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<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4990924" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Dragon Magazine Issue 154: February 1990</u></strong></p><p></p><p>part 4/5</p><p></p><p>Role-playing reviews: Genre mashing! In the infant days of roleplaying, people piled everything they could into D&D, largely due to lack of other options. However, these days, we have systems specifically designed for very particular blendings of genres, instead of just a straightforward kitchen sink. And let's face it, this isn't a bad thing at all. So Ken's chosen remit this month is to examine some of these experiments, see which ones have turned out best. </p><p></p><p>Space 1889 sees GDW put a very different spin on space opera from Traveller. Drawing heavily on the works of Jules Verne, H G Wells, and other proto pulp and sci-fi authors, it sees the british empire extending their reach to the rest of the solar system in steampunk spaceships. The combat system seems designed to facilitate swashbuckling adventures where you're far more likely to pass out and have to escape or be rescued than killed outright, and you can integrate the board game into the overall ruleset for extra airship battley fun. And the settings of mars and venus are well developed and full of adventure hooks. It all seems like good rip-roaring politically incorrect fun. Very tempting. </p><p></p><p>Shadowrun of course merges cyberpunk with D&D flavour fantasy to create a game more popular than any of the pure cyberpunk games out there. Demihuman PCs. Various monsters, including Dunkelzahn the dragon CEO and all the undead people love to tell stories with. All the cool powers you're familiar with from years of gaming, plus cyberware enhancement and netrunning minigames. It's no wonder it appeals to a broad range of people. It is however, a bit mechanically dense and clunky, with disconnected subsystems all over the place that take quite a lot of learning. Ken is a bit dubious as to if it'll be worth it. Wait 'til the next edition unless you can take the steep learning curve. </p><p></p><p>Course, it's easy to forget that AD&D has quite a lot of clunky bits bolted on itself, it's just that we're used to them from years of play. Spelljammer adds more than it's fair share of these, as thy have to figure out ways of handling gravity, air supply, ship combat and interstellar flight that are fun and not too bogged down in realism. As with Shadowrun, the familiar elements should help ease the transition to new vistas. There are several new PC and NPC races, and quite a few existing monsters get repurposed for the new environment. You can have weird and wonderful adventures in in a setting more akin to some medieval fantasist's idea of space than the real thing, or you can just replace the hollow asteroids and ruined spaceships for regular dungeons and carry on pretty much as usual. Once again, even the official designers are swinging back towards freewheeling, house rule happy fun in their gaming. Ken is positively giddy with the possibilities, and I'm pretty positive he's not just saying that to be a company shill this time. Roll on the supplements. </p><p></p><p>In another amusing footnote, we find out that cyberpunk authors are becoming aware of the RPGs based on their work just as quickly as the fantasy ones, with Walter Jon Williams providing an official conversion of his Hardwired novel for the Cyberpunk system. This comes highly recommended as well. Interesting. They don't miss a trick. D&D's new system for making faerie folk available as PCs seems to be pretty decent as well. All in all, a very positive set of reviews, with a well above selection of notable products. This has been a fun bit of reviewing. </p><p></p><p></p><p>Fiction: Raistlin and the knight of solamnia by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. (Or just Racy Hickman :rips bodice: if you go by the misspelled contents page <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" /> ) This is a little prequel piece in which our delightfuly 'cesty little canon pairing engage in a little small scale heroism, lifting a curse and learning a few moral lessons, which, this being a prequel, they'll fail rather to take on board. Story of their world. An amusingly chaotic intro in which kender get all the dread they deserve segues into an adventure where the heroes win by brains rather than brawn and the supposed good guys are proved to be prideful jackasses, again. :shakes head: Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from these two. If you like their work, you'll like this. If not, you know what to do by now. </p><p></p><p></p><p>The role of computers: Mines of Titan is a sci-fi RPG set on Saturn's moon. A pretty open ended game, your theoretical goal is to earn enough money to leave. In the meantime, there's tons of things to do. You can gamble. You can go bounty hunting. You can talk to people and get all sorts of missions. Choose your buddies carefully, and make sure you train up before tackling the hard missions. Another way to eat up hours and hours of your life. </p><p></p><p>David Wolf: Secret agent gets a fairly negative review because it's mostly animated cut-scenes where you have no power to influence the plot at all. The bits where you do have control are ridiculously easy as well. Lame. Go rent a movie instead. This is what happens when you try and build a game around a gimmick instead of strong gameplay design. </p><p></p><p>M1 Tank platoon, on the other hand, gets 5 stars. Not only do you have to pilot a tank, you get to control a whole platoon and co-ordinate their actions against the enemy. This is one instance where you really need to read the manual, which as it's 200 pages long, means this game won't be for everyone. But with both great graphics and a huge tactical challenge with near infinite options, it's just the thing for a bunch of jaded reviewers. </p><p></p><p>Star fleet II: Krellan Commander sees you attacking the humans you were saving in the last installment. it's another enormous game, so much so that you'll need to adjust your computer's buffer settings to avoid crashes, and it'll still be sluggish unless you're on a high end machine. But once again, that doesn't mean they don't like it, just that you should think before buying. </p><p></p><p>Several other notable new games mentioned in the news section. Ghostbusters II. Double Dragon! And the second dragonlance conversion, Dragons of flame. They also seem to be getting over their griping about copy protection phase. That's a vague relief.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 4990924, member: 27780"] [B][U]Dragon Magazine Issue 154: February 1990[/U][/B] part 4/5 Role-playing reviews: Genre mashing! In the infant days of roleplaying, people piled everything they could into D&D, largely due to lack of other options. However, these days, we have systems specifically designed for very particular blendings of genres, instead of just a straightforward kitchen sink. And let's face it, this isn't a bad thing at all. So Ken's chosen remit this month is to examine some of these experiments, see which ones have turned out best. Space 1889 sees GDW put a very different spin on space opera from Traveller. Drawing heavily on the works of Jules Verne, H G Wells, and other proto pulp and sci-fi authors, it sees the british empire extending their reach to the rest of the solar system in steampunk spaceships. The combat system seems designed to facilitate swashbuckling adventures where you're far more likely to pass out and have to escape or be rescued than killed outright, and you can integrate the board game into the overall ruleset for extra airship battley fun. And the settings of mars and venus are well developed and full of adventure hooks. It all seems like good rip-roaring politically incorrect fun. Very tempting. Shadowrun of course merges cyberpunk with D&D flavour fantasy to create a game more popular than any of the pure cyberpunk games out there. Demihuman PCs. Various monsters, including Dunkelzahn the dragon CEO and all the undead people love to tell stories with. All the cool powers you're familiar with from years of gaming, plus cyberware enhancement and netrunning minigames. It's no wonder it appeals to a broad range of people. It is however, a bit mechanically dense and clunky, with disconnected subsystems all over the place that take quite a lot of learning. Ken is a bit dubious as to if it'll be worth it. Wait 'til the next edition unless you can take the steep learning curve. Course, it's easy to forget that AD&D has quite a lot of clunky bits bolted on itself, it's just that we're used to them from years of play. Spelljammer adds more than it's fair share of these, as thy have to figure out ways of handling gravity, air supply, ship combat and interstellar flight that are fun and not too bogged down in realism. As with Shadowrun, the familiar elements should help ease the transition to new vistas. There are several new PC and NPC races, and quite a few existing monsters get repurposed for the new environment. You can have weird and wonderful adventures in in a setting more akin to some medieval fantasist's idea of space than the real thing, or you can just replace the hollow asteroids and ruined spaceships for regular dungeons and carry on pretty much as usual. Once again, even the official designers are swinging back towards freewheeling, house rule happy fun in their gaming. Ken is positively giddy with the possibilities, and I'm pretty positive he's not just saying that to be a company shill this time. Roll on the supplements. In another amusing footnote, we find out that cyberpunk authors are becoming aware of the RPGs based on their work just as quickly as the fantasy ones, with Walter Jon Williams providing an official conversion of his Hardwired novel for the Cyberpunk system. This comes highly recommended as well. Interesting. They don't miss a trick. D&D's new system for making faerie folk available as PCs seems to be pretty decent as well. All in all, a very positive set of reviews, with a well above selection of notable products. This has been a fun bit of reviewing. Fiction: Raistlin and the knight of solamnia by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. (Or just Racy Hickman :rips bodice: if you go by the misspelled contents page :p ) This is a little prequel piece in which our delightfuly 'cesty little canon pairing engage in a little small scale heroism, lifting a curse and learning a few moral lessons, which, this being a prequel, they'll fail rather to take on board. Story of their world. An amusingly chaotic intro in which kender get all the dread they deserve segues into an adventure where the heroes win by brains rather than brawn and the supposed good guys are proved to be prideful jackasses, again. :shakes head: Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from these two. If you like their work, you'll like this. If not, you know what to do by now. The role of computers: Mines of Titan is a sci-fi RPG set on Saturn's moon. A pretty open ended game, your theoretical goal is to earn enough money to leave. In the meantime, there's tons of things to do. You can gamble. You can go bounty hunting. You can talk to people and get all sorts of missions. Choose your buddies carefully, and make sure you train up before tackling the hard missions. Another way to eat up hours and hours of your life. David Wolf: Secret agent gets a fairly negative review because it's mostly animated cut-scenes where you have no power to influence the plot at all. The bits where you do have control are ridiculously easy as well. Lame. Go rent a movie instead. This is what happens when you try and build a game around a gimmick instead of strong gameplay design. M1 Tank platoon, on the other hand, gets 5 stars. Not only do you have to pilot a tank, you get to control a whole platoon and co-ordinate their actions against the enemy. This is one instance where you really need to read the manual, which as it's 200 pages long, means this game won't be for everyone. But with both great graphics and a huge tactical challenge with near infinite options, it's just the thing for a bunch of jaded reviewers. Star fleet II: Krellan Commander sees you attacking the humans you were saving in the last installment. it's another enormous game, so much so that you'll need to adjust your computer's buffer settings to avoid crashes, and it'll still be sluggish unless you're on a high end machine. But once again, that doesn't mean they don't like it, just that you should think before buying. Several other notable new games mentioned in the news section. Ghostbusters II. Double Dragon! And the second dragonlance conversion, Dragons of flame. They also seem to be getting over their griping about copy protection phase. That's a vague relief. [/QUOTE]
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