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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9252062" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002part 7/10First Watch: Still plenty of gaming stuff to talk about to distract from all the chaos behind the curtain. The D20 Modern previews get around to covering Agents of Psi, probably the most interesting of the settings that made it into the book. It’s basically the X-Files, only the PC’s are on a somewhat more even footing with the paranormal weirdness that may or may not have an entirely scientific explanation. At least, until the Mind Flayers show up. It’s easy to see why this one was kept but Genetech was dropped, as it incorporates the secret government genetic experiments stuff from that easily and also gives the PC’s more kewl special powers to boot.Second is promotion for this year’s Gen Con. As usual, they’re planning on making it bigger and better than ever, with multiple improvements in format. (next year, they’ll be moving house, which hopefully will let them make it even bigger without overcrowding) A simpler scoring system where the judge does more of the work, the chance to win heraldic shields for your Living Greyhawk characters or replica blasters & lightsabers for your star wars ones. They’re trying out a new thing, rather than an ongoing Living campaign, a specific adventure series that’s meant to last a year and take the players from mid to high levels over the course of the story. Sounds like another precursor to when they’ll fully formalise the Adventure Path concept and make it a regular thing. There’s still all the familiar stuff though, the Living tournaments, the Classic ones, the benefit ones, the NASCRAG wackiness. I’m sure you can keep yourself occupied the whole weekend if you can afford to make it.The Release Roundup covers much the same collection of companies as last time. AEG continue to build on Spycraft, with the Soldier/Wheelman class guide and Threat book: The Hand of Glory. Another case where the d20 companies are beating WotC to the punch with similar modern day settings and probably doing it better as well. Avalanche take us to 13th century spain for some serious interracial war in Reconquista: The battle for Medieval Iberia. Hopefully none of your players are still holding any grudges from what happened to their ancestors in that. Bastion Press release the mammoth setting book Oathbound: Domains of the Forge. How will you deal with being summoned to a world that’s a prison for a forgotten god? Fantasy Flight Games release the Monsters Handbook, for those of you who love customising your beasties. Firey Dragon Productions give us an old school style 32 page adventure called Gates of Oblivion. Rescue the king’s son from a weird prison world. (not the same prison world as Oathbound, but then again there are lots of prison worlds out there.) Goodman Games release Broncosaurus Rex, mixing up cowboys & dinosaurs. The complete guide to T-Rex follows the month after, which seems like excellent marketing synergy. Green Ronin and Guardians of Order both release superheroic d20 variants. Will Mutants & Masterminds or Silver Age Sentinels be more to your tastes? Malhavoc experiments with pdf only products, starting with a series of pregen characters by Sean K. Reynolds. Mongoose are going so fast they’ve already burned through the core classes and are now doing a quintessential guide to psychic warriors, plus Judge Dredd & Slaine supplements. Necromancer games, release The Vault of Larin Karr, a big adventure designed to take you from 4th-9th level, which should at least give you a chance in Rappan Athuk afterwards. Paradigm Concept release a guide to giants, which will be extra useful if you also bought Green Ronin’s one on dwarves. No sizeism here.Necromancer Games get a profile this time. They’re doing very well out of their tagline of “third edition rules, first edition feel”, attracting both a solid fanbase and some of the biggest names from the old days like Gary Gygax & Rob Kuntz. In some ways, you get the feeling they’d rather be playing 1e entirely, but of course that’s not OGL so you can’t publish stuff for it. What they can do is publish adventures that specifically avoid the concept of 13.33 recurring fair fights per level, going both directions in terms of difficulty to keep you on your toes and do encounters where even though the crunch is the same, the cosmetic details may differ. They accept that this may not appeal to everyone, but they wouldn’t want to game with people who don’t like that anyway, so forewarned is forearmed, or possibly sixarmed if marilths get involved.Finally, they have a particularly silly little follow-up for Thunderball Rally. Stats for PC orangutans? What inspired that? Google’s best guess is Every Which Way But Loose, but I guess there were plenty of silly animal sidekicks on the cartoon end of the 70’s as well. Since they start off as 4HD monsters mixing one with 1st level PC’s would probably have balance issues, but as long as you take a fighty class you can probably keep up after that. I can definitely see the value in this if you want a bit of comic relief in your game.</blockquote>

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