Dragon Plus Issue 12

You can read this issue right here.

It seems like it has been forever since the last issue, doesn't it? This issue contains some pdfs that I wasn’t able to download, so I can’t give as thorough a look as I’d like.

We have begun the hype for the new book, Tales from the Yawning Portal. This book takes classic adventures from previous editions and updates them to the 5th edition rules.

Catlantis: We start out with a massive article where an author takes art of cats and creates personalities and a world around them.

This is so random that I don't even know where to start. Is it bad? No. I just don’t understand why it is here. I guess they want to draw in people who are very casually acquainted with D&D.

My favorite line: "Claire does not tolerate wiffle-waffle of any sort." Good things will happen to those who work this into a sentence in real life.

You can definitely lift the personalities and use them in your game. There’s some very good ideas for magic items too. My favorite: The Staff of Confounding Questions. It answers questions and questions answers.

Then it gives a broad description of an adventuring locale called Catlantis. A lot of this seems more like prep work for a novel.

Then there is an interview with the artist who did the cat art, Tahra. This artist does some really good stuff. There is a point in the interview where he mentions how cool it would be to paint a dragon or a beholder.

Now, let’s keep in mind that the cover he did for this issue is of a cat wizard. Not a beholder or a dragon. A cat wizard.

Yawning Portal: Mike Shea writes up a big article about Tales from the Yawning Portal. It is full of advice and ideas, ways to modify the adventure to fit your liking. He mentions that it is almost expected that the DM is going to modify the adventures. I imagine new players might not be aware of that, so I'm glad it got mentioned. I really love the idea of people brand new to D&D playing through White Plume Mountain or the Tomb of Horrors.

He drops in some hooks and all sorts of handy stuff.

There's a free pdf of a conversion of Kaladesh, a locale from Magic: The Gathering. Weirdly, I could download this one but not the other pdfs.

Premium Board Game: There is a premium edition of the Assault of the Giants boardgame. Normally, these games come with unpainted minis. But in the premium version, they're painted! I'm not even interested in the board game, but I might get that just for the minis.

Portal Art: Then we get a look a Tales from the Yawning Portal. They list who all of the people are on the cover. Mialee's on there! I had no idea. Honestly I've played or run most of these adventures and I didn't recognize any of them.

We get a TON of art from the book. Holy crap. Really, really awesome! Here's Acererak, the bad guy from Tomb of Horrors:

Here's an update of the classic White Plume Mountain map:

I really love that map, they did a fantastic job with it. White Plume is one of my favorite adventures of all time.

Free Adventure: There's an adventure, but I can't download it for some reason. I heard amazon was having problems. This is by Jason Thompson, the creator who does the walkthrough maps. Here, he did a walkthrough map of his own adventure! So while I can't read it, I can look at the map and pretty much see the whole adventure. It seems like it is absolutely loaded with xvarts. I might try to run this in the next few weeks.

Storm King Maps: More maps from Storm King's Thunder, tagged and untagged! Get them! They are very useful. One of these maps will be very useful for those following Dice, Camera, Action.

Dragotha: We get a pdf of an old article on Dragotha, the undead dragon mentioned in White Plume Mountain. Again, I can't download the pdf, which is a bummer. I'll try again later.

Overall

This issue is a lot like the others. It's decent and has a lot of useful stuff. Don't forget about it! The maps are awesome and a free adventure is nothing to sneeze at! It also does its job, at least in my case, in getting the reader fired up about Yawning Portal. 

I believe that they decided to make this anthology because people are still playing through the other adventures. This is sort of like a "filler" while people plow through Curse of Strahd, Storm King and Out of the Abyss. Curse of Strahd seems like it is mega-popular. I still get more emails about that adventure than anything else.

I am wondering if they will do this again in a few years. Another anthology? What would be in that one? I'd like to see an anthology of NEW adventures by awesome adventure writers. Heck, maybe they could take the best adventures off of the DMs Guild and give them new art and maps. That would be really cool.