[Let's Read] ARES Magazine

[(un)reason]

Ares Special Edition 2: Date unspecified



64 pages. So here they go again, filling up the magazine without a game as the centrepiece. The contents are pretty different though. While last time was all Conan, Arthur, Dunsany and the Universe system, this is about Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Gamma World. Less past, more future. Yet curiously at the same time, less hard science, more flights of fantasy. Funny how these things work, isn't it. I guess the past is fixed and quantifiable, but the future is still yet to be determined. Let's see how my brain will react to these bits of now static history.



Ares Log: Once again, nothing much to see here. A little bit of errata, and then once again elaborating on the issue's contents. The combination of outer and inner space. The more we understand our place in the universe, the better we understand ourselves and vice versa. Sounds mystical, but it's just basic logic really. These have definitely become less interesting since the changeover.



Letters: Two long and quite critical letters this month. The first, not too surprisingly given the size of it's fanbase, defends Return of the Jedi. Trying to treat blockbuster films as serious lore will almost always disappoint. Geeks seriously need to lighten up. It's just entertainment, except when it's high art, or about ethics in gaming, whichever is most convenient at the time.

More seriously, a letter reminding them that they inherited the Universe system from SPI and should be supporting it more in the magazine. The trouble with that is that they have a bunch of big centrepiece articles, but none of the smaller ones TSR prefers, and formatting around big articles is always a pain. If they got more reader submissions they might have kept it around, or maybe they're just saying that for appearances and they always intended to flip to mostly covering their own games.



Media: Last issue, we looked at the sordid business of creating novelisations of films. Here we look at the even more depressing business of making those glossy coffee table books full of photos about films and TV shows. Even cynical secondary market tie-ins like this somehow manage to attract a few idealists who just want to make the best damn coffee table book they possibly can, but they're outweighed by the flakes, grifters, and executive meddlers. This one is particularly bitter, as it seems entirely born out of personal experience by the writer. You work your ass off, get jerked around repeatedly, have your credit stolen, and at the end of it all, you don't even own your work, the company does. It's enough to put you off showbiz for life. Given the number of artists in multiple fields that spend a few years with a major company and then wind up going independent because of this kind of screwage, it's obvious that this is not a rare occurrence. Oh well, as long as it looks glamorous from the outside, there'll always be fresh meat for the content mills.



New Worlds: In contrast with last article, the hard science piece is cheerier than usual. Overviews of the six largest satellites in the solar system, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan and Triton. Even back then, they were fully aware that all of them were distinct and interesting in their own ways, even if we now have more detail on what's going on on and underneath their surfaces. The frequency with which these frozen moons have liquid seas buried deep beneath the ice makes life elsewhere in the universe seem considerably more likely. (although it would be much harder to develop a spacefaring civilisation under those conditions) So the details here are accurate, but very incomplete, and even now, we still have a lot to discover about all these little places in our solar system. Let's hope we'll get to find them out within our lifetimes.



Tales of the Sky, Tales of the Land: Ha. The magazine decides to do a holodeck malfunction episode even before TNG came out. I'm sure there are other examples of the trope before this, but it happened so frequently there that it will now forever be associated with Star Trek. There is considerably less handwavium though, with the spaceship being a colony ship only flying between stars at .2c, gravity generated by rotation, and the malfunctioning simulation being composed of physical robots with rubber skins. The final result is pretty realistic too, as they eventually solve the problem and arrive at their destination, and then the story is told as a flashback while they live a simple agrarian life trying to gradually build up a civilisation on their new planet. Life goes on, and our work is never over, but big dramatic emergencies only come along occasionally. That won't change if we ever get colonies on other planets going. It'll be more long slow expansion and occasional collapses when unexpected things go wrong, no matter how advanced technology gets, because the universe is always going to be mind bogglingly huge compared to us and the things we can do. This story all seems completely plausible as hard sci-fi. I approve.



Home Sweet Home: Ahh, good old random generation tables. Now there's a TSR thing I've missed while doing this magazine. They cement that they're running things differently from SPI with a set of random star system generation tables, technically for Star Frontiers, but using entirely real world numbers, so they can be easily plugged into any sci-fi system. They say they're realistic, but really, they had so little data on other solar systems then, there's no way they stack up to current knowledge (which is still woefully incomplete outside large gas giants in nearby star systems. ) and are obviously skewed towards earthlike conditions, when in actuality, red dwarves outnumber everything else by orders of magnitude, and any planets orbiting them at inhabitable temperatures would rapidly lock tidally to the sun unless they had a decent sized moon to keep the day/night cycle going. But while I can pick holes in the science part pretty easily, it's still preferable to having nothing when your players jump to a random star system and you need to come up with something fast, so it still has plenty of use in actual play. Stick it in the bookmarks along with a bunch of others I've already covered so you don't waste tons of time faffing around mid-session trying to find it.



The Far Frontiers: From random setting add-ons to more specific Traveller worldbuilding. A big chunk of star systems towards the outer edge of the galaxy that have been cut off from civilisation for a few thousand years and developed their own little cultures. At a scale like this, precise geography is irrelevant, but we do get overviews of their history, cultures, and relationships with one-another. Even the small ones still comprise several planets, and have overall populations orders of magnitude above present day earth. Like our first articles on the planes, it's all a bit too abstract to adventure in yet. They definitely need some specific places and NPC's to make these worlds relatable.



Revised Psionics for Traveller Gaming: Just a few months ago, Dragon did a psionics special in issue 78. Despite delivering an impressive 8 articles on the theme, it looks like that wasn't all their submissions, as they have ones for several of their frequently covered sci-fi games here. First up, one for Traveller that's aimed at making it rare, weak and unpredictable. You have to get a good roll to have them at all, they're often hard to consciously control, and the effects are generally low key and plausibly deniable so as to not ruin the overall hard sci-fi feel of the setting. Like the glacially slow advancement and expensive FTL in the system, it's not the most immediately glamorous, but if it lets you run a long-term internally consistent campaign, then I guess that's better than designing purely for short term gratification. I can quite understand why they did it way, even if I don't find it particularly exciting reading.



It's all in your Mind: Unsurprisingly, Gamma World's approach to psionics is a lot more quirky and haphazard, representing them as just more mutations, rather than having any kind of school system or hierarchy of powers. But since gamma world is a much more gonzo setting, they're also much more overt and powerful as well. A surprising number of them are meta-effects that modify your own or other's powers, which will be very situational in applicability, especially since they're randomly gained, so the odds of getting really good synergies are not high. They also include a new monster that incorporates a bunch of these powers, the the goat-headed centaurs seen on the issue's cover. They take goat's pre-existing ability to climb the tiniest cracks and enhance it into outright air-walking, can consume virtually anything you throw at them, and are genius mechanics to boot. They definitely have the Jim Ward touch of twinkitude and would be very scary to fight if the GM used their powers intelligently. This all seems pretty fun to use, if not even slightly balanced mechanically. Oh well, it's not as if you were expecting to run a long term campaign anyway. Only Paranoia beats Gamma World for rapid character turnover due to frequent and ridiculous deaths. Roll up a new character and get back into the action.



Frontiers of the Mind: The RPG section concludes with a third article on psionics, this time for Star Frontiers. While the other two are adding to existing rules, there aren't any for this system, so the writer has to make them up wholecloth. The results are quite similar to the Traveller version, but slightly more powerful and reliable and much more compressed, as they're trying to accomplish more, but in a shorter word count. The powers are 7 of the usual suspects, clairvoyance, energy absorption, telepathy, mental illusions, mind control, telekinesis, and teleportation. It's a solid enough start that could do with being expanded upon. That's another definite change with the TSR years. The shorter articles they prefer means you're more likely to be left wanting more.



Latent Image: Our second bit of fiction is a lot more mystical. A photographer is trying to develop a formula that will take photos that project the subjects back in time, giving them flashbacks of what happened then. His methods are alchemical rather than scientific, and his results are interestingly haphazard, with the past and present throwing up parallels that may be dream or reality. So it's not particularly concerned with consistent worldbuilding, but does put a lot of effort into being cool and evocative. So it's entertaining reading, but sticks out here, and is another demonstration of how TSR cares a lot less about their settings than SPI did in this era. Don't overanalyse, just roll them bones and see what the fates deal up, that's the fun way to do it.



Miniatures: This column decides to focus on spaceships this month, giving us an equal share of generic ones from Superior Models, and licensed Star Trek ones by FASA. Shouldn't be too hard to combine them in your own games. Not much else to say here again, especially given the lack of detail in the photos making it hard to make my own judgement about their quality. Meh.



Games: Lee's Guide to Interstellar Adventure is a collection of 10 example worlds for the Traveller system, although it's not hard to convert to other sci-fi games as well. With plenty of adventure scenarios, not just dry data, it should provide plenty of sessions to a GM able to extrapolate and expand on it's plot hooks.

The Company War is a wargame based on C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station. It gets an in depth review that's mostly positive while also pointing out the flaws. It prioritises drama over realism, but can still get pretty long when you turn the complexity dials all the way and add more than 2 players. As long as it stays fun, that's not a problem though.

To Challenge Tomorrow is one of the first attempts at a generic RPG system that you can then add various setting supplements onto. It can't have done that well or I would have heard of it before. Like most of these early attempts, it seems very simulationist, so while you may get the flavor of different places, the mechanics won't back up the style of various genres, and the sample adventures get a fair bit of criticism for being too simple and lacking in detail. These days, you'd definitely be better off sticking with GURPS.



Books: Elephant Song by Barry Longyear is another story of a circus IIIINNN SPAAACE! (see issue 14). Unlike that, where the visiting new and strange worlds is the fun part, these guys are stranded on another planet, and the interest is in them learning to survive while trying to preserve their culture, so it's a more low-key and realistic affair, with plenty of research done on real life traveling performer culture. I think there's room for both ideas out there in the universe.

New America by Poul Anderson is a compilation of his short stories, most of them in the same setting and with connected plot lines. Since he was a featured artist in the magazine just last issue, they unsurprisingly get high praise. Popularity is about good networking as much as it is actual talent.



Film: Brainstorm is the kind of thoughtful, hard sci-fi film that takes a single new piece of technology and plays through it's ramifications on society. In this case the ability to record people's whole body sensory experiences and play them back to others. It gets a very good review indeed, with the writing, acting and cinematography all working well together. it's just a shame it won't have the pop culture longevity of more overtly flashy movies.

Testament also gets a good review for similar reasons. It self consciously adopts a feminine point of view to the aftermath of nuclear holocaust, as radiation sickness develops in a community and the fabric of everyday life gradually disintegrates. Like When the Wind Blows, which is similarly low-key and bleak from the same era, it shows how there's no real winners to nuclear war; even if one side technically survives, the fallout will screw everyone who survives for generations to come. Let's hope world leaders never forget that.



Ringshipper comes to an end just as it finishes what should be the prolog, when the captain realises the potential of what he's stumbled across. What would he have done with that potential if the series had continued? I have no clue, given how light on detail the whole thing's ben so far. Oh well, at least we didn't have a chance to get attached before being abruptly left hanging like we did with Wormy. So that leaves this just another tiny unresolved plot thread in the vastness of history. I wish reality had neat endings like good fiction does.



I thought last issue had completed the transition, but somehow, this one feels even more TSRish than before. I think it's the lack of a big centerpiece article, which even the last special issue had. Here, it's all small ones, some which are good, some which are bad, but none of which really have the comprehensiveness of their big boardgames and setting expansions. So I'm left feeling a little unsatisfied this time around. Oh well, just one more regular issue to go, and then it'll be time for another complete change of scenery. Let's see if the themes of that one are satisfying, and if they'll lay it to rest in a respectful way, or an abrupt and arbitrary one.

 

[(un)reason]

Ares 17 - Mongoose & Cobra: Spring 1984



64 pages. Well, they're certainly leaving us in no doubt this is the final issue, saying it repeatedly on the cover and contents. Looking at the special feature, it looks like they're cutting corners too, as there's no boardgame, just one of those big Universe system articles they talked about having in their slush pile last issue. Unlike Dragon's ending, it's already obvious they're not going to be bringing their A game here. Let's see if it's all depressing here, or there's still a few buried gems worth being unearthed.



Ares Log: The editorial is obviously in thanks for the memories mode. They gave it their best shot, but the audience just wasn't there. They're still proud of what they've created, and the people who worked hard to make it what it is now. If they weren't, they wouldn't be folding it into Dragon in the hope of reaching a wider audience. Given the number of other systems they tried, only to drop after a few years when they were only a tiny fraction of D&D's sales, they've had to do this plenty of times, but it still stings, and makes you feel like a one-hit-wonder. You never really get used to being told your new stuff isn't interesting, give us more stuff like your biggest hit, and do your funny little dance, monkey. Will you pursue your muse wherever it may go, or accept that most people don't really want originality, just minor variations on familiar ideas? Or just get bitter and burnt out and quit the industry entirely, get an unrelated day job where you don't have the constant weight of expectation bearing down on you. This is the dark side of the creative world. No happy endings here.



Letters: Our first letter is from one of the people who had their game reviewed last issue. He concedes that it is mostly accurate, they're going to fix the problems pointed out in the next edition, and they also have several supplements in the works. Please buy them if you want to see more stuff from us. :teeth ting: Fairly standard self-promotion.

Unsurprisingly, the other letter is from someone peeved that the magazine is ending, and hoping the Ares section in dragon magazine won't be a load of half-assed crap. They'll do their best, but you definitely won't be seeing big expensive games in there regularly. It's all about costs and investment to reward ratios. It's a tiresome business, trying to have fun. You just keep on running into reality, no matter how hard you work to escape it.



Media: As we draw to a close, the media column throws off any semblance of detachment in it's reporting, turning it's eye to the relationship between writers and editors. In particular, his own personal experience with this very magazine and the way it's jerked him around in recent months. So with the magazine ending, they've decided they no longer give a naughty word and are going to go down dishing the dirt. That's always amusing to see. If you don't want to see what goes into making the sausage, you really don't want to see the bits that didn't make the cut. A lot of it is complete crap, whatever it's writers may think, but a fair bit is good, but just not what the magazine needs right at that moment. Be it issue theme, overall remit of the magazine, or formatting around space limits, there are good reasons why the writing you slaved over would end up butchered in the final product. Still stings though, especially if it goes through multiple revisions and still doesn't get published in the end, or is cut down by several orders of magnitude into a neat soundbite that lacks all the nuance you originally put in. Being a creative person is a tough business, and this is why you need a thick skin and the ability to make deadlines and respond to feedback to make it, not just raw writing talent. Just keep plugging away, hopefully someday you'll get to be the person doing the screwing instead of the screwee.



Fun among the Mutants: Jim Ward gives us another bit of decidedly silly gamma world material. What games do children play in a postapocalyptic wasteland full of terrifying mutants where life is cheap? Extremely violent and destructive ones, with no regard for health and safety regulations. This is the kind of thing that rubs in how insane everyone is there, and how cheap life is. It's no wonder no-one's been able to rebuild civilisation with even the kids running around routinely torturing and killing for kicks, and if it weren't for enhanced breeding and growth rates, they'd all be heading on a quick downward spiral to extinction. So this is the kind of article that reminds us that gamma world was never a serious or internally coherent setting, and the attempts to make it so in 6th edition were futile and misguided, like building a house on quicksand. You can have fun with this, but don't extrapolate the logical ramifications too hard, because it's all a big mess.



Sword in the Dirt: Our first bit of fiction is in much the same vein as the High Crusade stuff a couple of issues ago, an odd juxtaposition of futuristic technology and knightly trappings. A bunch of SCAites are recreating dueling and jousting, but their weapons and armour are augmented with artificial intelligences who's job is to assess the situation and give the best tactical advice to their users. Of course, the problem with relying on AI is that using the optimal tactical solutions all the time will eventually short circuit the whole fun of it, ruining the game aspect. Eventually people will get sick of it and go back to doing it au naturale. So this works as both an allegory, and an example of how to play sentient magical items, which may want to help their owner, but have senses and priorities very different from our own, so they'll go about it in quirky ways. Ideas like that will work well to spice up your high level campaigns.



Pancake Alley: A bit of a leftfield turn here as we have a Car Wars article, of all things. A game all about customising your vehicles is itself ripe for expansions and customisation, so they steal from real world rally driving to give us some slightly less lethal ways to use them. Two different variants on chases, where one driver has to get away from all the rest, while they have to box him in or otherwise disable his vehicle, and one of capture the flag, which works exactly the same as on foot only faster and more environmentally unfriendly, as the vehicles barrel around off road churning up mud while they try and grab flags and get them back to their home zone. I definitely approve of this, as it takes the existing rules, and shows you how to use them for more than just direct combat, helping you make a varied campaign out of using the same vehicles and drivers. That's the kind of thing that'll help it survive long-term.



A Friendly game of Hoople: The competitive sports theme continues in our second bit of fiction, where a group of space explorers have to engage in competitive volcanic mud surfing to gain the respect of the locals. (The bigger the bubble you leap over as it bursts, the higher you score. ) Since the alien's physiology is better adapted to doing this, plus they have far more experience, they've been beating us easily repeatedly. This continues right up to the end of the story, where the humans barely manage to squeak out a win at the last moment of the match, in typical edge of the seat sports drama (IIIIINNNN SPAAAAACEEEE!!!!!) So while the plot here is very predictable, it is hung on some pretty decent worldbuilding that goes into detail on the alien's physiology, the world they evolved on, and how they became the way they are. That's worth using for inspiration even if the sportsball stuff leaves you cold, so there's still more positives than negatives here.



Mongoose & Cobra: Our final big feature is a fairly standard 16 page adventure module, as was common at the time. Don't know why they were making a big deal about it not fitting in the magazine when they do them in Dragon nearly every other issue at this point. I guess it's the usual attempts to please everyone by doing lots of different little articles rather than a few big ones. Plus it definitely feels like it was written under the SPI management rather than the TSR one, so it may be just the usual creative competitiveness. On the plus side, that means this has the usual attention to setting detail that they loved, which will come in handy as this is a quite open-ended module, so if the players go off in an unexpected direction you won't have to completely make it up yourself. Indeed, it spends so much space on building up the solar system that the actual adventure part, a group of space pirates raiding the cargo ships, seems somewhat perfunctory by comparison, relatively easy to solve once you actually find their hidden base. Really, I suspect their reluctance to use this wasn't really due to space issues, but more due to TSR's current disinterest in detailed setting building - they simply didn't think it was exciting enough. So if you're looking for a setting to build your own campaign around, there's plenty to use here. If you just want a prefab adventure to fill a session, it'll leave you a bit unfulfilled.



The Zamira, Weapon of the Yazirians: Or how to give Chakram a sci-fi reskinning. A one page article giving those razored discs of death Star Frontiers stats and talking about their place in the Yazirian culture. They combine them with their gliding ability to engage in duels that would be impossible for a human, with a choice of aiming to seriously hurt, or merely to slash their opponents wings and ground them to show who's boss. If you want to put a bit more Xena in your sci-fi, this is pretty neat, as it includes several stunts you can do with them on top of standard damage dealing. Settling fights nonlethally with style is definitely something they should be encouraging more in the rules.



Fire at Will: A second Star Frontiers article in quick succession expands the space combat system to cover hex based minis battles by using the Knight Hawks game. As with any space combat system, it struggles against the enormous distances and timescale involved in space travel, so it focuses on a scale that will never have more than one significant landmark on the map. Turning speed is very important, perhaps more so than your actual velocity, which isn't entirely how physics works in a vaccum. As it's based off combining and houseruling two different sets of rules, neither of which I know, this was a particularly impenetrable article to read, so I have no idea at all how they'll turn out in actual play. It'll definitely be a relief to finish this and go back to reviewing D&D articles which I can easily analyse again. Just a few more to push through.



The Federation Strikes Back: We go way back here, to expand on the DeltaVee game from issue 9. 16 new spaceships made by 4 different companies, each with very different naming conventions and design quirks, plus 7 new pod types to customise them with, some which open up new tactical options rather than just being different arrangements of existing statistics. These are then put through their paces in 2 new scenarios, a relatively short pirate hunt, and a more protracted battle around a rebel planetary base in deep space. Seems a to be a pretty decent set of add-ons. This should provide a good few extra hours of entertainment from the game.



Sword & Sorcery in Supergame: One thing I found quite notable about the Ares section in Dragon was how it went from being almost entirely space opera to heavily featuring superheroics over the course of it's lifespan. Looks like that process started here, as the last RPGing article in the magazine is also their first superhero one. Unfortunately, it's not a very good one, as it's purely promotion of the newly released Supergame system and the things you can do in it with no actual game material. It feels more like a paid promotional piece than a regular article, which isn't pleasing to see at all. So either their lack of good submissions has caused them to lower their editorial standards, or they are indeed taking backhanders from other companies to disguise adverts as articles. Neither is a very pleasing notion. A distinctly unsatisfying way to round things off.



Games: Autoduel Champions is a crossover between Car Wars and the Champions superhero system. The results are interesting, but also somewhat frustrating, as it's not too hard for superheroes to become too powerful or out of context for even the most souped up hod rod to have a chance against, and only half the rules will be useful whichever system you're using. There's a good reason BMX Bandit & Angel Summoner is a cautionary tale, not an example to be imitated.

The Car Wars reference screen is far more normal, the usual agglomeration of important rules and tables so the GM doesn't need to do as much page flipping mid-play. You've seen one, you've seen a hundred of them for various systems over the years. The format hasn't changed much in 30+ years.

Scouts is the self-explanatorily named splatbook for Traveller, giving you more options if you want to be on the front lines of exploring new worlds and casing out joints for potential profit. Along with the obvious new skills and equipment, they also expand on the system for generating new star systems, so the places you explore will take longer to get repetitive. That's good joined-up thinking. I approve.

The Klingons is the equally self-explanatory splatbook for the Star Trek RPG. If you want to be a backstabbing sneaky bastard trying to advance in a society full of backstabbing sneaky bastards (as this is before TNG tried to recast them as honourable warrior types) this will be your jam. Even if it isn't many of the smaller setting and language details will still be accurate, because why throw out good worldbuilding? The fans lap that stuff up like catnip.

Superworld is Chaosium's attempt at a superheroic RPG. It's based around BRP, so it's compatible with Runequest and Call of Cthulhu, although obviously starting power levels are a lot higher, so modules that're tough for either of those'll be a breeze. There's still a fair bit of randomness in character generation, but even the most powerful powers are designed to be less game-breaking than competitor superhero systems, so hopefully the batmen will still be able to contribute on a team with speedsters and teleporters. How well did this one do, as I don't remember it, while RQ & CoC are still going today, many editions later.

Alien Contact Is another of those sci-fi wargames we've seen a fair few times in this magazine. It gets a pretty mediocre result, as the rules are sketchy and the rest is all pretty formulaic. There's only so many ideas in the universe, and it's no surprise people get jaded with them.



Books: Web of the Romulans by M. S. Murdock (Daredevil's a Star Trek fan? I guess he would appreciate having Geordi's visor ) gets a fairly positive review. It mixes humour and drama successfully, and adds a bit more setting detail to the Romulans. But will the other writers take that detail and build on it in their own books and episodes? That's the real challenge in building a shared universe without strong editorial control.

The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison also gets plenty of praise. No surprises here, just a rollicking good time adventure. Sometimes you don't want to be challenged, you just want a consistently entertaining franchise as comfort reading, and he still knows how to pump them out.

The man who used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster gets a somewhat more mixed result. It has some interesting ideas, but some of them are deeply improbable and the characterisation needs work. Oh well, can't win 'em all. You have to speculate to accumulate.

Gunner Cade by C. M. Kornbluth & Judith Merril gets a thorough slating for being boring and poorly written. All the more baffling when the short story by the same author included with it turns out to actually be quite good. Just natural variance in quality, or a matter of subject matter and personal taste? I guess I'd have to read them myself, and if they seemed dated back then, they'd be even more so now. I find it hard to summon the enthusiasm.



Finally, they take the time to issue errata for two of their more recent games. Into the Void was missing one of it's robot stats, which seems important, and Nightmare House gets a longer list of clarifications and additions which seem less critical, but I suspect will still improve play if applied. You never really finish designing a game, just stop due to time and budget constraints. I'm sure there's plenty more they'd do differently with the benefit of hindsight.



So here's where this little sidequest joins up with the main path of my adventures. You can go to Dragon Issue 84 in that Let's Read if you want to pick up directly where this leaves off. It's not a particularly satisfying ending to the magazine, with definite signs of them loosening their quality control to get the issue done and out of the way, and serves to illustrate just how little the TSR issues of Ares had in common with the SPI ones, apart from the reviews, which kept their pleasingly acerbic tone. There's still some good articles, but overall, the arc of the magazine is a sad story of a product never really finding it's market. Oh well, this ending is the opportunity for a new beginning. Join me soon for the long-awaited Let's Read of Polyhedron Newszine, to see how that twists and turns over several decades before it too is absorbed into Dungeon, becoming a magazine within a magazine in exactly the same way for a few years before being scrapped altogether. Hope to see you there.