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[Let's Read] ARES Magazine
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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6813484" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Ares 05 - Citadel of Blood: November 1980</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>Nearly monochromatic isometric 3D, huh? Someone's been taking their inspiration from the early computer games of the era. That's a good reminder that it's not just RPG's encroaching on the same free time and money as wargaming, it's the arcades and personal computers as well. Dragon had a computer games column for many years. Will ARES make their own attempt too? Guess I'd better push on and see if they've changed things around inside again. </p><p></p><p></p><p>44 pages</p><p></p><p></p><p>Muse: The editorial is very short indeed, with only 2 notable bits of information. First, that the editor actually prefers realistic games to fantasy ones. Well, SPI was primarily about the historical wargames, and Strategy & Tactics is still far bigger than ARES. Not surprised that many in the company would only be jumping on the bandwagon reluctantly in the wake of D&D's massive success. That's slightly worrying to know. Second, and far less surprising, is that the new game inside is a variant on the rules of one of their existing ones, which virtually all companies do. Another of those reminders that like any decently sized company, they are a production line, and that means giving people jobs they don't really want to do, at a rate determined by management rather than inspiration. Sigh. It can never be just fun and games, can it? On with the show. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The Dark Tower of Loki Hellsson: Wut. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite12" alt="o_O" title="Er... what? o_O" loading="lazy" data-shortname="o_O" /> Loki Hellson?! Now there's a name that's chosen to sound cool and completely inaccurate from an etymological point of view. But then, when you're talking about a generic fantasy dungeon, what can you expect. His enemies, Thorin Evilsbane and Vasili the Blessed are similarly cheesy. This is the first time their habit of providing setting material for every game seems a bit forced and perfunctory, barely longer than a page, and with terrible names in general. It's a magical dungeoncrawl which shifts layout every time you visit it. It doesn't have to make sense. Just let us play the game and enjoy it. After all, unlike D&D, it's not as if you have to place it in a specific location in the world, worry about it's effects on the neighbours, and what'll happen once it's cleared out and left abandoned for a while if the campaign continues. Not impressed at all by this one. Let's hope they put more effort into the actual game. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Dark Stars & Dim Hopes: The miserabilist pieces on the limits of human advancement continue, once again going into the mathematics of interstellar space and the difficulty of traversing it within a practical timespan. Even if we solve the mechanical challenges of building something that can accelerate to a decent fraction of lightspeed, get to another solar system, brake and transmit useful information back, getting humans there alive, well and sane within a single lifespan seems impossible with us as we are. Cryogenic suspension still isn't an option even now, and generation ships seem doomed to revolt due to human nature. The only course I can see that might have potential is genetic engineering, and that seems unlikely to be tried properly given the current suspicion of human experimentation by the general public. It's all pretty depressing. I do wonder why they keep publishing these. One is fair enough, but what do they expect to achieve by continuing to go on about it? Are you really THAT devoted to gritty realism over fun? What's the motivation here? And how do I keep my motivation up in spite of it? It's all a little baffling. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Miniature Spaceships: Adding minis reviews to their already pretty full roster? I'm not surprised at all, actually, as it's more relevant to their core goals than movies or books. Not that they have a huge amount to say about them, as they cram 7 into 2 pages with a fair bit of whitespace to spare. Really, it's not much more than telling us that they exist, and there are games you can play using them. The photos aren't particularly impressive either, being very much limited by the printing technology of the day, especially in black and white. This definitely needs some retooling before it could become a regular column.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Books: The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein sees him well into his brain-eater phase, producing material that's rambling, overlong, full of subplots that go nowhere and weird sex stuff. It's not that it isn't interesting, in part because of it's strangeness, but it's still very disappointing compared to his older works. Time does cruel things to us all, and the higher you rise, the farther you have to fall. </p><p></p><p>Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny also comes up short compared to his previous works, this time for being too short to properly explore all the ideas he comes up with. This is why you need an editor who can be completely blunt with you no matter how big you get. </p><p></p><p>The Magic Labyrinth by Philip Jose Farmer completes a hat-trick of let-downs, bringing Riverworld to an anticlimactic conclusion where the big secrets are largely irrelevant. It's always so much easier when you don't have to explain your tricks, and can let people's imaginations do the heavy lifting. </p><p></p><p>The man who Corrupted Earth by G. C. Edmonson does please our reviewer's strict standards, on the other hand. It's dark, dramatic, and tackles some genuine real world issues. Shame that space travel has died down so much in real life, where the good guys don't get to win in the end by author fiat. There's always the future. </p><p></p><p>The steel, the mist and the blazing sun by Christopher Anvil gets a resounding meh. Just another way to fill a few hours with no lasting impact. It's so easy for reviewers to get jaded when they consume a lot, isn't it. </p><p></p><p>Lifekeeper by Mike McQuay suffers from the classic first book problem of feeling like the author just started writing without a plan and rambled until they had enough material for a novel. This is where physically writing multiple drafts instead of a word processor helps. A good editor is just as important for beginners as it is for big stars. </p><p></p><p>The Light Bearer by Sam Nicholson is one of the lucky books that makes the grade. Essentially an Arabian Nights story in space, it manages to be both entertaining and well-written enough for Greg's standards. </p><p></p><p>Ironbrand by John Morressy is another decent, but not exceptional fantasy one. Three brothers get magical swords, and have to liberate the kingdom from evil. Same old story. </p><p></p><p>The Dancers of Arun by Elizabeth Lynn sees Greg once again complain about all this tedious feminism that's getting in his fantasy lately. Less talky, more fighty! If he posted this today, the comments sections would be packed full of flames. </p><p></p><p>And finally, Glen Cook's Dread Empire series gets a pretty positive collective review. The ending might be a bit rushed, but it's still a solid series that has potential for more expansion in the future. Well, he's not wrong here, at least. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Bypass: Along with the scientific articles about how the future can go wrong, we have some fiction about how the future can go wrong. Uploading human minds to a computer? It's quite possible that they'd go insane and become self-destructive trying to deal with their new condition. Which would be a great pain in the ass for everyone else involved, especially if they're running a spaceship or other place where they control the life support. Fortunately, this is only fiction, so they can come up with a happy solution with no loss of life at the end. Nothing too surprising on the speculative fiction front, really as this is the same kind of problem we've seen many many times before, and hopefully will be equipped to deal with if we ever face it in reality. I can't give it particularly high or low marks. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Citadel of Blood: Time for a fantasy dungeoncrawl in here, which isn't too surprising, even if the way they're going about it is a little different, as this is more an elaborate board game like Advanced Heroquest than a full RPG. The layout of the dungeon is generated randomly each time you enter, and the whole thing is designed to work without a GM. There's a decent selection of monsters, and they have various quirks to make them more interesting than just hitting back and forth until someone dies, plus you can roll to negotiate with them or magically charm them if you want too. The Spell selection is a little limited though, and could do with some expansion, especially on the Special table to give more room for advancement. So this is good if you don't have a GM, and want a fantasy adventure with a little more room for player choice and character advancement than Heroquest, but not so much it becomes unwieldy to keep track of. If your DM is flaky, keep it around as a standby. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Facts for Fantasy: This section is shrunk to a page and a half to fit around the adverts. As before, it's completely eurocentric, with a little bit of egypt squeezing it's way in, with a combination of fantastical and historical stuff, including some surprisingly detailed talk about various types of cannonballs and the excesses of 12th century feasts. The various monsters and myths are all completely familiar (and statted out), of course, but some of the historical bits are new to me, which again shows the difference in focus between ARES and Dragon. When you play mass combat games regularly, you care as much about different gauges of cannon as you do polearms. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Science for Science Fiction: Just like the previous column, this gets a 25% cut in size for the sake of equality. It's tidbits of information are slightly more detailed, but also much more dated, since we have a lot more information on what stars nearby have planets, and even how big and far from their primary they are. Continental drift has long since ceased to be controversial, but global warming has if anything become more so. You never know what's going to change, and what's going to be all too similar until you get to the future, and there's still a lot to find out in this field. I do wish we could afford to send a few more probes off into interstellar space with powerful cameras to get more accurate information from multiple viewpoints.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Monsterquest: Just like TSR, SPI needs their fans to produce supplementary material for their games. DragonQuest is brand new, and they need to do some serious catching up on the monster front if they want to compete with D&D's multiple monster books. So here they encourage you to send in your own monsters, and lots of them, so they can publish a big book full a mere 6 months later. As usual for these things, the monetary rewards and legal terms are not great, making it very clear that this is work for hire where they get all the rights and control and you get little but the bragging rights of seeing your name in print. It's very much one of those moments where seeing how the sausage is made removes your desire to actually eat it. I know all that legal crap is necessary to cover their ass, but it's still depressing. There's very little money in creativity unless you're at the top of the pyramid, at which point you have all the power. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Film & Television: Close Encounters - Special edition is actually slightly shorter than the theatrical version of the film, but the reviewer still considers it a substantial improvement in pacing and special effects. It may lack the worldbuilding of harder sci-fi, but in terms of sheer wonder, it's still up there with Spielberg's best. </p><p></p><p>The Final Countdown gets a negative review because the film makes very little sense as it is, skipping huge sections of the book to keep it the right length for the theatre, at the expense of pacing and coherence. You know, that was what intermissions were for in the old days. That way you don't have to test your bladder every time you want a little room to develop in your films. Let's hope they filmed more than they used so a better cut could be releasable later. </p><p></p><p>Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars gets a pretty positive review, punching well above it's budget in terms of special effects, and while it has some humour, the actors still take their characters seriously. It might not match up to Star Wars in impact, but it's still more than entertaining enough for a rewatch. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Games: The games section is thoroughly taken over by roleplaying at this point, and begins with a lengthy rant on how fantasy and sci-fi vastly outsell more realistic historical or modern day scenarios. This does not please the editor at all, as we found out earlier, and if he had his way, he'd change the tastes of the public too. (preferably by releasing a megaselling game that puts SPI at the top of the roleplaying pile) Yeah, that's not going to happen, and at least they're realistic about the odds against it and the reasons why. The closer you are to reality, the more constrained you are as both a writer and a player. It's harder to make fun, and you have to deal with more nitpickers telling you you're doing it wrong. That issue hasn't changed with the passage of time, and I feel like I could jump in at any point of history in any gaming related media and deal with complaints of much the same nature. </p><p></p><p>Traveller actually gets a pretty positive review, as the glacially slow experience combined with gradually escalating chances of death in character generation is actually fairly realistic, and makes for a fun minigame in itself even if you don't get around to playing. The worldbuilding systems are good, the action resolution works as intended, and there's tons of things to do out there in space. Of course, there's one area that's a little too realistic, and that's the lack of technological advancement in other areas. (which of course is all the more glaring 30+ years later) They're also not so positive about the supplements, which show the usual problems of being written on a lower budget and with less playtesting than the corebooks. Oh well, that's why you read the reviews and choose carefully where to spend your money in the first place. </p><p></p><p>Space Opera also gets some praise, but slightly more criticism, as it is pretty comprehensive, but that also makes it too slow in actual play for their tastes. Like many RPG's, you really have to figure out which rules to ignore for maximum fun, which is not a pleasing concept to those raised on competitive wargames. A perfectly accurate map is actually useless, and so it goes with games that are as slow or moreso than reality. It's a hard lesson for designers to learn. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Feedback: The feedback remains mostly the same, but this time, starts to slip ideas for DragonQuest supplements in amongst the standalone games to see what people might be looking for in their roleplaying. Like the advert for monster submissions earlier, they need your help to grow their game in the right way. Will you focus on dungeons, wilderness or cities, adventuring or domain management? As ever, let's hope we find out before all their plans come to naught anyway. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Having had the novelty wear off of doing this again, this is where the conservative and parochial attitudes of the writers is going from amusing to grating for me. I never thought that early 80's Dragon was a bastion of equality, but compared to ARES of the same era, it certainly was. The pessimistic take on realism and scientific accuracy is also weirdly discouraging in a magazine that's supposed to be about gaming, and makes it seem like they have very specific tastes in fun and will complain at you if your playstyle doesn't match up. Is the emphasis on stamping out badwrongfun one of the things that hurts their sales and kills them of in the end? It certainly isn't making it easier to get through this. Let's see if the next issue is any more entertaining.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 6813484, member: 27780"] [B][U]Ares 05 - Citadel of Blood: November 1980[/U][/B] Nearly monochromatic isometric 3D, huh? Someone's been taking their inspiration from the early computer games of the era. That's a good reminder that it's not just RPG's encroaching on the same free time and money as wargaming, it's the arcades and personal computers as well. Dragon had a computer games column for many years. Will ARES make their own attempt too? Guess I'd better push on and see if they've changed things around inside again. 44 pages Muse: The editorial is very short indeed, with only 2 notable bits of information. First, that the editor actually prefers realistic games to fantasy ones. Well, SPI was primarily about the historical wargames, and Strategy & Tactics is still far bigger than ARES. Not surprised that many in the company would only be jumping on the bandwagon reluctantly in the wake of D&D's massive success. That's slightly worrying to know. Second, and far less surprising, is that the new game inside is a variant on the rules of one of their existing ones, which virtually all companies do. Another of those reminders that like any decently sized company, they are a production line, and that means giving people jobs they don't really want to do, at a rate determined by management rather than inspiration. Sigh. It can never be just fun and games, can it? On with the show. The Dark Tower of Loki Hellsson: Wut. O_o Loki Hellson?! Now there's a name that's chosen to sound cool and completely inaccurate from an etymological point of view. But then, when you're talking about a generic fantasy dungeon, what can you expect. His enemies, Thorin Evilsbane and Vasili the Blessed are similarly cheesy. This is the first time their habit of providing setting material for every game seems a bit forced and perfunctory, barely longer than a page, and with terrible names in general. It's a magical dungeoncrawl which shifts layout every time you visit it. It doesn't have to make sense. Just let us play the game and enjoy it. After all, unlike D&D, it's not as if you have to place it in a specific location in the world, worry about it's effects on the neighbours, and what'll happen once it's cleared out and left abandoned for a while if the campaign continues. Not impressed at all by this one. Let's hope they put more effort into the actual game. Dark Stars & Dim Hopes: The miserabilist pieces on the limits of human advancement continue, once again going into the mathematics of interstellar space and the difficulty of traversing it within a practical timespan. Even if we solve the mechanical challenges of building something that can accelerate to a decent fraction of lightspeed, get to another solar system, brake and transmit useful information back, getting humans there alive, well and sane within a single lifespan seems impossible with us as we are. Cryogenic suspension still isn't an option even now, and generation ships seem doomed to revolt due to human nature. The only course I can see that might have potential is genetic engineering, and that seems unlikely to be tried properly given the current suspicion of human experimentation by the general public. It's all pretty depressing. I do wonder why they keep publishing these. One is fair enough, but what do they expect to achieve by continuing to go on about it? Are you really THAT devoted to gritty realism over fun? What's the motivation here? And how do I keep my motivation up in spite of it? It's all a little baffling. Miniature Spaceships: Adding minis reviews to their already pretty full roster? I'm not surprised at all, actually, as it's more relevant to their core goals than movies or books. Not that they have a huge amount to say about them, as they cram 7 into 2 pages with a fair bit of whitespace to spare. Really, it's not much more than telling us that they exist, and there are games you can play using them. The photos aren't particularly impressive either, being very much limited by the printing technology of the day, especially in black and white. This definitely needs some retooling before it could become a regular column. Books: The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein sees him well into his brain-eater phase, producing material that's rambling, overlong, full of subplots that go nowhere and weird sex stuff. It's not that it isn't interesting, in part because of it's strangeness, but it's still very disappointing compared to his older works. Time does cruel things to us all, and the higher you rise, the farther you have to fall. Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny also comes up short compared to his previous works, this time for being too short to properly explore all the ideas he comes up with. This is why you need an editor who can be completely blunt with you no matter how big you get. The Magic Labyrinth by Philip Jose Farmer completes a hat-trick of let-downs, bringing Riverworld to an anticlimactic conclusion where the big secrets are largely irrelevant. It's always so much easier when you don't have to explain your tricks, and can let people's imaginations do the heavy lifting. The man who Corrupted Earth by G. C. Edmonson does please our reviewer's strict standards, on the other hand. It's dark, dramatic, and tackles some genuine real world issues. Shame that space travel has died down so much in real life, where the good guys don't get to win in the end by author fiat. There's always the future. The steel, the mist and the blazing sun by Christopher Anvil gets a resounding meh. Just another way to fill a few hours with no lasting impact. It's so easy for reviewers to get jaded when they consume a lot, isn't it. Lifekeeper by Mike McQuay suffers from the classic first book problem of feeling like the author just started writing without a plan and rambled until they had enough material for a novel. This is where physically writing multiple drafts instead of a word processor helps. A good editor is just as important for beginners as it is for big stars. The Light Bearer by Sam Nicholson is one of the lucky books that makes the grade. Essentially an Arabian Nights story in space, it manages to be both entertaining and well-written enough for Greg's standards. Ironbrand by John Morressy is another decent, but not exceptional fantasy one. Three brothers get magical swords, and have to liberate the kingdom from evil. Same old story. The Dancers of Arun by Elizabeth Lynn sees Greg once again complain about all this tedious feminism that's getting in his fantasy lately. Less talky, more fighty! If he posted this today, the comments sections would be packed full of flames. And finally, Glen Cook's Dread Empire series gets a pretty positive collective review. The ending might be a bit rushed, but it's still a solid series that has potential for more expansion in the future. Well, he's not wrong here, at least. Bypass: Along with the scientific articles about how the future can go wrong, we have some fiction about how the future can go wrong. Uploading human minds to a computer? It's quite possible that they'd go insane and become self-destructive trying to deal with their new condition. Which would be a great pain in the ass for everyone else involved, especially if they're running a spaceship or other place where they control the life support. Fortunately, this is only fiction, so they can come up with a happy solution with no loss of life at the end. Nothing too surprising on the speculative fiction front, really as this is the same kind of problem we've seen many many times before, and hopefully will be equipped to deal with if we ever face it in reality. I can't give it particularly high or low marks. Citadel of Blood: Time for a fantasy dungeoncrawl in here, which isn't too surprising, even if the way they're going about it is a little different, as this is more an elaborate board game like Advanced Heroquest than a full RPG. The layout of the dungeon is generated randomly each time you enter, and the whole thing is designed to work without a GM. There's a decent selection of monsters, and they have various quirks to make them more interesting than just hitting back and forth until someone dies, plus you can roll to negotiate with them or magically charm them if you want too. The Spell selection is a little limited though, and could do with some expansion, especially on the Special table to give more room for advancement. So this is good if you don't have a GM, and want a fantasy adventure with a little more room for player choice and character advancement than Heroquest, but not so much it becomes unwieldy to keep track of. If your DM is flaky, keep it around as a standby. Facts for Fantasy: This section is shrunk to a page and a half to fit around the adverts. As before, it's completely eurocentric, with a little bit of egypt squeezing it's way in, with a combination of fantastical and historical stuff, including some surprisingly detailed talk about various types of cannonballs and the excesses of 12th century feasts. The various monsters and myths are all completely familiar (and statted out), of course, but some of the historical bits are new to me, which again shows the difference in focus between ARES and Dragon. When you play mass combat games regularly, you care as much about different gauges of cannon as you do polearms. Science for Science Fiction: Just like the previous column, this gets a 25% cut in size for the sake of equality. It's tidbits of information are slightly more detailed, but also much more dated, since we have a lot more information on what stars nearby have planets, and even how big and far from their primary they are. Continental drift has long since ceased to be controversial, but global warming has if anything become more so. You never know what's going to change, and what's going to be all too similar until you get to the future, and there's still a lot to find out in this field. I do wish we could afford to send a few more probes off into interstellar space with powerful cameras to get more accurate information from multiple viewpoints. Monsterquest: Just like TSR, SPI needs their fans to produce supplementary material for their games. DragonQuest is brand new, and they need to do some serious catching up on the monster front if they want to compete with D&D's multiple monster books. So here they encourage you to send in your own monsters, and lots of them, so they can publish a big book full a mere 6 months later. As usual for these things, the monetary rewards and legal terms are not great, making it very clear that this is work for hire where they get all the rights and control and you get little but the bragging rights of seeing your name in print. It's very much one of those moments where seeing how the sausage is made removes your desire to actually eat it. I know all that legal crap is necessary to cover their ass, but it's still depressing. There's very little money in creativity unless you're at the top of the pyramid, at which point you have all the power. Film & Television: Close Encounters - Special edition is actually slightly shorter than the theatrical version of the film, but the reviewer still considers it a substantial improvement in pacing and special effects. It may lack the worldbuilding of harder sci-fi, but in terms of sheer wonder, it's still up there with Spielberg's best. The Final Countdown gets a negative review because the film makes very little sense as it is, skipping huge sections of the book to keep it the right length for the theatre, at the expense of pacing and coherence. You know, that was what intermissions were for in the old days. That way you don't have to test your bladder every time you want a little room to develop in your films. Let's hope they filmed more than they used so a better cut could be releasable later. Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars gets a pretty positive review, punching well above it's budget in terms of special effects, and while it has some humour, the actors still take their characters seriously. It might not match up to Star Wars in impact, but it's still more than entertaining enough for a rewatch. Games: The games section is thoroughly taken over by roleplaying at this point, and begins with a lengthy rant on how fantasy and sci-fi vastly outsell more realistic historical or modern day scenarios. This does not please the editor at all, as we found out earlier, and if he had his way, he'd change the tastes of the public too. (preferably by releasing a megaselling game that puts SPI at the top of the roleplaying pile) Yeah, that's not going to happen, and at least they're realistic about the odds against it and the reasons why. The closer you are to reality, the more constrained you are as both a writer and a player. It's harder to make fun, and you have to deal with more nitpickers telling you you're doing it wrong. That issue hasn't changed with the passage of time, and I feel like I could jump in at any point of history in any gaming related media and deal with complaints of much the same nature. Traveller actually gets a pretty positive review, as the glacially slow experience combined with gradually escalating chances of death in character generation is actually fairly realistic, and makes for a fun minigame in itself even if you don't get around to playing. The worldbuilding systems are good, the action resolution works as intended, and there's tons of things to do out there in space. Of course, there's one area that's a little too realistic, and that's the lack of technological advancement in other areas. (which of course is all the more glaring 30+ years later) They're also not so positive about the supplements, which show the usual problems of being written on a lower budget and with less playtesting than the corebooks. Oh well, that's why you read the reviews and choose carefully where to spend your money in the first place. Space Opera also gets some praise, but slightly more criticism, as it is pretty comprehensive, but that also makes it too slow in actual play for their tastes. Like many RPG's, you really have to figure out which rules to ignore for maximum fun, which is not a pleasing concept to those raised on competitive wargames. A perfectly accurate map is actually useless, and so it goes with games that are as slow or moreso than reality. It's a hard lesson for designers to learn. Feedback: The feedback remains mostly the same, but this time, starts to slip ideas for DragonQuest supplements in amongst the standalone games to see what people might be looking for in their roleplaying. Like the advert for monster submissions earlier, they need your help to grow their game in the right way. Will you focus on dungeons, wilderness or cities, adventuring or domain management? As ever, let's hope we find out before all their plans come to naught anyway. Having had the novelty wear off of doing this again, this is where the conservative and parochial attitudes of the writers is going from amusing to grating for me. I never thought that early 80's Dragon was a bastion of equality, but compared to ARES of the same era, it certainly was. The pessimistic take on realism and scientific accuracy is also weirdly discouraging in a magazine that's supposed to be about gaming, and makes it seem like they have very specific tastes in fun and will complain at you if your playstyle doesn't match up. Is the emphasis on stamping out badwrongfun one of the things that hurts their sales and kills them of in the end? It certainly isn't making it easier to get through this. Let's see if the next issue is any more entertaining. [/QUOTE]
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