Dragon 138 (october 1988).pdf

C ONTENTS

Issue #138

Vol. XIII, No. 5

October 1988

SPECIAL ATTRACTION

15 Dreadful Tidings:

Nothing is so bad at Halloween that it couldnt be much, much worse.

Publisher

Mike Cook

16 The Black Book and the Hunters Craig Schaefer

Those who annoy the Old Ones should keep a careful watch behind them.

Editor

Roger E. Moore

22 The Ungrateful Dead Tom Moldvay

Beautiful ghouls and titanic zombies: new undead for your AD&D® games.

Assistant editor

Fiction editor

Robin Jenkins

Patrick L. Price

38 Methods to Your Madness Ed Friedlander

A new insanity system that lets a little lunacy go a long way.

Editorial assistants

Kim Walter

Barbara G. Young

Art director

Lori Svikel

44 The End of the World Eileen Lucas

Got an ailing fantasy campaign? Cure it with the Black Death.

Production staff

Betty Elmore

Kim Janke Carolyn Vanderbilt

OTHER FEATURES

Subscriptions

U.S. Advertising

8 Through the Looking Glass Jeanne McGuire

Bring the dead to life with just a touch of your paintbrush.

Pat Schulz

Shelia Meehan

U.K. correspondents

Graeme Morris

Rik Rose

52 Putting Fire into Firepower Martin Landauer

Lasers in TOP SECRET

games; or, Whats this red button do?

U.K. advertising

Dawn Carter Kris Starr

56 Between Thunder & Lightning fiction by Nancy Varian Berberick

Wars purpose is to take life; to renew it is another kind of struggle.

70 The Role of Computers Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser

If the space pirates arent tough enough, you can try the rainbow dragons.

78 Role-playing Reviews Ken Rolston

Four role-playing games and supplements for those who take horror

seriously.

90 The Game Wizards Scott Haring

Sifting through the Empires Of the Sands.

DEPARTMENTS

3 Letters

51 Index to Advertisers

92 Convention Calendar

6 Forum

76 Gamers Guide

96 Dragonmirth

12 Sage Advice

84 TSR Previews

98 SnarfQuest

COVER

Our Halloween Greetings cover is the first DRAGON ® Magazine cover from

Jeff Easley, whose work should be familiar to any longtime gamers. It is also the

first cover acquisition made by Lori Svikel, our new art director. Jeff admits that

he collects antique Halloween items; he certainly has a feel for the topic.

L ETTERS

Souvenirs

The GEN CON®/ORIGINS™ 1988

Game Fair is safely over. Your maga-

zine staff members acquired a num-

ber of items from the convention for

their services:

An ORIGINS Special Award for

Outstanding Achievement (1987) for

DRAGON® Magazine;

A dozen new colorful buttons,

including “Veni, Vidi, VISA” (“I came,

I saw, I went shopping”), “Oh, no,

not another learning experience!”

and the rather appropriate “100,000

lemmings can't be wrong!”;

Copies of the now-infamous

WOOF MEOW role-playing game of

cats and dogs gone bad (with magic

system — I am not making this up)

and the lurid MACHO WOMEN

WITH GUNS role-playing game of . . .

well . . . ahem;

The keys to the display booth,

which I had to return on an emer-

gency drive back to MECCA on

Wednesday night (sorry, Mike);

Converted new SPACE: 1889™ game

T-shirts from the Game Designer's

Workshop booth (thanks, Marc);

A chance to see the 22,986,375

playing pieces inside each of the

humongous BUCK ROGERS™ and

DRAGONLANCE™ boardgames that

sold so well at the booth;

A friendly wave from Margaret

“Darksword” Weis, who also told

visitors that the editor of this maga-

zine was the one who threw the

paper airplanes in the Hyatt and

thus brought down the wrath of the

hotel staff on the otherwise harm-

less game-industry party on Friday

night (a completely untrue assertion;

really, it wasn't me);

Several bags full of wonderful

munchies from the Ambrosia choco-

late works (just a couple of blocks

from MECCA), where the air was so

thick with chocolate you could hard-

ly breathe;

Fond memories of the good

response we got from our seminars

(thanks to all panel members and to

those in the audience); and

The usual end-of-convention colds

and exhaustion that debilitated the

staff (as well as the rest of TSR, Inc.)

for a week afterward.

It was worth it. Now, of course,

there's next year. . . .

What did you think of this issue? Do you have a

question about an article or have an idea for a

new feature youd like to see? In the United

States and Canada, write to: Letters, DRAGON®

Magazine, P.O. Box 110, Lake Geneva WI 53147,

U.S.A. In Europe, write to: Letters, DRAGON

Magazine, TSR UK Limited, The Mill, Rathmore

Road, Cambridge CB1 4AD, United Kingdom.

for prolonged visits, with meals. All prices are,

of course, subject to change as the DM desires,

and are offered only as guidelines.

The reference to issue #155 should have been

to issue #115, the November 1986 issue.

Some last words

Dear Dragon:

After reading your article The Last Word in

issue #129 and Cliff Fraziers sequel to that

article in #134, I thought of other suggestions to

include in the sequels sequel. These are:

Its probably just another gas spore.

Whos the chick with the spiders?

No, you go on without me.

Without Mjolnir, Ill bet youre a real wimp.

Whats that up ahead?

Cmon guys, lets show him whos boss.

Why is it so dark in here?

Hes probably only first level.

Ill try to talk to it.

Its just another illusion.

I think its dead.

Lets split up.

Ill walk up to the dragon invisibly.

Why is that man performing sign language?

Dont be so paranoid.

Next index?

Dear Dragon:

Will you ever consider a separate index of

past reviews of books and games? When do you

expect a follow-up index to your Ultimate Arti-

cle Index?

Matthew Pritchard

Houston TX

We used to index the items that were

reviewed in DRAGON Magazine, but discontin-

ued that practice as time went on (and the

number of things to index grew longer). Time

will tell whether we index the titles of reviewed

books and games.

We are considering several options for pub-

lishing another index for DRAGON Magazine.

We could either create a yearly index, to be

published each December, or a cumulative index

that would either appear every so often in the

June anniversary issue (as has been done

before), as a separate booklet, or in a future

Best of DRAGON Magazine anthology. Designing

such an index, however, would be a difficult and

time-cosuming task, and we’re not sure how

soon we’ll be able to get to it. We will make an

effort to have an index created and published

by the end of 1989 — but we cannot make any

promises!

Daniel Watson

Plattsburgh NY

And some more...

Dear Dragon:

With respect to The Last Word, I have come

up with a few myself:

The dragons asleep!

How much damage do I take?

They wont kill us if we surrender.

Im opening the chest.

Those stairs sure look slippery.

What does green slime taste like?

Hey, look archers!

Spikes in the bottom of a chest how

weird!

Ill dive in with full plate on.

How many are there?

Ill snap the staff!

Thats no mage!

Did you ever see so many teeth?

It says healing on the label.

Ill turn the 43 vampires!

Neat! A cave entrance that looks like a

mouth!

Im going to open the door, push the third

book to the left on the bottom shelf, enter the

secret room, open the chest, take out the 3,142

gold pieces, put on the ring of animal control in

the false bottom, and control the snake I find

under the box. Pretty good guess, huh?

Darrell Anderson

Elma NY

More errers

Dear Dragon:

I am writing to point out two mistakes I found

while reading DRAGON issue #136. The first

mistake I found was in the article A Room for

the Knight, in Table 1, Inn Prices. According to

this table, a four-star inn costs 5 gp to stay there

for one night, yet it only costs 15 sp to stay

there one night and get a meal. The second

mistake I found was in the Long Arm of the

Law. The very first sentence in the article

starts, DRAGON issue #155 printed many thief-

orientated articles . . . But this was printed in

the new issue, #136. DRAGON issue #155 is not

due out for another year and a half. Would you

please clear up these two mistakes?

Jeff Darby

Lawrence

The first line under “Lodging” in Table 1 from

“A Room for the Knight” should have read “1

night without meal.” The second line should

have read “1 night with meal.” The weekly and

monthly lodging prices reflect discounts offered

DRAGON 3

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