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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8459238" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 79: January 1993part 2/5Take a Byte: They've been promoting their novels in here for years. Now they decide to do something similar for TSR's licensed computer games, although since those are higher effort to produce than books, this column definitely won't be appearing every month. They start off with their upcoming trio of Dark Sun games, designed to take characters from 3rd to 20th level through multiple adventures using the same game engine. They spend a lot of time selling the improvements in size & visual quality over previous computer adaptions of D&D, which as usual look risible in hindsight. It fits on 6 floppy disks or one CD and requires 2 megabytes of RAM! Characters have 29 frames of animation! Another case where I'm quite happy to live in a future where the exponential expansion of computer technology has levelled off, and you can enjoy both hyperrealistic AAA games and 2d indies and the gameplay is the important thing, not how many polygons and ray tracing effects you can cram onscreen. Does the gameplay of these hold up in hindsight?The Everwinking Eye: After briefly noting the Melvauntian propensity for sado-masochism, Elminster decides that's enough dwelling on their personal habits for a family friendly publication, and heads off to Thentia instead. Initially things don't seem that different. Both are low tax places where there are few laws other than don't mess with the flow of trade, which is punished very harshly. Thentia does at least seem to be a little more straightforward, responding to external threats by purchasing large quantities of mercenaries rather than magical espionage & blackmail. Their favourite god is Selune rather than Loviatar, and there are a decent amount of nonevil characters in positions of power. It seems a somewhat more pleasant place for an adventurer to make their base of operations than the previous couple of cities they've covered, although once you're high enough level for teleportation and other fast travel, you'll still probably want to spend winter in warmer climates. Another fairly interesting entry that shows how the various moonseas cities can seem superficially similar to outsiders travelling through, but have all sorts of nuances if you spend more time there and get to know people. Another pretty decent instalment adding more of the depth the Realms is known for, and their other settings can't compete with.Evansburg: The adventure this issue is a Gamma World one, interestingly enough. Only the second one that's appeared in the newszine too. But while the first one was wacky to the point where it was near unusable in a regular campaign, this is basically just a D&D adventure converted to a different system. A whole load of kids have been disappearing in the poor part of town. The PC's are asked to deal with it. After a bit of investigation, they track things down to the sewers, where they find out it's giant mutant cockroaches. Fight them, destroy the nest of eggs before they hatch and go from a few adults to hundreds of hungry babies, and save the day. It's only 4 pages long, so it's one that will fit into their standardised 4 hour game slots with loads of room to spare. As usual for them, it's almost completely linear, although it's not actually that jokey, which is mildly surprising and shows how much they're trying to make 4e a more serious game. If it were a D&D one it would merely be underwhelming and formulaic. i'm inclined to be slightly more forgiving because at least they're trying to support other systems, but it's still on the mediocre end of ok. They could do so much better.</blockquote>

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