khyron1144's page

khyron1144 wrote:

10) More likely to get you accused of being a Satanist when read in public (especially at school) than a laptop (true storry, but it involved the Mage: the Ascension 2nd edition rulebook rather than an issue of Dragon, but it happened).

Holy crap, this happened to you too? I got my M:TA at my birthday party from a friend of mine and my mom nearly fainted!

Yeah. Two stories, I think they're kind of funny now, but I was at least a little dismayed at the time.

1) I went to a charter school, West Michigan Academy of Environmental Science, during my tenth-grade year. A charter school is a public school, but out of the city's regular public school system or something. It's a hard concept to explain, especially because I don't fully understand it. They're a kind of a new idea in my state.

One important thing about it is that often, class sizes, as in over-all number of students are often a bit smaller. That was true in this case. I was one of about thirty tenth-graders. I knew everybody in this class by face and name at least and was decent friends with at least two or three.

I am a real bookworm. I always have a book with me when I leave my house. I am a gamer. Much of my reading is game rulebooks.

I left my house with the Mage: the Ascension 2nd edition rulebook and headed off to the West Michigan Academy of Environmental Science one fine morning. At some point during the day, one of my classmates, a girl named Austin, asked me what I was reading and I showed her the book. She looks at it and flips to a random page, one with an example on it about coincidental vs. vulgar magick involving using a lightning bolt coming out of the tv set to strike down an enemy. After looking at it for a few minutes, Austin says, so are you a Satanist?

2) I went to a family reunion picnic pig roast at a great aunt's farm. I brought along my recently acquired Mosnter Manual II (1e). A very distant relative, I don't know from anybody, sees what I'm reading and tells me that D&D is Satanic, leads to suicide, etc. and so on.

Now that I've done that, let's mention a positive experience and one that involves Dragon magazine:

That charter school hit financial troubles at the end of my tenth-grade year, so I was back in the big city's public school for my neighborhood, Union, the next year. I was one of hundreds of students again. That year my American History teacher had a student teacher.

I was reading a recently acqired 1e era back issue of Dragon that had an article on the Suel Pantheon of Greyhawk one day, while waiting for class to start, and the student teacher asks what I'm reading. I show him the Dragon and he looks at it, and says: "I think I have one from around then, I remember that pantheon."

So after that, he and I would occasionally talk game stuff.

khyron1144 wrote:

1) Even $8 is not Earth-shatteringly expensive.
2) That relatively-speaking inexpensiveness allows me the freedom to just throw a few into my backpack for a long road trip or whatever and not worry about it.
3) They roll up well for swatting stuff (flies, younger siblings, naughty pets, etc.).
4) Just so you don't think I'm a sadist, I was kidding on the pets.
5) If you didn't get the current issue yet, you can buy one during a road trip, if said trip includes a mall with a Borders.
6) How are they going to do a a letter column in a pure digital format? As a published Dragon letter-writer, this is a concern for me.

You Forgot

7) Easier to read a Magazine while on a toilet then a Laptop.

:-p

True.

8) Easier to read on bus during commute than a laptop.
9) Generates more interesting conversations when read in public (or at school) than a laptop would.
10) More likely to get you accused of being a Satanist when read in public (especially at school) than a laptop (true storry, but it involved the Mage: the Ascension 2nd edition rulebook rather than an issue of Dragon, but it happened).

Just came across this interview with Liz Schuh, WotC Brand Manager for D&D on the end of the print versions of Dungeon and Dragon on an industry website:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/10496.html

Thoughts, anyone?

from the above site:

I'm sure there are probably five or 10 people out there who are Luddites who prefer the portability or the experience of reading a print rather than on the Web, what do you say to them?

I think it's important to note that we're not moving away from printed product at Wizards. That is going to remain the bedrock of our business, it always has been, and it always will be. We're going to put out lots and lots of printed products. For people who prefer ink on paper, they'll always have a wide variety of choices.

Yes, I am a luddite to the extent that I prefer books in the real world over PDFs on my computer, CDs in the real world over MP3 on my computer and Heroclix, D&D, and Magic: the Gathering with real human players in the real world over electronic entertainments (not to say I don't own plenty). I think they underestimate numbers.

While there may be printed options, they will largely be in the realm of $30 skinny hardcover books and not a magazine. One of the wonderful things about Dungeon and Dragon as printed magazines is that:
1) Even $8 is not Earth-shatteringly expensive.
2) That relatively-speaking inexpensiveness allows me the freedom to just throw a few into my backpack for a long road trip or whatever and not worry about it.
3) They roll up well for swatting stuff (flies, younger siblings, naughty pets, etc.).
4) Just so you don't think I'm a sadist, I was kidding on the pets.
5) If you didn't get the current issue yet, you can buy one during a road trip, if said trip includes a mall with a Borders.
6) How are they going to do a a letter column in a pure digital format? As a published Dragon letter-writer, this is a concern for me.

I'm gonna miss it. I've been an on and off newstand buyer of Dragon since #200. Just this past year, I finally had enough money to subscribe, and they are cancelling the magazine while I have one issue left on my subsription. Oh, well at least it isn't an even later subscription with even more issues that will never arrive.

It reminds me of DC's decision to drop letter columns from their comics because they've been "replaced" by messageboards, only bigger and stupider.

I love Dragon. I've even gone to the trouble of tracking down used back issues from the 1e era at local comic shops. Oh well, at least that can still be done.

I like some web-based content, like the web-enhancements relating to books, I've bought, but there is no possibility of a pure digital magazine replacing the printed version in my loyalties and affections. I know it's dead trees, but somehow actually holding either a new issue that I just pulled out of my mailbox and tore the shrink wrap off of or even a new old issue, I found hidden in a comic shop, is a great thrill.

khyron1144 wrote:

They're okay. A lot less fun than Slaad, and not inherently silly as Death Sheep and Killer Spruce Trees are.

Which is why you'll never see those latter two creations in an April issue of Dragon for as long as Erik is in charge. ;D

How long's he gonna be in charge given recent announcements regarding Dragon's tranition to a new incarnation (ie. death)?

After having read this April issue of Dragon thorouhly, I liked it, but found it as disappointing in terms of humor as I had previously stated.

That depends greatly on how you feel about modrons...

They're okay. A lot less fun than Slaad, and not inherently silly as Death Sheep and Killer Spruce Trees are.

Now that a new April issue has come out it is time for the thread necromancer to hit this thread.

I've been away from home for a while and haven't seen my subscription copy that is doubtless awaiting my return, but I did stop at a major bookstore and give the issue a thorough look-through.

My feeling is that it looks like an excellent over-all issue of Dragon that is a lousy April issue. It doesn't even have one humor piece; at least last year we had The Ecology of the Adventurer.

Depending on the definition of use I've been working on a Thrall of Malcanthet (from this month's Dragon) that has levels in Jester and Battle Dancer more to learn a little about theoretical character optimization than to really try to play.

Thrall of Malcanthet is very interesting as a class. It's getting a lot of buzz over on wotc's Character Optimization board:
here
here
and here.

I got mine last week Thor's Day.

I have not read any of China Mieville's work yet, but have to say this was a cool issue of Dragon anyway.

I'd like to see more worlds get this treatment, but most of the ones I really like are out already by a d20 licensee (Conan, Thieve's World, Lankhmar), or have their own game (Cthulhu, Elric), or have been GURPS world books sometime (River World, Disc World) or are more likely suited to d20 Modern/ d20 Future rules (Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy, Asimov's Robots-Galactic Empire-Foundation series).

Now that the letter in the first post has actually run in Scalemail does anyone have any new/old comments?

Oh and thanks for running my letter. It's a real thrill.

Because the theme of horror is directly relevant to and useful in 95% of D&D games. Comedy is a lot harder to pull off, both in the magainze and in the game. I will actually use stat blocks for the creatures printed in the halloween issue; I won't be putting jello monsters or red bellied pun people that receive face time in April in my game anytime soon.

I have run a game that did include Jello monsters, Death Sheep, and Killer Spruce trees. It was satyisfying to all participants. I recommend that you try it sometime.

It's apples and oranges. If we're going to do April Fool's, how about Christmas? We could have stats for Santa's elves, a write up of his sleigh, and maybe a magic spell allowing travel through chimmney's.

That would be awesome. You have inpired me. I'm going to start work on this now.

Halloween is about monsters and things that go bump in the night. So is D&D. That overlap is worth exploring. The overlap between D&D and every other holiday known to (American) man, is not.

I have to admit that Flag Day, Arbor Day, and Sweetest Day issues of Dragon do sound rather bland or wrong, but D&D is a game. Games are about fun. Nothing says fun like Death Sheep.

Anyways it isn't every holiday. It has been tradition since before the ten or more years that I have been following Dragon pretty regularly to make April the funny issue of Dragon and October the scary issue of Dragon. I think it's wrong to ignore or tone down this tradition. If it's good to have an October issue that's got at least four scary articles, why on all the infinite planes would it be good to have an April issue with exactly one funny article?

Here is the body of a letter I just sent to scalemail:

Dear Sirs and Madams invovled in the wonderful publication known as Dragon,
I picked up issue 348 last week and have to say I am much pleased.

In a previous letter of mine, which was printed in issue 345 (I've gotta say it was thrill to see my name in print in Dragon), I said that I always look forward to the April/ April Fool's issue and the October/ Halloween issue of Dragon.

Here's what I like: it was a good issue of Dragon (lots of useful, nifty gaming content) and at the same time a good Halloween issue of Dragon (lots of scary, useful, nifty gaming content).

In the past, I wondered when Core Beliefs would start bringing on the bad guys. "Core Beliefs: Vecna" was an excellent start to what I hope is a continuing trend: fleshing out the bad guy groups in detail as rich as they deserve. I loved it.

"Bestowed Curses" was a nifty little goody. The existing effects in the rulebooks for curses feel more than a little dry. This added some much needed flavor.

"Bloodlines" was nice. No DM has enough monsters, and three new vampire templates are a welcome addition.

As for "Horrors of the Daelkyr", I don't really know much about Eberron, so much of the specific details of the flavor was lost on me, but I have to say: What DM can't use six new ugly monsters?

"Ecology of the Wight" was another excellent entry in the new Ecology Of series, but if you're going to mention the real world history of the Wight and The Saga of Grettir the Strong, then perhaps you might mention the article in issue #210 or #198 (I can't remember off the top of my head) that contained D&D stats for that sort of wight.

One thing I miss from the old days is the just about annual inclusion of a Call of Cthulhu article in October. I remember particularly the ones in #s 198, 210, and 222, mostly because they were from around when I started reading Dragon regularly.

Thanks for your time,
JustiN Taylor of Walker, MI
(The N at the end of JustiN is intentional; if you run this letter, please pay attention to that)

Why am I putting it up here already?
There's one issue that I'd like to expand on a bit.

I think most letters regardin 348 will be rather like mine praising the creators involved for sticking to the traditional October Horror and Undead theme pretty much throughout. Why aren't more people disappointed when the April issue is light on the Humor theme?

I personally like sigs. If nothing else they give me a place to plug my messageboard on the other cool kids's messageboards.

PMs are nice too.

I'm rather eh about smilies and animations and graphics in sigs. They don't bug me overly much, but I don't use them and they add little to the experience for me.

I know I'm going on a trip to Chicago soon. This is from my West Michigan home at least a two hour ride, if not more. So I decided to pick up some potential reading material for the trip. I went to a local comics and games store and picked up some issues of Dragon. The issues I chose were #201, #214, #248, and #262.

In a recent, perhaps the most recent, issue of Dragon a reader wrote in saying that the recent 30th anniversary issue of Dragon ended up in his bathroom reading material stack along with his girlfriend's Cosmo and so on, rather than being something he had to bring to the game table.

The reason I am likely to bring 2e Dragons along with me on a road trip is probably similar. They stand up to rereading. I like the current Dragon enough that I sent in my subscription card a couple weeks ago, so I'm not knocking the job you guys are doing now, but I suspect there's a reason (well two or three reasons once you add in age and the difference between staples and perfect binding) why my older Dragons are often cover-less and kind of ragged looking and my 3e Draogns are in fairly decent shape.

One thing that I believe adds to the rereadability of older Dragons is the presence of the reviews column. Don't ask me why, but a review can be an interesting read in and of itself. It's especially interesting to read a review that I think may have helped me decide to buy a particular sourcebook again after I have the sourcebook and see how my thoughts on it agree or disagree with the reviewer.

Other factors include the balance of fiction to gaming content and game articles without actual statistics. I like the Voyage of the Princess Ark and Three Wizards articles in old Dragons because the story is very readable and then after the story is the game mechanics for a new D&D PC class or spells or whatever. I also fondly remember things like "The GM's Ten Commandments", "The Neutral Point of View", and "History of a Game That Failed".

Lol, I remember some years where the April issue was so far out there none of us were, and still dont know, if anything in any April issue is real or just pulling our dice bags.

I don't know what you mean by for real vs. just pulling our dicebag.

To me a monster is for real if it has hit dice, an armor class, attacks per round and damage figures, and EXP value/ CR

Does it matter if it's a Norker, a Goblin, a Chocolate Golem, or a Death Sheep?

This year's April issue of Dragon fetl a little light on the game-able humor content. On the one hand, "Ecology of the Adventurer" was a great laugh. On the other hand, the kobold feats sidebar while funny, did not include anything that would be likely to be incorporated into even a silly game.

I just picked up issue 343 at the Borders in Brighton on my way back home from a road trip to detroit.

The monsters in Creature Catalog 5 look great. I would have bought this issue just for the norker alone. How did the norker fail to get included in both Wizrds' Fiend Folio (3rd edition era) and Necromancer's Tome of Horrors? It's one of a very small number of beasties from the Fiend Folio (1st edition era) that I can use without laughing.

Valegrim wrote:

I would like to see more on the Demon Lord of Gnolls and Ghouls; like how the heck did that happen. hehe is he the lord of off evil things starting with G is he gonna fight with kotchitie to take over the giants? I haven't seen any 3.5 stats for him, but he was one of the wimpier 1st end demon lords; how did this mob get to be a lord anyway. He figured fairly strongly in my game years ago when my pc's were fighting lots of gnolls and hmm ghouls then finally battled and defeated him. Gnolls and ghouls are a lot tuffer now as they can have classess added to their profiles; would like to see this guy figure as a prominent demon lord.

Yeenoghu? the story goes that he was just the lord of gnolls until he subverted The King of Ghouls and took over their rulership. i *think* you'll find that information back in the original 1st edition Monster Manual...

This discussion of Yeenoghu reminds me:

The Book of Vile Darkness didn't have a Thrall of Yeenoghu prestige class. To me that alone should make him a viable candidate for a Demonomicon article.

The one I really want to see is Abraxas of his interesting real-world history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_lord_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

according to that, he was Mentioned in Monster Manual II (1983), page 35.

Yes. That list on page 35 of Monster Manual II was what I was referring to.

Dear Sebastion...sorry about the eyes....I'll never use that abbreviation again.......it's funny you should mention K.O.T.D.T though.....that strip, altough well written, actually depressed me to read it. I just found it's general flavour to be equal parts pettiness and patheticness.

If it was a real campaign you'd find me scidaddling off to play the Zogonia campaign or even in the Dork realms....

I loved KotDT because it reminds me of my own pathetic gaming groups. Two very high-strung min-maxers, a fairly normal person or two, and me. My own characters were either quiet, because I'm quiet, and plotting against other party members, because I wanted to "win", or very over the top weird.

Why did I stay?

Because it was the only game in town.

no Yuggoloths

You mean Daemons.

Why? Why? Why? is this the only stupid 2e terminology change to survive completely intact? Yes, the terms Tanarri and Baatezu are unfortunately still slightly in use in 3e, but the heading at the top of the page in the MM is still Demon or Devil. Why did no one kill the Yugoloth and bring back Daemons?

I enjoy all of the strips currently in Dragon, but Order of the Stick is just okay rather than excellent. Nodwick used to be funnier but is still good.

I miss the old Dragon Mirth one panel gags format, but I suspect either no one remembers it or else consider one page strips superior.

I think there should be rust monster variants that eat cloth, wood - with a preference for worked and treated wood, paper - like scrolls and books, glass and pottery which might give you interesting results from monsters drinking your potions or target pcs who carry most of the potions. Disenchanters; a beast that came out of Dragon a few years back; are good compliments to this beast in dungeons, they invoke about the same reactions.

Many moons ago, when the goal of the April issue of Dragon was to have funny content you could take to the game table, there was a parody Monstrous Compendium. One monster featured therein was a paper dragon that ate scrolls and burped the spells back at PCs.

Put one of those, a disenchanter, and rust mosnter in the same dungeon and you have the Ultimate Fun Dungeon (for DMs).

I seem to remember the name Abraxas on one of the lists in the MM II, but without stats.

I don't think he's a likely bet for showing up soon, but I would love to see something about Abraxas in D&D because of his interesting real-world and literary history.

Abraxas' name is where the nonsense stage magician's magic word abracadabra came from.

Abraxas has also popped up in literature too, in Paradise Lost, if I remember rightly.

They had a feature in the recentish past called A Novel Approach that was about trying to make gaming use of non-gaming books.

Unfortunately (well it was unfortunate in my opinion), they chose to take an Approach similar to Silicon Sorcery rather than Giants in the Earth.

It was cool to see an article about Dune in Dragon, but it was disapointing to see monster stats for something kind of like a guild navigator instead of character stats for Paul Atreides.

It was very funny, but it would have been better if it was more like a regular ecology, such as including a sidebar that mentions the Adventurer's first appearance was in the AD&D Monster Manual by Gary Gygax as one of the entires under the very scary heading of Men (worse than Devils to a Kobold, Men are).

I read this about the same time I picked up a copy of the 2nd edtion Complete Book of Humanoids (you know, in 2e PC Kobolds got no ability score bonuses and some penalties). Together they made me decide that in my campaign world, one of the right hand beings of my Grandfather of Assassins will be a 14th level Kobold Assassin.

I am not the sort of person who looks over a new book automatically for errors and/or too powerful rules-hackery, however I must say that if one applies the Unseelie Fey Template to the Tibbit race and takes the right classes and feats you might get something more powerful than the Level Adjustment of +0 would indicate.

This might just be a case of something that might need to be errata-ed, but the Unseelie Fey template does not list a modifier to CR or level adjustment. The example gnome to which the template has been applied seems to be of the standard +0 levle adjustment after the template has been applied. I feel this implies the Unseelie Fey template has a level adjustment of +0 relative to the base creature.

An Unseelie Fey Tibbit would have a +4 DEX mod, and a +2 CHA mod right? It will have a -4 STR mod and -2 CON mod to offset these. The Unseelie Fey Tibbit with one level in Battle Dancer and one level in Jester could have an unarmored AC about as good as a moderately armored FIghter, Barbarian, Ranger, or similar, and probably only slightly worse than a heavily armored Fighter.

Anybody else have any thoughts?

If they go with a planar sequel as hinted at in the intro and elsewhere, I'd have to say "The Nine Hells" from issues 75 and 76 would be most awesome.

What I'd really like is something along the lines of: Dragon Compendium II (or higher; I'm willing to wait) presents the Monster Manual IV (an all monster book, but maybe with some ecologies and some of those old articles that were mostly theory/fluff about things like African monsters [I remember the crunch portion of that article was called "Gaming The Dark Continent"], and something from that Halloween series that provided folklore on undead I remember installments ran in issues number 198 and 210 and provided some cool insight into what a lich or a wight is).

Thanks for the help.

What prompted this thought was my recent acquisition of issue #144 from my wonderful local used book store/comics specialty store/RPG stuff store. This was another April issue with lots of interesting humor, some of which, like the Outrages from the Mages installment, can be used in a game if you like.

After doing some figuring the Monstrous Compendium parody mentioned in my first post is almost definitely from issue #156. That is where Killer Spruce Trees, Deeth Sheep, Blink Wooly Mammoths, and a vareity of other nifty funny monsters can be found.

I have noticed over the years that there has been a decline in the number of humor articles in the April issue of Dragon that can be used at the game table:

Good example from the older eras of Dragon include The Crazed Book of Mog from issue 204, the Planescape Factions from issue 216, and the Monstrous Compendium parody from issue 132 (I'm uncertain on that number).

It's not to everyone's tatse I guess, but it's one issue a year, and I for one think the game is actually poorer for a lack of Pelf's Rancid Arrow spells, Wizardesses of the Black Teddy, Killer Spruce trees, Chocolate Golems, and Death Sheep.

Can anyone confirm (or for that matter refute) that issue number 198 was the last issue to have a Marvel-Phile column for the old FASERIP Marvel Super Heroes System?

I remember seeing a few Saga system Marvel-Philes sometime after this (I would say somewhwere around issue 224 or later), but no old-sysem Marvel-Philes in the issues I have past 198.