DRAGON 1 SPECIAL ATTRACTION 49 12 Mutant Manual II Various authors Another collection of GAMMA WORLD@ game creatures 87 OTHER FEATURES 9 Leomunds Tiny Hut Lenard Lakofka Ideas for adding variety to AD&D® game monsters Publisher 2 The role of nature Bruce Humphrey Mike Cook Systems for bringing physical environment into play Editor-in-Chief 22 The ecology of the pernicon John Nephew Kim Mohan Dont let a bunch of these bugs get to you Editorial staff 25 The pernicon: a new version John Nephew Patrick Lucien Price Suggestions for toning it down and tuning it up Roger Moore 28 Cantrips for clerics Arthur Collins Editorial assistance Introducing the orison, 0-level magic for those other casters Eileen Lucas 30 A different design Lisa R. Cohen Making tournament adventures requires a special outlook Art, graphics, production Roger Raupp 36 Agents and A-bombs Thomas M. Kane Kim Lindau The TOP SECRET® game comes of age nuclear age, that is Subscriptions 40 After the blast Roger E. Moore Pat Schultz How to play it right, in case anyones left 42 The plants of Biurndon Eric W. Pass Advertising Creating customized greenery for your campaign Mary Parkinson 62 ORIGINS Awards nomination ballot Contributing editors 68 The Grey Stones Josepha Sherman Ed Greenwood Its whats inside the stones thats really important Katherine Kerr This issue's contributing artists THE ARES SECTION Brian McCrary Larry Elmore David Trampier Joseph Pillsbury 78 High Tech and Beyond James Collins Edward B. Wagner Roger Raupp Globe crackers and smart computers in TRAVELLER® gaming Richard Tomasic James Faulkenberg 81 An Honorable Enemy Gregg Sharp Stephen Hearon Janet Aulisio Oni, the greatest enemy of Japans CHAMPIONS villains Jeff Butler 86 Old Yazirians Never Die Peter C. Zelinski Dave Cockrum Age and aging in the STAR FRONTIERS® game The MARVEL®-Phile Jeff Grubb The humorous side of the Marvel Universe 90 More Mutant Fever John M. Maxstadt Even germs are strange in the GAMMA WORLD® game DEPARTMENTS 3 Letters 66 TSR Profiles 98 Dragonmirth 4 World Gamers Guide 93 Convention calendar 99 Snarfquest 6 The forum 96 Gamers Guide 102 Wormy 64 TSR Previews COVER Hidden Danger has a special status among DRAGON Magazine cover paintings its the only work of art weve ever printed that almost died of old age before it ap- peared. Larry Elmore, the good ol' boy of TSRs art department, offered us this paint- ing as a cover piece a couple of years back. We were glad to get it, and Larry agreed to let us hold onto it as an escape hatch, to be used if our supply of covers ever ran a little low. Well, that hasnt ever happened, but we finally decided it was high time to use it anyway. Now maybe Larry will do another cover for us. Larry? Larry? 2 APRIL 1986 The joke is not on you This issue of DRAGON® Magazine is a concession to those of you who think that April Fools features are a waste of space. the stipulation (on page 46) that these classes This column is dedicated to those of you Modern-day akasa were for humans only, since the regular (lawful who think the opposite. Because of last good) paladin was also originally designed as a years fiasco, we (in other words, yours Dear DRAGON, human-only class. Unfortunately, we neglected to truly) decided not to use any Foolish stuff I found The laws of magic in issue #106 remove all the demi-human references from the in this years April issue. extremely helpful. It has opened new doors for later sections of the manuscript. (Hey, folks, Time does heal all wounds, but the were only human, too.) my campaign plans. I would like to incorporate process is sometimes a slow one. Up until some twentieth century adventures for my players Its pretty easy to tend to the things we forgot; by sending them to a modern world. Conse- just delete references to demi-human members of a month ago, we were still receiving letters quently I have some questions. Does akasa exist these classes wherever they appear: To fix the of outrage and expectation from people in modern times, or has it burned out? If it Race of follower tables, combine the entries for who misunderstood the intent of the face- does, my magic-users and clerics will have magic human and same race as the (whatever) into tious column and the facetious letters to (and metamagic) ability. But what of modern one category with a single die range; for instance, the editor that appeared in issue #96, and people? Can a magic-user teach a twentieth on the myrikhan table a result of 9-18 indicates a who apparently didnt see the apology/ century person to manipulate the akasa? And can human follower. KM retraction in #98. modern clerics receive spells? I dont want to go through anything like Bryan Winter that again, nor do I want to disappoint or Ann Arbor, Mich. Invisible problems distress any of you. I also dont want to The answers to these questions depend on how further irritate the people who thought you define a modern world. Within the context Dear DRAGON, Nogard was a stupid module. (Of of the game, we can call it a parallel world, one of According to the author of the article Seeing course it was stupid. That was the point.) the infinite number of alternate Prime Material is believing (issue #105), About 2 is how far For those of you who enjoy and appreciate Planes that exist in the multiverse of the AD&D® the invisibility extends. If the invisibility extends Foolish stuff, I hope this column will serve game. in all directions, the floor below him would be as an explanation so that you wont have But is a twentieth-century world one in which invisible for 2 down and over at an upward to spend time and effort writing in to ask magic works the same way that it does in the slope. Isnt there a special ruling that he [the why we didnt acknowledge the day like player characters native world? Personally, Id author] should have made about this? If not, say its not. Taking a cue from Robert Schroecks invisibility is useless because when a moving weve usually done. reasoning in The City Beyond the Gate (issue patch of invisibility saunters into a room. it Mean and cruel humor is not funny, #100), you can rule that this particular parallel would take a really dumb monster not to know and weve never purposely indulged our- world is too far removed from the source of akasa something was amiss. selves at the expense of your feelings. But (the PCs home world) and thus is magically Brian Roessler apparently its hard to know in advance null, as Robert put it. Visitors from the PCs New Providence, N . J . what will be seen as cruel humor. Like I home world could use the spells they had stored said in #98, if I thought that anyone in their minds when they made the trip, and they would think that Howe Audacious was might be able (by praying or studying) to regain Dear sirs: a real person, I wouldnt have used that certain spells while theyre there. But natives of Physical invisibility, as described by Seeing is letter. the alternate world cant manipulate the akasa, believing (#105), is caused by bending light either because it doesnt exist, it isnt strong waves around the object so made to vanish. Such It isnt my intention to disappoint any- enough, or they are simply incapable of doing so. a method would undoubtedly cause the recipient one who enjoys funny stuff, and I apolo- Of course, the other view is that (for the sake of to become temporarily blind. This is because no gize to those of you who feel that way. But your version of the game or the sake of whatever light could reach the one rendered invisible. thats the way it has to be . at least adventure youve concocted) magic does work on A similar problem is reached if one considers a until next April. In the meantime, keep this parallel world the same way that it works on substance that renders the subject perfectly and reading and keep smiling. the Prime Material Plane that the PCs came completely transparent, to the extent of eliminat- from. If youre willing and able to make this ing light refraction, as in The Invisible Man by theory work in practice, more power to you. It H.G. Wells. This is because light would pass seems like a mind-boggling task to me, but through the retina unless one considers the Detec- maybe your mind doesnt get boggled as easily as tion of Invisibility Table (DMG p. 60) is for mine does. KM determining of you notice a pair of eyeballs floating about the room. This does not matter if the object is inanimate or if blindness would not normally affect it, but a PC would usually suffer For humans only even more than the monster he is attacking. Erik Burch Dear DRAGON, Stuyvesant, N.Y. In Christopher Woods article on paladins (issue #106), it is said on page 46 that These These and other letters weve received about paladin types are also exclusively human. On the invisibility article demonstrate how difficult it page 55 in the description of the Arrkihan, it can be to describe an imaginary concept in con- mentions halflings and dwarves as eligible in that crete terms. Brian and Erik have made good, class.