Dragon Magazine #130
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CONTENTS Magazine Issue #130 Vol. XII, No. 9 SPECIAL ATTRACTION February 1988 7 The Arcane Arts: Without Merlin, where would Arthur have been? 8 Get the Most From Your Magic John N. Kean Dweomers are forever: long-duration spells for maximum effect. 16 Arcane Lore Len Carpenter Publisher From to Western campaigns: new spells for the casting. Mike Cook Oriental Adventures 22 Hold On to Your Illusions! Brian Tillotson Editor Can a 6th-level illusionist create an army of 20th-level paladins? Well, almost. Roger E. Moore 28 The Faces of Magic John N. Kean Assistant editor Fiction editor Sometimes a wizard should look like anything but. Robin Jenkins Patrick L. Price 34 Better Living Through Alchemy Tom Armstrong Alchemists and their magical trade, from potions to poisons. Editorial assistants Eileen Lucas Barbara G. Young OTHER FEATURES Debbie Poutsch Georgia Moore 42 Shark-killer fiction by Carol Severance Art director Having abandoned her god, a warrior faces her worst enemy alone. Roger Raupp 50 The Game Wizards Jon Pickens Production Staff Where the magic goes: more on the second-edition AD&D® game. Marilyn Favaro Lori Svikel 54 The Dragons Bestiary John M. Maxstadt A mutant plant that only a GAMMA WORLD® game GM could love. Subscriptions Advertising Pat Schulz Sheila Meehan 56 Miniatures in Wonderland Robert Bigelow Role-play 100,000 dwarves at once, at the 1988 GEN CON®/ORIGINS Games Fair! Creative editors Ed Greenwood Jeff Grubb 58 Keeping a Good Watch Ryan Grindstaff Who watches the watch men? Try these TOP SECRET® game timepieces. 62 Dungeon Etiquette Jody Lynn Nye The paladins on Tatooine and the wizards in Dreamland whats a DM to do? 64 The Oriental Sea Margaret Foy Maritime might comes to Oriental Adventures. 70 If Looks Could Kill Malcolm Bowers A direct look at gaze weapons and the monsters who use them. 80 The Marvel®-Phile Jeff Grubb Scourge picks up the tab at the bar with no name! 86 The Role of Computers Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser The best of the best: Wizardry IV, Phantasie III, and Sanxion! DEPARTMENTS 3 Letters 12 Gamers Guide 94 Convention Calendar 4 World Gamers Guide 13 Index to Advertisers 98 SnarfQuest 6 Forum 92 Dragonmirth 101 Wormy COVER One of the things about being a magic-user, as cover artist Linda Medley shows, is that you never have to worry about not having anyone to talk to. The ladys froggie familiar seems to think differently about the matter, though but thats a frog for you. 2 FEBRUARY 1988 LETTERS The real world Current events can provide an inexhaustible source of adventure ideas for any modern or futuristic role-playing setting, as many writers have pointed out. However, it is safe to say that many gamers involved in such campaigns have visions of the More miniatures Its a small thing, but a great convenience. present or future modeled instead While I'm at it with the covers, I would like to Dear Dragon: compliment you on the artwork youve been after popular movies, novels, comic I am writing in response to David Howerys able to get. It is good enough to hold my books, and TV shows. (I sure did.) letter in issue #126. I do not play role-playing attention for a few minutes before I launch into There are galaxy-spanning empires, games, but large-scale fantasy wargames have digging through the magazine. laser-toting gunmen, rebels and my interest. I greatly enjoy reading DRAGON® One other thing: What font do you use? interstellar wars all of it cast out Magazine for the ideas it gives me for spells and Mark R. Mulik of the three Star Wars films, with statistics for creatures in my games. However, Neosho MO Road Warrior, RoboCop, and Max like Mr. Howery, I would also like to see cover- Headroom as well. Sometimes you age of new figure releases, painting tips, and We changed the logo because we got tired of get some Japanese spice, too (a la other miniatures-related topics. There are so calling our periodical a “monthly adventure Its fun, bizarre, and many figures on the market now that it is not role-playing aid” when it is actually a magazine. Robotech). always possible to keep up to date on what is Stephanie Tabat designed the new logo, and we much stranger than the real world. available, especially as so many stores have only are in seventh editorial heaven over it. We're Or is it? Within the last 50 years, a limited stock. I hope you do decide to run glad you like it. weve had Adolf Hitler, the Bomb, these kinds of articles again. Thank you, too, for your praise of DRAGON Apollo 11, and Chernobyl. High Patrick Presnall-Kelleher Magazine’s artwork. We’ve been very proud of technology cloaks our world just as San Diego CA it, and we have more high-quality art coming in deeply as high sorcery cloaks the every issue. Our art director, Roger Kaupp, mysterious lands of fantasy games. in fact, we are thinking about doing this very deserves some praise too, even if he does chase Some events in our real world thing. We urge our readers with interests in editors around with plastic mailing tubes. even make events in science-fiction miniatures and miniature games to write and The body copy of this magazine is 9-point and fantasy worlds seem mundane. tell us what you would like to see if we had Zapf Book Light with a leading of 10, set on a such a column. 14-pica margin in three-columm format. Certain The following are examples of sections like the “Letters” and “Forum” columns real-world themes I have rarely seen are set in 8-point type with a leading of 9. The in science-fiction campaigns or in Dungeons & body copy of the magazine (like its logo) has espionage, superpowered hero, and changed several times over the years; it used to modern warfare settings, either. designers have Baskerville II type, and before that we How realistic would they seem in a used Triumvirate Regular: game campaign? Dear Dragon: Though I thoroughly enjoy playing D&D® Civilian atomic accidents: Many games, I never really had a set of my own. So game campaigns consider civilian around last year, I made up a set of rules for a Roger returns nuclear power to be of minor impor- game. Please send me some information tance, completely safe, or little seen concerning how I would go about getting this Dear Dragon: but poor control of nuclear junk game patented, published, copyrighted, etc. Just out of curiosity, whose job is it to decide caused several deaths in a poverty- James J. Boland on a color for the DRAGON logo, the logos stricken area in Brazil in 1987. In Trenton NJ perimeter, and the outline of special features addition to the famous accidents at printed on the cover? I think he, she, it, or whatever does a fine job. Windscale, Three Mile Island, and Jim Ward had some ideas on how to become Chernobyl, the worst-ever nuclear involved in the gaming industry in his column Tony DeFigio for “The Game Wizards,” in issue #128 (page 34). Edinboro PA disaster apparently took place in the You might also read the third letter in the southern Urals of the U.S.S.R., late “Letters” column for issue #124 (page 3) for We’ll tell Roger Raupp you like his work. in 1957. A chemical explosion in a more information. Legal information on nuclear waste facility scattered copyrighting your game is best received by radioactive plutonium over 1,000 consulting a lawyer. Gamers wanted square miles, killing perhaps hun- DRAGON Magazine is also interested in dreds of people and dooming thou- Dear Dragon: publishing small fantasy-based games, though sands more to lingering deaths from we accept very few submissions. You could send I recently moved and am having a lot of an SASE for our writers guidelines and query us problems finding players. I am 13 years old and cancer. This so-called Kyshtym on details relevant to your proposed design. not a regular D&D game player; that makes explosion left vast regions of land gaming clubs even harder to find. Do you have uninhabitable for ages to come. Will any advice for finding players or announcing colonists on other worlds be any Hoist the flag! myself to gaming parties in my area? better at nuclear management? Jacob Burby Nuclear extortion: Thunderball Dear Dragon: Orange Vale CA was fiction but a Florida city in I was curious why you changed the flag of the 1970 was threatened with destruc- magazine (you know, the big DRAGON The best way I could imagine would be to visit tion unless the blackmailer was Magazine logo on the cover). Its different, all of the games and hobby stores in your area given a million dollars and safe and I like the new format. I especially like and poet an index-card notice in each, giving having the month and year on the cover. Before, your name, gaming interests, and phone conduct out of the country. Plans if you wanted to figure out what month and number Many game stores have bulletin boards for a cobalt-wrapped H-bomb ac- year the magazine was from, you had to open for this very purpose. The more gamers they (continued on page 60) the magazine and look at the bottoms of pages. can draw into the hobby the better their sales. D RAGON 3 The World Gamers Guide With issue #131 of DRAGON® Magazine, SN J.