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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9460115" data-attributes="member: 7044704">I remember one of my GMs using a modified version of this one for Spelljammer, with the ruined city and monument transplanted to a rock in Wildspace and the association of Thoth and Ptah (a Big Deal deity in SJ, far more so than planetside) played up some.  I don't recall the traps being particularly OTT by 2nd ed standards, but our GM may have toned them down when making mods - I know some monsters were swapped for more spacegoing alternatives. Have to admit, these days I really struggle read anything by Greenwood without thinking of that accursed "breast milk" nonsense.  It's amazing how much that's spoiled his legacy for me. This came up on another forum not long ago, and I feel it's worth repeating:  A fair number of older gamers have probably at least seen this book, and almost as many are probably aware of the trilogy, all of which were written in the 80s.  But very few people seem to know there are actually seven books in the "Magic By the Numbers" series now, as well as three more related books in the "Island Magics" trilogy.  Hardy (who's well into his 80s now) had a surge of new output between 2017 and today, more than tripling the size of his bibliography, but the failings of modern publishing have led them to fly under most folks' radar.They're perhaps most noteworthy for being an early example of a "hard" magic system, years before the term became common parlance among fantasy fans.  Well worth a look even today, particularly the (quite self-contained) first book reviewed here. What in blazes does that even mean?  "Gauche" might conceivably be applied to some of the much later books loaded down with with bad cheesecake art from Queen's Blade and Queen's Gate, but in 1984 there was nothing like that.  You might as well try to call Ace of Aces "risque" - it wouldn't be any more wrong.Also note that the (rapidly growing) series of gamebooks will be reviewed just four months later in Dragon #85, which you can find <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Worlds_%28gamebook%29" target="_blank">over on the wiki page</a>.  The various reviews there are a little harsh, as the system's replay value increased geometrically as more characters and sub-mechanics were steadily added over the years.Sure, if you completely ignore all the production errors and typos that were allowed to slip through by extremely (and atypically) poor quality control from Chaosium.  The company's treatment of SW was and is appalling - to quote from Steve Perrin (taken from <a href="https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/one-last-superworld-game-40-years-later-steve-perrin.904679/" target="_blank">a long and fascinating thread on Superworld over here</a>):I dimly recall playing through part of the first module in the series (<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_on_Hareth" target="_blank">Curse of Hareth</a>) when it was brand new, but after two TPKs in a row we ditched it and never went back so I can't tell you anything more about it.  That's not even really a comment on its quality or lethality - we had a bit of a "killer GM" at the time and we were using D&D, which was absurdly dangerous for 1st level characters in its TSR days.</blockquote>

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