(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Magazine Issue 128: December 1987
part 2/5
A nightmare on elm street game. Man, the number of board games has been increasing recently. Either more general toy companies know about D&D and are putting adverts in here, or their standards have dropped. Worth noting, in any case.
Matters of mystery: It's a book review, but not as we know it jim. Role-playing mastery by Gary Gygax (at least the magazine isn't trying to whitewash him out of history) gets special attention. However, as with the Gord novel last month, that attention is not particularly favourable. Particular criticism is given to the poor organization, unclear writing objectives and schizophrenic design, at some points aimed at new people, at others expecting you to already have a decent grounding in what he's talking about at the time. It also falls heavily into one-true-wayism, advocating the idea that gaming can only be truly appreciated by few elite masters of the artform (which of course includes him and his inner circle) Overall, it seems more likely to drive people away than bring them into the hobby. As with Gary's farewell message in issue 122, I'm not sure how much of this is the reviewer's real opinion, and how much editorial interference has taken place. But given things like the 1E DMG, the nature of the criticisms seem entirely plausible. Which makes them more likely to stick and be taken seriously, unfortunately. In any case, this is some very definite bad-mouthing. They don't want New Infinities to succeed and become a viable competitor. As ever, it'll be interesting seeing just how much of this stuff shows up over the next decade, until the company collapses, and he is welcomed back into the fold.
To believe or not to believe: Ahh, here's a subject they've complained about in the forum recently. Adjudicating illusions is a pain in the ass. It's no surprise someone'd send in a article on it. If anything, the surprise is that they don't have multiple. Guess they're already reconsidering last year's idea of deliberately presenting multiple conflicting options so you can choose, if the forum is anything to go by.
Anyway, specifics. Looks like it's time for a new exception based subsystem. Not my favourite thing, but if done well, they can be better than applying the same rule formulae to everything. The writer takes a fairly simple approach, cross referencing the caster's level and the victims wisdom, adding a few other basic modifiers, and then rolling a % die (which since all the modifiers are in increments of 5, would work just as well as a d20 roll) This shows a definite FASERIP influence, and seems easy enough to use. On the other hand, it completely leaves out that can of worms of figuring out when you're supposed to try and disbelieve, and how much of the onus should be on the players to figure this out from the DM's descriptions. So it falls into the servicable, but unexceptional box. Probably not one I'll bother to use.
Role-playing reviews: Empire of the petal throne gets the spotlight on it this month. God, we haven't seen anything on this in years. As Ken points out in the introduction, too much originality is actually a bad thing from a commercial point of view. You need a decent number of familiar reference points to orient from, otherwise you don't have the context to take new things in and really understand them. And Tekumel certainly has unfamiliar elements in spades, even after being around over a decade, and 3 different editions. Mechanically, it may be just a fairly close relation of D&D, but the setting is a tremendously idiosyncratic one, with most of it's derivations from mayan & aztec culture rather than the more common medieval or oriental ones. For a third time in a row, Ken examines the current edition in contrast with previous editions, and finds it wanting in some respects. I suspect he may be feeling the pull of grognardia, as this is becoming a definite pattern. Still, better a new edition than a cool game like this goes out of print and can't be played by new people anymore. Hopefully this turned a few of the magazine's newer readers onto the game back in the day.
Skyrealms of Jorune is another highly distinctive game that takes rather a lot of buy-in to really capture properly. This is another case where Ken is torn between loving many of the ideas, and being frustrated by the flaws in their presentation. Character generation in particular is a bit of a chore, with some unclear writing and quite a bit of errata. But if you can make it through that, you'll get to enjoy a clever, richly detailed sci-fantasy game, with well integrated magic, mechanical design that encourages the players to become responsible citizens rather than hack and slashing sociopaths, and a generally delightful setting. Even if you don't play it, it's well worth stealing ideas from.
part 2/5
A nightmare on elm street game. Man, the number of board games has been increasing recently. Either more general toy companies know about D&D and are putting adverts in here, or their standards have dropped. Worth noting, in any case.
Matters of mystery: It's a book review, but not as we know it jim. Role-playing mastery by Gary Gygax (at least the magazine isn't trying to whitewash him out of history) gets special attention. However, as with the Gord novel last month, that attention is not particularly favourable. Particular criticism is given to the poor organization, unclear writing objectives and schizophrenic design, at some points aimed at new people, at others expecting you to already have a decent grounding in what he's talking about at the time. It also falls heavily into one-true-wayism, advocating the idea that gaming can only be truly appreciated by few elite masters of the artform (which of course includes him and his inner circle) Overall, it seems more likely to drive people away than bring them into the hobby. As with Gary's farewell message in issue 122, I'm not sure how much of this is the reviewer's real opinion, and how much editorial interference has taken place. But given things like the 1E DMG, the nature of the criticisms seem entirely plausible. Which makes them more likely to stick and be taken seriously, unfortunately. In any case, this is some very definite bad-mouthing. They don't want New Infinities to succeed and become a viable competitor. As ever, it'll be interesting seeing just how much of this stuff shows up over the next decade, until the company collapses, and he is welcomed back into the fold.
To believe or not to believe: Ahh, here's a subject they've complained about in the forum recently. Adjudicating illusions is a pain in the ass. It's no surprise someone'd send in a article on it. If anything, the surprise is that they don't have multiple. Guess they're already reconsidering last year's idea of deliberately presenting multiple conflicting options so you can choose, if the forum is anything to go by.
Anyway, specifics. Looks like it's time for a new exception based subsystem. Not my favourite thing, but if done well, they can be better than applying the same rule formulae to everything. The writer takes a fairly simple approach, cross referencing the caster's level and the victims wisdom, adding a few other basic modifiers, and then rolling a % die (which since all the modifiers are in increments of 5, would work just as well as a d20 roll) This shows a definite FASERIP influence, and seems easy enough to use. On the other hand, it completely leaves out that can of worms of figuring out when you're supposed to try and disbelieve, and how much of the onus should be on the players to figure this out from the DM's descriptions. So it falls into the servicable, but unexceptional box. Probably not one I'll bother to use.
Role-playing reviews: Empire of the petal throne gets the spotlight on it this month. God, we haven't seen anything on this in years. As Ken points out in the introduction, too much originality is actually a bad thing from a commercial point of view. You need a decent number of familiar reference points to orient from, otherwise you don't have the context to take new things in and really understand them. And Tekumel certainly has unfamiliar elements in spades, even after being around over a decade, and 3 different editions. Mechanically, it may be just a fairly close relation of D&D, but the setting is a tremendously idiosyncratic one, with most of it's derivations from mayan & aztec culture rather than the more common medieval or oriental ones. For a third time in a row, Ken examines the current edition in contrast with previous editions, and finds it wanting in some respects. I suspect he may be feeling the pull of grognardia, as this is becoming a definite pattern. Still, better a new edition than a cool game like this goes out of print and can't be played by new people anymore. Hopefully this turned a few of the magazine's newer readers onto the game back in the day.
Skyrealms of Jorune is another highly distinctive game that takes rather a lot of buy-in to really capture properly. This is another case where Ken is torn between loving many of the ideas, and being frustrated by the flaws in their presentation. Character generation in particular is a bit of a chore, with some unclear writing and quite a bit of errata. But if you can make it through that, you'll get to enjoy a clever, richly detailed sci-fantasy game, with well integrated magic, mechanical design that encourages the players to become responsible citizens rather than hack and slashing sociopaths, and a generally delightful setting. Even if you don't play it, it's well worth stealing ideas from.
) finishes off this year's articles. Just how experienced an adventurer are you? Have you got what it takes to make a living by killing people and taking their stuff? Or would a nice accountancy job suit you better? Do not take their advice seriously, for it is not meant to be done so, and may result in the unfortunate loss of much of your money. Another good example of Roger bringing more of a sense of mischief to his job than Kim did, even in the non-april issues. Which is one change I have no real objection to. This year may have seen things become more erratic than they were under Kim's tenure, but there's still been plenty of entertaining moments. Whether things will get better or worse next year is still uncertain, but it's still going to be interesting finding out. 
