===================================================================== || || || DRAGONQUEST Newsletter April 1994 || || || || Volume 1 / Number 2 || ===================================================================== Produced: Wed 27 Apr 1994 The DQ Newsletter is for discussions of the DragonQuest role playing game. The key addresses you need to know are: psproefr@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu (Article Submissions, Editor, etc. ) dnadler@wtcpost.daytonoh.ncr.com ( Mailing List Maintenance, Back Issues ) All articles are copyrighted property of their respective authors. Reproducing or republishing an article, in whole or in part, in any other forum requires permission of the author or the moderator. C O N T E N T S Administrivia --- Dave Nadler Letter FROM the Editor --- Phil Proefrock Letters -- Kelly Grant "Re: Weapons Rule Variant" -- Joe Gregg "More about republishing DragonQuest" -- Daniel Allbutt and Andrew Carter "A DragonQuest Magazine" ===================================================================== "Administrivia" --- Dave Nadler Phil (a.k.a. "Ed") has outdone himself this time. In an effort to make up for the "Missing March Edition", Phil has produced an April edition of considerable size. I'm breaking up the April edition into a couple of "printings" so no one's e-mail capabilities are overloaded. You should be receiving over the next week issues v1n2 (this one), v1n3, and v1n4 which will make up the entirety of the April publication. Confusing? Yes. So why am I doing this? Other mailing list administrators have advised keeping a mailing to around 15K in size. Dave Nadler (a.k.a "Ad" the Administrator) --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Letter FROM the Editor" --- Phil Proefrock We are continuing to get subscription requests, so the momentum is building. Hopefully those of you who have been in touch with this since it first was begun haven't completely burned out on the idea since it has been coming a little slowly, so far. That was, hopefully, just a one time thing. For those of you who don't know, I am a graduate student in architecture (my secret identity) and I had the opportunity to go to Luxembourg over my spring break to participate in a project being sponsored by the government of a community in Luxembourg as part of my studio. Preparations for this, plus being out of the country for more than two weeks, all helped to keep the March issue from happening in a timely manner, so it has become the April issue. My apologies to those of you who eagerly check your email to see if any new DQ material has arrived. I know I said I'd try to do this monthly, but circumstances will sometimes interfere. I've also had some inquiries about using the material we are distributing in this Newsletter in other publications (club news-letters, etc.). Although the copyright of the individual authors should be respected, I would imagine most of the authors will gladly welcome a chance to have their work distributed to a wider audience. If you want to reprint an article, I recommend that you contact the author through the 'Net. I will start including the author's email address at the end of their articles for easier reference, although they are also included in the header. David Nadler is our resident expert on Internet protocols and precedents, so I'll ask him to add any other points he feels may be relevant. We also would not mind having a reference to the DQ Newsletter made in your reprint of any article distributed here. The more people who know about what we're up to here, the better. [I'm in strong agreement with Phil's recommendation to get permission from an author BEFORE publishing any submission or letter or anything from this newsletter. Commercial or potentially commercial ideas are being discussed here, and we need to respect the rights of the authors - Ad] Likewise, if there are non-'Net-connected DQ players who want to participate by sending hardcopy of their material, I will gladly consider it for the newsletter (and I'll type it in myself to get it in to the newsletter, if need be). I am also willing to receive DQ related material for review in future issues. My s-mail address is: Philip Proefrock 625 McGuffey #291 Oxford OH 45056 USA (I will also add as a parenthetical note that anyone who playtests any of my rules or variants and sends me some useful feedback, I will add you to the playtesters acknowledgements, should that supplement ever get published.) --------------------------_L_E_T_T_E_R_S_---------------------------- >From Kelly Grant: "Re: Weapons Rule Variant" [Some other material edited] Secondly, I'd like to reply to an article. Can there be a letters page included in the newsletter? I don't mind if people want to respond to my letter via email. [And here it is. I think that feedback and discussion are going to be the lifeblood of this newsletter, so please, do write. I certainly welcome the feedback, and I'm sure the other authors are also interested in how their ideas are received as well. --Ed.] Thirdly, Weapons Rule Variant. Does the Modifier apply to the percentile chance to hit with the weapon or the damage the weapon does? +3 to the damage seems an enormous bonus, if it is the case, given that weaponsmiths take years of time to make weapons that give an equivalent bonus. More details please. I quite like the idea of wearing in a favourite weapon, or pickin up a complete dud. Kelly [That's exactly what I had in mind with this variant. I've had a lot of success with this in my campaigns, and some characters who have developed a real affinity for certain 'favorite' weapons. But I obviously goofed in not making it completely clear that these are modifiers to Strike Chance. (Not to damage or IV or anything else). Sorry it was unclear. -- Ed.] --------------------------------------------------------------------- >From Joe Gregg: "More about republishing DragonQuest" WotC is a startup company that hit it big with one product, the "Magic" card game that's just come out in the last year or so. Each player has a deck that they have thrown together from card sets they purchased or won from other players. Cards are for mana sources, spells, or monsters that can be summoned. Play consists of draws from your shuffled deck, and plays from your hand. Careful attention must be paid to having mana sources available to power your spells (you can even tap the other player's sources). There's quite a bit of thinking that can go into it. But a lot isn't required. That's probably more than you wanted to know. Let's just say that WotC cleared over a million bucks with this product expects to do a lot better this year. We do have "The Shattered Statue" module. We found it somewhat distasteful that third edition DQ bowdlerized the original, and likewise that the Rune and Shaping magics were less than wonderful. We set about correcting what we didn't like, as everyone wants to do. We came up with four branches of four colleges each. That way there was a branch in opposition to some other branch. It also made sense to set some colleges in minor opposition to each other. Finally, we put shaping and summoning into "greater knowledge" available to every college. Hmm, sounds weird. Here are the details. EE | Illusions--- THAUMATURGIES ---Mind | Naming Earth . Starlight | . | Fire-- ELEMENTAL --Water . . . . . . Lunar-- CELESTIAL --Sun | . | Air . Stardark Necromancy | Shadow--- ENTITIES ---Rune | Black Once a mage has mastered his/her college, then one of the two paths of Greater Knowledge are open to him/her. Mastery occurs at some reasonable level - we have selected Rank 10 in all General Knowledge and Rank 6 in all Special Knowledge. As an aside, we allow research at a slightly lesser level of mastery. Greater Knowledge is exclusively either Shaping or Summoning. We allow the given spells and rituals for Shaping and either the old Greater or the new Lesser Summoning, given in the various TSR materials. Our reasons for doing this are from our analysis of what a viable society would have produced. If only Shapers can make investment receptacles, then they are either enormously in demand or are hunted and enslaved. Given the time requirements listed in "The Shattered Statue", a human Shaper would learn the college by age 16, gain Ranks and new magic over a decade, and die of old age and Endurance loss by the time one major artifact could be produced! Similar reasoning applied to Summoners. We found limits that were logical in allowing summoning based upon one's original college (animals associated with your bent, etc.), up to the demon-summoning of self-deluding fools. To be more specific would be to use up a lot of net bandwidth. Okay, I hope that has whetted your appetite as well as satisfied some of your curiosity. Joe (gregg@espresso.rt.cs.boeing.com) --------------------------------------------------------------------- >From Andrew Carter: "A DragonQuest Magazine" Greetings from Australia! Enclosed are contributions that the GM's of our group wish to make to this newsletter. [Those will be appearing in a forthcoming issue. --Ed.] I only just recently joined, with my character "Wittya" - an Illusionist mage. Luckily I have access to Internet from Uni so I was able to find out about this newsletter. I had been putting up notices about DQ on Role Playing BBS's in Sydney but with no result. Anyway, as you will read below, the players in our group are happy about this newsletter (GM's especially!). I hope it continues. Daniel Allbutt. Here is Andrew Carter's contribution: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hi Phil, Dave and fellow DQ Players. I received your February Newsletter last night from one of our group who has access to the internet. I couldn't disbeleive it! (I checked as Wittya is an Illusionist). Nope! It's still here. I am still recovering from reading it! There ARE more of us around. I knew there was, I just didn't know how to contact others. What a brilliant idea this newsletter is. Let me support you all the way. Our group has played DQ ever since we obtained First Edition in, I think, late 1980. Most of our group has been together some 15 years. The majority of time was spent playing DQ. We played ADD for about a year or so until this new game called DragonQuest came along. That ended our ADD days. After playing DQ for so many years, through three editions, we decided to switch to Rolemaster. Having no new feedback and always having to convert modules, source material, etc, took its toll on our GM's - including me. We always played weekly, so there was a lot of work for our GM's. We still play Rolemaster weekly, however a few of us couldn't give DQ up! We actually went for nine months without playing it! Some of us in the group (including myself) now play DQ every second week along with the weekly now-Rolemaster original group. We also quite often have the ex-DQ players of our group "drop in". With input from your newsletter we could start weekly gaming again with DQ. 2 NIGHTS A WEEK! My wife will kill me! AAH! But it will be worth it. Our new group is "DQ - The next generation" as new players have now joined! I will certainly spread the word of your newsletter here in Australia. I would also like to get your thoughts on production of a DQ Module Magazine similar in setup to TSR's Dungeon Magazine but only catering for DQ modules. This has been a personal frustration to me - always having to convert modules. I don't always have the time or the imagination to constantly create my own. This Magazine of mine would cater only for modules and closely related material. I would in no way want to compete with this newsletter. I'm behind it 200%!! As I said before it would be similar in concept to TSR's Dungeon Magazine, but exclusively DQ. Phil, Dave, Joe Gregg and anybody else - What are your thoughts? Would any of you buy it if it were cheap enough and good enough? Would any of you send me original DQ dungeons? If so, SEND THEM NOW. Is this type of magazine any use? Could it compliment this newsletter? If arrangements could by made would anybody sell, on a commission basis, copies at Conventions, especially GEN CON? These are just some of the thoughts going around in my head at the moment. The concept has been in my mind for the last two years. The first issue could be ready as easily as late June. Maybe even earlier. My final consideration of course is copyright. I want to produce the first edition stating clearly this is _not_approved_ by TSR and TSR owns "DragonQuest DQ" and TSR is in no way linked to me. I will also send TSR a copy of all the published issue. I hope by doing this they will not 'close me down' if the concept works. I am also a bit concerned about my idea's impact on Joe Gregg's discussions with TSR regarding the purchase of the DQ Rules. I want in no way to jeapordize this. Joe, I have written you a message on here. If you have any concerns please contact me and let me know. I would love to see any revival if DQ this newsletter and my mag could be part of it. Would anybody please send any thoughts or comments. I don't care if they are positive or negative - I'm open to both. Above all, if you like the concept, send me original DQ modules or concepts. Please include an international postage coupon if you want a reply. I hope to receive maximum submissions and to constantly pay postage would be a burden. I'm sorry to ask this but I only have one wage to split between a Wife and five children (YES five - got to do something other than work DQ! :) I will try to pay as much as I can for published modules if the mag gets off the ground. So send ideas to me! Now! Long live DragonQuest and this Newsletter! signed ANDON THE GREAT (Arch Ensorcelor and Enchanter) BTW: I sometime live in a fantasy world called Earth under a character name of ANDREW D. CARTER. POSTAL ADDRESS: Andrew D. Carter 27 Fuller Street Mount Druitt New South Wales 2770 Australia write c/o: dallbutt@st.nepean.uws.edu.au (please mention at start of letter that the message is for Andrew) #################################################################### ### End of DragonQuest Newsletter -- April 1994 (part 1 of 3) ### ####################################################################