Accessory - Dragon Magazine #112, MAGAZINES, Dragon Magazine
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DRAGON 1
SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS
Publisher
Mike Cook
41
The Ultimate Article Index
compiled by Jean Black
After this, an update is all youll ever need
51
TSR staff GEN CON® Event Listing
Better late than never and besides, theyre free!
Editor-in-Chief
Kim Mohan
Editorial staff
Patrick Lucien Price
Roger Moore
Robin Jenkins
OTHER FEATURES
8
Dawn of a new age
Kim Mohan
A fresh look, and outlook, for DRAGON Magazine
Editorial assistance
Eileen Lucas
10
DINOSAURS
Steven Inniss
A monstrous article on the beasts of the Mesozoic Era
Art, graphics, production
Roger Raupp
Kim Lindau
19
Revenge of the nobodies
Joseph R. Ravitts
When a grass-roots movement grows, watch out!
Hartley and Pattie Lesser
Our second foray into the world of electronic role-playing games
Advertising
Mary Parkinson
27
Cloaked in magic
Ed Greenwood
Elminster returns with some wise words about windbreakers
Subscriptions
Pat Schulz
35
Armor, piece by piece
Matt Bandy
A partial armor system for non-Oriental AD&D® games
This issue’s contributing artists
Daniel Horne
Jim Holloway
Marvel Bullpen
Dave LaForce
Lawrence Raimonda
Richard Tomasic
Joseph Pillsbury
Bill Cleveland
Larry Elmore
Dave Trampier
81
Dire Invasion
—
William Tracy
Rom and the Dire Wraiths in the MARVEL SUPER HEROES game
88
For a Fistful of Credits
David “Zeb” Cook
New equipment for STAR FRONTIERS® gamers
DEPARTMENTS
38 TSR Previews Dragonmirth
4 World Gamers Guide 92 Convention calendar 98 Snarfquest
6 The forum
96
94 Gamers' Guide
101 Wormy
COVER
I looked to the sky and saw ragged scarlet clouds
one of them in the shape of a dragon! I went home and quickly did a sketch of it.
Daniel told us the painting is untitled, and suggested we come up with a name for it
if we wanted to. Well, Easy Pickings seems like an appropriate title, no matter
which point of view you consider it from.
The Hobbit.
2 AUGUST 1986
23
The role of computers
3 Letters
This is probably the first cover painting weve ever published that owes its existence
to a real-life experience. As Daniel Horne tells it, On weekends some of my fellow
SCA friends and I go into the countryside in costume. It was late afternoon and we
stopped in an apple orchard for a rest. Then we started to sing the song that the
dwarves had sung in
Half right
at the best
Death of an
Arch-Mage's flaws
roll 20 or less for her hit points, and the party
could possibly dispatch her by slaying her
homonculous. Also, the Monster Manual says
us to do as a result of our reader
survey. Deciding to do those things was
easy; as the quotation marks indicate,
those werent really decisions at all at
least, not decisions we had to make alone.
But you people didnt let us off the hook
altogether. A lot of the questions we asked
arent being answered by 80% of you one
way and by 20% of you the other way.
Sometimes the split is more like 70-30, or
60-40 and in a few cases, its danger-
ously close to 50-50. I should have ex-
pected this (and I guess I did, if I think
about it), but I still dont like it.
Im tempted to do it, but I wont tell you
for now what the 50-50 questions
are. What I really want to do is gripe a
little bit, and lay some advance ground-
work for the time when were going to
have to release specific results from the
survey and, in so doing, tell you that no
matter what we do, approximately half of
you arent going to like it.
The problem is how, or whether, to
make a change when half of you want one
thing and half of you want the opposite.
Unfortunately, we have no way of finding
out (except at the expense of time we cant
afford) whether we could keep most of
you happy by changing A but not chang-
ing B even if you really wanted both A
and B changed.
Would you continue to enjoy (and buy
lets face it; thats what this is all about)
this magazine if we didnt change any-
thing? We have to assume that the answer
is no; thats why we published the survey,
and thats why we are, at least, doing
something
that a homonculous cannot pass more than 48"
(480 feet) away from its master. However, it is
Kim:
Posted forthwith, a complete (I hope) list of
things in Death of an Arch-Mage" tissue #111)
that were botched by me, you, and other re-
sponsible parties:
On the ground level map, there should be an
opening in the south wall of the inner foyer to
connect it to the entrance foyer. And, in the
servants foyer, there should be a door to the
kitchen opposite the door in the west wall.
On the upper level map, that long void in the
south part between the stairways is the Upper
Gallery.
It should be noted on the tournament PCs
sheets that they are all human, and three of
them are dual-classed. To be official, the
strength scores of Kai Randar and Velton Sectal
should each be raised to 15.
Colin Myrrh should also possess a ring of free
action, and it should be noted that his armor
class of 5 does not include his shield +2.
The two double-sided documents are the map
and the list of guests. All other documents are
one-sided, and can simply be photocopied.
Alambar must have a vial of acid in his posses-
sion before he can use it.
entirely possible, using the random encounters
table for the labyrinth, for the characters to
encounter the creature in area 43. Shouldnt it
be in the same area as Oolayah?
Mike Sostre
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Obviously, we goofed in not showing the
tables and chairs (and the mimic) on the map on
page 53. However, this is simple enough to fix:
Put a couple of square tables in room 11, put
four chairs at each table, and pick one of the
eight chairs to be the mimic or let an eight-
sided die decide for you. To determine the
mimics hit points, pick up that same eight-sider
and roll it seven more times, or just select a
number between 7 and 56 that seems appropri-
ate for the power of the party.
Oolay'ahs missing hit points can't just be
rolled up the way the mimics can be, for the
reason that Mike has described. I think its a
good idea to simply give her maximum hit
points, to make her as tough as possible. (Thats
what we would have done if we had noticed the
omission in the manuscript before we published
the module.)
Flaloch and Fleatis must go upstairs after 9:43
so that they can come downstairs at 9:50.
Otherwise, Kim, we got them all, with the
exception of the three typographical errors
which Im certain you'll find.
The homonculous problem isnt a problem at
all. According to my ruler, it is possible for
Oolayah to be in area 49 when the homoncu-
lous is in area 43, and the two will still not be
Michael Selinker
Evanston, Ill.
more than 480 feet apart as the homonculous
dies. -KM
Your diligence is appreciated, Michael. Consid-
ering the complexity and general weirdness of
the module, I guess we should be happy that
there werent any mistakes more serious than
these. And just for your information, I'm not
going to worry a bit about the three typographi-
cal errors. (Where are they, you impudent snob?
Speak up, or Ill borrow a vial of acid from my
friend Alkus and slip it into your mouthwash!
Oh, you don't use mouthwash?. . .) KM
Turning up
the volume
Dear Dragon,
to try to achieve that very
elusive goal: the greatest good for the
greatest number.
Even now, when weve just begun to
take our survey results into account, you
can assume that from your point of view,
were going to do something wrong in the
issues to come, whether that mistake is
the result of action or inaction if we
have'nt done something wrong already.
The best we and you can hope for is that
well acquit ourselves in the long run and
youll be willing to keep spending your
well-deserved money on our well-
preserved magazine.
I beg to differ with Paul Hancocks otherwise
excellent article on When rations run out
tissue #107). His note 9 says that A cubic foot of
water . . . is equivalent to one gallon.
Roughly, one cubic foot will hold about 7½
gallons. To carry this farther and out of context
with his article, a decanter of endless water
employing the geyser function will fill a 10 ×
10 × 10 room in just about 25 turns (assum-
ing none of the water is absorbed by the sur-
rounding material or otherwise drains away).
You see, I now have a flooded dungeon with a
runaway decanter. . . .
The case of the
missing mimic
Dear Dragon,
Though it may seem rude to correct you,
there were a few items in The House in the
Frozen Lands tissue #110) which I feel need
clarification.
Area 11 lists a lesser mimic as being one of the
chairs surrounding the tables. Yet nowhere on
the map are any tables or chairs. There is also
no listing of the mimics hit points.
In area 49, there is no listing of Oolayahs hit
points. This could cause problems, as there is a
possibility (slim but possible) that a DM could
Richard E. Hutson
U.S. Marines in Germany
Right you are, Richard. We could have
avoided this mistake by simply double-checking
with a table of weights and measures . . . but we
didnt. Incidentally, for those of you who use the
British system, a cubic foot of water is equiva-
lent to about 6.2gallons. KM
DRAGON 3
If you take this job seriously, as I some-
times do in spite of myself, you can really
get hung up on soul-searching. And its
even worse when you ask other people
what to do, and they tell you, and you still
end up searching your soul.
The article on page 8 of this issue is all
about some of the things that you have
ordered
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