will result in more interesting games. The mundane difficulties they'll face can be a big source of roleplaying, and the way they use their powers to mitigate their limitations  will hopefully be interesting. Have you got that into your thick heads yet, bloody powergamers?


Fiction: The end of trading season by Daniel Hood. Ooh. An unhappy ending! Not often you see those around here. Merchant fails to heed the native traditions, things go horribly wrong for him, and he winds up being a sacrifice to an undead monster posing as their god. Not hugely surprising, apart from the ending, where we can be pretty sure he didn't get saved at the last minute, but full of neat worldbuilding details nonetheless. The whole scenario looks perfect for an RPG module, as there's plenty of points where you could do things differently, and still get interesting results. That makes this a very strong bit of fiction for the magazine on multiple levels. Not just entertainment, but also helpful too.

Dragon Magazine Issue 195: July 1993


part 5/5


Campaign Journal: We return to Greyhawk again, courtesy of Carl Sargent. And he's starting to feel the backlash from people who aren't at all happy with the major changes the war made to the world. They can't exactly reverse this stuff, but they can certainly mitigate it. A lot of this is a reminder that the books do not have to be adhered strictly to for your own campaign, and things can be rearranged, transplanted, adapted, or simply ignored if they contradict stuff built up in your own game. Which you probably know already, but it's still annoying when a world goes in a different direction to the one you want it too. One reason it can be easier to play in a setting that doesn't have a constantly churning active supplement mill. So I guess we're seeing the first signs of backlash against metaplot here. It's still going to get bigger before it goes away, but it's no longer the fresh young thing that can do no wrong, and everyone has to have. Welcome to the bloated arena rock days. Feel the gated reverb on that drumkit. Get ready for lightshows, costume changes, and guitar solos longer than ZZ Top's beards. Not my favourite environment. So this says nothing I don't know, and reminds me that there's a storm a comin'. Bleah.


KULT! The darkness continues to spread. Death is only the beginning.


Up front In charge:  Quite a tricky roleplaying issue. The problem of leadership within the party is one we probably haven't covered enough over the years, with the player/DM adversarial relationship taking the brunt of the heat. But a group without proper organisation and tactics is a group sleepwalking into it's own death, likely to face humiliation at the first group of enemies played smartly. And a group that bickers while in the dungeon and has players wander off to try stuff without knowledge of the rest of the team, or fire off fireballs without checking everyone else's position will practically kill themselves. Thomas Kane well and truly graduates from expanded forumite to full blown writer here, in a piece which combines intelligent writing on social dynamics IC and OOC with rather amusing and all too true to life fiction. A dwarf that talks like Yoda. A gnome that everyone ignores until he gets them in trouble. A wizard who is all too keen to play grand vizier with her companions. And a fighter who likes to think he's in charge, but isn't to hot on the actual ideas. This clearly illustrates quite a few things. The person who most wants to be in charge is often not the best actual leader in terms of ideas and organisation. Listening to your subordinates and letting them feel valued and able to exercise their creativity is vital for keeping them happy. The best plan is a simple one. Beware PvP spilling out into bad feeling amongst the actual players. A very good article here, that even experienced players can learn from. Issues of leadership and hierarchy will be settled informally if you don't pay attention to them, and if you don't know what's going on, it's a lot harder to figure out why things have gone wrong and fix them.


Swordplay: Another regular comic starts here. As is often the case, not very impressively, but then, you need time to introduce the cast in strips as small as this. It's been 5 years and Yamara is still only on its third plotline. Man, the monthly serial format has its flaws.

Speaking of yamara, she gets a double size episode this issue as we see the trial of Yocchi. And once again ogrek .... er, seems to be about to save the day. Dragonmirth really isn't playing fair, as usual. The team get captured in twilight empire. Hey, that just means they'll be taken straight into the bad guy's lair. That should help get things flowing.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse come to Rifts. Can you guess what they want to do? Bridge? Opening a milk round? I think not.


Through the looking glass: Ahh, joy, the government committees have got involved in the lead bill. We know how long THEY take to get anything done. I swear they're just an excuse for government guys to give well paying jobs to their mates where they do maybe a few hours work a week for months or years. Bleah. And in the meantime, uncertainty is bad for business, so half the companies and stores are phasing out their lead minis anyway. Which means nobody really wins but the lawyers. This, like, totally sucks donkey balls Beavis.

As usual, the minis are less interesting than the drama. Several knights from Pendragon. The real differences are in the personality. A 12 piece green dragon that'll be a real pain in the butt to assemble. King Arthur, his sword & horse, perfect for a bit more pendragon tie-in. A young and fully grown pair of wyverns. A dragon and her eggs, which are in danger of being nicked. And a full-blown diorama in which a party of dwarves are fighting a dragon. Quite a bit of multi-piece stuff, for some reason.

We also get three other reviews on top of that. Dragonfire gets a pretty mediocre review, with incredibly simple and dull rules for experienced wargamers. Legions of Steel does rather better, with a pleasingly consistent (if rather grimdark) aesthetic, and fast and furious rules that may be a little simple, but have plenty of scope for expansion. Study in contrasts of how to do introductory games right or wrong. In addition, he also proves rather fond of the Battletech Recognition cards. They're not actually that expensive, and can speed play quite a bit. I'm surprised how much coverage Battletech is actually getting over the years. I guess it's another of those things that you can skip over when reading casually, but this kind of detailed examination reveals.


Man, drizzt really needs to get a better photographer. He looks about 50 here, and that's in human years, not elf years. And would it hurt him to smile a little? At least he's got the eyebrow raising down pat.


Yet another mixed bag, with some good articles, but no real consistency, and an increasing number of non-useful promotional columns. The gradual slide into complacency on the part of the playing population continues, much as I and Roger wish it wouldn't. Someone ought to do a reading thread for White Wolf's old magazine or the Rifters, so we can get a more positive slant on this era from the up and comers. I'd quite enjoy vicariously reading that. But for me, it's to the next issue.

Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993


part 1/5


124 pages The dragon in this month's cover takes a secondary role, looking a lot like a pet of the guy with the sword. Who's in the driving seat this time? Hopefully you, as it's time for another issue full of DMing advice. Poor players. They never get to control dragons. (yet) And if they do, you'll have to think of even more impressive suitable challenges or risk the whole thing falling apart. So a DM's work is never done. Good thing we've still got many more years of advice to draw upon to go.


In this issue:


I, Strahd, by P N Elrod. Once again they bring out the big guns for Halloween, on the 10th anniversary of the original module.


Letters: A letter asking if the Snarfquest compilation is still available. Unlike the Fineous Fingers one, you're in luck. Larry still has a good relationship with the TSR staff, so they're happy to be of service to you both.

A follow-up on the Uriah Heap question. It was the early 70's. Lots of people were putting occult & Tolkien inspired blather in their music. These days, their hubcap diamond star halos are looking a little rusty and need a good servicing.

A letter from a person who found a moth squashed on their fire elemental trading card. The jokes here make themselves. Jim Ward, on the other hand, fails to see the funny side. I think the stress of his job may be getting to him. He ain't the mischievous monty hauler he used to be.

A suggestion that they include martial arts demos at their conventions. After all, so many gamers love MA in their games. Luring them to try it out IRL would be good commercial sense, and also fitting from a health point of view. After all we have to battle the stereotypes about being weedy/overweight couch potatoes, and what better way than being able to slam anyone who takes the piss to the ground and punch through bricks. Roger doesn't think it's a bad idea, although he'd really like to see sumo wrestlers, but doubts they could get any in. Always the joker, eh.

Some nitpicking about kukris. The historical accuracy brigade won't let any weapon go mislabeled!


Editorial: Never trust a DM who forces you to roll for breast size. Roger can't find anything current events related to get worked up over, so once again his mind drifts back to reminiscing on games past, and the naive fun they had. Seems he's doing increasing amounts of that recently. So say hello to Bob. A guy with boundless enthusiasm, no sense of proportion, and very little taste. It's tricky to get rid of him because he's so enthusiastic about it all, but at the same time the things he does are so silly that you can't really have a campaign with him without it all falling apart. Still, while it may be a pain at the time, at least it makes for memorable stories. And given the alchemy of nostalgia, the fun bits remain, while the crap gets glossed over. And so Roger manages to come up with enough entertaining anecdotes to fill this column for another month. Making it a permanent fixture may not have been the smartest thing to do really.


Exploring the fantasy political campaign: Ah yes, politics. One of those things that continue to be a challenge to insert into a game compared to dungeon crawling. Continuity becomes so much more of an issue when you're dealing with the same faces year in, year out. And if you get sloppy, it'll come back to bit you more than if you're moving from dungeon to dungeon, not looking back. Unlike a kill and take their stuff mission, where it can be safely assumed that the bad guys are indeed bad enough that compromise is a pointless task, who the PC's are, and what their opinions are on a topic can vary widely, and this affects the direction that they'll take the story. On the plus side, while you need to keep on making up new dungeons wholecloth, once you have a well set up political game, it'll last you years if well maintained, with actors fading in and out as time goes by. We've been through this before, but this manages to do so quite well, reminding us that the individual missions in a politics heavy campaign will often be little different, especially while the characters are pawns of the other power players. It's more the way the adventures tie together and have an effect on the larger setting that's interesting. And making the playstyle seem accessible rather than intimidating is an important aspect to getting new people involved that the older articles sometimes failed at. So as is usually the case with themed issues, they've picked a good one to start things off with.


Cultivating campaign cultures: Things step back down again, with a bit of random table stuff. We already have one for random personality quirks for people. Now we have one for random cultural mores for societies! If you stumble across some village in the middle of the jungle, you need to know what the trigger is that'll result in them driving the players out in disgrace or trying to put them in the cookpot. Yeah, I can see the use in that. I can also see the humour in it too. Most of the specific examples are ones from the real world, and don't seem too ridiculous though. Although it is a bit short. I guess you'll have to use it as a springboard to designing your own expanded tables with their own quirks and taboos. Cool idea, so-so implementation.

Quote from: (un)reason;404652Someone ought to do a reading thread for White Wolf's old magazine or the Rifters, so we can get a more positive slant on this era from the up and comers. I'd quite enjoy vicariously reading that. But for me, it's to the next issue.

I know you basically wrote this for RPGnet, but if I had all the Rifters I kind of do want to do this someday.

I only have about half of them now sadly, and almost none but the most recent in actual order.  (29 total issues out of about 50 or so.)

I would get through like the first 6-7 and there would be a gap.  

I only sort of buy them now and again, slowly filling up the set, kind of like what I am doing for Autoduel Quarterly and Battletechnology.

Eventually I will be bothered to have a full set of all 3.  Eventually.

By the way.. hell of a job you are doing here.  I don't read every bit you write, mostly focusing on the topics I care about, but damn if its not an epic bit of work.