Dragon #111 - July 1985

This is a Denis Beauvais piece that I think is entitled “The Conflict”. In the Letters page, Kim Mohan mentions that put two kinds of art on the cover “fine art” and “game art”. This is called a fine art piece. Lovely piece and no nudy ladies…

Buy Me A Coffee

I usually don’t like new magic items as presented in various RPG magazines. They are usually, turn a wand into a ring, turn a ring into a staff, etc. They don’t excite me. They don’t add to the game. This article presents a new magic item that did excite me. Instead of giving away new rings of protection, scrolls with the same old spells, the author has a novel idea to give the wizard a magic item that allows them to convert spells to other spells.

So you have a ring of fireball transmutation, but what is that you ask? Simple, it is a ring/bracelet/jewel/whatever, that allows you take any 3rd level spell you have memorized, and cast a fireball instead. This allows the magic user to memorize other spells that they might want to cast, but when confronted with a horde of orcs, the wizard is no longer at their mercy, instead of that dispel magic he had memorized he can just vaporize the orcs. He still can only memorize one spell at 3rd level, but it does add some versatility to his repertoire.

You can add as many different items as you see fit in the campaign, I think making some rings of destructive spells is probably the best use of these items.

He also presents the idea of a ring of fire spells, or Bigby’s spells. A ring of fire spells, would allow you to convert any spell from any level into a fire spell. So you could convert that magic missile to a flaming hands, you could convert that clairaudience to fireball, etc. There is no limit to what you might invent.

Read the article, the idea evergreen, works for any game you want to play.

This was another great article in this issue. Miss Helfenstein details a pretty good city with ideas for all the different classes. The idea of a city you can drop into any campaign world, that is decently fleshed out, is a treat to read. She details how the churches fit into the city, she adds a druidic park, ideas on how fighter classes fit into the city and its hierarchy, there is even talk about how thieves can fit in for both good and ill.

Who can make a better lock than a thief? What would wizards do if they set up shop? Read this article to get ideas on how you can make your own Ankh-Morpork, or Lankhmar.

Interesting historical artifact about the new periodical, Dungeon Magazine. How to write adventures, what they are looking for, editorial remarks about writing. Obviously, the magazine no longer exists, but the ideas presented here have long out-lasted it. I think it is worth reading if you have any interest in trying to publish modules for various RPGs.

This issue is chock full of good articles. Mr. Roosa details how campaigns can get out of control, and how to get them back on track. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is required for new DM’s, but it is highly recommended.

We reach what is in my mind, the first dud article of this issue. What if you ran out of monsters to throw at the PC’s, and decided to make single celled organisms the main protagonist, but on a giant scale? The article is well thought out, the monsters are well described. I just don’t see any point in using them. Your mileage may vary. Read it, use them if you wish.

• Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold! written by Terry Brooks

• The Curse of Sagamor written by Kara Dalkey

• Yonder Comes the Other End of Time written by Suzette Haden Elgin

• Witch Blood written by Will Shetterley

• The Cross-time Engineer written by Leo Frankowski

• The Unicorn Quest written by John Lee

• Interstellar Pig written by William Sleator

This is a murder mystery adventure. I enjoyed my read through of it, but I’m not sure I would play it. It is one of those tournament adventures that they publish from time to time. It does accentuate the idea of real time play. You have four hours to get to the end and figure it out. This is one of those adventures where the characters don’t matter, but the players do. If they do not like solving problems, they will not like this adventure. I felt like I knew the answer after reading the synopsis. Interesting idea.

All about grenades in Top Secret rpg. Interesting information. Worth using if you were to actually play it.

Not the best short story every published in Dragon. I didn’t really like it, your mileage may vary. The idea is what happens when a Conan the Barbarian is magically transported to Yale Library? Read on to find out.

How do you handle Omega level characters in a superhero game? A good primer on the Phoenix Force. This article does not do a good job of trying to help you use an Omega level character. The premise is, if they do bad things, and use all their powers at once, they become NPCs, or else you can throw thousands of Sentinels at them. I’m not saying it was a bad article, but I don’t feel it accomplishes the main mission. How do you design adventures for the most powerful characters in the game.

An article on Villains & Vigilantes describing Maxima. Another article that is supposedly about handling the greatest of the superheros. And again, it just falls down. Make villains to fight each hero individually. Fine, that sounds great in theory, but in practice? This set of articles needs more to it.

Ahh, Kryptonians. How do you handle Kryptonians? Again, you don’t really handle them. This article has better ideas, help a developing nation from starving to death. How does Supergirl alter the climate so that food growing is practical, and what kinds of villains would oppose her? Eh, I see why superhero games never made it as big as more traditional RPGs.

Maybe this is why the new Supergirl movie was so bad? I don’t know, I didn’t watch it.

A whole page dedicated to Longshot. My only recollections of Longshot are from the X-Men cartoon from the 90’s and in mobile video game Marvel Contest of Champions (where he is quite good). I do enjoy this quick dives into various Marvel characters, their stories, their backgrounds, and their powers.

Another take on how to make your campaigns for high powered heroes. This time the premise is make the heroes power levels variable based on the campaign’s needs. And again, I don’t like this idea. It’s an idea, but I just don’t like it.

This week your hero is Spiderman who is saving the city from Doc Ock, the next week your hero is Superman saving the earth from an alien invasion, the next week your hero is the Beyonder saving the entire universe from some cosmic entity that wants to destroy it.