Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 2/6


Fuzzy Reviews: Oh man. This is like Clay-o-Rama's cuter big sister just bounced into the magazine. Fuzzy heroes is a wargaming ruleset which allows you to take nearly any toy, assign it stats based upon it's physical traits, and then have them fight. It has simple basic rules, but tons of optional advanced rules, and plenty of possible variants. The main complaint is that it's sample battles and setting assumes the same set of toys the author had, which probably will not be the case. Still, it seems perfect for introducing your kids to wargaming. April fool indeed.

Fuzzy Sooper Heroes takes this idea and encourages you to mod your toys liberally. Add a cape & mask, and suddenly they get a whole bunch of cool extra abilities, and an interesting attempt to implement a moral code. This means that games involving sooper heroes are more likely to feature one-on-one fights and a certain degree of roleplaying, as players have to learn to play fair and get along OOC to make the chivalry point rules work. It all seems designed to segue neatly into playing full RPG's. This is one joke that definitely has serious applications.


April fools Faxions: Oh boy. Some philosophies are just too out there even for people in the planescape universe to take seriously. That's quite an achievement. April fool. The kind of april fool you could well include into your game if you handled it right, but nevertheless, this is primarily intended for humour's sake. Handle with caution, especially if your players are sensitive or humourless and involved in the industries parodied by this.

The Beautification League think that aesthetics are all-important, morality is irrelevant. Of course, there is still a degree of internal dispute, but most are not keen on the current chaotic and frequently spiky decor of Sigil. They may be annoying, but they can spot secret doors and hidden compartments like no-ones business with their keen sense of the out of place. Thats a benefit worth acting like a snooty fashionista for in my book.

The Free Flora Collective is a group of sentient plants fighting for their rights. This isn't making much headway in sigil, where people have no trouble treading on anyone whop doesn't stop themselves being walked over with force, and the biggest plant, razorvine, is not a valuable member of society. I lack the wit to come up with suitable plant related puns for a shaft filk at the moment, so I don't feel inclined to support their cause.

The Herbivorous Assembly think that the most humane and healthy thing for intelligent beings to do is stop eating animals and live in harmony with them. This ironically puts them in direct conflict with the FFC above. Develop synthetic foods to solve the problem.

The Wizards of the Black Teddy are an order of scantily clad dominatrix wizards, wielding the power of cheesecake to their advantage. Sounds more like a kit than a faction, given it's narrowness. Still, I'm sure they have no shortage of men seeking to be "auxiliary members". They shouldn't expect to get the faction benefit though, no matter how skimpy the leather thongs they're wearing.

The Apathetic Alliance are the Bleak Cabal on steroids. They can't even be bothered to rationalise the futility of the universe, and just sit around doing sod-all. They won't even notice if you attack them with nonmagical weapons, such is the strength of their apathy. This would obviously be pretty broken in a serious game, especially if you min-maxed them by pumping their wisdom up to 18 to mitigate their drawback. But surely no serious DM would allow that. Maybe, but don't call me Shirley.


Paranoia skips two editions and goes straight to number 5. Is it still funny? That's for you to decide.


Bards on the run: More filking. Some fairly obscure choices to mock this time. I can only recognise two off the tunes offhand. Wait a minute, is that the American national anthem? Ouch, man, ouch. Even Magic:the Gathering doesn't deserve that. So yeah, this is as excruciating as ever, while also managing to be moderately topical. April fool.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;430071I was always impressed with the quality of Masque of the Red Death, but I never knew it did all that well for TSR. I know later supplements for it tanked, or so I heard. The original box handled the concept well, and there is a faint proto-League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe to it. The later supplements were, as I recall, far too tepid for my taste, concentrating too much on the era as it was rather than how it could have been, along the lines of the aforementioned LoEG.

Probably. Like Oriental Adventures, diminishing returns set in pretty quickly once people had the basic rules and setting, plus this was right in the middle of their general sales decline. Still, enough people liked it that they licensed it out for 3rd edition.

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 3/6


Paths of power: Back to the serious stuff. Now this is one of the more impressive attempts to rework the D&D magic system into something a little more literary feeing. It's been rather a while since they really tried altering the magic system, and the usual request, which they resolutely ignore, is for a spell point system like most other games use. This gets rid of the artificialness of having casters forget spells, while still constraining their options on a day to day basis. Spells are divided into paths, similar to rolemaster but a bit less regimented, with some paths having multiple or no spells in a particular level, and many spells appearing on more than one path. This is a feature, not a bug, with forking from one path to another being a good way to pick up cool new stuff without an external teacher, via scientific extrapolation. This has a whole bunch of interesting emergent effects, and many of them are spelled out in the article, showing they've really thought about this one, and hopefully done a bit of playtesting. I think this actually qualifies as a classic article, with both neat fiction, and very adventurous crunch. Don't see nearly enough of those these days. Ok, so it'd need a whole new campaign ( or at least region of the world where everyone does things differently) to really take advantage of it, but that's not insurmountable. Hopefully at least a few people tried this one out, given the demand for stuff like this.


The game wizards: Bah. It's the Player's option books. If Unearthed Arcana was AD&D 1.5 edition, this is definitely 2.5. And this is precisely the point where they started to lose me, back in the day. Quite a bit of that can be attributed to this first teaser. Goddamn critical hit tables. We hatses them, and the havoc they inflict upon our painstakingly developed characters, yesss. Get back to Rolemaster where you belong. The fact that all this was presented as optional made me instantly decide that I wanted no part of this, and was going to refuse to buy it, and any further supplements that required the stuff therin. Maybe I'd have chosen differently if they'd teased something else, like the various combat options that give fighters more tactical choice rather than showcasing the bad things that are likely to happen to you. So in my case this was a very definite marketing misstep. Whether this was one of the things that hastened their commercial decline overall I'm not sure, but it can't have had a particularly positive effect on overall sales, and did quite a bit to split the userbase and cause flame wars. So this is another historical turning point I'm not particularly happy to have reached, especially as there's going to be plenty more S&P articles before 3e arrives.


Eye of the monitor: Zeb Cook is our sole reviewer this month, trying to maintain links with TSR while also adapting to his computer programmer job. Once again, the job falls to the person who is least busy, quite possibly at the last minute. No back and forth banter this time, I'm afraid.

Doom II doesn't do quite as well as the first one. Yes, in technical terms it improves upon it in nearly every aspect, but it's simply not innovative in the same way the first one was. Diminishing returns and all that, just as with SSI's Forgotten realms games. Plus it needs a pretty high end system to run at a decent speed. You'll need to put a few more tricks in Doom 3 to keep the franchise fresh.

X-Com is a multilayered strategy game where your job is to defend the earth from alien attacks. This required shifting from a sim style setup where time passes and you have to choose where to position your bases and soldiers, and a tactical stage where you actually fight them off. This means that you have to think long and short term, and while you may be bored waiting months of game time for attacks to happen, you won't regret having taken the extra time to prepare. So it's not for everyone, but those that like taking on all these different roles in one will love it.


Rumblings increases in size this month as it has lots of juicy gossip. Dale Donovan is getting a sex change, lycanthropy and alien abductions run rampant through the department, and people are fleeing as chaos sweeps the land. April Fool. Anyway, the hit status of Blood Wars is confirmed. The Jyhad card game, Cyberpunk, and Castle Falkenstein are all getting novel lines. White Wolf is introducing the "masterpiece" HOL to a wider audience. And Steve jackson is combining Lovecraft and Shadowrun with GURPS Cthulhupunk. I don't remember that one at all. What was it like?


The Auld Alliance: Arthur Collins has been contributing articles to the magazine for well over a decade. If anyone knows something about persistence, it's him. So I can give plenty of credibility to advice about keeping a gaming group healthy over years of play from his pen. Game with friends and family, instead of meeting up with people you don't see outside gaming, and might not even like much. Don't be flaky, and get rid of those who are. A few stable people are much better for getting things done than a larger group full of people who only show up half the time. Respect each other, ya sonsofbitches! Make a regular time for the game and stick to it, regardless of how busy life gets. Trade off leadership, or at least give everyone a defined role so you can work together better. Customise things to fit you. And if things lose their spark, a change is as good as a rest. Sounds good for most kinds of social activity where the socialisation is actually where most of the fun lies. I approve of this message. Theoretical analysis can not compete with real world practical experience.

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 4/6


Role-playing reviews: Masque of the red death tries to tone things down to accommodate modern day gothic horror, but still retains far too much of the D&D class and level system to make it work properly. These flaws are not immediately apparent though, and in terms of layout it's pretty great, resulting in Rick giving it a 6 pip rating. Style!

Parlainth: The forgotten city sees Earthdawn picking up pace and setting detail, with a nicely detailed citybook. Robin Laws gives it plenty of history, and makes it into a dungeon crawl with a sense of humour and plenty of opportunities for roleplaying. Rick's main complaint is exactly that, it's not sure if it wants to be completely serious as worldbuilding. Bah. TSR have certainly been guilty of that too. Glantri vice, anyone?

Red steel turns D&D's magic level up a good deal, ironically making spellcasters less essential in the process. The new races are pretty good, the kits are cool and well integrated, and the constant need for new sources of Cynnabryl to stave off nasty withdrawal symptoms keeps adventurers constantly busy and with plenty of potential opportunities and enemies. I like this a good deal more than Masque, and it has stood the test of time better mechanically. (apart from the CD, which was pretty meh even at the time, and now just seems embarrassing to my trained ears in terms of sound design. ) Rick just wishes there was more detail on the setting, which I can quite agree with.

Denver, the city of shadows gets a review that is largely Rick taking the piss out of Nigel Findley in an affectionate manner. The product is packed full of IC dialogue of shadowrunners trading off quips and information. This makes it an entertaining read, but tricky to find stuff in a hurry. Typical mid 90's writing flaw then.


Fiction: Dead man's curse by Roy V Young. An excerpt from one of their new novels? They haven't done that since Quag Keep & Trollshead. This is a very unwelcome stepping up of their co-ordinated promotional recycling crap. It's another goofy april story as well, which is a bit much after last month. On the plus side, it is edited in such a fashion that the excerpt still works as a standalone story, and the finale is genuinely laugh out loud worthy. So this is another case where I have to return a mixed result because I can see ever more of the sausage grinder that's actually producing this stuff, and looking behind the scenes isn't particularly pleasant. This is another case where I seriously hope they don't make a habit of this.


Forum: Jon Larie praises the idea of mashup games, but warns that you should be prepared to houserule after the fact if a combination turns out to be gamebreaking. In situations like this, GM agency is more important than ever.

Jason Hubred justifies the recent rise in minis prices. Yes, we know there are good reasons, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. It's still a pain from a consumer end, however you slice it.

Ann Wilson tells Stephen Jessup not to try railroading characters into novel plots, especially if they're the wrong level and party mix. That'll result in things turning out differently even if they try to play along.

Steve Shawler complains about the recent tendency towards railroading and statistical sloppiness in TSR modules. The backlash is building, the backlash is building. Damn right too. We want choices in our adventures, not to watch some NPC's having all the fun. Keep that to the novels.

Donald Hoverson suggests another thing that would become standard next edition. AC should have a base of 10 and go up, not down. These are really starting to add up and still 5 years to go. I wonder how many more canonised houserules we'll spot in here.

Ralf Toth thinks clerics are not the supreme class. Their kits suck, and they're in just as much danger of losing all their powers as wizards, maybe more if they follow a strict deity. They don't get as much love in supplements, do they.

Garry Wilson wants holy warriors for gods other than the same old lawful good stuff.  You'll wanna go back to issue 106 mate. That'll give you more than enough examples to draw upon.

Matthew Ferguson continues the magic jar debate. He thinks it is all that compared to becoming undead. Y'know, I think I'd prefer the Shade option. Far cooler, and a lot less destructive of other people's lives.

Steve Collier is another person who thinks clerics can be pretty scary in combat. Ok, they may not stack up to wizards in AoE power, but stuff like hold person, heat metal, animal summoning can really turn the tide. Points of damage are not the only way of determining advantage.

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 5/6


Novel ideas: Oohh. This column again. The unloved stepchild of the books department gets to go out in the sunlight for the first time in over a year. Albeit the nasty blasting red sunlight of Athas. Not sure that's such a great deal. On the plus side, it then gets to go to Cerillia immediately afterwards. Yup, here's our first teaser for the Birthright setting. Slightly more traditional than the other campaign worlds they've released recently, it nevertheless tries to change the gameplay quite a bit by putting you in the leadership role right from the start. But as this is the novel department, this isn't to do with the mechanics side. Instead, it's an interview of the guy hired to write the first novel in it. Simon Hawke. He turns out to be quite an interesting person, who's taken a rather idiosyncratic path to get where he is. A name change from the original Russian proved a good career move, making him a more recognisable brand. He's been a musician & DJ before becoming a writer, and still bounces round the room playing music to warm up before writing. He's got a pretty impressive resume of novels, both independent and working in shared worlds. It seems a fairly enviable life, even if he did have to sell out a bit to get it. Looking forward a bit, it seems like he stops producing novels in 2003, although as far as any of the wiki sites know, he's still alive. Early retirement? Health issues? In any case, this is one I pretty much skipped over back in the day, that's actually rather interesting second time around. This is a pretty good example of how you get to make a living in a creative industry.


Elminsters notebook: Kobolds of the Realms get a turn in the spotlight. After Dragon Mountain, it's not as if anyone is going to make the mistake of underestimating them again. Still, they do have trouble going it alone, which is why they work best as minions of something able to do what they can't, mostly spellcasting. (a flaw which will be solved spectacularly next edition) One or two is all you need to massively upgrade their traps, items and general mobility, which is just what you need when using your brains. As usual for this column, there's a ton of little setting details. Various kobold tribes, where they are, how they like to make a living, lots of little bits and pieces for a canon junkie to take advantage of. Pretty standard really. It's still good, but as with anything, sticking to exactly the same formula makes it feel routine.


Sage advice is here, despite being missed out on the contents page. Skip is gonna have to do some serious capping of asses for this snub.

How do I deal with the huge XP needed disparities for dragons in council of wyrms (temporarily retire those characters. Make them play their human PC's more. Yes, the biggest problems are at 1st level, where you can't do that anyway. Is it Skip's job to solve all your problems?)

Can planar races take Al-Qadim kits (no, but their kids can if they settle there)

Do optional class awards supplement or replace the group ones (supplement. Otherwise slow advancement would be sloooooow.)

Are racial save bonuses cumulative with the normal ones for high stats. (Yes, but 1 is still a failure. )

What's the experience modifier for having psionics ( a mere +1-2 HD. Not very good differentiation given how much they can improve a character)

Do you need to be able to read to use magical books (yes. But you don't have to be able to write to have your own private code)

What does spellcraft let you do. (Tell if something's magical. Simple enough. )

Can you stack bladesinging with regular specialization (And make elves even more twinked. Skip thinks not. )

How many miles is it from the spire to the gate towns (Indefinite. Not all planes have euclidian geometry. The outlands, for example, has node and vector geometry with randomized travel times between nodes. 3-18 days travel to get to the next adjacent point location, no matter how fast or slow you are. This is a great pain in the ass when you want to be precise. It also means it takes 30-180 days to get to the middle from the gate towns, but only 24-144 to get to all the way to the other side by going round the circumference. Which means pi = .8 in that instance. Now that's alternate physics!)

How does lightning bolt work (with great brutality)

Do allies lose a level when a card says everyone does (yes)

Can you play cards before being forced to discard them (Immediate means immediate. Has you no memory at all)

Which effect happens first if you play more than one (The one you played first. They cannot be done simultaneously)

Dragon Magazine Issue 216: April 1995


part 6/6


Curses, Dragonmirth is fooled again by those pesky do-gooders. All seems lost for yamara and co.


From the forge: This month, Ken chooses to have a sci-fi special. It's currently approaching mainstream in terms of TV coverage, with Star trek right in the middle of it's multiple series at once zenith, and Babylon 5 making real waves in redefining how you can handle long running plots on a tv show; while oddly enough, starting to decline in terms of RPG market share. Life is complicated, and saying something as large as an entire genre is becoming more or less popular is not a straightforward thing, with all kinds of subtle demographic shifts within the larger population.

We start out, of course, with the big boys. Games Workshop has a whole bunch of stuff for the familiar 40k universe, plus a new game, Titan Legions, which brings giant mecha combat to the grimdark future. That is indeed pretty heavy metal. Grenadier has competition for them though, with the Future Warriors line getting a game to go with it. It's different, with anticipating your opponent's moves crucial to winning, but whether it has longevity is another matter altogether. Global games also have four minis reviewed from their Legions of Steel game. Two rather sinister looking robots, one with four arms, and two heavily armed aliens. FASA get the best marks, with the Battletech Compendium and Tukayyid Scenario Pack filling in lots of setting and giving you sample scenarios to play out as well. Ral Partha has a couple more mechs for battletech, and also shows us how a minotaur and satyr look in Shadowrun. Pretty funky, really. Heartbreaker Hobbies have two dark legion officers for the Mutant Chronicles game, and two members of the Brotherhood determined to stamp them out. Pretty obvious who they're trying to imitate. Ground Zero Games get Full Thrust reviewed, which sounds vaguely pornographic, but is just a game of space combat. It's another one where you have to issue orders the turn before and guess what the opponent is going to do well, and also take momentum into account. It seems to strike the right balance between easy to learn and having emergent complexity, and has done well enough to get at least one supplement. And apropos of nothing, there's also a Tudor inn so fantasy fans don't feel completely left out, remember, there's plenty of crossover between the two.


TSR previews is unreadable this month, for some reason. Even a slight angle on the scanned pages makes the cleanup software not work very well. Oh well, this is one magazine I have in print, so that's not a problem. First up, unsurprisingly, are the expanded and revised Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. More colour, bigger margins, more references to other books, (Gotta collect 'em all) less errata. Go on, give us more money for old rope.

The Forgotten Realms finally gives us info on the Seven Sisters. Like Elminster, they've been mary-sueing round the realms since it's outset. Now you can penetrate a big chunk of the mystery, and find out for sure just how twinked they are. There's also Once around the Realms, by Brian Thompson. Or around the world in 80 days converted to toril. What fun we shall have! :claps:

Mystara expands further on the Red Steel setting, giving the Savage Baronies their own sourcebox, including another silly audio CD. Find out just how common adventurers of various classes are in these wild and magic heavy lands, and just how fragile the current power blocs are. Perfect place for you to carve out a domain of your own.

Ravenloft has Van Richten's guide to the Fiends. They may not be common in the demiplane of dread, (possibly because they actually outclass the evil of most things there and the dark powers are scared of them) but they really do a number on the place when someone summons them in. No surprise that he'd have a run in or two with them under his belt.

Planescape fills in one plane that doesn't quite fit in the big sourceboxes. A Players guide to the Outlands sees Audio CD add-ons come to other gameworlds, this time as an IC artifact. Probably the best use of this idea they managed, even if some of the acting is a bit hokey.

Our generic novel this month is Mus of Kerbridge. The adventures of a mouse made intelligent by a wizard? Hmm. Not too bad an idea. I certainly liked the Dartford Mice stories, and Terry Pratchett's Amazing Maurice. This has potential.

Spellfire gets a booster pack, giving us stats for most of the weird and scary Artifacts in AD&D's history. Rod of 7 parts, eye of vecna, coat of arndt. I'm sure your champions'll be happy to have them.


This issue contains both the best and worst of times. It has both a genuine classic article, and some pretty terrible promotional stuff, and the humour both hits and misses, albeit with slightly more hits than misses. Once again there's enough enjoyable stuff that I don't feel I wasted my money first time around, but it's not by a huge margin. It won't take much of a decline to push me over that edge. The time when I quit first time round grows ever nearer. Let's see if I have the same opinion this time round when I get there.

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 1/7


128 pages. A spelljammer cover here for some reason, despite the line being long gone by now. I approve, since it both looks cool, and thumbs the nose at their marketing department. On the other hand, they've once again forgotten to tell us what theme their lead articles have. Straight away it looks like this is going to be another mixed bag in terms of quality. Let's see if the good outweighs the bad this time around.


In this issue:


Letters: A letter worrying that the new printings of the corebooks are a 3rd edition. Nope. They have no plans to do that anytime soon. No sir. Not at all. :shudders: All sounds like far too much work to us when we remember the last time round.

A letter pointing out the mistakes in their blood wars card list. Happens every time. No escaping it.

A request that they not put magazine articles online before they get published physically. Ahaha. Now that's a promise that can only be kept for so long.

And finally, we have an obituary for Nigel Findley. Damn shame. He managed one of the highest ratios of great articles of any writer, even better than Ed. (although he certainly wasn't as prolific) And as we saw last month, he was still producing thoroughly entertaining stuff recently. If he'd lived, he would probably have produced quite a few more great books.


Editorial: A farewell from Dale this month. He stepped into some pretty big shoes when he became the main editor, and he didn't quite manage to fill them. Still, as Roger didn't really get into the flow of things until about a year and a half in, this may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As usual, it's hard to say how history would have been different if someone else had been in the chair. So as is often the case for farewells, he looks back over his run on the magazine, and talks about the coolest things they printed in that time. Somewhat saddening. Sure, he wasn't one of the greats of roleplaying like Kim or Roger, but he certainly wasn't a bad guy, and he did make some interesting personal contributions as well as choosing other people's articles. So once again it's time to face the chaos of new people coming in, and having to figure out how to run everything all over again. Tough times are already here, and they're about to get tougher still.


First Quest: RPGA co-ordinator Jean Rabe takes a turn at this reminiscing thing. (just before she leaves the company. Everyone's jumping ship to go freelance it seems. ) A werehawk with exceedingly low mental stats was her first character, and she got into roleplaying because she wasn't keen on going out getting drunk. Wait, shouldn't that be the other way round? I guess starting in media res and then filling in the backstory later is an established narrative convention. Just wasn't expecting to see it in a 2 page article. There's plenty of info on the rest of her gaming career as well, and the benefits she's got from it. A job, a husband, friends and a whole cast-off campaign world. And probably cheaper than going out getting pissed on the weekends too. Who said gaming was bad for your social life?


Boons & Benefits: We've had quite a few articles on unorthodox treasures before. Gems, books, maps, title deeds, plants, poisons, works of art. There's no shortage of things you can give your players beyond money and magic items that let them kick more ass. This pushes that idea a bit further, with the concept of treasures that are largely intangible. Titles, memberships in secret societies, medals, honorary degrees, a well paying sinecure of a job, huge discounts at the place saved, (or maybe just tax breaks) undefined favors to be called in at a future date. Here's 126 ideas, nicely divided into semirandom tables. Once again, we reinforce the fact that we have more ideas from the magazine than we can ever use. Still, there are a good deal wider ranging than most articles of this sort, and it's a good reminder to put different stuff into your game. I approve, even if I'm not blown away.

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 2/7


Behind enemy lines: Hmm. Another quite good and somewhat different idea here. And another one that might be tricky to implement. Just as many players will look at intangible rewards and thumb their noses at them, trying to run a campaign where you're right in the middle of the bad guys, and there's far too many to kill your way out of the problem may prove a problem for some groups. Be it because they don't have the tactical and roleplaying acumen, or they're now high enough level that instant teleportation or easy flight is in their reach, this might be tricky. Since D&D is more prone to both those problems than the average RPG, this is one that might be better suited to another system. Not a bad idea, though, and certainly easier to get a group into than the horrible A4 captured and stripped of all your stuff setup. So this is a second article I have mixed feeling about. I suppose we exhausted most of the easy adventure ideas a while ago, so I shouldn't be surprised we're getting into ones that are rather harder to run successfully.


Two heads are better than one: Now this is one of my personal favourite ideas, that I've used personally to great success. Sharing DM duties makes things a lot more fun. (provided you like the other person and have time to meet up with them outside the game to prepare for the next session) You can split the party, you can bounce ideas off each other and edit them better, you can divide labor in ways that play to both your strengths. Two heads are very frequently better than one. I have absolutely no reservations about recommending this article to everyone, whatever system or genre they're playing in. It may be short, but you can get a good deal of joy out of trying it, and may even find it becomes your default way of working if you can get a good enough partner. The smallest ideas can have the biggest repercussions, because they're most widely applicable.


Class action!: Oooh. Another idea that really should have got an article much sooner. They are stepping up their adventurousness in terms of rules and playstyles. Let's see what happens when you break D&D's usual niche protection, and have a party comprised largely or entirely of one class. While campaigns certainly won't be the same, they can still be entirely viable, and possibly even more interesting. And you can still find ways to differentiate them. Warriors can wield different weapons and work on their formation fighting skills. Wizards and rogues can really focus on getting good at their specialities. And bards can play different musical instruments. As white wolf games show, a game can thrive by focussing on one thing and doing it well, and then highlighting the more subtle subdivisions within that area. (savage vampire, imperious vampire, shadowy vampire, mad vampire, pretentious vampire ) You really will need to create adventures tailored to your party though, otherwise they may die horribly (apart from clerics. A good set of different speciality priests hardly needs other classes, as they admit here. ) With a sample adventure for each class group, this is both strong and fairly innovative. You could potentially get 4 whole campaigns off this one before rehash set in, so I'm definitely voicing my praise for this article.


En-Psycho-Slade-ica: Or How compiling every magical item ever released for D&D into a set of tables drove slade quite quite mad. A sensation I can empathise with pretty well at this point, as the third anniversary of this thread draws ever closer. The sheer quantity of stuff just gets to be more than the human brain can comprehend at some point. To prove this, here's 21 pages of random tables, covering every item in the game via rolling d1000's. A fairly impressive special feature, made less so by the fact that it'll appear in volume 4 as well, so this basically fills up a 6th of the magazine with precycled promotion. So this was cool on first reading, but moderately annoying in retrospect, like so many promotional articles that no longer have any use once you have the actual product. Did you have a shortage of decent stuff to put in the magazine or something?

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 3/7


The new colour PHB & DMG get a centrefold spread. Four pages of teasing full of shiny new visuals. Considerably bigger, but not actually much more content. This means they cost more as well. Whether that gives them a bigger profit margin, on the other hand? Surely they weren't expecting to sell as many this time around as when 2e was first released.


Eye of the monitor: Looks like it's not just Lester who's rebutted Jay & Dee's review of Space Hulk. Indeed, they've got so many that they decide to give it another shot. They don't change their mind in the end, but that's not the point. The vigorous debate caused is still interesting, and writers do appreciate getting responses to what they write, even if it's not entirely positive. It's only when you're getting more flamers than you can even read that it really starts to bog your life down.

SimTower is the latest in the hugely successful sims series. You unlock new features to put in your towers as you go along, which helps give you a sense of accomplishment and keep you playing longer. Controlling your stairs, elevators, and eventually escalators is key to success, which is somewhat amusing. Their main complaint is that you can wind up waiting around for too long to make something happen or get more money in, which means it's best played while multitasking with something else. Nothing wrong with that playstyle. I must admit to doing that while also trying to write these reviews. But I can see why that would stop them from awarding too high a mark.

D!Zone is an unauthorised mod for Doom. It basically adds on a ton of mods and new levels, of decidedly dubious quality, and seems to expect anyone using it to be a computer programmer. It's definitely not for anyone but the most hardcore fanatic.

Heretic is another one for Doom fans, as it's essentially a fantasy themed Doom heartbreaker, with most weapons obviously analogues of Doom ones, and much the same gameplay. So if you liked that, get this. If not, don't bother.

Landstalker also seems fairly typical of it's genre, zelda-esque overhead fantasy adventure with lots of things to kill and puzzles to solve. There's less actual roleplaying than they'd like, but it does what it does well. No groundbreaking classics this month then.


The game wizards: Skills & Powers teaser part two. See us try and halfheartedly get in on the GURPS market by implementing point buy. And in the process, make the game considerably easier to break by not being very rigorous with the point cost balancing. As with several of their other rules experiments at this time, this really shows up the fundamental flaws in the system design. Developed in an organic evolutionary fashion, it's pretty good for some things, but exceedingly ill-suited to others. And like trying to tidy a filthy bedroom, a half-done job looks worse than not doing it at all, and just means the original owner now has more trouble finding things. So once again, this reads like a case of cool intentions gone wrong, and implemented poorly. Many of these options are just obviously better than other ones. And the choice between buying new stuff or using the points as one-off drama points to save your ass is very clunky. Given AD&D's advancement rate at higher levels, you're pretty much screwing yourself over if you don't upgrade yourself. Rip it up and start again. Chances are, you'll be wanting to respec characters built like this after a few levels.

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 4/7


Sage advice has finally wormed out of spellfire duty. Skip is most pleased. That'll teach em for leaving skip off last month's contents.

 How does an amulet of life protection keep your psyche for 7 days (By trapping your Soooooouuuuuuullllll! )

How much does bariaur armor cost (same as for horses. How humiliating.)

How do bariaurs ride a bonded mount (Er, um. Ick. It'll just have to be a loyal companion, rather than an actual mount. )

Can psionicists improve already existing defense modes (sure. The choice between power and versatility is a hard one. )

What monsters can I summon with various levels (use their XP rating to see what can be considered fair. )

Can you clarify some specialty priest powers (is this still causing people problems. If you're gonna make skip explain every one, you'd better pay skip pretty damn well. )

How much can you fit in a backpack (Don't worry about it. Encumbrance is already inconvenient enough. If you enforce realistic storage space as well, you'll never get anything done)

Can you remove a creatures spellcasting power with dispel magic (no, only the spells they currently have active.)

Warhamer + Gauntlets + Girdle is totally broken. How could you allow that! (Skip only examines the rules. Skip doesn't make them (unless it's unclear and skip feels like it at the time) And there are plenty of ways to make a character even more broken. Skip will even show you some if you pay.)

What gets multiplied by buffs (usually, only the dice. The adding comes afterwards.)

What special powers do you gain with shapechange ( Some, but certainly not all. )

Isn't it easier for priests to make magical items (no, because they have to get their god on side. You know how busy gods are. )

How do you make magic items if you're a specialist without access to the enchantment school (you can't. You'll have to find a scroll or persuade someone who can to help. Oh wait, you can't use opposition scrolls, so I guess you'll need a friend. Solitary wizards in towers are screwed. )

Does a wall of force protect you from reading symbols (no)

When are you gonna do tome of magic spheres for monster mythology. (they're already in the book, dumbass. Have you even read it, or are you just kneejerking for the hell of it. Skip doesn't like kneejerkers. They're prime targets for bein' capped. Then their knees'll never jerk again. )

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 5/7


The role of books: The armless maiden, edited by Terri Windling is a collection of reframed fairy stories focussing on child abuse, edited by someone who suffered from it herself. This means it sometimes makes uncomfortable reading, and the preachiness may get in the way of the stories, but that doesn't mean that the craftsmanship is bad. Quite the opposite, if anything. It's just a question of if you can find something like this enjoyable or cathartic reading.

Cats paw by L. A. Taylor is a victorian flavoured mystery, low key but with good character development and excellent artwork. It's old fashioned air contrasts quite a bit with more irreverent modern attitudes of the other books being reviewed, and as is often the case, this contrast turns out to be a positive overall.

The book of earth by Marjorie R. Kellog is the start of an elemental themed quartet of books. That's already pretty overdone as an idea, and that the story is pretty standard makes this feel like just another cliche ridden fantasy book. Do we want to stick around and see if future books improve?

Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston is unsurprisingly a fantastical twist on Doc Savage. It hits pretty much the notes you'd expect, taking a guy from modern day earth as the viewpoint character and throwing him into this pulp fae realm with the Doc & his other companions. The sexism & racism of the originals is toned down, of course, and it maybe has too many supporting characters that don't get properly developed. John nevertheless finds it highly enjoyable. Pulp isn't dead, it's just a little diluted.

Voices by John Vornholt is a Babylon 5 novel. It focusses on just a few of the show's cast, and takes them places the show probably couldn't due to budget constraints, while keeping them consistent with established characters. That already puts it up on far too many books from tv series. That is also tells a pretty decent story and fills in a bit more of the setting makes it a quite good result for the series. Let's hope the editorial control stays good on this line.

No earthly sunne by Margaret Ball is another fae themed book, combining music based magic, computer programming and time manipulation in it's plot threads. All of these elements are handled quite convincingly, showing the author did her research, and the story is pretty well done as well and full of variety in moods. No objections there.


Role-playing reviews is particularly strange and wide-ranging this month. A novel, a computer game, a card game? This isn't roleplaying! Very curious. On the other hand, a little variety does help to stave off the boredom, so I am interested in seeing how this shakes out.

Theatrix is one of those games that plays with the concept of what roleplaying is, moving it a lot closer to improv acting than wargaming. There's no dice, and the overall direction of the story is scripted in advance. The fun is in finding out exactly how you get from A to B. This takes quite a bit of adapting to for people used to lots of stats and dice rolls, but does make a fun game, and would be an excellent framing device for giving drama students a degree of narrative control within a play. Lester highly recommends it.

The empire of Elwolf, on the other hand, gets slated in amusing fashion. The days of Spawn of Fashan are not over. So proclaims King Blasteem Baltamax! Stupid names. Inane dialogue, delivered with all kinds of weird descriptives. And oh god, the terrible terrible riddles. Really, it's not a good example for your roleplaying at all. Avoid at all costs, unless you wish to do an MST3K reading.

HOL is technically a roleplaying game, but really, you can't exactly play it as written, and the primary entertainment is in reading it. The whole thing is hand-written and illustrated, and it's all deeply deeply twisted in an amusing manner. A home-spun gem that would be ruined by trying to treat it in a professional big budget manner.

Superhero league of Hoboken is a computer game putting you in charge of a team of misfit heroes with mostly useless powers, trying to fight crime in New Jersey. Shame Squirrel Girl isn't around to show them how it's done. Of course, this being a RPG, the odd powers and items all become crucial to solving at least one puzzle over the course of the game. The tricky puzzles, challenging combats and amusing bits all combine to create a rather neat package.

Whispering vault is another 6 pip groundbreaker of an RPG. The rough edges from issue 208's prerelease copy have been sorted out, it looks great, and the gameplay combines tremendous freedom in character creation with an easily understood formula for adventures. Horror does not have to be disempowering or bogged down by angst.

Dangerous prey is the first supplement for Whispering Vault. Not too surprisingly, it's a monster book. In any game that differs from the norm, a GM is going to want a little help defining the boundaries and conventions, and this has more than enough weird creatures and their lairs to keep PC's on their toes for a while. And they'd better get on it, for I get the impression normal people may have a hard time even affecting things like this.

On top of this, we have quick reviews of The Great Dalmuti and Battlebots. A card game and a tiny board game. Man, this is some pretty insane variety. That's one definite benefit of the editorial regime being in flux. You can get away with quite a bit if you pick your time right.

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 6/7


Rumblings: Ooh. TSR releases the cancelled Ivid the Undying as a free download. Greyhawk lives on over the Web! That's not bad news, is it. It certainly sets the stage for further internet support for lines that don't merit full books any more. Also very historically interesting is seeing WotC consuming various other companies IP with great gusto. The TSR takeover had plenty of precedents, and they certainly weren't shy about buying properties they liked, even if the companies weren't even in trouble.

The other two bits of news aren't quite so significant. A trio of fanzines get promoted, along with some talk about what's in them. And the guys behind Whispering Vault have a new project in the pipeline already. Given the positive reviews that got, the people in the magazine are interested to see more. I can't say I disagree with them.


Changeling: the Dreaming gets teasered in here, as they do. Once again we see how their budget has increased, as they give us a 4 page, full colour piece giving us info on the kiths and noble houses. Much more visually appealing than TSR's revised corebook spread as well. Someone poach some new graphic designers from the competition while they still have the money.


Forum: Keith Bidwell needs help with his game, as it's houserules seem to be causing problems. Someone send out an all areas call for the Canon Police to reeducate this sucka.

Eric Shearer has a more prosaic problem. How much descriptive info on places should you give your players. I would incline towards initial conservatism, but encourage them to ask more specific questions, and let them deduce stuff from the answers to those.

Danny Walthall thinks you need to have some roleplaying for it to be a roleplaying game, but a certain amount of balance still needs to be struck. Remember, if they act like a pretentious self absorbed procrastinating idiot IC, nasty stuff is going to happen to them. That's just common sense.

Stefan Happ hasn't been in a gaming shop in ages, and is surprised the magazine is still going. The way the hobby has changed in recent years is strange and scary, so he's just going to accept that he's a grognard now and stay out of your way. Really not sure how to respond to that. Another sign of troubling times ahead, methinks.

Greg Howley shares his parrying houserule. Don't know if this one is going to stick any more than the last one.

Stephen Carter talks about issues of darkness and maturity in gaming. The two are not the same thing, no matter how much White Wolf may think they are. And weirdly enough the official adventures still seem to fall into the same mission based crap., putting the lie to those claims. Tricky one. True mature games seem to need to be tightly tailored to the specific campaign.

Jamie Nossal is annoyed by all this talk of one class being more powerful than another. They still all have valuable roles to play in a party. The game keeps on working unless you consciously try to break it. Plus variety is fun in itself, even if some of the options are suboptimal.

Jean H. Monday tries to balance the people claiming clerics are overpowered with the ones saying they suck. How did they end up like this? Social issues as much as anything. Gods need worshippers, so clerics have a much stronger need to be involved in the community than any class apart from Bards. There's a lot you can do without sinking into the background.

Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995


part 7/7


Swordplay has drama and betrayal in a life or death situation, as usual. Dragonmirth seems to have a castle theme this month. Yamara is saved. Er, maybe. We definitely have a musical episode. Even if it doesn't rhyme. Or scan. Or have a proper tune you can hum. That should drive off a big chunk of the enemies, anyway.


Through the looking glass: Something a little different here this month. Modular components? That's something that could definitely do with a special feature. After all, they're good value for money, but require careful shopping to ensure maximum compatibility with your other bits and pieces. Guess we might end this column on a high note.

Firstly, there's some 6mm scaled city scenery. 6mm? They don't normally review stuff that small. That's the size of those teeny plastic toy soldiers. Not easy getting good paint jobs on those. Somewhat more warhammer appropriate is a castle assembly kit that'll be just about big enough for 28mm things, but could be more impressively looming at 15mm. Six minotaurs in different poses. Not sure how that's modular. A second, slightly longer review of the Kill Zone game, with plenty of playtest info. As with the other one, the overall verdict is pretty positive. And finally, FASA's Citytech game gets it's 2nd edition reviewed. Well, that theme petered out pretty quick. So much for a focussed topic.


TSR Previews: Audio CD frippery comes to Ravenloft as well in A light in the Belfry. As ever, play the tracks at the appropriate juncture for extra horror. Just be ready to hit stop quickly, otherwise it'll run over to the next track and the players'll get spoilers. They also release an adventure tying in with the recent Van Richten's guide. Circle of Darkness has the players stuck between a Tanar'ri and a Darklord. Can they kick the ass of both sides?
 
The forgotten realms is sticking close to home base in Sword of the Dales. Mourndale is having a little lich trouble. Why are these low level schmucks being asked to help solve it? I suspect some railroading may be involved here to make this one work.

Planescape gets In the Cage: A guide to sigil. It has plenty of detail already, now you get even more, so you can wander around to your hearts content. Just don't get sucked into the plane of ooze.

Dragonlance gets The History of the Dragonlance setting. Another crunch free recounting of stuff that's happened, both IC and OOC. With interviews by the prime players it it's success. They're in an odd position. The novels continue to sell solidly, but the gaming material has petered out from lack of interest. Can they drum up a new generation of actual players somehow?

The Encyclopedia Magica is up to book 3. The green one with tons of other spellbooks detailed within. Just the thing for the wizardly among you.You'll have to wait until next time for the swords though.

CCG's get pushed hard this month. Spellfire gets a reference guide, with strategies, errata, tournament rules, and all sorts of other ways to put it's buyer at an advantage compared to those who didn't shell out. Blood wars gets Expansion pack 2: Factols and factions. Oh boy, now we're really in trouble, if open war has got into the city of doors. Good thing this stuff isn't canon for the gameline as well like Legend of the 5 Rings.


The featured articles section in this one is excellent, with a very high amount of game changing ideas. The rest of the magazine, once again, not so much. The reviews seem to be losing their editorial focus, and there's absolutely tons of crap promotional stuff in this one. Neither are particularly pleasing developments. And since they're having a big shakeup of the editorial staff, things are likely to stay annoying for a few issues yet. Let's see if they've remembered to get some proper birthday presents amid all this.

Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995


part 1/7


124 pages. Birthday number 19 here. And for the first time in over 10 years, they forget to advertise that on the cover. Either they're starting to feel the budget cuts, or they no longer want to boast about how old they are. Still, the quality of the cover is pretty much unchanged, with a rather epic dracolich coming round for an attack on a castle. Let's see if the contents can match up to that.
 

In this issue:


Letters: The primary topic this month is the critical hit teaser article. This is one of those rules that generates a lot of controversy, and so it proves this time around. One is just plain against their current implementation, while the other two are just unclear on the finer points of the rules. In any case, it's pretty obvious that this is user base splitting stuff. A few people'll be driven away, others simply won't buy it, and if there's a mixed opinion within a gaming group, there'll be a lot of debate on whether to adopt the new rules or not. Oh boy. Here we go. Another rather negative signpost in retrospect.

A letter saying that the M:tG craze seems to have died down in their area. Maybe so, but that just means it's levelling off. It still has a long and highly profitable life ahead of it.

And a request for Chaosium's address. Call of Cthulhu is still a fairly popular game amongst Dragon readers, for some reason.


Editorial: The last editor said goodbye last issue. No surprise that the new one says hello this time. And straight away, they're talking about giving things a major shake-up. Things can't go on the way they are. But at the same time, if you change things the wrong way, you'll only make them worse. They're very aware that at the moment they're looking a little dinosaurish, and don't want to die. Which is a perfectly valid fear really, since it will actually come to pass in the near future. So this is an editorial that shows they're entirely aware of the trouble they're about to get themselves into. What a way to start off a birthday.


First quest: Whoa. Ed Greenwood gives us his first gaming experiences this month. And it's an absolute doozy. The tale of how he was shaped into an awesome dungeon master by a girl from university who then died of cancer reads as almost too perfect to be true narratively. Exactly how much artistic licence he made in recounting this tale is something I'm very curious about. Still, it would explain why he became so driven to create as much as possible in the time he has. Being exposed to the fragility of life at a young age can have that kind of effect on people. So this is both genuinely tearjerking in a way most of these stories are not, and quite informative. There are some quite serious issues behind him ending up the person he did, and they could probably be explored in more depth than this. Question is, does he really want that, or would he prefer to stay behind the scenes and let his creations do the talking? Hmm. Anyone got any links to further interviews where he actually talks about his own life seriously?


Birthright!. Here we go with the last big setting of the 2e era. Ready, Steady, Rule!

Dragon Magazine Issue 218: June 1995


part 2/7


Tanzin the Gray: Straight after the advert is our first proper birthright article. And like all the other important players in Cerilia, they're rare and individual in their stats, not just part of some generic subrace. And here's one of the oldest and most well known. Unsurprisingly, he gets personally connected in to all the big events of the setting, which is a bit mary-sueish, but since they've only just released it, they probably haven't filled in the minor details of the world enough yet. And lets face it, a great wyrm should be badass enough to participate in world-shaking events, especially when they're one of maybe a dozen on the entire continent. And he is suitably badass,  Aside from the major artwork fail ( a purple dragon where he's described as grey, and it's way too small as well) this fits the bill. He's sufficiently morally ambiguous that he could serve as an ally or an enemy for the party, and he has some rather good reasons to want to interact with the world rather than snoozing the centuries away. So this is pretty well designed stuff that fills exactly the niche they intended, and is quite useful for your game, but isn't particularly surprising. By this point, they've designed so many worlds in quick succession that there is quite a bit of following the formula and going through the motions involved.


Dragon Intrigues: An article encouraging you to play your dragons proactively and intelligently? We had one of those last year. Still, this is substantially longer and has more specific examples than last time, which is a definite plus. Greg Detwiler once again shows that he's one of our more reliable workmen, with an article that's low on originality, but high on game usefulness. A lot of emphasis is put on their power to manipulate the environment and order various creatures around. Sure, they might also change shape and infiltrate human society, but really, they're dragons. They ought to be taking a wider view of control than just looking at the effects of a single species. So this is a little iffy from the perspective of a long time reader, but excellent for more recent arrivals to the magazine. For all that they appear in the name of the game, you see dragons surprisingly rarely in actual play, so this kind of advice does come in handy.


Dragon dweomers: Another topic we've seen before. Spells by dragons, for dragons, and in many cases unusable by other creatures, be it due to magical restriction or mere practical physiology. Guess it's going to have to be another case where I judge on the specifics, not the generalities.

Aerial Acceleration alliteratively augments your airborne abilities for fantasticaly functional flight. In flight movie not provided, but if you're in the middle of combat, that would be a bad idea anyway.

Aura of Terror enhances your fear aura. This is obviously useless if you don't have one in the first place. But you wouldn't put it past a Lich to nick this one for their own  pleasure. Maybe a mummy too.

Blast Jewel is a variant on fire trap that does substantially more damage. It also ruins any stuff around it, making sure thieves can't profit from their ill-gotten gains. Sour grapes or what? Dragons really can bear grudges for a long time.

Focus Fear allows you to reduce the area of your fear and increase it's intensity. I'd just breathe on them and watch them die horribly. It'd be a far more efficient use of your action for the round. One for the metallic dragons who don't really want to kill casually then.

Hoardguard lets you glue all your treasure together into a great immovable mass. Whether this makes it more or less comfortable to sleep on is not revealed, but at least it makes it harder to steal. It's duration isn't too long though, so if they come back the day after killing you, they'll be fine. Will they figure that out though, or waste tons of time on complicated curse removal methods?

Pseudodragon lets a dragon summon mini-me's. This is one that is completely useless to nondragons then. There's a whole load of speculation as to where these come from, since they don't resemble regular pseudodragons. Schrodinger's summoning, I guess. Best not to think about it too hard or you'll destroy the universe.

Razorfangs gives you near vorpal teeth. Careful with them, for limb severing makes a lifelong enemy if you don't finish them off.

Shadow Scry is only dragon specific because it relies on your connection with your lair to work. That's a trick that shouldn't be too hard to emulate. And then you can track people from anywhere there's a shadow. And since this is your lair, you can probably make sure there's plenty of shadows everywhere.

Shadow Dragon lets you turn into a shadowy form that's near impossible to hurt save by light, and can still breathe and use spells on you. Unsurprisingly, it was developed by a shadow dragon, and fits their sneaky modus operandi to a tee. Be ready for calls of unfairness from players.

Sharptooth is the less powerful relation of Razorfangs. Even the dumbest white dragon can get use out of this one. And you know those extra points of damage add up over a battle. So there's quite a few spells here that could be a staple of your dragon's tactics, and enough of them are usable by PC's that they won't feel totally gypped. Once again, I'm going to have to return a result of competent but not thrilling. This birthday set hasn't been nearly as distinctive and quirky as last one.