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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8360374" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 64: October 1991part 4/5The Living Galaxy: Roger tackles another fairly general topic this month. How do you reduce the lethality in your game? Well, at least in this column you can actually suggest systems other than D&D, which is a good start. But his sci-fi knowledge definitely isn't at the bleeding edge, because he doesn't even suggest basic transhuman stuff like clones & memory backups or reloading your whole pattern from the transporter buffer. I guess it is 30 years ago, but these were still established concepts from sci-fi shows & literature of the time, even though they hadn't really tried to make that kind of hard sci-fi hypertech playable a la Eclipse Phase. However, he has heard of more meta ways of reducing lethality such as luck points, as well as plenty of in-setting ways  such as adventures in cyberspace or places where weapons are heavily legally restricted. You may still have to invent new rules or fudge the existing rules a little to cover these scenarios, but at least the players know going in that they're in a safer position, and can act accordingly. Decent, but not as ambitious or inventive as it could have been. Into The Dark: James covers more straightforward Sword & Sorcery films this month, with an eye on one particular thing. Do they throw their sword at any point during the movie? It's a completely impractical move, yet has somehow still become a cliche. Can't say I'd thought of it before, but now you've mentioned it I'll probably be seeing it all over the place, just like those damn berenstain/stein bears. Has he managed to find anything good amongst all the cheesiness this time?Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings definitely does not qualify as good by anything but the laxest standards. A rotoscoped mess where the budget declines visibly as it goes on before giving up 2/3rds of the way through the story, to get a pseudo-sequel with a different art style by a different company several years later, it focusses on all the wrong things and somehow manages to be both tedious and too short. Not really worth digging up when we have a better alternative now.Conan the Barbarian does considerably better, but still has pacing issues, being too slow through most of it then ending too abruptly as if they just ran out of plot. Casting and soundtrack are good though. Maybe a sequel where they're not bogged down with origin story would do better. Or maybe not, as history unfortunately shows. Deathstalker II is apparently better than the first one, but still not actually good, save maybe as a parody of the genre. The bloopers are funnier than the intentional jokes, so this is probably best served by getting very drunk and doing the MST3K thing with some friends while watching it. Ladyhawke does get a good review, being both well-done and not cliched with it's very distinctive cursed pair of lovers who never get to be human at the same time. The final fight scene attracts his ire for distinctly unimpressive choreography where the bad guys attack the hero one at a time, but otherwise the whole package is pretty solid. I should rewatch this, see how the effects and pacing hold up by modern standards. Hawk the Slayer, despite sharing part of the name, gets completely the opposite result, both boring and derivative. They can't even use the elements they blatantly stole from other, better films right. Another one to skip.</blockquote>

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