Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
[Let's Read] ARES Magazine
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 7883446" data-attributes="member: 27780"><p><strong><u>Ares 16 - The High Crusade: Winter 1984</u></strong></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>67 pages. Another big name writer licences out their work so the magazine can make a game of it. This time, it's Poul Anderson who's dipping his toes into multimedia with his tale of english knights on other planets. Will you manage to be the conquerers or the conquered. Or maybe you'd prefer to avoid that whole nasty business of imperialist colonialism and the horrors that are committed in it's name. I guess even with the sci-fi rebranding, they're still wargamers at heart. We're still a long way from outgrowing the need for violence and other conflict in our escapist media. So I guess it's time to strap on our shiny armor, kill things and take their shiny stuff again. To Action! Are we men or are we magpies?! Who Cares?!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ares Log: The editorial is basically the same as the contents page, telling us what's in the magazine, only with slightly more words. Nothing particularly interesting to read here, so I have nothing in particular to say in response either. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Letters: The TSRification of the magazine takes another step here, with a letters page that is basically identical in format to the Dragon ones of the same era. Let's see if the individual letters are just as predictable in content.</p><p></p><p>First up is a request for help converting between 1st and 2nd edition DragonQuest. They tell him to do it himself, as it's hardly rocket science. Some gamers, no ability to think independently. </p><p></p><p>Secondly, a long criticism of one of their recent reviews, pointing out how factually inaccurate and contextually ignorant the reviewer was. It's a fair cop guv. We'll try and do better next time. </p><p></p><p>Thirdly, someone wondering when DragonQuest material will start appearing in Dragon Magazine. It already has, buddy, it already has. </p><p></p><p>Finally, an ever predictable request for submission guidelines. Avoid becoming a meal for the no SASE ogre and you're in with a good shot, as the competition is small enough that they can't afford to be that strict with their standards yet. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Galactic Empires: Our hard science piece this issue is very much a rehash of issue 12, looking at the logistics of interstellar travel and communication, only from the perspective of a conquerer rather than a trader. The problems are still the same though, vast distances, communication lag, perishability of things being transported, making the whole enterprise profitable, prisoner's dilemma when it comes to exchange of information, and huge amounts of bureaucracy trying to keep everything organised, so there's a fair bit of repeated material. But there are some new mathematical tidbits, such as a breakdown of organisational complexity and ways to improve efficiency via multiple semi-independent chains of command. On breaking it down, without faster than light travel, any interstellar empire will have to allow a lot of freedom on any short term decisions by individual star systems, and some form of lifespan extension to create the continuity needed to implement broader policy decisions over thousands of years. And as ever, I wish people would spend more time and energy working on making this stuff a reality rather than writing thousands of novels about it. It continues to annoy me that if anything, we've regressed in terms of space travel over the past 30 years. I guess that once again, that shows how hard bureaucracy is, as novel writing is a solitary process, but getting thousands of smart people to work together in pursuit of a bigger goal requires complex social communication. They're always going to be rarer than the sum of their parts. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Crimes, Crazies and Creole Cookery: As a postscript to the last article, we have a little piece on the odds that an interstellar civilisation would steamroller us, destroying or co-opting casually not out of any malice, but simply because we were in the way. Now that's an all too plausible fear, given how colonialism on earth has gone. All it takes is a disease we've got no defence against or a fast breeding invasive species, and even benevolent explorers have wound up wrecking an ecosystem. It's a good thing that we'll probably see them coming years in advance if there's no FTL, no matter how technologically advanced they are. If only there was some way of preparing when we have no way of predicting what might be out there. Oh well, better keep on improving those telescopes. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Quest: As mentioned earlier, Poul Anderson created a novel where knights were transplanted to another planet by slaving aliens, and managed to win their freedom by adapting to their new situation and technology, but retaining the emphasis on chivalry, heraldry and feudal hierarchy. Now we get to see what happens when they get a sniff of the holy grail out there. (God works in mysterious ways.) Piety and crass opportunism intermingle as a whole host of knights decide to seek it for various reasons. They fight a dragon, find a church containing a holy man and beautiful maidens that seems to fit the bill, then get suspicious, and look for the catch. Turns out it was all an alien plot to exploit their superstitions and the fake grail is a nuclear bomb that would have gone off when they got it home, destroying their leadership in one fell swoop. But they manage to foil the plot, and return home with the spoils of their labour. Huzzah! So this is reasonably entertaining, but feels altogether too easy as a challenge. It takes what could have been a whole novel's adventure, and condenses it down to a single small chapter. I guess leaving me wanting more is a good thing overall, especially when it's leading into a game. You want to get people fired up and ready to go, not satisfy them so much they're content with just being passive consumers. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>The High Crusade: While the formats of the past two games got a mild rejigging by their new editor, this is the first game that feels TSR all the way through, with writing by Zeb Cook, Larry Elmore on the cover art, and playtesting by a whole bunch of big TSR names. The parts are still fairly familiar though. Little square chits with a couple of stats representing the units, and a big hex map representing the star systems our knights and aliens are fighting over. i'm not sure if the knights are more powerful than the aliens overall, but they have named characters with individualised abilities while the aliens are just faceless hordes, so they probably hold the edge in flexibility. Both sides have ways to convert enemy units, causing them to switch sides, giving you an incentive to capture them instead of just killing everything in your path. While there are dice rolls, they feel like a smaller part of the game than many of these, putting more of an emphasis on your tactical choices, so you'd better work at keeping your enemy off balance and wearing them down. To battle! To the victor goes the spoils!</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Miniatures: TSR's really taking this sci-fi/fantasy divide thing seriously, as they divide up their minis reviews between the magazines. Unfortunately, this doesn't quite work, as they only have enough material for a single page and three different packs of stuff, which means both poor quality photos and very little critical analysis. They say if you build it they will come, but that's not always true, it's just that confirmation bias means we only notice the times we did notice the thing and went to it. This looks like another of those experiments that's going to disappear unmourned when they merge this into Dragon.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Return of the Stainless Steel Computer: Another expansion for a game in a previous issue, this one reaches all the way back to issue 10 to make things a little more challenging for slippery Jim. It basically turns reaching the computer at the end from your win point to a boss fight, with randomly determined defences to keep you on your toes through multiple plays. So it's a mild increase to both the length and difficulty of the game overall, which is something I have no objection too. A climactic ending is definitely better than a blank screen saying "A WINNER IS YOU".</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Creating Alien Races: The RPG stuff feels like it's completed the transition from SPI to TSR material as well, both in topic and format, as this article is exactly like the ones in Dragon's ARES section. A new race for the Traveler system, the profoundly stupidly named Sydymites. No, their planet doesn't have any tendency towards rains of fire or pillars of salt, as far as I can tell, nor are their mating habits even mentioned in this family friendly magazine. Instead they're low gravity adapted human variants, tall, thin and bald, with definite tendencies towards xenophobia and militarism. They enjoy superior strength and endurance, but pay for it long term with back and knee problems, which is realistic, as tall people do tend to suffer from those more; the human frame just get beyond a certain size before becoming unable to support it's own bulk. The rest of their setting detail is decently developed too, giving plenty of information on their history and the way they fit into the surrounding galaxy. So it's a competently done bit of writing, ruined by giving them a name that would be impossible to use at the table without people sniggering. What were they thinking?! Banish them on a one-way trip to uranus. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Swords and Stars: A third article tied into the issue's theme here, as Roger Moore gives us Traveler lifepath options for barbarian (which in this case means anyone from a non spacefaring culture) characters. Which is basically a method to convert your D&D characters to Traveller and take them on a spacefaring adventure pre-spelljammer, complete with various D&D class features and equipment, and psionics as magic. So as with the special feature, this confirms the TSR guys are now fully in command, and can't resist putting in references to their other properties. The line between fantasy and sci-fi is a pretty fuzzy one anyway, but they're not helping keep them separate with stuff like this. Maybe splitting them up wasn't such a good idea in the first place, especially as we already know it wasn't economically viable in the long run. Let people be creative without slicing it up into precise categorisations, you'll get more interesting stuff that way. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Books: Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. McAvoy gives me flashbacks to the first issue of this magazine, as it features a shapeshifted dragon blending into human society. Magical realist hijinks ensue as it learns computer programming. The reviewer approves, and wishes it was being marketed better. Oh, the woes of being put in the genre ghetto. </p><p></p><p>The Rainbow Cadenza by J.Neil Schulman is a sci fi tale about what happens when foetal sex selection results in the male/female ratio skewing way male. An ugly mix of conscription and mandatory prostitution keeps the incels from getting out of hand, and makes for interesting individual human dramas within the society. Sounds like it'd be just as relevant if converted into film/TV today, a la the Handmaid's Tale. </p><p></p><p>A Century of Progress by Fred Saberhagen gets a mostly negative review. Cool ideas, but poor implementation. Since the basic conflict is the same as GURPS infinite worlds, just go play that instead. Sorted. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Games: The Star Trek RPG gets a long and fairly positive review. The mechanics are competently done, with a definite Traveller influence, and it draws well on the details given in the show to give you plenty of options as both a player and GM. Ironically, their big complaints are where it's a little too faithful, with a distinct lack of large scale worldbuilding and glacial character advancement to reflect the largely episodic nature of the source material. Plus the frequent issue with licensed games where they make the original characters way more powerful than any PC you could ever create. It'd be a looooong journey working your way up the ranks from ensign under this system. Oh well, at least that means your campaign won't be killed by the PC's becoming able to steamroller all opposition, especially with the surfeit of godlike entities Trek has. You'll always need to use your brain if the GM is doing their job right here. </p><p></p><p>Star Trek 15mm Deck plans are their first supplements, letting you view the enterprise and a klingon vehicle in larger scale. Unless you're running a tactical minis based fight through the decks, a decidedly nonessential purchase, and so they only get a short perfunctory going over. Meh. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Film: Krull gets a decidedly mediocre review. One fantasy movie is a hit, and next thing you know, there's dozens of bandwagon jumpers trying to imitate it without understanding what made it good. Boring and not worth your time or money. I remember seeing complaints like this after the LotR movies too. </p><p></p><p>Superman III, on the other hand, gets a genuinely angry review because it has higher expectations to disappoint. The combination of cost-cutting on the effects, comedy that isn't funny and terrible writing undercuts all the things that made the first one great and the ideals Superman is supposed to represent as a character. Why is it so hard for some people to accept that you need a straight man, a shining hero, even if the world they inhabit is imperfect, to create contrast and allow the darks to seem darker as well. Not everyone needs to be dark and brooding or full of snarky one-liners for every situation. It's just a shame that this magazine won't last long enough to devote even greater rage to the depths they descend too in the fourth one. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Media: This column turns it's cynical eye on the idea of novelisations of movies. This is a very asymmetrical business, due to the fact that books are much cheaper and easier to make than movies. A movie adaption of a book is normally made years after and changed substantially to fit the medium, while novelisations of movies are churned out quickly and cheaply to be released simultaneously as tie-ins, so any changes are either scenes and lore that was developed but cut for time in the actual film, or the kind of weirdness you get when no-one really cares about the product they're creating and time is limited, so the writer just comes up with stuff that they know is crap and it gets past the filters because no-one higher up the chain is paying attention. The result is a lot of mediocre product, with a few entertainingly awful ones that just baffle as to how they were created. Yeah, this all seems pretty familiar 30+ years later. There may be more transmedia properties where movies, TV series, books and computer games are all tied together and producing co-ordinated complementary works rather than straight adaptions, but there's still plenty of cheap shovelware too. The internet has made it easier to do research, keep track of setting lore and co-ordinate writers, so certain kinds of basic mistakes get made less frequently, but people still have the same amount of creative energy overall, and capitalism still pushes the same perverse incentives. So this is a return to form for this column, educating as well as entertaining. Let's hope it does the same next issue. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ringshipper sets us up with a text heavy bit of everyday life before ending on a dramatic cliffhanger. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Feedback: Having already cut out the most significant part of the feedback form last issue, they cut the number of questions in half again this issue, increasing the size of the font to compensate. Now the backlog is burnt through and the TSR staff are fully in the driving seat, it's obvious they don't really get why this was here in the first place, so they're not putting in the effort to keep it running and updated with the changes in surrounding products. Looking ahead, it's no great surprise that this is it's last appearance in the magazine. Another of those things that goes out as a damp squib, with most people at the time not realising the significance of what happened and it's long term implications. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>As I noted repeatedly in individual articles, this definitely feels like the issue in which TSR has used up all the old SPI material, and everything is now stuff they wrote or commissioned and edited themselves. I guess that shows how obvious the distinction between the two is in tone. Even when covering the same kinds of games, their approach is quite different, apart from the reviewers, who retain their strongly acerbic edge. I do have to say I find the TSR approach much more accessible, and I suspect that's not just because I've already ploughed through 30+ years of their writing style. They survived where SPI didn't because they were better at writing in a way that sparks the imagination, even if they don't have as much technical rigor. That's what gets people excited enough to buy, and I'm not immune to that either. So I guess I'd better enjoy the return to familiar ground after a surprisingly slow slog for such a short magazine run. What will they fill the next special edition with now it's all their own work?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="(un)reason, post: 7883446, member: 27780"] [B][U]Ares 16 - The High Crusade: Winter 1984[/U][/B] 67 pages. Another big name writer licences out their work so the magazine can make a game of it. This time, it's Poul Anderson who's dipping his toes into multimedia with his tale of english knights on other planets. Will you manage to be the conquerers or the conquered. Or maybe you'd prefer to avoid that whole nasty business of imperialist colonialism and the horrors that are committed in it's name. I guess even with the sci-fi rebranding, they're still wargamers at heart. We're still a long way from outgrowing the need for violence and other conflict in our escapist media. So I guess it's time to strap on our shiny armor, kill things and take their shiny stuff again. To Action! Are we men or are we magpies?! Who Cares?! Ares Log: The editorial is basically the same as the contents page, telling us what's in the magazine, only with slightly more words. Nothing particularly interesting to read here, so I have nothing in particular to say in response either. Letters: The TSRification of the magazine takes another step here, with a letters page that is basically identical in format to the Dragon ones of the same era. Let's see if the individual letters are just as predictable in content. First up is a request for help converting between 1st and 2nd edition DragonQuest. They tell him to do it himself, as it's hardly rocket science. Some gamers, no ability to think independently. Secondly, a long criticism of one of their recent reviews, pointing out how factually inaccurate and contextually ignorant the reviewer was. It's a fair cop guv. We'll try and do better next time. Thirdly, someone wondering when DragonQuest material will start appearing in Dragon Magazine. It already has, buddy, it already has. Finally, an ever predictable request for submission guidelines. Avoid becoming a meal for the no SASE ogre and you're in with a good shot, as the competition is small enough that they can't afford to be that strict with their standards yet. Galactic Empires: Our hard science piece this issue is very much a rehash of issue 12, looking at the logistics of interstellar travel and communication, only from the perspective of a conquerer rather than a trader. The problems are still the same though, vast distances, communication lag, perishability of things being transported, making the whole enterprise profitable, prisoner's dilemma when it comes to exchange of information, and huge amounts of bureaucracy trying to keep everything organised, so there's a fair bit of repeated material. But there are some new mathematical tidbits, such as a breakdown of organisational complexity and ways to improve efficiency via multiple semi-independent chains of command. On breaking it down, without faster than light travel, any interstellar empire will have to allow a lot of freedom on any short term decisions by individual star systems, and some form of lifespan extension to create the continuity needed to implement broader policy decisions over thousands of years. And as ever, I wish people would spend more time and energy working on making this stuff a reality rather than writing thousands of novels about it. It continues to annoy me that if anything, we've regressed in terms of space travel over the past 30 years. I guess that once again, that shows how hard bureaucracy is, as novel writing is a solitary process, but getting thousands of smart people to work together in pursuit of a bigger goal requires complex social communication. They're always going to be rarer than the sum of their parts. Crimes, Crazies and Creole Cookery: As a postscript to the last article, we have a little piece on the odds that an interstellar civilisation would steamroller us, destroying or co-opting casually not out of any malice, but simply because we were in the way. Now that's an all too plausible fear, given how colonialism on earth has gone. All it takes is a disease we've got no defence against or a fast breeding invasive species, and even benevolent explorers have wound up wrecking an ecosystem. It's a good thing that we'll probably see them coming years in advance if there's no FTL, no matter how technologically advanced they are. If only there was some way of preparing when we have no way of predicting what might be out there. Oh well, better keep on improving those telescopes. Quest: As mentioned earlier, Poul Anderson created a novel where knights were transplanted to another planet by slaving aliens, and managed to win their freedom by adapting to their new situation and technology, but retaining the emphasis on chivalry, heraldry and feudal hierarchy. Now we get to see what happens when they get a sniff of the holy grail out there. (God works in mysterious ways.) Piety and crass opportunism intermingle as a whole host of knights decide to seek it for various reasons. They fight a dragon, find a church containing a holy man and beautiful maidens that seems to fit the bill, then get suspicious, and look for the catch. Turns out it was all an alien plot to exploit their superstitions and the fake grail is a nuclear bomb that would have gone off when they got it home, destroying their leadership in one fell swoop. But they manage to foil the plot, and return home with the spoils of their labour. Huzzah! So this is reasonably entertaining, but feels altogether too easy as a challenge. It takes what could have been a whole novel's adventure, and condenses it down to a single small chapter. I guess leaving me wanting more is a good thing overall, especially when it's leading into a game. You want to get people fired up and ready to go, not satisfy them so much they're content with just being passive consumers. The High Crusade: While the formats of the past two games got a mild rejigging by their new editor, this is the first game that feels TSR all the way through, with writing by Zeb Cook, Larry Elmore on the cover art, and playtesting by a whole bunch of big TSR names. The parts are still fairly familiar though. Little square chits with a couple of stats representing the units, and a big hex map representing the star systems our knights and aliens are fighting over. i'm not sure if the knights are more powerful than the aliens overall, but they have named characters with individualised abilities while the aliens are just faceless hordes, so they probably hold the edge in flexibility. Both sides have ways to convert enemy units, causing them to switch sides, giving you an incentive to capture them instead of just killing everything in your path. While there are dice rolls, they feel like a smaller part of the game than many of these, putting more of an emphasis on your tactical choices, so you'd better work at keeping your enemy off balance and wearing them down. To battle! To the victor goes the spoils! Miniatures: TSR's really taking this sci-fi/fantasy divide thing seriously, as they divide up their minis reviews between the magazines. Unfortunately, this doesn't quite work, as they only have enough material for a single page and three different packs of stuff, which means both poor quality photos and very little critical analysis. They say if you build it they will come, but that's not always true, it's just that confirmation bias means we only notice the times we did notice the thing and went to it. This looks like another of those experiments that's going to disappear unmourned when they merge this into Dragon. Return of the Stainless Steel Computer: Another expansion for a game in a previous issue, this one reaches all the way back to issue 10 to make things a little more challenging for slippery Jim. It basically turns reaching the computer at the end from your win point to a boss fight, with randomly determined defences to keep you on your toes through multiple plays. So it's a mild increase to both the length and difficulty of the game overall, which is something I have no objection too. A climactic ending is definitely better than a blank screen saying "A WINNER IS YOU". Creating Alien Races: The RPG stuff feels like it's completed the transition from SPI to TSR material as well, both in topic and format, as this article is exactly like the ones in Dragon's ARES section. A new race for the Traveler system, the profoundly stupidly named Sydymites. No, their planet doesn't have any tendency towards rains of fire or pillars of salt, as far as I can tell, nor are their mating habits even mentioned in this family friendly magazine. Instead they're low gravity adapted human variants, tall, thin and bald, with definite tendencies towards xenophobia and militarism. They enjoy superior strength and endurance, but pay for it long term with back and knee problems, which is realistic, as tall people do tend to suffer from those more; the human frame just get beyond a certain size before becoming unable to support it's own bulk. The rest of their setting detail is decently developed too, giving plenty of information on their history and the way they fit into the surrounding galaxy. So it's a competently done bit of writing, ruined by giving them a name that would be impossible to use at the table without people sniggering. What were they thinking?! Banish them on a one-way trip to uranus. Swords and Stars: A third article tied into the issue's theme here, as Roger Moore gives us Traveler lifepath options for barbarian (which in this case means anyone from a non spacefaring culture) characters. Which is basically a method to convert your D&D characters to Traveller and take them on a spacefaring adventure pre-spelljammer, complete with various D&D class features and equipment, and psionics as magic. So as with the special feature, this confirms the TSR guys are now fully in command, and can't resist putting in references to their other properties. The line between fantasy and sci-fi is a pretty fuzzy one anyway, but they're not helping keep them separate with stuff like this. Maybe splitting them up wasn't such a good idea in the first place, especially as we already know it wasn't economically viable in the long run. Let people be creative without slicing it up into precise categorisations, you'll get more interesting stuff that way. Books: Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. McAvoy gives me flashbacks to the first issue of this magazine, as it features a shapeshifted dragon blending into human society. Magical realist hijinks ensue as it learns computer programming. The reviewer approves, and wishes it was being marketed better. Oh, the woes of being put in the genre ghetto. The Rainbow Cadenza by J.Neil Schulman is a sci fi tale about what happens when foetal sex selection results in the male/female ratio skewing way male. An ugly mix of conscription and mandatory prostitution keeps the incels from getting out of hand, and makes for interesting individual human dramas within the society. Sounds like it'd be just as relevant if converted into film/TV today, a la the Handmaid's Tale. A Century of Progress by Fred Saberhagen gets a mostly negative review. Cool ideas, but poor implementation. Since the basic conflict is the same as GURPS infinite worlds, just go play that instead. Sorted. Games: The Star Trek RPG gets a long and fairly positive review. The mechanics are competently done, with a definite Traveller influence, and it draws well on the details given in the show to give you plenty of options as both a player and GM. Ironically, their big complaints are where it's a little too faithful, with a distinct lack of large scale worldbuilding and glacial character advancement to reflect the largely episodic nature of the source material. Plus the frequent issue with licensed games where they make the original characters way more powerful than any PC you could ever create. It'd be a looooong journey working your way up the ranks from ensign under this system. Oh well, at least that means your campaign won't be killed by the PC's becoming able to steamroller all opposition, especially with the surfeit of godlike entities Trek has. You'll always need to use your brain if the GM is doing their job right here. Star Trek 15mm Deck plans are their first supplements, letting you view the enterprise and a klingon vehicle in larger scale. Unless you're running a tactical minis based fight through the decks, a decidedly nonessential purchase, and so they only get a short perfunctory going over. Meh. Film: Krull gets a decidedly mediocre review. One fantasy movie is a hit, and next thing you know, there's dozens of bandwagon jumpers trying to imitate it without understanding what made it good. Boring and not worth your time or money. I remember seeing complaints like this after the LotR movies too. Superman III, on the other hand, gets a genuinely angry review because it has higher expectations to disappoint. The combination of cost-cutting on the effects, comedy that isn't funny and terrible writing undercuts all the things that made the first one great and the ideals Superman is supposed to represent as a character. Why is it so hard for some people to accept that you need a straight man, a shining hero, even if the world they inhabit is imperfect, to create contrast and allow the darks to seem darker as well. Not everyone needs to be dark and brooding or full of snarky one-liners for every situation. It's just a shame that this magazine won't last long enough to devote even greater rage to the depths they descend too in the fourth one. Media: This column turns it's cynical eye on the idea of novelisations of movies. This is a very asymmetrical business, due to the fact that books are much cheaper and easier to make than movies. A movie adaption of a book is normally made years after and changed substantially to fit the medium, while novelisations of movies are churned out quickly and cheaply to be released simultaneously as tie-ins, so any changes are either scenes and lore that was developed but cut for time in the actual film, or the kind of weirdness you get when no-one really cares about the product they're creating and time is limited, so the writer just comes up with stuff that they know is crap and it gets past the filters because no-one higher up the chain is paying attention. The result is a lot of mediocre product, with a few entertainingly awful ones that just baffle as to how they were created. Yeah, this all seems pretty familiar 30+ years later. There may be more transmedia properties where movies, TV series, books and computer games are all tied together and producing co-ordinated complementary works rather than straight adaptions, but there's still plenty of cheap shovelware too. The internet has made it easier to do research, keep track of setting lore and co-ordinate writers, so certain kinds of basic mistakes get made less frequently, but people still have the same amount of creative energy overall, and capitalism still pushes the same perverse incentives. So this is a return to form for this column, educating as well as entertaining. Let's hope it does the same next issue. Ringshipper sets us up with a text heavy bit of everyday life before ending on a dramatic cliffhanger. Feedback: Having already cut out the most significant part of the feedback form last issue, they cut the number of questions in half again this issue, increasing the size of the font to compensate. Now the backlog is burnt through and the TSR staff are fully in the driving seat, it's obvious they don't really get why this was here in the first place, so they're not putting in the effort to keep it running and updated with the changes in surrounding products. Looking ahead, it's no great surprise that this is it's last appearance in the magazine. Another of those things that goes out as a damp squib, with most people at the time not realising the significance of what happened and it's long term implications. As I noted repeatedly in individual articles, this definitely feels like the issue in which TSR has used up all the old SPI material, and everything is now stuff they wrote or commissioned and edited themselves. I guess that shows how obvious the distinction between the two is in tone. Even when covering the same kinds of games, their approach is quite different, apart from the reviewers, who retain their strongly acerbic edge. I do have to say I find the TSR approach much more accessible, and I suspect that's not just because I've already ploughed through 30+ years of their writing style. They survived where SPI didn't because they were better at writing in a way that sparks the imagination, even if they don't have as much technical rigor. That's what gets people excited enough to buy, and I'm not immune to that either. So I guess I'd better enjoy the return to familiar ground after a surprisingly slow slog for such a short magazine run. What will they fill the next special edition with now it's all their own work? [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
[Let's Read] ARES Magazine
Top