Dragon Magazine #132
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CONTENTS Issue # 132 Vol. XII, No. 11 April 1988 SPECIAL ATTRACTION 49 ORCWARS! Bruce A. Heard A game of looting and world conquest, for the orc in all of us. OTHER FEATURES 6 Bazaar of the Bizarre Stewart Wieck At last, the ultimate hack-n-slash weapon: the one-and-only chainsword. Publisher 8 Role-playing Reviews Jim Bambra Mike Cook Bust ghosts. Party with aliens. Serve The Computer. But most of all, have fun. 16 Beyond the Gate of Dreams John Nephew Editor There are some adventurers for whom dreams come true always. Roger E. Moore 24 Resourceful Sorcery Michael DeWolfe Some RUNEQUEST® game advice: First, you catch a spirit. Assistant editor Fiction editor Robin Jenkins Patrick L. Price 28 With All the Trappings Gregg Sharp If you care enough to give the very best, give em green slime in a spiked pit. Editorial assistants 38 Let the Good Dice Roll Scott David Gray Eileen Lucas Barbara G. Young Probability tables can bring out the hero in your hero. Art director 40 Out of Hand fiction by Nina Kiriki Hoffman Roger Raupp Her drawings were real enough to leap from the page and they did. 46 The Ecology of the Aurumvorax Mark Feil Production Staff Lovely to look at, delightful to hold but if you annoy it. Marilyn Favaro Lori Svikel 58 Arcane Lore Mike Rodgers and Tom Hazel A few spells designed to bring out the animal in any druid. Subscriptions Advertising Pat Schulz Sheila Meehan 60 The King of Conventions Keith Polster and Robert M. Bigelow The 1988 GEN CON®/ORIGINS Game Fair, from both sides now. Creative editors 64 Cash & Carry, Gamma Style Dan Kretzer Ed Greenwood Jeff Grubb Another day, another domar in the GAMMA WORLD® game. 70 A Little Less Super Jon Slobins Reach for variety, but know your limitations in the DC HEROES game. 72 Superheroes Alive! Jeff Grubb Five books on super-powered heroes, from encyclopedias to shared worlds. 74 The Frontiers of Design Mike Lane Shipbuilding with flair in the STAR FRONTIERS® game. 78 The Marvel®-Phile Jeff Grubb Somewhere on the bizarre planet of Halfworld lived a young boy named Rocket Raccoon. 80 The Role of Computers Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser The quest for the Coconut of Quendor leads you far Beyond Zork. DEPARTMENTS 3 Letters 68 TSR Previews 91 Convention Calendar 4 Forum 86 Dragonmirth 98 SnarfQuest 34 Sage Advice 88 Index to Advertisers 101 Wormy 66 Gamers Guide COVER Prospecting for gold is not all that its cracked up to be, as Snarf and his planet-hopping friends discover in this months SnarfQuest adventure. Larry Elmores Fools Gold cover painting is now available as an art print; see page 96 for details. 2 APRIL 1988 LETTERS Errers Our staff was out to lunch, and at some point while waiting for our food to arrive, I announced that I wanted to write an editorial on the stress and strain that the magazine staff experiences in its work. Eileen overwhelming horror that its been cancelled, Two problems thought that was a great idea. due to insufficient sales. Dear Dragon: Please, say it wont happen. We could use a funny editorial, I am devoted to DRAGON Magazine, and my Marc Webber she said, or words to that effect. collection extends back to #68. Issue #128 had Belleville, Ont. Well, ha ha. Most of you arent two major problems I felt had to be pointed out. aware that the magazine editors The first concerned the KINGS TABLE game. As for finding new gamers, see the last letter here have a little ritual we perform It is an extremely interesting game, and I intend on page 3 of issue #130. You might also consider every time a new box of freshly to play all versions of it. Unfortunately, the rules joining a play-by-mail game; see the first letter printed magazines comes in. The neglected to cover one basic point: what hap- in the “Letters” column for issue #126 for more ritual is called Whats Wrong With pens to a piece when it is captured? Is it information. We reviewed a good PBM game in This Issue, and we play it very seri- removed from the board? Is it unable to move issue #131 as well (the Alamaze game). until one of its captors moves away? Perhaps I ously and with large, felt-tipped, missed something, but I believe this point was error-marking pens with fluorescent never explained. Back to Brak yellow ink that would startle an The second problem occurred in Dennis airline pilot at a one-mile range. We McLaughlins article Chopper Power! Included Dear Dragon: pride ourselves on our ability to in this article was a description of the 23/4 Concerning the article, The Last Word, by catch any errors in each issue rocket. From the description, I can only con- Gregg Sharp in DRAGON® issue #129, one of the before it gets printed but some clude that the author thought the 2 3/4" referred quotes (Brak? Thats a stupid name for a bar- slip through anyway. Nevertheless, I to the rockets length (this would explain their barian.) hits hilariously close to home. Brack, think that most people notice some- $10 per rocket price, and the maximum range our resident Stupid Barbarian, is distressed to thing wrong with an issue only if it of 150). In actual fact, the 2 3/4 is the measure see his name misspelled in print, however. of the rockets diameter; the rockets are nearly Three and a half years ago, the character involves an immediate gaming con- 5 in length! This changes a few things about Brack was born into the world of Harn, and cern. (You left the duration off of them: the rockets cost several hundred dollars soon became known as you stupid barbarian the 'summon froghemoth' spell, and each, and their range is approximately one mile. for fairly obvious reasons. you didnt give the giant cave ham- And in terms of damage, any human caught We players had always assumed our Brack sters a movement rate.") within 10 of an exploding rocket is killed out- was unique. We are therefore most interested in For example, we recently had five right. As well, the weapons PV (Penetration discovering the origins of this other Brak. issues in a row which had slightly Value) skyrockets (no pun intended), because Sandie Weissman these rockets were designed to destroy all forms Murray W. Weissman different masthead set-ups in the of armored vehicles (including tanks, if they hit Sheila M. Humphrey upper left-hand part of page 2. We where the armor is weak). Diane L. Fryberger-Smith never noticed them until we hap- I have not included more exact statistics for G. William Brack Smith IV pened to note a small error on the the 2 3/4 rocket because I would never allow Glenside PA one prepared for issue #131. Then such a deadly weapon in my own TOP SECRET® we backtracked and the changed campaign. If Admins wish to use it, they must I suspect that the Brak to which Gregg Sharp’s mastheads immediately appeared. make up their own stats for it. As a final note, excellent article alludes is the hero of a series of No one wrote to comment on them. Admins may use the stats of the weapon given sword-and-sorcery stories by novelist John Last year, we failed to notice that in Mr. McLaughlins article simply by treating it Jakes, originally appearing in the late 1960s. the date on the bottom of each page as a grenade launcher. They are worth reading, if you can find them. of the January 1987 issue was for Gord Coleman The Brak of those stories, however, was not Nepean, Ont. stupid at all; insulting his name within his hear- January 1986. Only two readers ing could be considered stupid, though, as he wrote to us about it. Pieces that are captured in the KING’S TABLE was cut from Conan’s mold. We changed some advertisements game are removed from play. around in issue #130 and had to We are not able to speak on the subject of drop an article (Matt Battisons Illu- helicopter rockets, but your suggestions are sory Solutions) at the last minute. noted. We wish an agent facing such firepower However, I forgot to remove a refer- the best of luck in the afterlife. ence to that article from another article in that issue (see if you can It wont happen find it). I found the error only sec- onds after opening my own copy of Dear Dragon: issue #130. I considered wearing a Im worried. Ive been playing the AD&D® paper sack over my head for life game for eight years now and have enjoyed but few people wrote in about it. every aspect of it, up to and including DRAGON FREE INSIDE: We wont talk about the unusual Magazine. The reason for my unnerved state is subscription cards in issue #129, concern for the popularity now and in the future of the AD&D game. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER™ which didnt seem to cause a prob- I live in Canada, and during the past few years Game Poster lem with most subscribers. Ive found it next to impossible to find active We all make mistakes, but few of gamers. I hope (knock on wood) that the day 1988 GEN CON®/ORIGINS™ us make mistakes seen by a quarter never comes when I go to pick up the latest (continued on page 88) edition of DRAGON Magazine and find to my Game Fair Information D RAGON 3 like this sort of thing, then why are you going about it in such a silly way? Never challenge a cavalier to a joust! Get off of your horse and issue a challenge to single combat.