Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988

part 4/5

Through the looking glass is kicking off by giving us some reviews. Given this year's real push to promote wargaming at the conventions, it's no surprise that lots of companies are bringing out stuff to coincide with this. From small indie companies like Stan Johansen miniatures, to the established giants of Games workshop and Grenadier, everyone's got stuff to sell. Plastic or lead, at various scales, all in one or needing some assembly, the choice is yours, etc etc. The reviews are fairly conservative, with the lowest score 2 stars, and the highest 3 and a half. More interesting is a lengthy rant on all the things that can go wrong in the design and distribution chain. Have a little sympathy for the poor shopkeeper, for they can't control it if a game is late, or only available in other countries. Like bullying, ranting begets more ranting, and so the cycle continues. As long as people keep having unrealistic targets and deadlines, it is no wonder that there will be painful disappointments on a regular basis.


TSR Previews: Starsong apparently got delayed, for it is first out the gate this month as well as last month. Or is it just a formatting error? Hmm. Not hugely important, anyway.

AD&D gets the new Greyhawk Adventures hardback. Now redesigned to be compatible with 2nd edition, and more differentiated from the Forgotten Realms. Now with 100% less Pluffet Smedger!

Talking of the Forgotten Realms, we get Ruins of Adventure, the back conversion of the recent AD&D computer game. How very amusing. That's like doing a novel of a movie. Will it be improved or messed up by the format change?

The Forgotten Realms also gets another novel. Doug Niles and R A Salvadore have already made their mark, now Ed Greenwood gets to show these new arrivals just what the creator of the world can do, with Spellfire. There may be twinkitude involved.

Dragonlance isn't neglected either, with a new boardgame based upon it. Find the Dragonlance and save the world! Is it Tuesday already?

Buck Rogers, of course, has to go one step further. Their boardgame isn't just about the fate of the world, it's about the entire solar system! Overthrow that tyrannical dictatorship! :roll of thunder, stab of organ music: Erm, or maybe not. Got to have something for the next generation of players to struggle against too.

Marvel Superheroes tops even that, with ME3: The left hand of eternity. Oh, the elders of the universe are in so much trouble now. WHAM! THWOK!! KERPOW!!! and all that.

Finally, we get to see Tom Wham's latest stroke of genius, Mertwig's maze. The usual madcap boardgaming fun ensues.


Damage control report: Star frontiers continues to get occasional support here, despite being a dead gameline now. A new damage system for space combat, with a little more variety in which systems get damaged in an attack, reducing short term lethality, but increasing long-term annoyances? Seems a reasonable enough change. After all, no-one likes having a TPK result from a single hit, as is a problem in space combat. And troubleshooting unexpected faults can become an adventure in itself. A short article that leaves me with little to say about it, this is very much in the old Ares section tradition.


New kicks in martial arts: Len Carpenter tries to rebalance the OA Martial art system, so you can create custom styles that are balanced with each other, and come closer to the official ones from the book. It's still not too great, not being nearly as flexible as it could be. This is really still an area that needs a complete rebuild rather than just patching. I don't think I'll be using you.


The game wizards: Top Secret/ S.I. has been out for a year now. Feedback time! Not only are we going to try and provide all the realism you wanted, we're also going to take the game further out there as well, providing multiple different settings for all your modern day espionage needs. When we overhauled the system, flexibility was one of our design goals. So supplements will be coming more frequently, and they will not all be compatible with one-another. Very interesting. Seems like they're trying to make it into more of a generic system. A risky gamble. Is this what kills it? They never had much luck with generic systems, as we see again with the Amazing Engine and Alternity. Hmm. This is definitely worth thinking about.

 

[crazzycat]

how exciting and interesting will be waiting ror the next part

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988

part 5/5

The role of computers: Dungeon Master is one of those adventure games where you create a party, equip them, and take them through adventures, fighting monsters and leveling up as you go. Seems like they review a lot of those. Well, this is an RPG magazine. It gets a highly detailed review, with lots of screenshots, and plenty of praise. There's plenty of hidden stuff to find, (familiar looking) foes to to beat, resources to manage, and all that jazz. Visually, they are definitely improving quite a bit lately.

Basketball Challenge is a strategy simulation game, where you train up a basketball team, and dictate their tactics in games from the sidelines. Not too bad an idea, but not really my cup of tea.

Fantasyzone is rather more quirky. Primarily an arcade shoot-em-up, you also have to collect coins from fallen enemies, and get to spend them in shops for all kinds of upgrades. Picking the right power-up can make a big difference, particularly when facing the bosses. With an interestingly designed soundtrack and visuals, it's challenging, but a good player'll get a little further each time. Which is how it should be.


Gamma life in the big city: Gamma world joins in with the theme this month, despite not actually being in the themed section. The stereotype in postapocalyptic settings is that most of the cities are largely abandoned, with only small communities of scavengers picking through the rubble. But things get more interesting if there are still at least a few sizable communities. Course, this requires that there be the resources to support this population, and enough safe living environment that they not die too frequently and go into terminal decline. This frequently leads to insular attitudes and heavy fortifications. After all, resources must be protected, and only shared with the worthy. if you let mutie scum in, who knows where it'll end? This dials down the strangeness a little, but doesn't neglect it, pointing out plenty of ways you can derive humour from the settlements imitating and misinterpreting modern institutions. This is actually considerably more detailed than the earlier articles, giving you a one-stop set of info on using them both as home bases, as adversaries, and as locations for adventures. With sample characters, plot ideas, and plenty of advice, this is almost as useful as the other ones put together, and eminently convertable as well. Rather pleasing.


Role-playing reviews is also in theme, with reviews of products covering city settings.
City-state of the invincible overlord gets a very negative review, both as an updating of an older product, and as one in itself. The old nicely medieval, if rather hard to locate stuff on map has been replaced by a a fantasy Milton Keynes, everything neatly laid out in grids with lots of space between stuff. The metaplot isn't properly integrated with the setting, the way monsters just show up on random tables, yet the city doesn't react to them makes no sense, the religion is just a flavourless mishmash, the new races are twinked, there's just no cohesion in general. The only redeeming feature is the index. And what's the use of that if there's nothing you want to find? Zing! Now that's an entertaining slating.

Lankhmar: City of Adventure gets a rather more positive review. While there are a few irritating omissions that really need a supplement to fill them in, it presents a nice compromise between feel and detail, giving you plenty of room and tools to design your own adventure locations within the city. Massively downgrading the power and speed of magic to emulate the original stories, it shows you how you can mod AD&D to be more fighter and thief centric. Still, these rules changes, combined with the very strong flavour, mean this may be tricky to use in an existing campaign.

Carse is another generic citybook, produced by chaosium. While not brilliant, and rather too focussed on the little details over giving you the knowhow to use them, it's still better than the city state of the invincible overlord. One you'll really need to figure out how to make the most of yourself.

Tulan of the isles is another book in the same series, set in the same world. It manages to be slightly better in most respects, more general atmosphere, more detail on individual buildings, and more setting info on the world surrounding the city. It seems much easier as a starting point to build good adventures from.


The game fair update: Big ambitions, big hassles, as usual. They've been promoting the conventions strongly all year, but they've still had problems with organizing stuff. Stuff being late, stuff being overbooked, last minute changes, there's some people running around like headless chickens, trying to get everything done here. Will they pull it off? Will they put an optimistic spin on things no matter how badly it goes? Guess I'll have to wait for the aftermath. Let's put some Dr Dre on while we do so. Crank that bass, synchronised head nodding is go!


Dragonmirth is speciesist again. Yamara tries to fool joe the cleric, another of her companions. Win some, lose some. Snarfquest is still all about the races.

Our boardgames for Dragonlance and Buck Rogers are advertised in the back pages. How long before the magazine is forced to run articles on Buck Rogers products as well?


A fairly average issue overall. From good to bad, they run the gamut. Should we leave or stay put? Hang around too long and we'll be late in the terminal sense. And then this'll never be complete. Turn the page, shut the door, and open up the next one.

 

[LordVyreth]

Huh, I forgot about the Fantasy Zone review. That's pretty damn weird for the time, as Dragon mostly ignored the console and arcade markets. Or maybe I'm just remembering wrong and we're about to get reviews for Zelda and whatnot.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 137: September 1988

part 1/5

108 pages. A very photorealistic, but not particularly autumnal cover here. Once again we step into the wilderness, treking through hostile environments, and hunting down creatures dangerous and tasty. Not a place for the physically unfit. In high contrast, the editorial tackles disabilities and roleplaying. We've already had one article on that, but it's been a long time, and Roger's encountered quite a few other people with various physical problems in his years gaming. So he's taking the time to reassert that the magazine is disability friendly, and they would welcome suggestions to make it, and roleplaying in general, more so. Now, when will they tackle questions of sexuality or race? Is that too controversial? Maybe. Oh, the persistent problems of running a family friendly magazine.

In this issue:

The bullwinkle and rocky roleplaying party game?! Now there's a license I wasn't expecting to have a game for it.

The waterdeep city system. Another player favourite gets it's first in depth look at. The realms is really being filled in now.


Letters: A decidedly deranged spattering of anonymous odds and ends make up this month's letters page. Waldorf has destroyed greyhawk and enslaved its gods. Please send in all your characters so I can figure out how much XP I've earned. In other news, Isildiurs ring has been found as part of a two-piece bathing suit. Smexy. Roger Moore is still not the same Roger Moore that does the bond films. This one would never wear a toupee, no matter how much he might need it All very amusing. After all, they get the material, why should they waste it sticking to the sensible stuff all the time?


Forum: M A Cottle is finding that the publication of Watchmen has been having massive knock-on effects on everyone's roleplaying of superhero characters. Detailed psychological characterisation is replacing hack and slash (BIFF and KERPOW?) gaming even here.

Ed Friedlander talks about the decline of lethality in recent gaming. With regularly available raising, the advent of saving games in CRPG's, the elimination of assassins, it seems to definitely be on the down. And he's actually in favour of this. They may be only characters, but people get very attached to them. He'd rather defeat be merely humiliating, as he sees enough real death in his day job. This may provoke serious debate.

Bahman Rabii expresses contempt for the idea of formalizing nonweapon skills. It takes all the player thought out of the equation when they know exactly what they can do and just roll to do it. This isn't the True AD&D Way!

Peter Kirkup is another grognard who feels threatened by recent developments. In his case, it's the poncy actory types that were drawn in by the Dragonlance games. We want more stuff for the hack and slashers and problem solvers, and less purple prose and modules with a fixed story.

David Howery has suggestions to make the vanilla fighter class more interesting, so they can compete with the more exotic combat classes. Still a problem, I see.

R. J. Wenzel, on the other hand, thinks that the game still focusses too much on combat, and the current tendency towards power creep needs to be fought. The DM should be rewarding players for actually roleplaying and clever problem solving more.

Theodore Licktenstein points out that Silence spells are not a faultless stealth device. The complete absence of noise is rather disconcerting, and can be a giveaway. Like any tactic, if players are overusing it, it shouldn't work all the time.

 

[(un)reason]

Huh, I forgot about the Fantasy Zone review. That's pretty damn weird for the time, as Dragon mostly ignored the console and arcade markets. Or maybe I'm just remembering wrong and we're about to get reviews for Zelda and whatnot.

If I (p)remember correctly, they make a decision to focus more on consoles in 1991. I'm pretty sure the first two Zelda games get covered together at some point.

 

[amysrevenge]

Finally, we get to see Tom Wham's latest stroke of genius, Mertwig's maze. The usual madcap boardgaming fun ensues.

Is that an ad for the game, or an early version of the game itself? I have a couple of friends who own standalone versions of Mertwig's Maze (that they bought on eBay a few years back) and it's a riot to play.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 137: September 1988

part 2/5

What's for lunch: Hunting for food. A decidedly tedious business in reality, for finding easily edible plants is harder than it seems, and catching animals requires a lot of patience and luck. It's already been covered in one of the duller 1st ed books, the Wilderness survival guide. But no, someone's not satisfied, and wants to give it even more detail. Cue lots of tables of the natural animals common to various climates, and more than a few statblocks for creatures not covered in the MM's. Yeah, this is still dull stuff, and is problematic because of the usual difficulties in integrating the fantastic and mundane creatures in D&D settings. One to pull up when needed, and then pay no mind too the rest of the time.

Treasures of the wilds: Just how much is the stuff you find in the wild actually worth? This is a tricky one, because unlike gold and jewels, the value of harvested plants, furs, meat, etc is very time dependent. A day makes the difference between highly valuable and manky, especially in warmer climates. Perhaps ivory would be a better choice. Course, if it's maximum money to weight ratio you want, poison harvesting is the way to go. This is another one that doesn't make hugely interesting reading, being more than half tables, but would probably save a bit of time if you have the kind of adventurers that collect anything that could remotely be of value. Looks like we're gonna have to deal with quite a bit of grinding here if we want to level up again.

The ecology of carnivorous plants: Hmm. This is an unusual one. An article coving a whole range of flora with only one connecting factor. They like to eat adventurers. This article goes into an indepth look at real carnivorous plants, and then extrapolates from there when talking about fantasy ones. Most of them come from harsh environments where soil and sunlight are not sufficient to grow healthy plants. After all, nature is lazy. It won't evolve energy intensive adaptions unless there's a real advantage to doing so. And movement via highly selective growth spurts definitely falls into that category. This is another nice reminder of things I learnt in school, and haven't thought about since then. Another bit of pure pontification, this is both longer and more rigorous than the carnivorous ape one, but has less humour in it. Overall, it's a fairly so-so ecology, focussed a little too much on the biology of the creatures, rather than how they can be used to challenge (and be exploited by) adventurers. Gotta keep your playability in mind, especially when dealing with stuff we can get entire books of real world info on elsewhere.

Time-life books are advertising in dragon magazine? Way to lower the tone of the whole neighbourhood. Superlame.

Weathering the storms: Looks like table central is continuing this month, with a second article for high detail weather determination. (see issue 68 for the last one. ) And I'm afraid this is still dull, heavily realism focussed material that you could spend hours fiddling with, but would be unlikely to improve your game much. This is proving to be a very tiresome issue indeed. What are we to do with them?

Into the age of mammals: After the dinosaurs died out, there were several eras of time, filled with weird creatures that don't get nearly as much attention. Which means a rich seam of stuff for you to mine and surprise your players with. This article focusses on the cenozoic era, giving us info on 29 different creatures, 14 of which are new and get full stats. The rest are already statted creatures or variants on them, giving us more info on their place in that era. This is easily the best article so far this issue, with lots of fun little biology tidbits. Since we already have lots of stuff for dinosaurs (issue 112 and others) and more recent ice age stuff, (issue 68 again) putting in a substantial "lost world" region to my campaign increasingly seems both a desirable and achievable thing to do.

 

[(un)reason]

Is that an ad for the game, or an early version of the game itself? I have a couple of friends who own standalone versions of Mertwig's Maze (that they bought on eBay a few years back) and it's a riot to play.

Just them saying "It's out this month! Go get it!" If it was actually appearing in the magazine, I'd have written rather more about it.

 

[Arnwyn]

Woo! Yamara is beginning!

I'm looking forward to later reviews when it gets pretty wahoo.