Dragon Issue 272: June 2000


part 3/7


Dragon Psionics: Ed Bonny does another intriguingly specific article for a niche setting. How does Gem Dragons having access to a source of power the other two families can't learn or really understand affect politics? Since Psionics aren't subject to magic resistance in 2e, and have lots of mind affecting powers, you can see how some dragons would get paranoid. But while there are some adventure hooks here, most of this is devoted to 8 new psionic powers, most of which are proprietary secrets of various races, and in some cases specific clans. Most of them are quite dragon specific, and wouldn't be of much use to a race without flight, breath weapons, and so forth even if they did manage to somehow steal the secret. This means that while this is pretty fun reading, it's not going to be useful to a huge number of people. Still, given their current stance of making the material they release more generic, that means I shall treasure it. If there's any campaign that really needed a few good supplements to keep you from running out of material before you even got past 1st level, it's Council of Wyrms.


How to talk with a dragon: Speak softly, and bring lots of friends with big sticks. Unless you're dealing with a dragon that's still small and young enough that they can't squash you with one claw like a bug, you need to be both obsequious and constantly on your guard. Unlike Devils, which want your soul, and will normally keep to the letter of their bargains, dragons don't consider you important enough to negotiate with seriously unless specifically proven otherwise, plus you look so very appetising, so evil or neutral ones may well eat you as soon as you're no longer useful or amusing, and even good ones will be more than a little patronising. This article takes an extreme stance, (you certainly couldn't say this about all the dragons in Ed's Wyrms of the North series) but does so with style, and more than a little humour, making it stand out from the crowd. It once again shows how interesting a writer Robin Laws is, and how taking a strong stance for an article gets more notable results than filling up your statements with conditionals and compromises. He fully deserves to be a popular and polarising writer who gets forum threads about what he does with this showing.


Sleeping dragon Inn: We finally get to see the winner of this competition from issue 251, nearly 2 years later. I do have to wonder what took them so long. And since the inn is small and rectangular, and doesn't have any huge surprises in layout, I'm not sure why they picked this one over all the other submissions they got. What do you consider good building design in a fantasy campaign anyway? I think I'd really have to see some of the competition so I could get an idea of what the bad ideas looked like, (and if they were actually more gonzo and awesome anyway) so I could judge it better.


The secret library of Vecna: Ah yes, Bahamut and Tiamat may be getting an upgrade in the edition change, but it's Vecna who's really getting a promotion, from an occasional adversary to a core god who'll appear in most campaigns which don't make up their own whole new set. Part of that is because he just has an iconic look. Anyone can draw a corpse missing a hand and an eye, and however the details differ (did they ever say if it's the right or left eye? ) anyone with a modicum of D&D lore'll be able to say "yup, that's Vecna alright" But anyway, since he's temporarily trapped in Ravenloft at the moment, this is a collection of typically double-edged magical items that he's collected recently. You'd have a hell of a time getting hold of them, and if you did, the odds of you turning into an undead creature, being possessed by a ghost, or just dying horribly when he catches you are pretty high. Basically, you're screwed, because he's the writer's darling, and trying to fight him will just send you on a railroad ride of frustration. I think i speak for many in the audience when I say fuck that noise.


Fiction: The skin witch by J Gregory Keyes. Fool Wolf continues to try and get rid of his savage bonded spirit, only to find that the only people who might be able to accomplish that have agendas of their own, and are not to be trusted in the slightest. I don't think it'll surprise you to hear he fails, the author not wanting to change the major framing device for the stories. (plus he'd have to find a sidekick or someone else to talk too to make the adventures relatable) However, he doesn't keep the world static, with the river god that was shooting to become a monotheistic overlord having been overthrown recently, leaving a big power vacuum. But that hasn't made things any nicer, and the magic-users are still getting up to some pretty fucked-up stuff in the name of power and security. He might not want to be a hero, but compared to the people he meets, he's not a bad guy at all. Like Gary's column, this is one of the few things in the magazine pushing at what the censors might allow, and is more interesting for it. Magic is probably more interesting, and definitely more balanced when it has a price, and so using it or not is a real choice. Perhaps that would be a better way of balancing D&D magic. Instead of nerfing the powers, just add a few more strange costs for them.

Dragon Issue 272: June 2000


part 4/7


Arcane Lore: Another helping of overpowered dragon-exclusive spells for our birthday. Truly yawnaramic. This column held out for a bit, but has now well and truly fallen into the same repetitive malaise that got the bestiary and bazaar a few years ago.

Breath Control makes your breath weapon more reliable in terms of damage inflicted. Not really a great gain, overall.

Claw Aura, on the other hand, is a pretty nasty buff. Double your damage, using the energy type of your breath weapon. This'll be more useful to some dragons than others, particularly the one with interesting multiple options.

Magnify Breath Weapon gets pretty brutal at higher age categories. Fry the fuckers trying to steal your treasure with great prejudice. Woo.

Hoard Cache is another way of storing your treasure extradimensionality for security and transport reasons. Seen you before.

Breathmantle surrounds your whole body in your breath weapon. Another way to discourage the enemy getting close. Which is a good idea for dragons, for being surrounded means you can't toast them all in one breath. And that's bad tactics.

Dimension Trap lets a dragon store a breath weapon like a far more devastating fire trap, to set around their lair, or wherever. Brutal, but not too surprising.

Wing Razors are't too surprising in effect, only in degree. 12d4 points of damage? That's near vorpal in intensity. You could have a whole low-level party sliced in two without blinking. I suppose their breath weapons are usually even nastier. So yeah, yet more draconic scariness, as if you really needed it by now.


Bazaar of the Bizarre: A substantially more useful bazaar this month. A few months ago, we had planar armours. This time, we have planar weapons. Not quite a big or unique as the previous time, this is still full of useful stuff for your players and their opponents. The planes retain their popularity among the writers, even if the line has been cancelled.

Arcadian Dwarven Hammers work best for dwarves, and disappear if not used regularly. You need to be proactive in your attempts to kick the butt of evil, otherwise what's the point.

Bytopian flintspears burst into flame whenever they strike a metal weapon. This does focus your optimal combat choices a bit, but hey, you can cheat by powering up with your buds just before battle. It's a neat flavour touch as much as anything.

Celestial Swords put you in contact with a celestial, and you get to make a deal with them for power, at the cost of doing good and having your soul go to them when you die. | think that's a price I'm willing to pay.

Fiendblades are also a means by which you can strike a deal with a powerful extraplanar being and get power at the cost of your soul. Course, the destination is going to be a good deal less pleasant than it would with a celestial as your boss.

The Flail of Apomps has a tryptich of nasty special effects, and a whole bunch of yugoloth true names inscribed on it. That has definite uses, but of course, summoning fiends has it's dangers. I suppose either way, someone suffers, which pleases the Gehreleths.

Modron Heartspears are made for the express purpose of fighting tanar'ri. You'd think they at least affect slaadi as well, but apparently they're not as much bother. Or maybe they have a different tool against them. Guess that's in your hands.


Dragon's bestiary: More adorable little dragonets? Well, we've had plenty of them before, but still not as many as we have full dragon types. Still, our last bestiary for this edition is once again treading very very familiar terrain. Guess they're trying to make us eager for the changeover by feeding us to bloating with stuff we don't really need.

Crows-nest dragons are draconic gull equivalents that'll follow ships and scavenge from ports. Killing them is bad luck.  

Geyser dragons are adorable little amphibians with the ego of full size dragons. You'll need to be a pretty dominant personality to get one of these as a familiar. Sounds like the plucky animal sidekick from certain novels I'm familiar with.

Mole dragons have a face a dwarf would find cute, and gemlike scales. They're one of the smartest and most malevolent varieties of dragonet, with decent magical abilities. Give a Dao one as a pet.

Pavilion dragons live in rainforests and have psionics. They're tricky to win as a familiar, but quite good if you can manage it. Is that enough choice for you now?! Please please say it is!

Dragon Issue 272: June 2000


part 5/7


Oh, this is a terrible advert for die, vecna, die! You really are not selling us on it by trashing the old edition, even before the new one is out.


The ecology of the hydra: Looks like the ecologies are eager to make the changeover, with this one dual-statting all it's crunchy bits. Other than that, it's business as usual, with the association of monster hunters being their impetuous and arrogant selves, and suffering rather for it. High intelligence, looooooow wisdom. And terrible at dealing with women. With social skills like this, who needs vows of celibacy? As usual, plenty of research on the creatures mythical antecedents is done, as well as extrapolation on it's capabilities as a multiheaded creature. Thankfully, like ettins, brains are not among the things it's many heads grants it, so it can be defeated more easily than say, a dragon. A fairly average ecology, this pretty much sticks to the usual formulas for this group, although it does introduce what looks like a new recurring character. Gotta keep the dynamics from getting stale somehow.


Shop keep does the pedant thing.


The new adventures of Volo: Another chance here for Ed to demonstrate his ability to whip up cool stuff in such quantity that there's no way it could all fit into a conventional book format. All those little quotes he's come up with from various characters that never got incorporated into novels, or put at the beginning of chapters of sourcebooks get offloaded here, lightening his pile of unpublished stuff a bit more. Like Oscar Wilde, it seems he has quite the supply of pithiness, and has invented a ridiculous number of fictional books written within the setting. We know by now the Realms has basic printing press technology, and a long history, so that's not too credibility stretching. A more interesting question is how many of these authors actually have histories, stats, and mentions elsewhere, and how many were just names made up on the spot. Lots of geeky fun combing other books and articles to be had here then. Not only an amusing reading, but one that looks like it'll get extra value with a bit more hindsight.


Gamma Squirrels & Mutant Moose: They're referencing the old Rocky & Bullwinkle RPG TSR did in the late 80's? They never mention that! Even more than Buck Rogers, (but not as much as the All my children RPG, which was never even mentioned in the magazine ) this is something that gets left out of a lot of histories. But they're not actually converting any setting material from the cartoon, just using it  as a secondary reference while they give us gamma world material, which is a slight disappointment. Of course, rules for creating mutated anthropomorphic animals can be applied to many settings, so it's easy enough to genericise this material. This certainly looks like another article that'll help you play Alternity for a while longer, and do different things with it. My main issue is with the sudden mood whiplash between the gonzo artwork and intro, and the dry and serious contents. Methinks whimsy is not Andy Collins forte, and he was forcing the tie-in a little.


The wisdom of (Corey) Solomon: Oh dear. The guy in charge of the D&D movie is a first time director who's been trying to get it off the ground for nearly 10 years. And they're apologising for the low budget. However you spin that, and they're trying hard to be positive, it doesn't make this look like a promising prospect. Also, casting Tom Baker as an elf? That didn't really work, did it. Richard O' Brien as a master thief who sends the heroes into a maze though, that was just obvious in an amusing fashion. They're also making it obvious that there'll be a fair bit of cheese involved (which really, you should have figured out last month when they said a Wayans brother is involved. ) Already, our hopes of getting a serious treatment of the subject matter is fading. You think this will sell us on the movie? Even without the knowledge of hindsight, this would make me skeptical. This is going to be even more of a struggle for them than I thought.


Wizards live: Virtually every day apart from thursdays is packed this month, although once again, more than half of it is TCG material, which shows how much of their market share that makes up. Skip does Sage Advice live again, which must be a fairly popular one, and Monte Cook explains the new barbarians in a bit more detail. Nothing particularly surprising here, so I have nothing more to say. Just another promotional article.

Dragon Issue 272: June 2000


part 6/7


Dungeoncraft: Ray's advice this month is stuff that even he admits is likely to be particularly subjective. What physical objects do you really need to run a session? DM Screen, Notes, Rulebooks, Character sheets, Dice, Minis, Maps, Notepads AND Props? Yeah, that's a fairly extensive list. These days, I'd condense all of them apart from the dice, minis and props down to my laptop, and possibly even use an electronic dice roller as well. And since I'm not a great user of minis and props, i'd probably skip those as well. Once again, for someone who wants to do the minimum of effort needed, he sure does put a lot of work into it. I suppose that's the thing isn't it. If you put in a bit more effort at the outset, you can get everything else done more efficiently. And then the temptation can be to keep working harder because you're getting more done, making a positive reinforcement loop. And aren't those just so much nicer than the negative ones? And if the result is the difference between retiring at 55 and buggering off to the spanish riviera to live comfortably, and having to keep doing a part time job at 70 to supplement your crappy pension, then I think you can say the result was worth it. But anyway, this is all YMMV. And reminds me just how much computers have taken over in the last decade, by the improvements in their form factor more than their processing power increases. I don't feel I've gained anything from this article, but I'm still interested in seeing what he has to say about making the first session of a campaign good. Onto next month then.


Sage advice: Do undead characters get the AC of their monster type ( Recycled question. No.)

Will a naga crown and rings of wizardry used together quadruple your spell slots. (Hell no. At best, they'd triple it (remember you add multipliers, not multiply them out. ) At worst, they'd go boom, and permanently disjoin your spellcasting ability for trying to be such an egregious twink.)

How long does the mantle of baravar last (One hour per level. You can split that, within limits.)

Does blocking use your base or adjusted THAC0 ( adjusted)

Does the axe of the dwarven lords transform deep dwarves into normal dwarves (Yes. If they aren't a hill dwarf, they undergo an embarrassing race change. Prepare to be treated like Michael Jackson)

How does a ring of regeneration interact with the deaths door rules (Recycled question. )

Can really big weapons nullify the automiss from a cloak of displacement (no, even if that makes no sense)

Do you get strength bonuses on bows or not (you do. Just not on crossbows, who's firing has little to do with your strength. )

Is using a ring of vampiric regeneration an evil act. (No. You're already hurting them. What does it matter that you're getting some hp back from it)

How does Antipathy/Sympathy work (flexibly. It's a high level spell. It can affect most creatures)

If you cast wall of fire on large creatures does the damage for different range categories stack (no. Use only the highest applicable)

Do bariaur get natural armour (No. The monster description is assumed to be wearing hide armour)

Does rope trick accommodate 8 characters full stop, or 7 plus the caster (you choose. )

What protects you from dragon turtle breath (fire resistance, as counterintuitive as it may seem)

How long does it take to prepare a free magick (same as a normal spell slot)

Can you use a dust devil to disperse dust of sneezing and choking (Yes. This means it doesn't work at all, not that it can affect multiple creatures.)

Stop messing me around! How do you really pronounce Flind! ( Doughnuts down your pants. Maybe that'll cheer you up. Tone poetry? JFK's death? Skip gives up. No pleasing some people. )  

Maybe a bit of alternity stuff'll cheer them up.

How much does a gravity negater cost. (not much, in all contradiction of reality.)

Are there rules for repairing cyberware (Go to a surgeon. This stuff's too complicated for you to fix it in the field. We have to force you to spend money somehow.)

What good does a computer gauntlet do you (it makes you better at using computers in general. Is that so complicated?)

Dragon Issue 272: June 2000


part 7/7


Role models: The people in the staff room continue to show off their deals with various minis companies, allowing them to afford better stuff than you™. Sure the idea that you should prepare for your sessions, and buy cool new props and minis to whip out for each new setpiece is a good idea, but all this costs money and uses up storage space which is increasingly at a premium, especially in the current sucky economy. And unlike last year's material that was rather good at showing you how to use what you have creatively and making it go further, this just leaves you too it. So so disappointing, with a side order of smug. Get a dedicated writer in again!


Silicon sorcery: Colon overload this month, as we cover a game which uses two of them in it's title. Total Annihilation: Kingdoms: The Iron Plague? That's one clunky title. The result is fairly clunky too, as it involves transplanting some rather steampunk looking technology into your fantasy game. Mechanical scorpions, submarines, zombies, and bomb launchers are reasonably fun devices, and examining how a society supplies and powers it's technological advancement can lead to adventure hooks in itself. So this is a bit clunky in it's implementation, but there are some good ideas here. Well, I guess you don't want your technology too glossy, or it's harder for players to take it apart and tinker with it.


Nodwick is still battling the slave lords. Well, there are an awful lot of them around to battle.


Coming attractions: The Realms, as always, is busy busy busy this month, with 4 connected products. R A Salvadore is responsible for 2 of them. Book 4 of the cleric quintet gets it's turn this month. At this rate they'll finish them off by the time the next edition hits. Meanwhile, on the new front, he gives us The Spine of the World. Wulfgar has a crappy time for some reason, including having to induct some n00bs into playing D&D. Being a hero is a hard life. There's also a hint book for Baldur's gate II, and Cloak and Dagger, wherin they reveal some of the few remaining big secrets of the world in an attempt to beat the edition change sales slump. Amazed they still have any at all after the volume of supplements it has now.

Dragonlance mixes fiction and gaming material in More Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home. It might have more grimness, but the 5th age still has it's share of whimsy as well. The more things change, eh.

Greyhawk Decends into the depths of the Earth. Paul Kidd novelises D1-3 & Q1, with a bit of T1-4 thrown in as well. See the whacky group of weirdos who did the giants and white plume mountain romp their way through the oldest adventure path AD&D has to offer.

Vaguely connected to Greyhawk as well, but also to Ravenloft and Planescape, is Die, Vecna, Die! Another horrible railroad where canonically, the PC's fail, as Vecna not only survives, but becomes a god next edition. Way to end 11 years of 2nd edition on a sour note. Sure, it hasn't all been good, but it never deserved this.

Alternity gets a Gamma World conversion. Metamorphosis Alpha got converted to the Amazing Engine. Now this gets a short lived revival. (since they've already decided that they're killing this line) Dark apocalyptic?! Methinks the writers missed the point as well. No wonder no-one talks about this version much.

Another bit of cross-promotion from their other department as well with a M:tG book getting space here. Prophecy by Vance Moore is book 3 of the Masquerade cycle. So not only are you stealing WW's colons, you're also nicking their buzzwords. How lame is that?


What's new grapples with the issue of keeping very big pets. And the snail makes it a little further across the page. Oh, the continuity! :fans face: Where will it end?


They seem particularly keen to get to the next edition this month, with the two extra articles using the new mechanics standing out nicely. This is understandable, because this is a pretty filler heavy issue otherwise. There's some interestingly obscure articles, and some just plain boring ones, and not much that's really going to be generally useful. Let's see if any decent ones can duck and roll to get under that door before it closes for good in 2 months time.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 1/7


132 pages. Arr! There be pirates on this cover! Don't recall them doing that before. Space pirates, (issue 217) but not regular ones. Guess they're still not completely tapped out for the final 2e issue. Inside, it looks like the theme is swashbuckling, which is another popular topic that maybe hasn't got the coverage it could have, with just a half-hearted theme in issue 219 and a few other articles through the years. We've revisited the sky and ocean recently and found new things to say, now let's blow a kiss to the audience, sweep our cloak dramatically, and leap out the window into the darkness!


Scan Quality: Good, unindexed, centrepiece missing.


In this issue:


The wyrms turn: In one way, time is linear, and you can't really go back (because if you do, it causes all manner of causality problems. In others, a lot of it is cyclical, and you do the same things with minor variations on a regular basis. In a monthly magazine, those cycles are a little longer than some jobs, but they are there, and do become routine soon enough. And eventually, you have to take a break from them. Which may become a routine in itself, such as taking yearly holidays. Which establishes another new cycle you'll eventually have to break. Life is complicated. Even chaos naturally falls into certain patterns. But at least we're about to see some pretty major changes around here. Yup, we're in philosophical mode again for this editorial. After all, they're worried if they're making the right decisions, or it'll all fall apart in their face. Well, it's too late to turn back now. Even as we speak, the books are shipping to game stores across the world. All you can do now is keep looking for errata for the next printing to fix, and get to work on those first few supplements.


D-Mail: We start off with the quite valid worry of how easy 3e will be to teach to newbies. Good question. Increasing the consistency and organisation of the rules does have it's benefits. But we're still talking about hundreds of pages over 3 books just to play the core game. It's probably better than AD&D, but nowhere near as easy to pick up as the old basic sets.

We then have to deal with the old problem of specific vs general articles. They have to balance the problems of getting wide appeal with not repeating themselves, and there's plenty of people on both sides of the argument.

Next we have a letter from someone who seems to want half the regular columns cut, particularly those that don't provide more gaming stuff. You know that's a dangerous path. If you cut out everything that you think is filler to only do the most popular stuff, you may well wind up with a smaller audience, not a bigger one. Man can not live on gold alone.

Another couple of mostly positive letters with minor nitpicks follow. One wants Greyhawk to get coverage outside the RPGA, while the other wants the return of reviews in the magazine. Neither are going to get their wishes. The ways of the company are strange and inscrutable, and they don't want to pretend to objectivity anymore.

A letter from someone who loves what they've seen of 3e so far, and can't wait for it to arrive. I think most of the readers are in that boat by now, even the ones who aren't sure just want it over and done with. A year is a long time to build anticipation.

And finally some good old fashioned historical nitpicking. Will we ever know for sure what happened in ancient egypt? Would it stop the arguments if we did develop a device that let us open a window to the past and see everything? Probably not. There'd still be too much data to get an unambiguous result.


Nodwick gets examined for his serious case of nasal expansion.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 2/7


Forum: Bryan Rantala thinks people are thinking too much about the rules, and not enough about actual roleplaying. If they do that, class imbalances seem far less significant.

C. Roach points out that there's now tons of cool variant RPG stuff on the net. Oh, and B. J. Zanzibarrs :devil: People are sharing a ridiculous amount of cool stuff for free. Take advantage of it, even if the quality control might not be as high as in published books.

Steve Damon asks all the people jumping at previews to wait until they have the actual 3e books in their hands to give proper judgement. You know, that's the first time they've said that in here. That is a bit surprising.

Michael Bridges thinks a little moral ambiguity makes PC's more fun. Fafhrd and the Mouser never stopped being primarily out for themselves, even when they did wind up doing the right thing in the end. It's more interesting when you don't know exactly what the players are going to do or when.

Mike Donavon thinks people shouldn't expect every article to be tailored to their interests. That just seems selfish and self-centred. The hobby is bigger than you, cutter. And remember, even if it isn't useful now, it might be later. You never know when you might find yourself playing Traveller or Runequest again.

Heather Woodhurst has enjoyed having familiars play a big part in the game. Hers wound up getting a class and being loved by everyone. Autoscaling in the new edition comes quite welcome.

Osveldo Ortega reminds us that priests are servants of gods, and their powers come from a position of supplication, not demanding. They shouldn't expect their god to grant them miracles at a moment's notice. And 3e's playing up their medic side sucks. Cleverness will be replaced by brute force HP soaking to solve problems. Boo.


ProFiles: Fittingly for our final 2e issue, we see a profile that says goodbye to a leaving member of staff. Larry Smith has been working on the magazine's art for over 10 years, since issue 157, where the last minute decision to make it a Buck Rogers special from upper management (Roll of thunder, stab of organ music, god I've missed doing that.) resulted in much panic for him. He's had to deal with the Great Nipple Ban, legal department stupidity, mad freelancers, and the spellfire card game. But over time, you can become jaded to anything, and he really needs a change in his life, an escape from the endless roar of the dreaded deadline beast. Maybe he'll get bored after a few months and be back as a freelancer, maybe not. In any case this is a quite different profile from most of the recent ones, avoiding the blatant plugs for future products and relentless optimism, and not presenting a too rose tinted view of the past either. Which is rather refreshing, really. Even if you work in gaming, it doesn't have to be your life, and it can do you good to get out and have other interests. Advice I really ought to heed myself. Oh well, less than a quarter of this to go, and then I can leave it behind for good.


Up on a soapbox: After a whole bunch of trying to get people to look back and reevaluate behaviour often seen as immature, Gary gets to the point. If D&D is to survive long-term, it needs to be able to attract new players. And that does mean catching them young. To make that work, you need rules that start off simple, and can get you playing fast, and can then build complexity and provide supplements on myriad subjects to keep up to their spending power. And you need enough cool stuff to hook them in in the first place. This is harder than it sounds, and it was the old Moldvay and Mentzer basic sets that managed it most successfully. There's also the issue that despite Robert saying a DM should learn from a more experienced one, a group may actually have more fun if everyone starts at the same time and learns together. That way, there's no-one telling you you're doing it wrong, acting superior and driving people off before they can get up a bit of experience and investment in the game. Once again, he's questioning not only received wisdom, but the value of wisdom itself when it comes to having fun. Did you have more fun as a child or an adult? Why is that? If the answer is as a child, how can you fix that without abandoning your responsibilities? Pretty deep questions, really. And one the designers of each new edition need to solve in turn, for despite their efforts, roleplayers are still an ageing population. Whatever criticisms people may have of Gary, stupidity is not one. He's right on the mark here, and these questions are still very relevant indeed. I hope the people in charge of 5e are paying attention.


Countdown to 3rd edition: Only 1 month to go. Aren't you just bursting with excitement? And they've saved one of the best changes until last. Spontaneous Spellcasting! Sorcerers fill several valuable roles. They let you play a spellcaster without having to do so much bookkeeping, they're a good excuse to put a charisma primary class in the game, and they let you fill an important literary niche that D&D handled really badly before, the spellcaster who developed magical abilities as a twist of fate or ancestry rather than through conscious study over an extended period of time. It's an idea that wasn't obvious before it was done, but made perfect sense and was pretty popular after introduction, with more new classes being spontaneous casters than prepared ones over 3e's lifespan. Basically, they feel awesome, and it's interesting that despite this, they actually turn out slightly less powerful than wizards in long term play. Versatility trumps firepower when given time to prepare, especially once you can make magical items. Similarly, the new implementation of Bards is pretty nifty. Even if they did get criticism for being slightly underpowered in combat, their sheer versatility, able to fill any role, even the healer as a secondary character, plus being the kings of social stuff makes them pretty significant. So this is a fairly exciting teaser, that shows how they're increasing flexibility in the new edition pretty well, and will get players excited about not having to deal with spellbooks if they don't want too. That's the kind of choice I feel very positively about, even if I like quite a bit of bookkeeping myself.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 3/7


Touche: We start off our themed section with a list of source material and basic campaign ideas. Fairly dry, this feels like basic advice for the DM who would like to try this, but isn't sure where or how to start. Which means it's one of those articles that feels altogether too basic given my level of experience. Well, I guess like everyone, I'll be starting again at 1st next edition, so I should enjoy that feeling while it lasts. But still, this feels like an end of themed section filler article that was only put at the front because it was by one of their regulars. Curse you, you nepots! As much as you shouldn't neglect your basic exercises, I'm a little baffled by this.


40 Swashbuckling adventures: What, not even 50, let alone their preferred 101? Must have been short of sources to plunder this time around. As you'd expect, they're a lot more social than the average adventurer's fare, and those that do involve exploring far lands are all sea based. (so yay, pirates, buried treasure, and racially dubious colonial attitudes. ) There are a few supernatural elements, but the majority of the adventure hooks involve just people on different sides, trying to advance their agendas. Just the thing to keep the players morally conflicted. (but not trusting the Cardinal farther than they can throw him) So there's a pretty decent number of good ideas here, of a sort they haven't covered that much in the past. And even 40 should be enough to advance them a good few levels before the DM needs to come up with their own ideas. Swashbucklers do seem to hang with a higher class of people than dungeon crawlers, and their adventures are more likely to have long-term consequences and people seeking revenge for slights upon them and their family in the past. Hopefully you'll be able to get the drama self-sustaining by then.


Swashbuckling essentials: Now unlike Dale, Robin Laws knows how to make his writing style match his subject, and applies that skill with verve here. It's not only about the rules, it's about the implicit assumptions of the game. And you won't get very far if you try to play a swashbuckler when the DM is running the game to screw you over if you aren't paranoiacally careful with everything you say and do at all times. But changing the rules can make a pretty big difference as well. So he's pretty aggressive in house ruling D&D, particularly when it comes to experience awards, but also in giving you a lot more concrete uses for your Charisma score, making being flashy, charming and overdramatic the way to not only survive, but also prosper. This kind of willingness to reshape the fundamentals of the game is exactly what they need on the team, and it's a shame he wasn't here back when they were doing lots of settings. Seeing a full setting that altered basic things like how AC or experience work would be very interesting indeed, if probably flamewar provoking as well. This should have been twice as long and starting off the issue, then we'd really have a good sendoff for the system.


Van Richten's Legacy: The Foxgrove-Weathermay sisters unearth another piece of Van Richten's research, this time on herbalism. After all, he was a doctor before he was a hunter of monsters, so he ought to have some fairly substantial notes on the plants he's discovered in various domains and what they do. Of course, this is Ravenloft, where things rarely work as planned, and so each herb has three options for the DM to choose from, expected, with a twist, and with a horrible side-effect, or completely misleading. So once again, this is very much for the sadistic DM, particularly one with players who read the books and would otherwise metagame with their knowledge. This three options format is a pretty neat one, and I can see why they included it. The specific herbs are pretty neat too, with plenty of detail on their appearance and habitat, and powers that are handy, but not game-breaking. So this is both cool in general, and very well integrated into the specific setting. High marks here.


Something up your sleeve: Another article of mundane gadgetry isn't particularly swashbucklerish, but it does help keep rogues from being completely outclassed by spellcasters. And this stuff is a bit more high tech than medieval, so they might want it for a job. Still, I very much doubt they'll be lugging around a folding boat, or ninja climbing equipment. While there is some rehash here, there's less than I  expected, which I guess is testament to how long Greg Detwiler's been around, and knows what's in the books. And since this is pretty system light, you could convert it to 3e without any trouble as well. Until the OGL gets going, there'll be a shortage of esoteric gear there that needs filling. This isn't bad at all then, and quite well timed for it's purpose.


Fiction: Shamur's wager by Richard Lee Byers. A few issues ago, we had promotion for Ed's new non D&D novel series. But upon investigation, it turned out to be mostly action scenes, with a rather insubstantial plot linking them together. Well, this is the first time a short story in the magazine has basically been one long action scene with short bits at the beginning and end to set us up. It's not a bad action scene either, a griffon race through the sky with plenty of twists and turns and treachery to keep things tense until it finishes. But it doesn't really feel like a proper story either. It feels like they came up with the cool action scene, and then bolted on a flimsy pretext for it to happen afterwards. So this is literary junk food, entertaining while it happens, but leaving you nothing much to think about afterwards. A bit won't kill you, but too much will leave your brain fat and lazy. This isn't the kind of change I'd like to see become common.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 4/7


Abandon Ship!: Another minigame in quick succession? This is an unexpected treat. Course, the big question is if they'll continue doing these in the 3e days, or this is the end for them, just as with reviews and articles on other RPG's. Anyway, this is an amusing little piracy themed card game, where you fight the other players to get as much treasure onto a lifeboat before your ship sinks. With an intended playtime of about an hour, it seems pretty easy to pick up, but has a decent amount of tactics for you to think about and the possibility of ganging up on players and other politicing. John Kovalic is responsible for the artwork, which gives it a somewhat cutesey old school feel like the work of Tom Wham. I'm a little annoyed that the board was missed out in the scan, but I still like this quite a bit. It's another amusing diversion from the huge morass of sometimes contradictory options AD&D has become filled up with. More standalone minigames would definitely help keep the casual gamer market interested in the magazine.


Rogues Gallery jumps the gun a little as well, giving this collection of characters 3e stats. Curiously, they manage to make the statblocks smaller than the old ones, despite the greater amount of crunch in them, via more efficient formatting. Which also means they can fit in slightly more character detail as well. I think that definitely counts as a win-win situation.  

Thamlon Uskevren is the patriarch of a Sembian merchant house. He's fairly honest, for a merchant, and this seems to be working for him, as he now has a large and prosperous family, and tons of high class homemade wine. Seems like a pretty sweet position. I bet there's people in the family who want to take it.

Shamur Uskevern is his wife, and has an incredibly interesting history. Sent forward in time, she adopted the identity of her own relative, and since then, has been pretending to be much more boring than she actually is. Well, she can't really go back now, with all the kids she has in the modern day. But then again, who knows what tricks fate might pull in the future. It's not as if backwards time travel is unknown in the Realms, even if it isn't as common as Krynn.

Thamalon Uskevern II is the typical hedonistic wastrel son. A fighter with a 6 strength, he's pretty much useless for everything, and it's going to be a challenge for him to ever measure up to his dad. Maybe he should give the role of heir to someone else.

Such as Thazienne Uskevern. 4 years younger than her brother, she's already an accomplished rogue, and is starting to develop the business aptitude to go with it. Dad probably wouldn't completely approve if he found out how she was making  money on the side, but hey, at least she's competent. The family wouldn't end up losing all it's merchant cred with her in charge.

Talbot Uskevern is the black sheep youngest brother. He's not really that bad, but he broods about the things he does wrong more, feeling he can never really live up to his parent's expectations. He actually has the makings of a pretty decent hero, if he can just get over himself and realise his potential. And hang out with the right people, instead of spending too much time in bars listening to music. Get yourself a good adventuring party.

Erevis Cale is our first non family member, and the first character to take advantage of 3e's less restrictive multiclassing as well. He of course becomes the breakout guy of this book, transforming quite radically over the next decade. But at the moment, he's a fairly straight angsty brooding fighter/rogue, ruthless, but regretting it. Someone wants fangirls. Well, why mess with a winning formula?

Larajin is a young half-elf serving girl with a Tressym pet. Her honesty means she'll probably never work her way up and become one of the more important merchants.  Good thing she has the opportunity to become an adventurer instead then. Hopefully she'll get the chance to level up soon, for even in 3e, the world isn't that forgiving on 1st level characters. Good thing they haven't forgotten the ky00t factor, even if she isn't completely by the book.


The new adventures of Volo: More Realms tidbits from that most fallible of reporters, designed specifically to get you into trouble here. The House of Stone may not be as famous an adventuring location as Undermountain, but it certainly seems to chew through adventurers quite handily, with it's rearrangeable walls, and readily replenishing traps and monsters. Course, adventurers being what they are, that kind of reputation only encourages them, and so it continues to lure them in at a rate of approximately 2 parties a week. So that's a death toll of around 4-6 hundred a year. Man, they must breed fast in the nearby villages. Everyone thinks they're the ones who'll succeed where everyone else has failed. Maybe your PC's are even correct. In any case, it's rather (un?)intentionally comical, showing what happens to a world when adventurers become routine. Elminster's snark when dealing with Volo's "facts" is as strong as ever, and this looks like another fun place to drop rumours of into your campaign, see if the players bite. It's pretty much system free too, so it'll still be useful next month. This is still both entertaining, thought-provoking and useful then.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 5/7


Arcane Lore: We draw 2nd ed to a close with a 3rd druid special, this time concentrating even more specifically on plant magics. Hey, that means it'll also be useful to Rangers. A plan with relatively few drawbacks. Except the ever present danger of rehash. Still, hopefully this is the last time I'll have to say that for a while.

Hail of Thorns brings the pain, plant style. Slightly less dangerous than magic missile, as a cleric blasty spell should be, it's still both accurate and reasonably damaging.

Pinespear lets you add piercing damage to your staff without any metal assistance. Cue getting reamed with a pinecone jokes. Hey, druids can still have filthy senses of humour.

Nature's Mantilla is invisibility, plant sphere style. This is another one that doesn't work quite as well as it's straight wizardly equivalent, but that's the nature of kludges.

Leaf Ears is clairaudience via plants. Well, we do already have teleportation via plants.

Rooting lets you feed through your feet. Seen you before. Next!

Thorn Growth is the textbook antigrappler. Seen plenty of variants on you too.

Bear Fruit is a juicy variant on create food and water. Handy though, because it leaves the tree it creates behind, which may be more of an ecological benefit than the immediate one. Reforestation can be hard for druids, this makes it a lot easier.

Placate Plants satisfies their appetite, keeping them from going all Audrey II on you. A niche power, but possibly a lifesaver, like so many others.

Bronzewood Weapon is another way of making your weapon more badass, hopefully enough to hurt an annoying monster immune to mundane stuff. Not totally reliable though.

Rooted Wrath is a buffed up, damage inflicting Entangle. As usual though, there needs to be vegetation around. And this is one dungeon delving druids are unlikely to have the materials to draw upon, unless on the first level, and having the tree roots reach down out of the roof. Oh well, it's hardly terrible, is it.


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Our final 2nd edition bazaar is in theme, with a whole bunch of items that are perfectly suited to the swashbuckling mentality. Fight with style, and have dramatic encounters. An idea I'm pretty positively inclined towards. Looks like a pretty decent closing sale.

Favors for the favored are charms, traditionally presented to your romantic amour, which offer minor mechanical benefits. That's a good present, not like some pack of cheap chocolates that are probably half nutty crap anyway.

The Blade of Heroic Measures lets you do called shots and disarms with much greater probability. You don't have to kill your enemies to kick ass.

The Impeccable Defender lets you parry lots of attacks. But maybe not enough. D&D still can't match up to white wolf in terms of active defence mechanics.

The Rapier of Brilliance produces flashes of light that allow you to make a quick getaway or temporarily blind your opponent. It's all very unfair. I suppose we'll always have Grimlocks.

Breath of absolute valor allows you to bring a companion back to life, but at the very real danger of giving up your own life. One perfectly designed for dramatic nerve-wracking scenarios where everything hangs in the balance.

A Bridle of the Companion Mount boosts your mount's morale and helps you perform stunts with them. Hi ho, Silver! Away we go!

Candles of Renewed Brilliance let you rest and come up with a cool idea to sort out your current problems. Since I can generally do that anyway, I'm not impressed.

Everflowing Capes billow dramatically without any wind, let you leap chasms, and produce stuff mysteriously with a flourish. Swoon.

Gloves of the Gallant let you fight while seeming not to be paying attention at all. This has little mechanical effect, but is highly amusing flavourwise.

Kaldeen's Chroniclers of Questing Confessions provide a truly faithful account of your actions. This means you may be cautious about letting people read it, for all your little lies and indiscretions will be revealed.

Perfume of Wondrous Attraction are an item recycled right from the early 80's. Temporary charisma boost followed by sharp loss if you're not careful. Just the thing to really set you up for a disappointment.

Potions of Spotlessness help your grimy adventurer to become socially acceptable again in short order. If you've just got back from a big adventure and feel it's partytime, this'll get you spruced up in time for a full evening's carousing.

The Shield of the Righteous is another item that reduces the effect of undead screwage. You may still lose levels and die, but you can postpone the effects for a bit and hopefully make a real difference for the party.


The ecology of the hippocampus: Silly people, underestimating things that look like animals, when actually they're pretty smart. Still, it does make for rather good stories, so I suspect they will keep on doing it. This ecology is the work of a pair of new writers, and it shows, in comparison to the slick charactersmithery of the monster hunters stuff. It's also a little to attached to the savage nobility of it's subject,    the angst of being captured and suffering, the bond between man and animal, and all that bumpf. What is it about horses that makes people go all gooey. It happened with unicorns, centaurs just about avoided it, but they're half human, and I expect it'll happen to pegasi if they ever get round to doing an ecology on them. Still, once again, the change in storytelling style breaks up the monotony. That's worth quite a bit these days.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 6/7


PC Portraits: This column always likes to join in, and swashbucklers have an easy iconic visual appearance, so they have an easy job this month. A nice smile, a stylish outfit, a flamboyant hat, and the confidence to not look like an idiot jumping around the place and cracking one-liners. Easy to describe, not always so easy to implement. Still, they're both racially and sexually inclusive, and not all of them are weilding the same old rapier/main gauche combo. I think this is a decent enough collection to choose from.


Shop keep suffers one of the more blatant breaches of gaming etiquette I've seen in a while.


Arms Race: So it's the final Alternity article. How could they possibly spend their final bit of coverage for an RPG other than D&D in a valuable way that'll stick in our memory for years to come? Well, certainly not more weapons, when we now have a full book on that already. Yes, it looks like we're going out with another load of new toys, not a mature culmination of their creative efforts. More than a little disappointing. So here are 5 new melee weapons, and 14 different guns of myriad sizes, shapes and power sources. Tons of ways to kill people, and a few that'll incapacitate them without killing them. People never stop looking for more efficient means of inflicting violence upon each other, do they. Very very disappointing, which is not the kind of note I wanted to end this on. There's so much more that you could have done with this system, and you end it on a filler episode. I guess this is goodbye then. If only there was something we could have done.


Wizards live: A couple of notable special guests this month. Lisa Stevens gets a profile, which she never did in the magazine, despite her importance to it. And the creator of Babylon 5 and other cool TV shows J Michael Straczynski pops in for a chat. Every day apart from thursdays and saturdays is once again filled with something. A lot of it is devoted to the new RPGA stuff, as they gear up Living Greyhawk for everyone to play. The logistics of that must be fairly substantial. Still, at least they can set stuff up wherever there's a decent player base without having to pay international phone rates just to talk. I wonder if they're still printing and mailing out all the modules from a central location? Economies of scale can still make that cheaper, weirdly enough. So this shows their online support as a still evolving process. The majority of the population are aware of it and participating to some degree, but it has yet to take over completely from the traditional distribution channels. And since that's still an ongoing process, 12 years later, I think we'll probably have more to say on that in later issues.


Dungeoncraft: So what does a DM actually do in play, asks Ray. Provides descriptions of the world, and resolves what happens when characters interact with it. When you put it like that, it sounds so simple. But they need to be good descriptions, while not being so verbose as to take up too much of the session time, so they players have a decent amount of information to react too, and enough time to act in. This is where all your preparation actually turns into success or failure. Give them enough information to choose a course of action, preferably one that you've prepared for, and if they do do something not covered in your notes, improvise a result that is interesting and makes sense. His big question here is if you should reveal all the info players need to make an accurate judgement of a scene upfront, or just the basics, forcing them to ask questions if they want to find all the treasure and avoid tripping any traps. With an assumption that a lot of the time, setting puzzles that test the intelligence of payers rather than their characters is a good thing. This advice won't be particularly relevant if your game is pure hack and slash, or narrativist one for whom all the conflict is interpersonal and the environment is just an unimportant backdrop. But between those extremes, they are some pretty important questions that don't have a one size fits all answer. Players will differ in their natural curiosity as much as DM's will in their innate verbosity. Hopefully this'll help you figure out what will best suit you and your players. And if you survive the first session, it should get easier from there.

Dragon Issue 273: July 2000


part 7/7


Sage advice: Does having a reversed spell take up extra space in your spellbook (no)

Can a sha'ir use a spelljamming helm (If they plug their gen into it with them. Stupid incompatible rulesystems. Needs moar fudge. )

What happens if no-one finds a secret door, but they know there must be one around and keep searching (Good question. Skip will backconvert the taking 20 rules from the next edition to get around this annoying scenario.

How do you determine the level of magical traps in a module (look for details on their creator. Simple enough.)

Can dual or multiclassed fighters have exceptional strength ( Yes, but not for much longer. Just one more month before all that crap gets jettisoned.)

Can you stack strength of stone with holy might (no)

Can you use a sunblade to backstab (Yes. Neither the back, or stab are literal. That is why we renamed it for the next edition. )

When you spend a CP to reroll do you have to do so before rolling (yes. This isn't quite as bad as it seems at first. )

Can a flametongue sword destroy enemy weapons by hitting them (only flammable ones. Other swords won't melt that easily. )

How does curse tablet work (It's very thematic, and somewhat inconvenient. Just be glad it works more reliably than real world curses. )

Do all necromancy spells require powers checks in ravenloft or not (no)

If you polymorph a shapeshifter, can they still shapeshift (Yes. They can turn back next round if they like. Or they can toy with you for a bit. Either way, your spell is mostly wasted)

What happens if you petrify a polymorphed character. ( Their new form turns to stone. It's all a bit embarassing. )

What happens if you smash a polymorphed, petrified person. (they turn into a shattered statue of their original form. This really doesn't help.)

Can dispel magic dispel flesh to stone (Recycled question. The answer's still no)

What happens to magic items while polymorphed or petrified ( They do nothing while stone, but they might work while you're shapeshifted, if that's applicable.)

What happens if an enfeared character is put in a corner (usually, they'll fight. An old adage about rats springs to mind. )

Does a crumbling wall of ice last as long as a solid one (No. Once it's gone, it's gone.)

Can you stack a ring of blinking and a cloak of displacement (Recycled question)

If you save against charming, do you know about it. How about if you're charmed and then it wears off. (More recycling. Skip is so glad about a significant edition change after 13 years doing this. That way, even if people ask the same question, Skip no longer has to give the same answer. And no more poring through hundreds of years old books.)

Does someone's alignment change while charmed (No. Even though they like you and want to help you, they'll do so in a manner appropriate to their nature. Laters, dudes. Skip's off to par-tay!)


Role models: When it comes to minis, you can't always get what you want. So if you can't make the minis fit the creature stats, change the stats to fit the creature. Like rolling stats for your character randomly, you can derive creativity from looking at the world, and then trying to make sense of it and build a story out of the parts you find, rather than crafting them custom. You could use this to ask questions about the death of the author and the validity of derivative works. Or you could just be lazy and reactive rather than working hard for your creativity. This is the kind of lesson you could take in all sorts of ways. So I think it does have some value, even if the presentation needs a bit more work, and is once again interrupted by blatant self-promotion. I think they might be improving again.


Silicon Sorcery: Nethergate gets some ideas stolen from it this month. A fantasy adventure game with a strong Celtic flavour, it's full of sinister crones, woad painted warriors, giants and fae. So as they've done before, they present 6 encounter ideas inspired by the creatures and events of the game, and give advice on how to recreate the mood of the game. Since celtic stuff has probably got less elaboration than it deserves over the years, with a big chunk of that focusing on the celt/roman conflict, this doesn't go unwelcome at all. That it's also high density, and has a decent amount of crunch in there makes this quite nice reading. This column appears to be in the hitting it's stride stage now. Hopefully it won't be suddenly taken over by someone else and take a downhill slide abruptly.


Nodwick is still fighting the slavers. And they're extra diabolical this time. They have literature and everything. Be very afraid.


Coming attractions: The releases this month are pretty much system free. You know an edition change is immanent when that happens. The Realms comes off vary nicely from that policy. As I thought, The Cleric Quintet gets it's final instalment reprinted. More money for TSR and Salvadore's coffers. We also get another computer game tie-in. Volo's guide to Baldur's gate. Just the thing for luring in those computer gaming casuals to proper roleplaying. And if that's not enough, there's The Halls of Stormweather, a set of short stories from their latest spotlighted city. It's gonna be tough for you guys, not getting any products for a while until they can get the updated corebooks out. Hope there's enough to tide you over.

Dragonlance gets The Clandestine Circle by Mary Herbert. Heavy armour and tights do not a great combination make for actual combat. Let's hope the contents are less cheesy than the cover.

Alternity may be cancelled as a gameline, but it still has a few novels working their way through the system. Two of minds and Gridrunner for StarDrive, and In hollow houses for Dark Matter. The print runs were probably pretty small, so good luck finding these ones. But at least the writers still get paid.

And finally, we have another novelised CCG conversion. The Scorpion by Stephen Sullivan is a L5R novel focussing on said clan. Looks like they've already made the deal with AEG that'll result in Rokugan being the primary setting in the 3rd edition Oriental Adventures. Not my favourite move ever. Still, at least the all D&D policy of the next magazines means I won't see so much of that.


What's new takes over. So much for those CCG's. Roleplaying will triumph again!


...... Yeah, this issue was pretty tough to finish, both in the emotional sense, and in that it was more than a bit of a grind. Up to this point, everything from the very first issue of the strategic review has been fairly compatible with everything else if you're willing to squint a bit. If you had the persistence, you could squeeze most of it into a single campaign spanning decades. That is not going to be the case anymore, thanks to both the massive rules changes and the accelerated rate of advancement in the next edition. Still, at this point, a substantial part of me welcomes that, and I know that's true for many people at the time as well. So let us not mourn the death of an edition that was long finished by the time it ended. Let us celebrate one that still has quite a bit of life in it.

Dragon: Your official dungeons and dragons magazine (yes, I think that's a bloated byline, and I'm not going to bother to put it on every title section.) Issue 274: August 2000


part 1/7


136 pages. So we've made it to the release of 3rd edition. Definitely an appropriate time for a special expanded issue, as they deliver the 5th biggest one ever. This is also an excellent time for a load of format changes. It also means a price increase by another dollar, to $5.95. They change the typeface of the logo drastically, and the colour scheme is extra red and yellow to match that of the new books. This also means the end of even token coverage of other TSR Products, let alone any other gaming stuff. They don't even get any advertising in, as that has pretty much been taken over by computer games and the odd bit of anime and various stuff. So lots of significant stuff happening then, not all of it pleasing.

In addition to the obvious 3e release material, they have a secondary theme this month. Robin Hood! That's a curiously specific theme, much more so than dragons, undead or elves. And not something they've done before, with only two brief articles in issue 11 & 55, and an editorial in issue 172. You could have done this last edition and I wouldn't have complained. So it looks like they'll have material that will remain useful even after the novelty of the new edition has worn off. That makes me a little less worried that they won't be all self promotion all the time.


Scan Quality: Generally good, but poster & bonus CD material are missing.


In this issue:


Let the games begin: So they've devoted a lot of effort to tightening up the rules, making sure they cover as many situations as possible. How do they demonstrate that first? Telling us how many creatures can fit into a Behir's belly, and how hard it is to cut your way out! Now that's the kind of situation that comes up in actual play, and needs formalising. This makes me giggle, but also demonstrates pretty well how they've focussed more on the universal application and reality simulation aspects of the rules. It's not that you can't just make stuff up, but you have less need too if you don't want too. Course, you've still got to remember where everything is, which will be easier than a 2e game with hundreds of supplements, but still not exactly effortless. Still, humour is a good way to get people to lower their defences. This is a pretty good start to the issue.


D-Mail gets renamed again to Scale Mail. Which is a definite improvement in my opinion. Both punnish, rhyming and hobby appropriate, it just seems to fit with everything else much better, even more than Out on a limb (gods, it's been forever since they called it that) I quite approve.

We start off with someone who's been using quite a lot of 3e's changes as house rules for years. Therefore, he wants to be hired onto their design team. If you were reading the forums over the past couple of years you'll see they took a lot of ideas from there. This is why the revision worked. People felt listened too. Just don't expect to get any money from it.

On the other hand, someone wasn't paying enough attention when they put Tiamat's heads in the wrong order in issue 272, and this makes one reader very cross. It's right there in the D&D cartoon! I quite agree. Shocking sloppiness. It's the little details that make a character recognisable regardless of who draws them. Otherwise how are we to recognise her from any other 5 headed dragon goddess in a police lineup?

And then we have another letter which has spotted an error in Tiamat's statblock. And that's before they even got the rules. This is a problem. Because they're built on formulas, it is much easier to take the writers to task if they screw up. They're going to have to get used to that over the next few years.

A letter from Johnathan M. Richards praising the bag of devouring ecology. It's good to have competition to keep you sharp. No disagreement there.

Praise for Gary for being able to cut through the bullshit and just speak his mind in a way other writers can't. Once again, I am in full agreement. it's good to have him around again.

A letter from someone worried that with all the upgrades characters are getting, they'll steamroller monsters now. Well, that's up to the DM, isn't it. Now they have a better idea if a monster is likely to beat a group or not, but they can still put them up against creatures way too powerful for them and see if they realise they should run away.

And finally, someone who's really missed Dragonmirth's absence. That's one thing they really shouldn't get rid of. We all need a little light entertainment after digesting some heavy rules.


Up on a soapbox: Gary loses his picture, but i'm sure most of us know what he looks like by now anyway. And he stops talking about reclaiming words and high concept what is roleplaying questions, for some practical advice on how to be a good DM. Look, listen and learn. Observe your players, and see what they like, observe other DM's, see how they run things, and adjust your play based upon feedback. Really, it's the feedback loop that is the crucial part here. Learning from others helps, but if you can't learn from your own experiences, then you are forever going to be stuck in a crap position in life. And if you don't vary what you do, you won't have the wide base of experiences needed to make an informed judgement in the first place. Just don't do an Orson Welles and get it right first time, then spend the rest of your life finding new ways to do things imperfectly.

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 2/7


Profiles drops it's odd capitalisation, but acquires one of those odd foreign letters instead of a proper o. It also splays out over the bottom half of three pages, instead of being formatted in it's own section, so it runs parallel with the letters. This is mildly irritating, and rather gimmicky.

This month's profilee is Jonathan Tweet, designer of Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and now one of the lead designers for 3rd edition. He makes the rather unfortunate misstep of comparing the new ruleset to the pokemon game, saying both involve customizing your character build to fight in battles, and level up your characters as a primary objective. Yeah, that's gonna cause a few flamewars. His optimism about the state of gaming as a whole certainly contrasts with Gary's worries about the aging of the hobby last month. But then, even if tabletop gaming dies, there's still LARPing and computer games which are heavily drawn from TTRPG DNA. And people are still playing lets pretend in all sorts of forms. You've got to be willing to set your criteria broadly and change with the times, otherwise your expectations are bound to be disappointed.


Nodwick's team seem curiously unwilling to get in on the grimdark scene. Guess he gets to keep this magic item for himself.


Dragonmirth is back! Thank god for that. And it's all the more fresh for it's break.


Coming soon returns to being called Preview, although without the TSR, or the s, curiously. Oh well, on with the show.

First, completely obviously, is the new players handbook. No surprise there. Blah blah exhaustively playtested better than ever. That it may be true makes the copy no less tedious to read. Still, you don't have to pay any extra for the character generation software this time around.

Course, you still won't have all the tools needed to play the game. If you can't wait, or just want a more newbie friendly version, you can get the D&D Adventure game boxed set. Course, that really won't hold a candle to the old Moldvay or Mentzer versions in terms of mass market penetration, but they've gotta keep trying. They also have character record sheets, for those of you who like to buy these things instead of printing them off or just drawing them up roughly yourself (which is of course, rather trickier with the higher interlocking crunch quotient of the new edition. )

Their novel lines continue to chug along happily, despite the break in gaming products. Forgotten Realms finally kills off King Azoun IV for good, having faked us out before, in Death of the Dragon. Let the succession wars commence. Dragonlance turns up the heat on their latest conflicts with Draconians in The Citadel by Richard A. Knaak. Flying fortresses? Those never work out well for the people underneath them. I hope they aren't gnome powered.


Shop keep gets renamed Dork Tower. I think that's an improvement, don't you. It certainly allows the writer a little more freedom in the range of his jokes.


One roll to rule them all: Logically, our first proper article is explaining the core mechanic. Most games have had one for over a decade. Hell, even FASERIP did, and that was the mid 80's. But since D&D hasn't had a major revision before, they stuck with the mass of ad hoc subsystems approach long after most designers had realised how much easier a core mechanic makes a game to learn. Well, you've got your wish. Now the real complexity comes in figuring out all the modifiers to apply to your d20 roll. It's not the best of core mechanics, as the odds of success increase in a linear fashion, and very high or low numbers become a foregone conclusion, but at least it's easy to calculate your chances, which is very handy for a DM adjudicating things on the fly. Of course, having made it easy to set things with a 50% chance of succeeding, they then muck with that. Attack rolls generally increase faster than AC, to keep combats from going on forever with escalating hit points. On the other hand, your non favoured saving throws do not keep pace with monster's ability to penetrate them, which means save or suck effects actually become nastier at high levels than in previous editions. Which they'll realise, and seriously nerf them in 3.5, before fixing the math entirely in 4th edition. So this shows that they did have a good idea what they were doing in the short term, but weren't aware of all the long term consequences of their actions. That's life for you. I don't think anyone can really predict more than a few steps ahead where there's thousands of variables to consider.


Playtesting confidential: Of course, some of those problems could have been fixed if they'd playtested high level characters a little more. Despite having over 100 groups going at it for nearly 2 years, they're still going to spot and respond to the problems that come up in low level play and common situations more. Still, it's a lot more than most games manage. This is as much about the technology that enabled this process as the playtesting itself. The internet let them send the rules out to people all over the world, see what issues came up more independently, and revise the rules in response to feedback without spending a load of money printing and mailing out new versions every time. They simply couldn't have run something like this 10 years ago. And if someone broke the NDA, they could simply cut them off without worrying about socialising with them anymore. The notes from individual playtesters are pretty entertaining, with a certain amount of mischief in the parts of the rules they cover. It's a party in here, and they're the ones bringing the noise. When people want to do things for you for free, you enable them, not throw obstacles in their way. And that's one rule they're certainly following this edition. It's hard for this exuberance not to rub off on me.

Dragon Issue 274: August 2000


part 3/7


Class acts: Ahh, now if any series defined third edition Dragon Magazine, it's this one, with it's continuous cavalcade of player character centric crunch. Prestige classes were Monte Cook's baby, and he has high hopes for them as a way of allowing players to specialise in certain things and get cool different powers at higher level, instead of following the same old patterns; and a way for DM's to flesh out their campaign world and give specific mechanical benefits to belonging to an organisation. You are strongly encouraged to invent your own, and decide carefully which ones from official books are allowed in your campaign. Ha. Your hopes are going to be cru-ushed We get a mention of ideas we would later see fleshed out in Ptolus, and lots of guidelines on how to make your own (mostly cribbed from the DMG, but then, most people wouldn't have that yet, and they're still trying to sell the new edition to us.) This is a pretty significant bit of historical data. And let's face it, they might not be perfect, but they're better than Kits, since they're not mutually exclusive, scale better, and there's a genuine balancing cost for taking them.

So having described prestige classes, they get straight in on the act and give us a new one in the magazine. They're certainly taking this much more seriously than they did for kits. It took them what, until 1993 before the magazine caught on to putting them in regularly. Our first new idea is The Mystic. Vanilla name, and a rather awkward implementation, as they get lots of new spells and abilities, but don't advance in spellcasting level, or gain higher level spells. They'd be neat for a one level dip, but any more than that, and you'd rapidly become horribly suboptimal. This is an excellent example of how they aren't fully experienced in how 3rd ed's rulesystem works, with all the synergies, progressions, and knock-on effects that you have to take into account when designing a character. They may seem cool, but I pity da fool who just jumps into this one, instead of shopping around for the good prestige classes. It'll be interesting to see how soon people figure out that some of these are inadvertently over or underpowered, and start refining their designs in response.


Ridley Scoffs at danger: In which Justin Whalin doesn't come off too bad, but the director of the movie once again comes off as in way over his head, trying to make things work despite a limited budget and dubious directiorial skills. It's obvious that both of them wanted it to be a success, since they were some of the first people involved in the production, and I'm not sure at what point most of the people involved will try to play this down on their CV. Googling doesn't seem very helpful with answering this. I guess that shows they didn't talk about it much after it flopped.


Steal from the rich: Robin hood, robin hood, riding through the glen. Robin hood, robin hood, with his band of men. Feared by the bad, loved by the good, Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Oh yes. This is an interesting setting for a campaign. Although maybe not one that's best suited to D&D, given that the story is notoriously magic light as myths go. Well, it is less than a millennium old, and firmly grounded in a specific period of history. And this first article fills you in on the late 12th/early 13th century period where this would have taken place, if it did happen. It turns out that there were plenty of reasons for people to be pissed off at authority at the time, and sherwood forest wouldn't be a bad place for them to hang out, as it's big enough to hide in, but close to a major trade route to rob from. This article is fairly dry, but it gets the facts across in a compact, system light form, and makes it very clear that people don't just become outlaws in a vacuum. If you want a similar figure to make sense in your campaign, you need to set up an enemy for them to rebel against, and a place it would make sense for them to hide out in. So this is a solid starter to their second theme, that'll hopefully allow them to add more crunchy or fantastical elements in the next articles.


Wolfsheads: And here we get out the shoehorn, and try and fit our topic into 3e rules. Actually, since 3e has a greater selection of martial character types, and fewer alignment restrictions, it probably handles this better than 2e without a load of house ruling and stripping away powers, at least as long as the characters are low level. The expert, commoner and aristocrat classes'll definitely get a good workout here. In addition to the class advice, which is fairly obvious, we also get 4 new feats for people who want to become kickass bowmen, DC guidelines for various trick shots, and rules for using ranged weapons as improvised melee ones. So they're showing you how easily the rules cover these eventualities, and also how feats allow you to break the regular rules, but in very specific ways. (that you quite possibly won't be able to get enough of for your character concept. ) This definitely shows off the strengths of 3e while glossing over the difficulties, which is exactly what they ought to be doing at this point. So once again, they manage to win over my skepticism with enthusiasm and cool stuff.


The great greenwood: We have our time, we have our rules, now for the place. A big sepia toned map of Nottingham, Sherwood forest, and the surrounding environment. Everything is crossreferenced on the grid and easy to find. 23 locations are described, including some that are important to the stories, but off the map. It does feel a bit strange seeing real places that you can still visit today get the mythic treatment, which just goes to show how well grounded the stories are, and likely that there were real world events which inspired them. The UK does have thousands of years of history, which is pretty well documented compared to most of the world, and every village has it's own stories and landmarks that stem from the strange things that have happened in their past. This is vast amounts of plot fodder to a knowledgable DM, and I've pulled ideas from my big book of local myths more than once. So this article is pretty interesting, and has quite a bit of worthwhile information in it, along with a look at how they handle demographics in 3e, which includes a rather higher proportion of mid level characters to go with the much easier advancement rate. For people who were picking the magazine up at the time, before the DMG and MM had been released, there's quite a lot of general information to draw from this issue, and this article plays it's part in that.