Dragon #109 - May 1986

“Attack of the Taer” by Daniel Horne. That fighter is very much speaks of Disney’s The Sword and the Stone animations. It speaks to me.

Customized Classes - Paul Montgomery Crabaugh

Want to play a human fighter/wizard/thief in BECMI? Well now you can. This article details all the rules and ideas you need to pick up various skills from any class? Paul has detailed all the things you need to know for playing any combination of races and classes all together on like three pages. It’s an interesting idea. Is it balanced? I don’t know. But if you are a part of the BECMI revolution that appears to be going on right now, then this might be for you.

The Barbarian Cleric - Thomas M. Kane

Mr. Kane details a new class the barbarian cleric. They get new special rules, new experience charts, and some ideas for using them in game. I’m not sure this is needed, but people like to create new things for the games they play, so why not? It is different enough from a cleric and a druid that makes it an interesting concept. I always like the brown book Complete Book of X series for 2nd edition AD&D with their kit concepts. These type of articles are the beginning of those concepts.

Fighters for a price - James A. Yates

This is a pretty good article on mercenaries. I do enjoy how Mr. Yates lists historical examples of mercenaries throughout history, and not just a list of charts on how to roll them up. You do of course get charts, and they are geared towards AD&D, but there is nothing that would stop you from using them, or basing your own on the information presented herein. I did enjoy reading it.

Worth it’s weight in gold - John Olson

Mr. Olson presents a deep dive in dwarves and beards. Again, I thought it was good article. It presents several ideas that should be canon, and you should add them to your repertoire of dwarves in any game you play.

The Ecology of the Displacer Beast - Bill Mickelson

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I really like these Ecology of articles. This one was clearly not written by Mr. Greenwood, but it follows along the same lines. And it gives some a lot of good information that you just can’t get from the Monster Manual. I particularly like the story of how they captured a displacer beast for magical study later. Always a good adventure hook, if you need one.

The Role of Books - John C. Bunnell

• The Iniate by Louise Cooper

• Shuttle Down by Lee Correy

• The Seekers and the Sword by Micheal Jan Friedman

• Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly

• Where Dragons Lie by R.A.V. Salsitz

• Time of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

• The Warlock Engaged by Christopher Stasheff

• Spinneret by Timothy Zahn

War Machine Revisited - Garry Spiegle

A continuation of the rules presented in D&D Companion Boxed set for the War Machine rules. The War Machine rules were the mass battle rules for the D&D game. TSR also wrote mass battle rules for the AD&D game, called Battlesystem. I haven’t done enough deep diving to know whether the original rules were any good or not. I enjoyed the few games of Battlesystem that I experimented with. If you are into BECMI, these are probably worth checking out. They include ideas for naval battles, some Basic Force Rating cleanup (in the CM1 module, the King has a for BFR of 200, which distorts the entire battle sequence in the module), scouting, and positing of forces. He also details outfitting costs, which is always good idea to know how much it wil cost to raise an army and get it ready for battle.

The Uncommon Tongue - Gregory Anderson

Did your players find a scroll from a far off land, detailing a treasure they want to find? What is the joy in giving them a wonderful looking piece of paper that says Go east, slay the dragon, and gain the treasure? Too easy.

instead

Now they are going to have to do some work to find out what this actually means. Maybe they need to hire a sage, maybe they need to cast some Legend Lore spells, maybe they need to pass an intelligence check to even read it?
This is a pretty good article on how to take some modern english and spice it up for your players.

Locals aren’t all yokels - Ralph Sizer

It always fascinates me when people (presumably from different parts of the country) were writing very similar articles on problems they encountered in the game. Tired of your heroes going all murder hobo and stealing everything in the town? Ok, I don’t actually believe this happened in “real” RPGs back in the day, but it must have, otherwise why would someone write an article on how to deal with it.

The next time they break in to the temple of whatever good goddess exists in your game, make it a High Holy Day, and have the entire clergy be present. Yes, a bunch of 20+ level clerics with a bunch of rare maces are going to have a field day protecting their temple from you PC’s, and it might just be permissible for them to raise the PC’s and torture them for a while. That will put a stop to being disrespectful in town.

Did the article have some good ideas? Yes it did.
Did I find it particularly useful? Not really.

But maybe you play different games than I do.

Blades with Personality - Sam Chupp

This is not the first article about juicing up the magic weapons you give to your PCs, or at least giving them a little more provenance. I don’t know a +1 Sword doesn’t need a history. Not every magic weapon is Glamdring, Sting, or Excalibur, sometimes a sword is just a sword. But that being said, if you want to add a little “personality” to the weapons you give your PC’s, by all means do it.

Giant-sized Weapons - Stephen Martin

I feel like I start everyone of these reviews with some stupid quip, so I won’t do that here, but it is the first thing that comes to mind. Giants have giant sized weapons and should do giant sized damage with them.

I don’t like the idea that a giant can throw different sized boulders, with corresponding differences in the amount of damage they can do. I understand that it does add more realism to the game. They are interesting rules to spice things up a bit, and make giants more or less challenging based on the strength and composition of the party, so they might be useful to you.

Ad time. I never even knew this existed until earlier this year, when Micheal posted it on his shop. I should probably pick these up. I do think these are important in the grand history of the RPG scene. I “think” this is some of the earliest Palladium rpgs that existed. I know they had done some Weapons of books, there is an ad earlier in this issue and in previous issues for them, but I think this was the first RPG they actually published.

Hooves and Green Hair - Bennet Marks

Mr. Bennet adds ideas for half-satyrs and half-dryads. The information is well presented, and I think the two races are interesting. I always like the idea of being a humanoid PC back in the day. The half-races are certainly interesting. You can probably be half-anything in the current iteration of the rules.

Administrator’s Advice - John J. Terra

The hardest part of any DM’s (Administrator/GM/Umpire/etc) is what the heck to do. John describes how to get started as a GM for the Top Secret game from TSR. This game is all about being being James Bond, or Jack Ryan if you are of a younger generation. He explains how to set up an organization (MI:6, NSA, etc). He also helps with the idea of what is possible, versus what is reality. Not every mission must be saving the world from nuclear annihilation, sometimes you just need to help a Soviet agent defect to these United States. He goes on to help with scenarios (use the current news cycle, which was probably more helpful in the 80’s), personalities (which is honestly just a good section for any RPG). He also gives his own Organization (ICICLE) that he uses in his game. While I have no desire to actually play or collect this game, that is a good article. While it highly detailed towards Top Secret, it does have some good nuggets of information that could be used in any RPG.

Valkyrie - W.J. Hodgson

I enjoyed this short story about a valkyrie, one of Odin’s maidens that go around collecting brave warriors for the final battle of Ragnarök.

This quote really struck me. I’m going to jump on my Christian soapbox for a minute. You can tune out or disagree with me as you see fit. I am not a theologian, just an ignorant hick that reads his Bible, and believes that Jesus was born of a virgin, live a sinless life, was the Son of God, died on the cross, was raised three days later, and He will come and take me to a real place called Heaven when I die.

To make anything higher than God, is to make that thing our god. I am one hundred percent guilty of this. John says there is sin that leads to death, I have no idea what that is, but all sin separates us on some level from God. And one of those things is making something more important in our life than God, himself.

“Stick and stones might break our bones, but words will never hurt us” as we used to say in elementary school. In this day and age, all kinds of people are called all kinds of names. I myself have been called racist, Nazi, misogynist, etc. Why allow a cruel man’s words to take us from our primary focus, which should be God.

/off soapbox.

Honestly, this was probably the best short story I have read in Dragon magazine in a long while. It spoke to me, maybe it will speak to you.

Fighting the Good Fight - Stefan Jones

I have never heard of Space Opera game. Apparently it is more geared towards mass battles, which is makes it a thing I want to look more into, since I collect mass battle rules. I love them. I love reading them, I love seeing what people are thinking.

This article is trying to make the combat more focused on single characters like the various TSR RPGS. I thought they were decent rules, but I do see them bogging down combat quite a bit. If you want more realistic fighting sequences in your space combat game, these might be what you are looking for.

Patriots, Terrorists, and Spies - Kim Eastland

Subtitled “More Frontier cults for Star Frontiers gaming”, I think this gives you everything you need to know. You could take anyone of these and turn them into a very large campaign. Some interesting ideas here, and they could be useful for any number of rpgs, not just space based. I wouldn’t mind taking a few of them and churning out some campaigns for Stargrave. There isn’t a lot of things here, but the cults are fleshed out enough to give you some good background, and allow you to iterate from there.

The Double-Helix Connection - Micheal Brown

Mutants in Traveller, a pretty good primer on how to incorporate mutants in your game. You get a d66 series of mutations to give your PC’s. There are some ideas on how to incorporate them into your campaign, and a detailed list of the mutations.

A Change of Diet - Tom Adams

Are you tired of playing regular old humans/muties in Gamma World? Why not give them a mutation that makes them into vampires? or militant Vegans? There is not a lot of substance here, but it could give your character some more depth, and allow for some interesing roleplaying.

The Keys to Good SF - Sherri Gilbert

A discussion on how to make your sci-fi games more than people go to earth, and find things, and do things. Spice it up some, different alien races (like centaur-like creatures), different ecology (like purple plants). Ok, I’m being a bit mean. I enjoyed this article, but I’m not sure how much I really got out of it. Your experience might differ.