Dragon 274, Part 2

We continue our exploration of the first 3e Dragon Magazine with...a Random Adventure Generator. Well, we haven't seen one of those since the 1e DMG, so we're definitely going old-school here. But this is much different from the 1e version, which just let you randomly roll up a map of a dungeon and randomly stock it. This...this is the storyteller version of that. Instead of randomly determining where the PCs are going as they explore, this generator gets villains, victims, obstacles, rewards...as I said, it's telling a story in adventure form. So, not as old-school as I initially thought.

Then we have the fiction. Dragon Magazine almost always included a short story of some sort, mostly by unknown (at the time) authors, but they had some big names show up as well such as Fritz Lieber and Gardner Fox, not to mention lots of Dragonlance stories over the years. This time around we have another big name in sci-fi/fantasy literature: Ben Bova. I'm not familiar with his work, but I certainly recognize the name. This story is about someone named Orion who is a squire to a young King Arthur...and who also fought at Carthage and Cathay centuries earlier. Okay, then. I get the sense that this is a recurring character in his writing. Anyway, this is a short story about Arthur and his knights trying to rid the British Isles of the Angles and other barbarian invaders (as well as the Scottish Celts). There's this all-powerful being called Aten who wants Arthur dead, so that's a plot thread that hovers over the rest of the narrative. It's a pretty good story, although I think I would have liked it more if I'd known more about Orion from previous writings.

More ads and comic strips, and then we get The Bestiary, specifically Beasts of the Pomarj. Yes, we're getting new monsters two months before the Monster Manual arrives. These are specific to the Pomarj region of Greyhawk, which ties in nicely with the Greyhawk deities and implied setting of the Player's Handbook. These are low-level critters, of course; no CR-15+ beasties here to plague characters with. This also means they can be used in games right away, if the DM wants to include them in his latest adventure.

So, we have the grimorian, a four-legged reptilian beast that weighs about 500 pounds. They're not very fast, but they have a nasty bite which can cause disease in their victims (assuming they aren't eaten by the grimorian first). Next is the raknakle, a fey creature that can gaze people into being unlucky, as well as use dimension door at will. They're also good at throwing rocks, and have some druidic spell-like abilities to use on victims. They're not evil, but they aren't pleasant, either.

The skerath is a foot-long insect with black fur and red underbellies. They have poisonous stingers, and are quite quick. Oh, and they can cast mirror image on themselves as long as they are in flight. Well, it's not technically cast, but it's a spell-like ability that makes it tougher to target them. Finally we have the skittermaw, which looks like, and I quote, 'an upside-down severed spider's head'. Well, then. I'm going to call that 'gross'. They have multiple attacks (four tentacles and a bite), can project panic into their victims' mind (usually while holding them with those nasty tentacles), and their blood is poisonous. Nasty little critters, all of them.

We're coming into the home stretch now. Ed Greenwood graces us with another article, this one just a fluff piece on the Forgotten Realms (aren't they all?) about the 'Stag Lass', presented by Volothamp Geddarm, better known simply as Volo. He describes a rite from the Waterdeep region which has the usual suggestive (but not raunchy) content that Ed is known for.

The Forum is next; this was a second Letters column geared toward ongoing discussions and even debates that would go on for several months as responses to previous letters would be printed, and rebuttals would follow, etc. Online forums completely replaced this, of course. But at the time, it was still a big part of the magazine. However, my interest in the Forum column this months is the introduction of sidebars called 'Power Plays'. These are ways to use the rules to create interesting and unusual characters. All totally legal, but plenty of outside-the-box thinking. For example, a wizard can throw a grease spell on an area, then the fighter with the Improved Bull Rush feat can shove an opponent onto that greased area, making the fight much more difficult for the victim. A cleric can cast imbue with spell ability on a wizard with an Item Creation feat and allow that wizard to create an item that uses clerical magic (such as a potion of healing). Things like that make for some interesting characters.

Role Models is a column that focuses on miniatures, something I never had any interest in.

Ah, Sage Advice. There are a lot of questions about the new game (almost certainly from playtesters, if they aren't simply 'questions' written by Skip Williams himself in order to clarify some rules), as well as some more of those Power Play sidebars. I like the one about the 'World's Fastest Haflling', with a Dex of 20 and 4 ranks in Jump and Tumble. He gets +9 to those two skills and doesn't draw attacks of opportunity while bouncing around the battlefield. Gain one more level, and those skills jump to +12 due to synergy bonuses. Nice stuff.

Dungeoncraft was a long-running series in Dragon that talked about building a campaign from scratch. However, this month the focus is on running game sessions and how to improve the play experience using different methods to describe what is happening, and there are still Power Play sidebars as well.

Silicon Sorcery is about computer games and how to possibly incorporate pieces of them into your D&D game. This month the focus is on the new game Pool of Radiance: Attack on Myth Drannor. I personally loved the original Pool of Radiance game back in the ancient times. I haven't seen this one at all, so I can't speak to how it plays. But it's a D&D-based game anyway, and there are several magic items that can be thrown into your game taken from AoMD.

And...that's it. There you have it, the very first 3e Dragon Magazine is wrapped up. I'm glad I managed to snag a copy at a great price; I hope I'll get more like that as this project continues. So, next up is the first issue of the Living Greyhawk Journal, #0.