DragonMagazine360.pdf

Authors

Richard Baker, Andy Collins, Scott

Fitzgerald Gray, Rob Heinsoo,

James Jacobs, Nicolas Logue, Ari

Marmell, Shelly Mazzanoble, Mike

Mearls, Kim Mohan, Robert J.

Schwalb, Amber Scott, Matthew

Sernett, Chris Sims, James Wyatt

Contents

Cover Artist

Marc Sasso

Interior Artists

Steve Argyle, Jason Engle, Brian

Hagan, Fred Hooper, Jim Pavelec,

Marc Sasso, James Zhang

Features

Designing 4th Edition ........................................................................4

Demonomicon of Iggwilv: Graz’zt, the Dark Prince ..................9

Lethal Locations: Dragons of Eberron .........................................22

Ecology of the Death Knight ..........................................................33

Infernal Aristocracy: The Dukes of Hell .....................................40

Fortress of the Yuan-ti:

The Lost Portals of Castle Serastis ............................................49

Dragons of Eberron: Dragon Hoards ............................................59

Cartographer

Mike Schley

Editing

Miranda Horner, Chris Thomasson

Typesetting

Nancy Walker

Columns

Editorial ..................................................................................................3

Confessions of a Full-Time Wizard ...............................................65

Design & Development

The Core Mechanic ......................................................................67

D&D Cosmology ...........................................................................68

The Warlock ...................................................................................70

Encounter Design .........................................................................71

The D&D Pantheon ......................................................................73

Zombies! ..........................................................................................74

Design Manager

Christopher Perkins

Managing Editor

Kim Mohan

Art Director

Stacy Longstreet

Graphic Desig

Toshiko Okumura

Director of RPG R&D

Bill Slavicsek

Web Production

Bart Carroll, Chris Thomasson,

Steve Winter

D ungeons & D ragons , D&D, d20, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, all other

Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trade-

marks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., in the U.S.A. and other countries.

Web Development

Mark A. Jindra

This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States

of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork

contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission

of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Based on the original D ungeons &

D ragons ® game by E. Gary Gygax

and Dave Arneson and on the new

edition of the D ungeons & D ragons

game designed by Jonathan Tweet,

Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich

Baker, and Peter Adkison.

This product is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people, organiza-

tions, places, or events is purely coincidental.

This Wizards of the Coast game product contains no Open Game Content.

No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written

permission. To learn more about the Open Gaming License and the d20

System License, please visit www.wizards.com/d20.

For more D ungeons & D ragons articles, adventures, and information,

visit www.wizards.com/dnd

Dragon October 2007

how did We Get into this, and What are We

Going to do now that We’re here?

Guest editorial by Kim mohan

This issue of Dragon Magazine marks a major step for Wizards of the

Coast. With it, we have bid farewell to the world of the print maga-

zine and have entered the arena of electronic periodical publishing.

We have activated a new branch of our operation, D&D Insider. We

are giving notice to the rest of the electronic publishing industry that

we have arrived with a vengeance, with a mission to fulfill.

-----------------

Those of you who have been around the D ungeons & D ragons

world even longer than I have might recognize the preceding

words. That long and elaborate title, and most of the words in

that first paragraph, appeared at the start of the editor’s column

in the first issue of Dragon Magazine, way back in June 1976. I’ve

taken the liberty of updating the first paragraph to reflect the

new reality of issue number 360, here in 2007, but I left the title

alone because it works just as well today as it did back then.

In that column, editor Tim Kask set forth what amounted to

a mission statement for the new magazine: again in his words,

“to publish the best magazine devoted to Sword & Sorcery,

Fantasy, Science Fiction and Role Playing gaming.”

It’s ironic, and at the same time understandable, how little that

mission has changed in the intervening years. Dragon has been

the best in the business ever since it came into being, through a

succession of different versions and editions of the D&D game,

through a cavalcade of editors and editorial visions, through the

evolution of a hobby that began as a fringe activity and is now

woven inextricably into the fabric of contemporary society.

Now the magazine and its readers are entering a new era. If

you’re reading this, you already pretty much know what the deal

is. As for the answers to the two-part question in the title:

How Did We Get into This? Well, I won’t belabor the

obvious by telling you how electronic publishing works, and I

won’t waste your time by going into the details of why this new

method of magazine delivery is better than shipping printed

copies to postal mailboxes and retail outlets. We got into this

as a natural outgrowth of the way most information reaches its

audience nowadays: Practically every entertainment venue in

the modern world now has an online component—D&D and

Dragon Magazine are no different, nor should they be. Nothing

can take the place of playing the game around a table with your

friends or flipping through the pages of a printed magazine

article, and of course both of those activities will always be

possible. At the same time, our ability to reach you through

your computer—and your ability to communicate with us,

and with other players, the same way—opens up possibilities

that no one could have imagined in 1976.

What Are We Going to Do Now that We’re Here? The

best way I can answer this question is to refer you back to the

mission statement that’s just as applicable today as it was thirty-

some years ago. The people who have produced Dragon Magazine

over the years have approached the task from different angles,

with the benefit of varying levels of technology, but they have

all shared the same goal: To do the best possible job of giving

the readers what they want, what they need, and what will keep

them coming back for more.

Striving to achieve that goal is what has kept Dragon Maga-

zine vital and valuable for more than three decades and well

over three hundred issues, and it’s what will keep us going for

untold articles and issues yet to come. The more things change,

the more they remain the same.

about the author

KIM MOHAN is a former editor of Dragon Magazine who remem-

bers the days when pages were made by sticking strips of type

down on pieces of cardboard, and really cool-looking headlines

were produced by slicing out individual letters from adhesive

sheets. He does not remember the days when each subscriber’s

copy of the magazine was hand-delivered by someone called a

mailman, but that might just be because he’s getting on in years.

designing 4th edition:

the lead designers speak up!

livinG around d&d

by rob heinsoo

Now skip ahead many years via many other non-D&D game

systems.

the real Good thinG: 3rd edition

Third Edition brought me back to D&D. I playtested 3E as part

of Jonathan Tweet’s Wednesday night gaming group. By this

time, 1999, I’d worked at a few game companies. Playing 3E, I

was ecstatic that D&D had surfaced ahead of the other RPGs

I’d loved. This new edition of D&D didn’t hurt my head, it was

just fun, and “good for thinking.” I could appreciate the design

decisions behind the most important features of the game.

Jonathan’s Wednesday night game turned into the best RPG

campaign of my life, and I was privy to his thoughts as the 3rd Edi-

tion rules coalesced into their final form. Before the process was

complete, in early 2000, I got hired onto the D&D Worlds Team at

Wizards of the Coast. I was at less of a disadvantage than most new

employees because I only knew the 3rd Edition system, not the 2nd

Edition system that everyone else was having trouble forgetting.

I didn’t work on D&D for long. I moved over to the card side

of Wizards’ R&D department, where I worked on several trading

card games before drifting back into the D&D orbit as part of

the Chainmail minis team. From there I ended up running the

D&D Miniatures line and designed Three-Dragon Ante in my

spare time. I’d been playing 3E and then 3.5 all along, as well as

running my own idiosyncratic D&D campaign.

And that leads us into the topic for the end of this article:

Other than the 3E Players Handbook, the D&D book that has

had the most influence on the way I think about D&D is The

First level Gamer: oriGinal d&d

I got into D&D in 1974 by ordering the original three booklets

in the brown box from a wargaming catalog. I was ten years old,

living in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and I was the only person

I knew who had read the Lord of the Rings, much less heard of

D ungeons & D ragons .

The D&D combat rules went over my head. I’d never seen a

twenty-sided die (or any other die that didn’t have six sides), so

I jury-rigged a melee system based on the hand-to-hand combat

rules from The Wargame , a book of Napoleonic miniatures

rules my Dad had picked up for me at the Fort Leavenworth

book store. Incomplete understanding didn’t lessen D&D’s

impact—I was hooked on roleplaying games for life.

A few dungeon levels later, my family moved to Oregon and

I’d figured out the D&D rules, though I still hadn’t encountered

a d20. That changed when I tried running a dungeon for a couple

grad school-age gamers who balked at drawing random numbers

out of a blue plastic Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang cup. After recovering

from the embarrassment, I branched out from D&D into most

of the other early rpgs: Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, Monsters!

Monsters!, Bunnies and Burrows, Knights of the Round Table from Lou

Zocchi, and The Arduin Grimoire (more on Arduin later). I didn’t

make a huge distinction between RPGs and wargames in those

days, and my RPG-related thoughts were equally influenced by

constant playing of Melee/Wizard, Ogre, the Starguard miniatures

game, and a somewhat god-mode fantasy miniatures game I’d cre-

ated to use all my favorite minis at the same time.

mid-level adventures: ad&d

By the time AD&D came out, I had tinkered with enough game

systems that I was impatient with AD&D’s claim to be the un-

modifiable system everyone should be playing with. I was more

interested in other rpgs—I only ran AD&D once.

I did play AD&D quite a bit while I was in high school, in

a campaign with college friends. The DM was named Joe, I

think he still runs games in Eugene, Oregon. Back then he

was running modules involving temples and giants. Joe had a

particular talent for enabling the spellcasting members of the

party to rival the monsters as threats to the PCs’ survival.

missinG an edition

I skimmed through the 2nd Edition D&D rulebook and

decided I liked the games I was already interested in a lot more.

I didn’t see 2nd Edition D&D as an improvement over Rune-

quest or Champions , so I gave it a miss.

rob’s other inFluenCes

I’ve been an omnivorous gamer, with one odd excep-

tion I’ll mention at the end of this note.

My favorite non-D&D roleplaying games are Feng

Shui (a mélange of all Hong Kong action films), Over

the Edge (conspiracy and fringe play on a polyglot Medi-

terranean island), and Greg Stafford’s world of Gloran-

tha as it appeared in Runequest and Heroquest. Cults

of Prax, a Runequest supplement that detailed the reli-

gious powers, hierarchies, and myths of a wasteland

section of Glorantha, was probably the single most

influential RPG product in my life, given that it set me

on the path to study anthropology.

Speaking of life influences, I might not have set out on

the path of the game designer without Lee Gold’s Alarums

& Excursions fanzine. Arduin introduced me to A&E, and

A&E’s free-ranging RPG conversations and arguments

introduced me to most of the people I worked with or for

when I first started working as a freelance gamer-guy.

My favorite miniatures games are De Bellis Antiquitas

(simple twelve-unit ancients warfare, usually abbrevi-

ated as DBA ) and the Great Battles of History series from

GMT Games. Yeah, technically the Great Battles of His-

tory series are board games, but the counters play like

minis on a board, so let’s call ‘em as they play.

Other board games I like best include Up Front, Wiz-

War, the Lord of the Rings cooperative boardgame, Inge-

nious, Knightmare Chess, and Twilight Struggle. I haven’t

decided whether GMT’s new Combat Commander

WWII tactical game is going to supplant Advanced

Squad Leader in my affections; but I hardly ever get

around to actually playing ASL, so Combat Commander

has that in its favor.

The exception to my omnivorous gaming habits? Com-

puter games. I did enough solitaire gaming as a kid, so play-

ing against a computer alone, or even in MMORPGs, is

something I can tolerate only for a short time before I spring

out of my chair looking for something more creative to do. I

prefer face-to-face interaction. I’m aware this could change

if I get back to creating computer games, but for now I keep

track of electronic gaming by watching other people play.

Every couple months I play an hour or two of World of War-

craft and about as much Combat Mission, but that ain’t much

compared to the rest of my comrades.

tables, ridiculous monsters like the Kill Kittens, a gazetteer to

the 666 levels of the Abyss, and bizarrely evocative character

classes like Star-Powered Mages.

The Arduin Grimoire and its follow-ups ( Welcome to Skull

Tower, The Runes of Doom ) never claimed to be D&D supple-

ments. Instead, Hargrave and his fans said that Arduin was its

own game. But you couldn’t play Arduin without using concepts,

rules, character classes, and mechanics inherited from D&D.

It wasn’t Arduin ’s mechanics that made an impression on me.

As solid game design, Arduin didn’t have all that much to offer.

But as inspiration for lifting your own fantasy roleplaying game

way above the ordinary, Arduin rocked. It shaped my concept

of how cool D&D should be.

My current homebrew Arduin is an interdimensional city ruled

by representatives of twelve major races whose roles in the city gov-

ernment are determined every three years by lottery. If the dwarves

land the Nexus Diplomacy post while the drow (they prefer to be

known as the Silver Folk) are in charge of Urban Defense, you

know everyone’s going to be in for a rough three years.

Meanwhile, out in the hinterlands, my Arduinian dungeons

are terrifying supernatural eruptions that spiral in toward the

city, growing stronger and deeper the farther they travel. If a dun-

geon survives long enough to surface inside the city, it becomes

a permanent feature of the landscape. The citizens only have to

look up at Skull Tower’s red eye sockets to know just how bad that

can be, so adventurers are treated as somewhat valuable members

of society, so long as they stick to their job of depopulating and

looting dungeons and don’t get too involved in city politics.

Do these ideas in my campaign have anything to do with

the text and background details of Dave Hargrave’s Arduin ? No,

not as far as I know. Nor have the rules and mechanics inside

the various Arduin books penetrated the 4th Edition D&D

rules system. But the spirit of wild possibilities that animated

the Arduin rules has influenced my design perspective while

working on 4th Edition. We don’t have wacky tables of random

abilities for each grouping of character class, but we’ve got

powers and abilities for each class and race that I’m not going

to have to doctor-up to fit into my home campaign.

the ties that bind

by andy Collins

In August of 1981, my life changed forever because of a single

birthday present from my Uncle Ralph. I certainly didn’t expect

it at the time (nor, I’m sure, did Uncle Ralph), but it’s safe to say

that no single object has ever affected the course of my lifetime as

much as that 9”x12” cardboard box with a picture of adventurers

busting in on a dragon defending its piles of gold.

Months went by before the first time I actually played the

game. Not only was I unaware of anyone else who played the

game, I’d never even heard of it (or of roleplaying games in gen-

eral) before opening up that box. Frankly, a youth of Monopoly

Arduin Grimoire. So much so that the homebrew 3E campaign

I ran for years was set in my own version of Arduin. And my

4th Edition campaign is headed in the same direction.

the arduin Whaaa?

Back in the days when Greyhawk, Blackmoor, and Eldritch

Wizardry were stapled-together booklets published by TSR and

full of strange variant rules for D&D, Dave Hargrave’s stapled-

together Arduin Grimoire was full of even stranger variant rules.

Highlights included long lists of random special abilities for

dozens of character classes, dangerous critical hit and fumble

Dragon October 2007

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