Tzor's page

The Koga has noticed a strange quincidence, that most rpgs just seem to ignore half the dice.

Back in the old days a d4 was known as the "cheater's die." It was said that if you threw it just right, you can look like you were rolling it but you would get the result desired. So it was common to roll a d6 along with the d4 just to keep the cheaters honest.

The d10 didn't exist back then but the d20 only had one digit. Sometimes you used marker to identify the 11-20 range, other times you rolled a d6 along with the d20.

Back then all the dice were more or less equally used, but in time 2d6 became a more common damage die than 1d12.

Roleplaying is a simple concept that few people really feel comfortable with. They take it to one extreeme or another. All role play is a combination of strategy and roll, the two have to go together.

I know this is not intitutive but consider combat. (Especially in 3.5E this makes a perfect example.) 2E was notorious for "Roll" playing combat. "I guess I attack. (roll) I hit AC 5. (roll) My damage is 10."

In 3.5E one has to consider strategy. Do I move in to flank? Do I make a full attack or not? Do I risk an AOO by moving or not moving and so on. Tactics are declared but all decisions are in the end made by the impartial die.

The player does not need to know the exact detail of how to wield a weapon, how to avoid people while moving and so on. He or she is always encouraged to add this to flavor text, but in the end it's the impartial die that decides all.

The same is true for role play. Just like there is no simple "I attack" there is no simple "I use gather information." The questions "how" or "where" need always be applied. There are, one could argue tactics in role play as much as there are in combat.

Never the less, it is important not to push the role play too far over so that it becomes a test of the player and not the player's character. The impartial die has to be the final resolver. Just like not everyone is a personal master of the sword, not everyone is a personal master at the art of persusasion, or diplomacy, or intimidation. Declare, declare how, when and where, and then let the impartial die decide the effectiveness of the act ... with appropriate modfiers based on the how, when and where as necessary. Before and or after the roll comes the flavor text.

This is where we get into a odd paradox, after all the flavor text is so much fun. But that's true with combat as well, and who hasn't gone a wee bit over the top in combat descriptions. But in the end neither combat nor role play is completely free form, both are connected to tactic and roll.

Gosh I feel old. Real old. Older than ... well not that old.

To me classic D&D was the game I never played but saw. I started with AD&D 1st edition in 1980. I played each and every edition of AD&D and played the New D&D or 3E and 3.5E.

Classic D&D was a few small paperback books, where elves were a "class."

AD&D, on the other hand was a sophisticated game best played by mature college students. (Until that fateful day when I saw E.T. and thought ... how can kids know the subtlies of ROLE PLAYING. And yes that was in 1E when role playing really was roll playing. My how times have changed.)

Now when I mention "roll" playing I mean the process of character creation where you literally had to use one hundred custom tables taken from whatever third party designer had the time to write them up to make your character. Race, class, height, weight, number of brothers and sisters, family's rank in society, and all that sort of stuff.

The year was 1980. The location was Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the second half of my Freshman year. It was first edition AD&D. The character was a Cleric. Everyone was calling their characters "Joe." Joe Cleric had previously died, so I named him Joe Dominie. He was a cleric of Thor.

I think the question of specific or general settings misses the point completely. In the hobby of model railroading there is a term known as "kit-bashing." Basically you take a kit and from the parts you make something else completely from it.

More or less almost everything is going to require a little "kit-bashing" on the part of the DM to get it into their campaign, even those who run a specific setting, because player interaction may have cause the campaign world to vary from the expected published scenario.

Thus the question is how "kit-bashing" friendly is it? How much work will the DM need to bash it into his or her existing campaign? The more work required by the majority of the DM's the more they won't like it, unless of course they are convinced that the worth is somehow worth it because it is a must have to throw into their campaign worlds.

Does anyone else have a problem in the way that humans are always portrayed as a Goodly race, and Goblinkin are always Evil?

I am reminded of the old saying that it is the winner who always writes the history books. But I think the answer is more complex than that and it has to do a lot with trying not to make things so morally confusing as to make the game no longer enjoyable.

In the first place, humans are neutural, not good. Some are good, and some are evil. Some are the players ally, and some are their enemy. I always have at least one human for a big bad evil guy/gal.

Could there exist good goblins? Sure, I can't see why not! What would good goblins do? Oh probably live in a village, farm crops and herd animals. The only humans they know about are those evil humans who raid their lands, because they are too lazy to raid other human lands. Being good they don't raid other lands, so most good humans who live in villages and who only see evil goblins who raid their lands never see the good goblins and vice versa. And they wouldn't trust each other if they did.

So in other words your view of the world depends on what part of that world you see. Generally you tend to see "them" more as hostile because it's the hostile one that tend to come to you in the first place.

I like the idea, as long as you keep things in perspective. (People get on horses all the time to increase land travel right?) The biggest problem is weight, (which you took into consideration) followed immediately by height. A simple solution would be to take 1/2 the height of the smaller character and add it to the bigger character if the smaller character sits on the shoulder, full height if he stands.

You might be able to walk around in some dungeons that way, but you might have a problem with most dungeon doors and lintels, which might be a bit short for the two to comfortably go through in that configuration.

There is a third problem, staying on the other person's shoulder. Not sure how to handle that, off the top of my head other than with ride checks. I can just see the gnome failing his check and suddenly grappling the barbarian around the eyes to keep from falling off, as the now blinde barbarian steps into the pit of ultimate suffering.

Squares are good because (and really mostly because) rooms tend to be made with 90 degree corners on them. A lot of combat does occur indoors even if you don't always go to the dungeon.

I remember an old rule to use squares indoors and hexes outdoors. I also remember playing so many sci-fi games like Traveller that used hexes that they started to feel genre specific at one point making squares fantasy, hexes sci-fi.

One thing that people forget about rot grubs was that they literally created and promoted an important device for the 1st ed AD&D thief, the ear trumpet. This small bronze tube enable the thief to hear things on the other side of a door without having his ear literally to the wooden door where the rot grub could simply crawl into his ear.

They were nice, but the new creatures in Dungeon/Dragon that cause undeath makes the rot grub seem mild.

I don't recall throat leeches however.

Personally, nothing would scare us more than a simple pool of clear liquid with a silver coin inside. Those were clearly vile traps of instant death!

You know it's strange in my case. My "religion" has never conflicted with D&D. Neither has my "faith." I am an active Roman Catholic, a professed Secular Franciscan, and very active in the Knights of Columbus, an organization of Catholic gentlemen.

I started playing AD&D in college around 1980. Back then the biggest thing against the game was not religious but a badly reported incident that somehow combined AD&D with steam tunnels at a college campus. Live rleplaying and table top role playing often got confused and as a result the game in general was often considered "dangerous."

Organizations that were based on these initial misconceptions lasted for over a decade, and actively crusaded against the hobby under the false belief that the game was responsible for the deaths of some people, typically people close to those in the organization.

Slowly, however, those objections subsided and more and more religious ones started appearing. They increased as D&D went from a college campus game to a high school campus game, and to some extent there may have been valid reasons at the time for some concern, if not from the core books from other books of the genre. I'm not sure Shanrda the Castrator was appropriate cover art for a high school book, although she was certnaly ok for college age adults who were above the legal drinking age at the time.

I should point out that one of the leading publisher of anti gaming material, from a religious perspective, publishes far worse anti-Catholic material than they do anti-D&D. This is a common problem, fear and ignorance is easier to spread if it is covered by a thin vineer of religion. It filters down until well meaning people start taking these bits of misinformation as gospel.

The store has been live for a few weeks now. What do you guys think?

Like it? Hate it? Got a reason?

It's nice. I came. I saw. I used my mastercard.

(Hmm probably better in the original Latin I suppose.)

I found a mini that I haven't seen in over 10 years, and since I originally found it in a bargain bin I didn't know the maker of the mini. (It's the elvin throne from mega mineatures.)

So the final analysis is I like it. Nice selection. And I will probably be buying the plush toys for my various nieces before next Christmas.

I'm going to have to get me a DVD of the movie and watch the scene very carefully. Everyone calls him (I'm assuming he's a him, it could be a lady bunny you know) a "vorpal bunny" but was he really a vorpal bunny, or was he just a jugular biting bunny? The latter could be simulated with a good number of rogue skills. (Sneak attack with bite would do it nicely.)

Bear in mind that Arthur and his knights are ... well I wouldn't even give them a CR1 frankly, one level of an NPC class each and they ought to be grateful. They can't even defeat Frenchmen!

Alas, what I would love to see cannot be seen.

My favorite campaign was Lankhmar.

In one sense I agree and in another I disagree. I really think that Dragon is heading back towards the style of the early 80's when the game was still mostly played by college level students and thus reflected a higher level of overall research.

On the other hand, not everything back then was a good thing, and sometimes not being what you used to be is a good thing. Dragon in the 80's used to be the source for all rule editions to the original AD&D system, so much so that if you were to give edition numbers to the realy editions, you would have to give a minor edition number to AD&D 1st edition with Dragon supplements. Dragon gave us the cantrip (dropped for 2E, but restored to life in 3E) and the Anti-Paladin, or in other words the good and the ugly.

I think that the current Dragon under the current leadership is quickly becomming the same standard that the old Dragon was ... but please no Anti-paladin equivalents.

My own comments on Issue 330

I’ll start out with a brief comment about the cover art. Now I am not familiar with the work of James Ryman, so my comments are of course nit picking to the extreme. I am aware of the effect which actually dates back to before Eberron of bizzare facial tattoos, but a perfect set of teeth? I at least expect a full article on orthodontia spells in a future issue. And the flayer looks like he is wearing a “Robin” mask. Perhaps it really is the boy wonder mind flayer after all?

I liked the article on the Far Realm. The various monsters ranged from OK to good, but all in all this was something one could easily put into any campaign. The Article on the Umbragen was also good. The story “Coming Home” was a very good short story. I realize that not everyone likes short stories in Dragon, but I strongly suggest you should continue such stories on occasion in the future. Assuming, of course, that they are like this story which also takes a number of interesting ideas and plays with them. Living spells is an obvious one, but the notion of loose lava ash and “swimming” under it to get full cover should get light bulbs forming over many a DM’s head.

The Ecology of the Chuul was … well let’s just say that before I read the article I would have thought anyone mad to write an article on the ecology of the Chuul, but afterwards, I might even use them on occasion myself. Bazzar of the Bizarre often lives up to its name, and a few of the items are … well bizarre. Volume Veneficus was also Bizarre in its own way as well. It’s ok by itself, but some of the illustrations from Chuck Lukas really bring the ideas home and make them appealing.

The Jester was interesting and of course I actually like and look forward to Andy’s Sage Advice. Finally I have to make one comment about the only real “April Fool’s Joke” in the issue. (Last fall I was at a local Con and we were doing a funny game where we were playing kobolds – but medium sized ones because the DM didn’t want to be bothered with the size rules. We all got to draw for special feats, and my character at one point got the equivalent of the “Delicious flaw.” He wound up getting killed by one of the other member’s squigs, but at least he was tasty.)

Normally I am not one to rave, but I feel that this is important enough to write down my appreciation for the article in issue #327, “Tomb Raider” by Kyla Ward.

I have been gaming on and off now since around 1980, and the article Tomb Raider brought back the long tradition of Dragon magazine of having articles where real world examples were researched in order to build a firm foundation from which the Dungeon Master and the player alike can build their own fantasy world.

I am not in general a fan of “realism” for the sake of realism, but I also feel that we shortchange our fantasy when we do not take the time to stop and notice the fascinating aspects of the real world. There is a saying that “truth is stranger than fiction,” and I do believe that the best fantasy always begins from the grain of reality.

The “homework” required for this article was indeed impressive. Not only was it diverse but interesting, especially the sidebars. In the current climate where some game designers openly flaunt their lack of understanding of the Latin language, such an article is a sign that Dragon may once again lead the way in the gaming genre.

In Issue 117, under "Prison Mail" you mention that the editorial staff drinks Diet Dr. Pepper in preference to coffee. This reminds me of an old discovery I made over ten years ago.

At that time I worked for a company that had just moved to Key West Florida and had finally settled into a former restaurant. While removing the stuff left over from the former restaurant, I discovered a metal thermometer base (with a working thermometer of course) that had a Dr. Pepper graphic and logo with the slogan, “Dr. Pepper … Hot or Cold.” I was intrigued by the thought of whether this meant that you should drink Dr. Pepper on either hot days or cold days, or whether it was implying that you could actually warm up the beverage and drink it “hot.” I found out that some people actually did heat up the beverage and did in fact drink it warm. I’m not sure you can do that today, and I’ve never tried it myself, but I always thought that was a fascinating bit of trivia.

Personally I think that the key to both a good character and villian is to have something "interesting." If the character has something interesting it can often be the "hook" to hang the character's or villian's actions and adventures off of. The character and villian can better come to life, to be either loved or hated for what he or she does.

Many times people think that having some odd combination of classes and races will make their character or villian interesting ... and if they think that the combination is indeed interesting they have succeeded at their mission!

But sometimes it just makes for an overly complex character.

A character can be interesting in ways other than their base clasess or races. A simple human druid who talks to animals and who calls everything as either his brother or sister might be interesting if played right. Quirks don't have to be flaws per se, but ways of playing the character that makes it interesing for the player and interesting for other players.

That reminds me of my college days, in the early 80's when we used 1st edition. Some players were so crazy at getting magic items that they invented "teeth" of spell storing.

I would just like to say that having these message boards and having the various editors actively posting to these boards is exceptionally fantastic. Combined with the format change (I'm going to hold off on comments on the format change because several different magazines on completely different subjects all changed format around the same time so I've been glossing over the different formats) I think this is a "perfect storm" of success!

And a Post Monster General! A perfect idea!

Understand, however, that the general nature of man is to post a complaint 95% of the time and a complement 75% of the time. (I'm sure it's probably true of fan/hate mail as well.) I'm sure that in time, this will become a very popular resource and hopefully that in turn will help promote what is becomming better and better with each issue!