It's the start of the A to Z blogging challenge and I Am already breaking the rules, or rather bending them a bit.It is also April 1st and that mean April Fools Day. So my first post is about the great April issues of the old Dragon magazine.
Back in the 80's Dragon would send out their April issue and it would have various bits of "off" content. While every May there would be "serious gamers" complaining about it I thought it was great.
In fact the "Adventure" Nogard from Dragon #96 (it's Dragon spelled backwards! Funny!) became a serious thing in our game. A dimensionless plane with no exits. It is timeless, so you can't die of old age or even hunger (but you still get hungry) became an awful place to get stuck in for our high school games.
I'd later use the exact same place in my series "The Dragon and the Phoenix" as the demonic waste-land in the finale "No Other Troy".
Of course some of the articles were just silly. I remember them now only fondly. Plenty of allusions to Phil and Dixie's "Sex and D&D" and lots of pointless character classes.
More recently WotC did an April Fools web site that featured older Basic and 1st Ed books as "New" and an equally useless cass, Witchalok (that got my attention) with powers like "Slow Dramatic Clap" and "Turn into Dinosaur". Some of the older gamers were "offended" I thought it was funny as hell myself. So in the vein of humor I present a new Witch Spell for Basic D&D. Convert to any version of D&D you like. But not to Original D&D, because really, who plays that any more? BTW this is the spell I got paid for the new 5th Edition D&D that will be announced at Gen Con 2011.
Slow Dramatic Clap
Level: Witch 8
Range: 25'
Duration: 3 rounds
This spell is one the greater compulsion spells the witch has access too. It can only be cast after someone in the witch's party does something that can be described as truly epic. Defeating the ogre king with only a broken table leg, getting the cursed gem into a bag, or scoring the winning basket with only seconds left on the clock. The witch stands and begins to clap very slowly. Any creature that fails their save vs. Awesomness (or Spells, whatever is on your sheet) will stand (if sitting), drop their weapons and clap too. Everytime someone falls victim to the spell, others will take a -1 to their save rolls. So if 4 people fail their save before you then you are at a -4 to save yourself. Eventually all will be clapping. If any 80's rock anthem is playing then everyone takes and additional -5.
The witch must be able to stand and speak the command words "Well done. Well. Done."
Of course WotC is doing it all again this year too!
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/
That spell is way too funny. Why not bend the rules? A little Misrule is a good thing...now and again...
ReplyDeleteYou had me going for a minute with your title. I'm not up on what you were talking about here but it was well presented.
ReplyDeleteGood luck and happy blogging.
Lee
Tossing It Out
Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge
I used to love the old Dragon April issues. I even have that one that you posted a picture of - I subscribed from issue #90 continuously until the print edition ended with #359 (or whatever number it was).
ReplyDeleteA few years ago on ENWorld, there was a whole discussion about the April issues. I fondly remember the one from issue #72, which was the first issue I ever bought, because it had the Cavalier class.
Anyway, the April gags in that issue included a bunch of "1/2-Level Spells", such as one of my personal favorites:
PURIFY FOOD & WATER 1/2
Material Components: Black Pepper & Ketchup (I think they called it "catsup").
Because everybody knows that everything tastes better with black pepper and ketchup on it.