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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8911255" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron UK Issue 1: July 1998part 5/5MEGAbyte: The reviews continue with a particularly quirky choice of product, the Babylon 5 interactive digital guide. Two CD's full of of music and point & click menus that let you find out more about the show and the people behind it in a visually appealing interactive way. The kind of thing that would become more common as special features on DVD boxed sets where all the bonus material was a big a selling point as the main feature, or fansites devoted to a specific series. (although some bonus bits could be buried pretty far down a menu tree. ) Another of those things that  was big for a while, but has gone into a decline in the age of streaming and a few big social media sites dominating the internet, which is a shame. It shows how changes in technology also affect the format of what's being produced, changing what's easy to do and how much money you can make out of it. Quite a thought-provoking little article really.Should there be an AD&D 3?: There've already been a few articles in Dragon & Polyhedron that floated ideas which would become core next edition. Here's where they get systematic about it, with a full 64 questions about which way they should take things, mostly rating an idea from 1 to 5, but some that are binary or require more open-ended answers. Do you want AC to go up or down? Do you want a universal resolution mechanic or lots of different tables? Quick & simple character generation or lots of customisable options? The kind of thing TSR didn't really get into, preferring to go with the gut feelings of their writers, and look where that got them. So this is a reminder that the creation of D&D 3e (which wasn't really the 3rd edition of D&D, because they released way more editions than that, but more a continuation of the AD&D line than the basic D&D one) was a protracted process involving a lot more careful math work, audience feedback and playtesting than previous editions. (which still wound up breakable in all sorts of ways once released into the wild, but oh well, can't predict all the ways the parts of your system can be combined, particularly once you open things up to 3rd party publishers) There are some leading questions here, but just as many where they then ask the precise opposite thing to balance the information they get out. All in all, a pretty decent quality of survey.While there were some basic repetitive bits in here, there was more than enough fresh perspective and ideas in here to make this a pleasant change of pace from the regular magazines, making it much quicker and easier to get through than I would expect for it's size. This era is proving to be much more varied and experimental from this perspective than the Dragon one, where they really played it safe and grew quite boring as a result. Now to get through several more of each of the other things I'm covering and hope that it continues to be a breath of fresh air next time around as well.</blockquote>

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