Issue #149 Vol. XIV, No. 3 R EGULAR FEATURES September 1989 Magic for Beginners Gregory W. Detwiler 14 Create all-new weaponsfor 1st-level characters only! Publisher Mike Cook The Envelope, Please! The editors 20Their finest hour: the winners of the 1988 ORIGINS Awards. Editor Roger E. Moore The Dragons Bestiary Kurt Martin 22Blue horses, six-legged horses, magical horses, and more. Assistant editor Fiction editor Anne Brown Barbara G. Young Advice for All Mutants Skip Williams 28The sage looks at the rules hazards of the 3rd Edition GAMMA WORLD® Editorial assistant Kimberly J. Walter game. Orcs in Space! Ken Rolston Art director Lori Svikel 32Mix role-playing, punk elves, and plasma cannon in GWs WARHAMMER 40,000 game. Production staff Paul Hanchette Angelika Lokotz Kesmai and Beyond Cheryl Peterson Kathleen C. MacDonald Gaye OKeefe 42Your computer modem is the gateway to fantastic adventure. From Freighters to Flying Boats Matthew M. Seabaugh Subscriptions U.S. Advertising Janet L. Winters Sheila Gailloreto 46Take a dive to the bottom of the sea: the navies of the STAR FRONTIERS® game. U.K. correspondent Christopher Christou Getting It Right the First Time Richard W. Emerich 56Dont be caught with your DMs screen down! Run your convention RPG event like a pro. U.K. advertising Sue Lilley The Role of Books John C. Bunnell 70Detective work with the Batman, Lord Darcy, and Carlisle Hsing of Nightside City. The Role of Computers Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser 76 Azure Bonds: You read the book, you played the module, and now Role-playing Reviews Jim Bambra 84Does the future look dim? Scary? Cruel? Well, you aint seen nothing yet. Through the Looking Glass Robert Bigelow 90A fantastic flight on a swan ship, and the wildest football teams ever. Time Marches On Thomas M. Kane 96 What do the Golden Apple and the Silmarils have in common with your RPG campaign? DEPARTMENTS 5 Letters 52 Gamers Guide 102 Dragonmirth 6 Forum 68 TSR Previews 10 Sage Advice 98 Convention Calendar COVER Observant readers who examine this months cover art will quickly be able to name the artist and the year in which the picture was painted. Color prints of our cover, Trinket, are available for sale; interested readers may write to Robin Wood, c/o this magazine. 4 SEPTEMBER 1989 Ogre-chow It was a dark and stormy night. His heart pounding madly, he tore at the envelope. His thoughts raced as he considered the message that might lie inside. His trembling fingers unfolded the single sheet of paper then he What did you think of this issue? Do you have spell. They then returned to the island in radia- gasped as he read the sentence that a question about an article or have an idea for a tion gear and liberated the poor gods who, due instills horror in every author: “We new feature youd like to see? In the United to their lives among the stars, were immune to have no current interest in this topic.” States and Canada, write to: Letters, DRAGON® radiation at ground zero. Unfortunately, the As the new editor on the DRAGON® Magazine, P.O. Box 111, Lake Geneva WI 53147, owner of the isle was standing directly at Magazine block, Ive recently been the U.S.A. In Europe, write to. Letters, DRAGON ground zero when Mirvs spell hit. We truly perpetrator of many of these heinous Magazine, TSR Ltd., 120 Church End, Cherry mourn his loss. letters. I hate sending them; some days Jake Lovell Hinton, Cambridge CB1 3LD, United Kingdom. Im plagued by sounds like in Louisville KY The Tell- Tale Heart, only these hearts are break- Waldorf hysteria I was a little disturbed when I read the letter ing, not beating. So this editorial is about Waldorf in issue #137. Well, it just so designed to help put an end to some of One year ago, in DRAGON issue #137, we happens that my 421st-level magic user, Al- this needless bloodshed by giving ad- published a letter from a reader whose charac- keronus, was in outer space for the last year vice on how to get your work accepted. ter, Waldorf (a 358th-level magic-user), had and just decided to come back to Greyhawk. We get dozens of requests for article destroyed Greyhawk with the nuclear bombs he Alkeronus was, of course, ticked off, so he ideas (Tell me what to write about, and had invented. Only Castle Waldorf and the salt decided to destroy Waldorf and his castle. With Ill write it!). First, we almost never his supreme power, Alkeronus made the sun go mines beneath it (in which all the deities la- assign articles to authors; all the ideas bored) were left. We received a lot of mail about supernova, which completely disintegrated the you see in print come from the that little letter planet. Waldorf is dead, and I expect the charac- ter to never be used again. Waldorf, you should imaginations of their writers. Second, Please tell Waldorf that I have successfully have known better than to mess with Alkero- the content of the magazine is dictated completed making my savings roll, and ask him nuss alehouse! by our readers; when you send in how much damage I took from the atomic Wade Beckman articles, you are determining what will bomb. Sioux Falls SD be published. We simply pick and P.Y. choose the best of the bunch. No address given, but we We regret to inform Waldorf the magic-user Okay, so how do you avoid the rejec- assume it was Greyhawk that he is in eternal servitude to Shamogroth tion pile? Start by browsing through Darkmane, a 511th-level Krynn minotaur bar- My character, Fist Xavier Redlance, has barian and his 89-person barbarian horde. some back issues of DRAGON Maga- become ultimately powerful. He owns three Shamogroth was on his home plane avenging zine. By looking at the last 10 or 12 or four completely paid-for and fortified castles. the destruction of his original barbarian tribe, issues, youll learn which topics have He and his mount, a 14-HD cloud dragon (Phan- so he was absent during the holocaust. been covered recently, and youll also tom), could wipe out Tiamat in one round of Unfortunately for Waldorf, Shamogroth get an idea of our style. Believe it or combat, or obliterate five tarrasques or even returned to his home forest to see that it was not, we get letters that read, Ive never Waldorf. He is a 60th-level knight/23rd-level devastated. Shamogroth then searched for the read your magazine, but heres an bard/23rd-level druid/l4th-level illusionist. only safe place on Oerth to return from the article. Such submissions are His two weapons are a mounted Dragonlance Border Ethereal: Castle Waldorf. By now, Mr. usually doomed. and a + 6 two-handed holy avenger. He is also Darkmane was very steamed (and a little hun- psionically imbued. gry), so he and his group of barbarians (ranging Follow our writers guidelines. We Tell Waldorf that not all of the planet was in levels from 100 to 300) plundered the castle can tell at a glance which authors use obliterated. Fist Xavier has two of his castles and destroyed it and all within, save Waldorf them. It makes our job much easier and completely surrounded by granite (i.e, theyre and the deities. Shamogroth released the gods, increases your chances of getting three miles underground). The one thing he who promptly did away with Waldorfs power published. hasnt done is design a device to clean up post- by exposing him to a little Negative Material Ask yourself whether your idea is explosion radiation, but he is currently working plane torture, then repopulated Greyhawk. unique. High-powered versions of low- on the problem. He can come out because his Shamogroth is now an epic hero and is level spells, variations on the armor is resistant to just about any substance watched over by the good and kind gods, and bag of and different colored known to man (or Waldorf). Waldorf is now chained to the bottom of the holding, magic Travis Fox Valley of Eternal Pain, created by Shamogroth missiles arent interesting. Were look- Virginia Beach VA and his divine friends. Sorry, Waldorf. ing for fresh insights and original ways James Collins &Jason Ross of playing, not just a new coat of paint Recently, my AD&D® game character, Mirv Woody CA on the same old monsters, spells, and the Outrageous (a 360th-level mage who had magic items. developed long-range space travel and left his In response to this so-called wizard Waldorfs Make sure your article relates to home in the Forgotten Realms) discovered a recent letter, I will not send my character sheets gaming. This may sound obvious, but small barren world. There were only a few to Mr. Waldorf, simply because I am the most its painful to reject a well-researched, inhabitants on it, on a 3 x 4-mile island with a powerful being in Greyhawk. Maybe you have interesting article on Chinese foot- castle. After infiltration, Mirv and his comrades heard of me: I call myself the Dungeon Master. discovered the castles name: Castle Waldorf. And just let me say that Ive been getting pretty binding because it has no gaming appli- Beneath the castle, working in a salt mine, were annoyed with Waldorf lately, so watch it! cation. Now, if that same article were the deities of the realm. What a horrible fate. D.M. to provide modifiers to hit points and So Mirv and his friends returned to their ship Spotsy VA dexterity, and explained how foot- and destroyed all of the remaining life on the island through the use of saturation bombing Continued on page 74 (phosphorus and antimagic bombs) and Mirvs Continued on page 74 favorite spell, power word nuke, a tenth-level DRAGON 5 DRAGON® Magazine (ISSN 0279-6848) is published monthly by TSR, Inc., P.O.