Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Now there's a real munchkin question if there ever was one.

Indeed. This is what you get for trying to be family friendly, and expecting your audience to know the myths you're referring too, which aren't so sanitised.

I've never been so disappointed (by a book) in my life as I was at the ending to this series. One of the best setups I've ever seen, as far as plot, setting, and characters go, finished off by tossing in every cliche in the genre at the end, seemingly at random.

I don't tend to cuss at books (TV is another matter...) but I dropped more than a few "What the F"s, out loud, as I got to the end.

The number of cool books/films/series with crap endings is another thing that could fill a large thread. In fact, I feel tempted to do just that.

 

[Jhaelen]

The number of cool books/films/series with crap endings is another thing that could fill a large thread. In fact, I feel tempted to do just that.

Yup, I could see that topic being sufficient to drive a thread.

However, regarding the example of the drgonbone throne I have to say I disliked the books right from the start. Derivative crap, imho; not a single original idea in sight.

Unfortunately, I had bought all three books because a friend had recommended them to me...

Thinking about examples of novels I liked that turned into bad series, I'd like to mention Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son (Alvin Maker), Dan Simmons' Ilium (Olympos), and David Brin's Sundiver/Brightness Reef (Uplift).

 

[Orius]

Indeed. This is what you get for trying to be family friendly, and expecting your audience to know the myths you're referring too, which aren't so sanitised.

Hah, I'm picturing a munchkin asking this question because he wants more cool powurz for his male PC.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989

part 3/5

Claydonia conquers the world!: Clay-o-Rama is back! Bigger and better than ever. Now you can advance your surviving creatures, and bring them to future games. And a whole bunch of other optional rules for you to try out. New powers! Playing without a GM! Rebuilding, bigger and badder! Well, the original rules are pretty loose anyway. In this case, a little tightening up probably wouldn't hurt. Not sure about character advancement though. Seems entirely too easy to cheat on in a con game. Oh well. At least it's not useless stuff that you should keep out of your game at all costs.

Still more outrages from the mages: Such as this. 27 joke spells, which either do nothing, do something that you could do just as effectively with mundane actions, or do something that is purely useless and harmful to the caster. Bigby's interposing eye, Drawmij's instant death, speak with mud, transmute rock to stone, we get lots of subversions of existing spells here. Mildly amusing, but not useful except as booby prize scrolls to put in treasure hoards and annoy your players with. And so the joke section draws to a close.


Role-playing reviews:
Toon got reviewed way back in issue 92. But it's still going, has quite a few supplements, and is still fairly groundbreaking. As is far too often the case with retreads, this is rather less interesting than the original review, both in writing style, and level of insight involved. But the game still kicks ass, so if it sells more people on it, then it's not too bad.

The Bullwinkle and Rocky Roleplaying game tries to cover similar ground, but with a lot more visual aids, and attempts to make things modular. You can play it purely using the event cards, trying to fit together a coherent story from the prefab pieces. You can play using the spinner, and trading off narrators. And then you can progress to making your own characters. You can't really advance them beyond that, and it does seem very much designed as a party game rather than a "proper" RPG. Have fun with it, but don't expect any deep meaningful stories.

We also get reviews of two Paranoia supplements. Ruthless mockery (in a good way) ensues, as you would expect. Tom Wham's new game, Mertwig's maze, also gets mentioned. Finally, we have one of our fun rebuttals. Jim stands by his statement that the new city of the invincible overlord is rubbish. Remember, it's only opinion. If we don't provide negative contrasts, then you can't see just how good the really good ones are by comparison. Ahh, the pressure to whitewash. A perpetual and rather serious problem, particularly when the reviewers are paid by the companies they're reviewing. Always interesting to see how different people cope with it.


When gods walk the earth: Runequest gets another article on it's magic, as seems to be common choice here. Do you really want to summon the avatar of a god? There always seems to be some idiot who wants too, even in games such as call of cthulhu, where success will result in huge amounts of death and insanity for everyone in the vicinity. Even the supposedly benign ones are arrogant and obsessive beings that will demand your absolute servitude and order you around with no regard to your human limitations. You have been warned. Don't come crying to me when your god of healing transforms the entire congregation into a fleshy amorphous amalgam that regenerates so fast that it's impossible to kill. Yeah, I'll still tell you how to do it. I'll even give you some pointers on how to get rid of the blighters as well. Obviously, this is primarily intended as a way for GM's to launch adventures, rather than a spell the players would cast. And it serves quite well in that role, both as something to foil before it happens, and deal with afterwards. Fairly pleasing.

 

[(un)reason]

Hah, I'm picturing a munchkin asking this question because he wants more cool powurz for his male PC.

That one's easy. A certain girdle from the DMG is tailor made to remove that little problem.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989

part 4/5

TSR Previews: First up, completely unsurprisingly, is the 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook. Kicking down the door, making gaming more accessable. They've been talking about this since 85, can it live up to the hype?

AD&D is also getting a pair of modules. The forgotten realms is proving highly multimedia, with FRC2: Curse of the azure bonds. Play the module of the computer game of the book. I suspect railroading may be involved, given it's antecedents. Greyhawk also gets a rather specific module, WG9: Gargoyle. Play a gargoyle trying to get their wings back. Very curious sounding indeed. Any opinions on this one?

On the novel side, the forgotten realms finishes off the moonshae trilogy. The heroes may defeat a god, but at what cost? Meanwhile, Buck Rogers gets a whole load of short stories, in Arrival. Flint Dille personally oversees things, and I suspect Lorraine :rumble of thunder, stab of organ music: did plenty of executive meddling as well.

Marvel Super Heroes gets MT1: All this and world war II. The start of a trilogy dealing with time travel? Hmm. One of the more problematic powers when combined with gaming. That could work, or it could go very wrong. How will they keep the plot under control?


The game wizards: Spelljammer! We're finally getting proper metasettings. And lots of other stuff. Another of their short columns where they pack in a load of stuff that wouldn't fit elsewhere, along with some more promotion of upcoming stuff. The best (or worst, depending on your point of view) entries in their recent pun contest. Another load of guidelines on writing freelance for them. They do keep having to do that. And the 5 boxed sets they're planning on releasing this year. Alphatia vs Thyatis. Greyhawk city. New york, new york. Taladas. And of course, AD&D in Spaaace! Rather a random article really. But not randomness with as much style as when Gary was in charge of this kind of thing. Oh well, at least they've still got lots of cool stuff coming out. Hopefully, this'll convince a few more people to buy those things.


The role of computers:
Arkanoid is one of those horribly addictive arcade games where you have to manipulate a bouncing ball to break all the blocks. I know your kind. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Enormous timesink approaching off the starboard bow. These kinds of games can last aaages, getting ever trickier as you try and make it to the later levels, and get frustrating as you try and rush through the earlier ones and mess them up. Must steer well clear, or I'll never finish this.

Zany golf is exactly what it sounds like, and gets a 5 star rating. With great visuals, and a number of quirky twists on the real game, including fairys that you get extra points for hitting, moving holes, and pinball courses. Ahh, the joys of being able to create things that would be near impossible in reality.

The Legend of Blacksilver sounds like it ought to involve pirates, but doesn't. Instead, it's yer basic RPG, where you explore towns and dungeons, fight monsters, and complete quests with the aim of saving the world from it's would be conqueror. It's pretty big, but thankfully, you can save in most places. As ever, do so frequently, or you'll regret it.

Battle Chess is basically just chess, with amusing animations as the pieces move around the board and kill each other. Still, it can be played two-player online, so you'll always have someone to give you a decent challenge. Exactly how long it'll hold your interest will obviously depend on how much you like playing chess anyway.

Space Harrier 3-D is also a bit gimmicky, using those red and green glasses to facilitate 3D visuals. If you can stand the eye strain, this can still be fun, and is as tricky as most games of this era. You'll probably have to do quite a bit of replaying to win it.

Wonder boy in monster land is a game I vaguely remember. Still primarily an action adventure game, with hidden shops, taverns, and monsters that require the right equipment and strategy to kill, it's closer to an rpg than the previous game in the series. Now, if only it had a save function as well. Restarting from the beginning does get tedious.

Also notable in the hints section is one of the cheats they give, revealing a silly easter egg in Bards Tale III. Ahh, they joys of in jokes. Amazing what programmers can squeeze in.

 

[Orius]

That one's easy. A certain girdle from the DMG is tailor made to remove that little problem.

Ah yes, my favorite cursed item of all time. I like it because the effect is often disturbing to the player, yet it doesn't mess up stats, classes, levels or anything else of that nature at all. You know, that would actually work unless the munchkin is insecure in his sexuality.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989

part 4/5

Marvel Super Heroes gets MT1: All this and world war II. The start of a trilogy dealing with time travel? Hmm. One of the more problematic powers when combined with gaming. That could work, or it could go very wrong. How will they keep the plot under control?

Screw the plot. Go tell the allied commanders everything you know. Then go try to kill the Axis leadership. (You tell the allies first in case you screw up the second part.)

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Magazine Issue 144: April 1989

part 5/5

Through the looking glass: Battle recaps! We haven't had those since the Strategic Review days! Once again they're delivering goods more interesting than endless reviews in this column. In the Battle for Headquarters hill, Robert tells a tale of an assault on a space observatory, using the Battletech rules. With a complete list of the units used, a map of the area, and a description of the battle from the perspectives of both players, this is rather well done, giving me a very clear turn by turn picture of what happened, and the rules of the game. As is typical of these games, both sides had rounds when they couldn't hit anything at all. But they soon had a winner. This definitely makes an interesting diversion from our usual fare, although I suspect I would grow bored if they did it every issue. Still, if they cover battles in different systems each time, they could probably keep this going for a year or two.

Robert doesn't skimp on the reviews either. In mini's, we have some female adventurers, an Umber hulk, an Ogre Mage, a Battletech regiment, and a whole bunch of fairly well done Forgotten Realms and Star wars characters. More interestingly, we also get Warhammer Siege, a supplement for WFB, but insertable into other wargames as a minigame. Far too many wargames don't have rules for this battle style and it's complexities. Now you can try and gradually undermine your enemies walls while they pour boiling oil on your head. Your tactics don't have to be constrained so much by the system limitations. This is also pretty interesting reading. He is stretching himself quite a bit this issue.


Red Guns: Marvel Superheroes gets a little more gun pr0n this issue. In issue 105, they gave some info on military equipment, for those of you who want your characters to go up against tanks and planes. (providing they have the power to make this a fight that isn't completely one sided in either direction. ) Now, you can go up against the red menace, and kick their armies butts in the name of the You Ess Ayy! These are somewhat better organized in terms of their stats than the previous article on this topic, but still, the real fun with these looks to be in the actual play, rather than the reading. Now, if only they'd tabulated the stats. Then they'd be even quicker and easier to reference in a fight.


Dragonmirth is a bit fishy this month. Yamara's party continues to suffer worrying attrition. We get another amusing one-off comic, Bludgeons & Flagons. Silly wizards. Do your own research, don't go for forbidden lore. There's a good reason why it's forbidden. Snarf wraps things up rather too quickly, and then gives us an obituary. Way to end on a downer dude.


A superficially entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying issue. The joke contents are rather less usable than they have been in recent years, and there's a lot of reviews that were a real slog to fill in stuff for. Come on, it's an edition change. Bring on the flamewars.

 

[(un)reason]

Ah yes, my favorite cursed item of all time. I like it because the effect is often disturbing to the player, yet it doesn't mess up stats, classes, levels or anything else of that nature at all. You know, that would actually work unless the munchkin is insecure in his sexuality.

It's certainly a lot more fun and games than losing an eye. (Although the penalty for that is pretty trivial as well. Something like -2 on ranged attacks, IIRC? ) Man, they made that ridiculously hard to reverse. Even using another girdle is a risky business. Coming back from the dead vs changing gender. If I were an adventurer, I'd be going "Who makes this crap anyway?"

Screw the plot. Go tell the allied commanders everything you know. Then go try to kill the Axis leadership. (You tell the allies first in case you screw up the second part.)

Probably easier in a superhero game than most genres. But there is still the issue of how much fine detail you know that'd actually be useful to them tactically, particularly if you were just zapped into a random era without time to prepare.