- This issue doesn't start off promising. You may recall a while back how much I complained about a Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes supplement for the Cthulhu mythos that appeared. Someone then wrote a letter in a later article kvetching about some of the choices the authors made (rather than the stupidity of the whole thing in the first place). Well now we have more of our time wasted by a response article to that article! People apparently take their Cthulhu very seriously. This is immediately followed by yet one more G, D-G, and H supplement for the Sumerion/Babylonian/Canaanite mythologies.
- We next have a variant introducing the ninja to the game. This is not meant to be a new player class, as the author admits that it is far too overpowered. Just imagine a fighter who also has the abilities of a thief, assassin, and monk and you have a good picture. It's actually presented as an aid for DMs to use as a "hit man" on player characters. Seriously.
- Jim Ward has another good "The Adventures of Monty Haul", lampooning ridiculous high level play.
- Gary Gygax takes this month's Sorcerer's Scroll with an article whose tone is rather pedantic and condescending. The article is a supposed rebuttal of players who want more realism in the game, but it's just Gary defending his baby again. How dare anyone suggest they can come up with better rules than him! His points basically boil down to 1) it's a game, which is by definition an abstraction of reality, not reality itself, so concerns with realism are pointless, and 2) it's fantasy, so realism goes out the window the moment you accept that magic exists in the game world. However, these points are both straw men when it comes to the realism debate. He does have some good points - for instance, you can't change just one part of the game without examining how that part fits with and impacts the whole - but misapplies them when it comes to actual D&D rules. For instance, some players wonder why magic-users can't use swords or fighters can't use wands. From a realism standpoint, what's to say a magic user couldn't devote time to learning how to sword fight, or a fighter learn to use simple wands? The answer in the context of D&D rules is obvious and he explains - because it would destroy the distinctiveness of character classes. If every class can do everything, there's no point in having classes. Certainly some rule variants do get out of hand in trying to make a god class (see the ninja variant previously in this issue), which spoils the game for all involved (and believe me, I've played a campaign with an out-of-control god character - a story I'll relate someday). But the fact that letting any character learn any skill creates problems does not prove that a "realistic" approach is inherently flawed, but rather proves that there is a greater problem with the game mechanics themselves - namely, that character classes are a flawed concept. This is why I am a much bigger fan of rule systems that let players learn whatever skills they want, even if they come from different "professions". Those systems avoid the god class problem though because they add another dose of realism - a person can only learn so much, and you can either have a broad but shallow knowledge of many things, or a narrow and deep knowledge of a few. Thus a character can indeed learn both swords and spells, but they'll never be either a master swordsman or an archmage. He also brings up the example of demihuman races - they have a lot of nice racial abilities that are compensated for by having level limits. If those limits were removed, no one would ever play a human anymore. But again, this is just hiding a deeper problem, which is the unnecessary imbalance between humans and demihumans. Simply balance racial abilities and then artificial and illogical level limits can be done away with. It gets funnier in hindsight when he goes on to bash two sets of rules that later on became official optional rules - double-damage critical hits and weapon expertise (and critical hits were in fact a primary rule in 4th edition). He complains that those that want critical hits don't logically consider that monsters should get them too for balance purposes, and claims this would somehow make the game too deadly (now I do have an issue with critical hit tables that allow for instant-kills, as I have lost a character to these before), and that nobody considers that if you allow critical hits, you also have to allow critical failures. He then takes on weapon expertise, claiming that if fighters can get expertise, monsters should too. I do agree that optional weapon expertise rules do simply add to a fighter's power without giving anything in return, but I'm just amused at the level of hissy fit he throws over it. Finally he takes on spell point systems for magic users, which again is hilarious in hindsight considering that mana-based magic systems are so fundamental to fantasy gaming now that we don't even think about it. He makes clear at the end of the article that all of this is a result of some attacks that had been made on him in some amateur publications. I don't have those materials, so I can't gauge how appropriate his response is, but I have to admit I'm rather disappointed that every time Gary writes for The Dragon on matters like these it always seems he does so in a whiny and petulant tone.
- Next - obviously carefully chosen by the editor to back up Gary - is an article/variant complaining about players who want their magic user to be able to use a mace or their cleric to use a sword. It attempts to give an in-world justification to these rules, then provides rules that do allow characters to wield these weapons, but at a hefty price. Coming down hard on players who want to play a certain kind of character is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, some players are just trying to selfishly make a god character so they can rule the game, but other players just want to create the character they see in their imagination - they want to be Gandalf, wielding both spells and the sword Glamdring at the same time. It's again a symptom of the disease of character classes, and I'm sad that modern gaming still clings to the concept so hard (although some games like Skyrim thankfully buck the trend).
- As if in counterpoint to all the D&D defense going on in this issue, there's an ad for the new RuneQuest RPG. I'm not sure if it has appeared in previous issues already, but it caught my eye in this one for the text, which claims it is based on a "REALISTIC SET OF FANTASY RULES [emphasis theirs], based on experience and reality rather than an arbitrarily developed abstract mathematical system." Take that, Gary! D&D is not named, of course, but it's clear that's where that particular barb is aimed. It goes on to proclaim "No Artificial Character Classes!!" I know nothing about RuneQuest at all, but when they promote stuff like this as their differentiator from D&D it definitely makes me want to take a look.
- We get the second part of the Harold Shea story. It's just meh.
- Finally, Jim Ward has a brief article extolling the virtues of high-powered play, where dungeons are full of great treasure guarded by tremendous challenges.
So much for another issue. Sorry to get on my soapbox there for a bit, but hey, if Gary can do it, I can do it to. Join me next time as we start perhaps the most famous D&D adventures of all time, the Against the Giants series!
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