(un)reason
Legend
Dragon Magazine Issue 134: June 1988
part 5/5
Role-playing reviews decides that it's their turn to have an oriental special. Better late than never to jump on the bandwagon, as it's popularity shows no sign of abating around here. As usual, Jim talks about what should make playing in this milieu different from any other game, and the standards he is using to judge the products by. You have to balance the cool powers with the social ties and responsibilities, the realistic elements with the fantastic, and capture the strangeness of the cultures without making them inaccessable. Oh, and there's gotta be ninjas.
How will he judge the current options?
Bushido is one of the more Old Skool games out there. With dense, poorly organized rules, it'll take several full readings to figure out how everything fits together. If you can do this, it's a crunchy games that does capture the Oriental feel fairly well. And you don't have to worry about keeping up with tons of supplements, although he doesn't see that as a positive either. Could be better, could be worse.
Land of ninja is a supplement for 3rd ed Runequest. It integrates pretty well with the existing rules, introducing plenty of new skills and powers. It is however lacking in martial arts, and the maps referenced in the adventures seem to be missing. So while generally of decent quality, the whole thing feels a bit unfinished, and if you don't like how the Runequest system works in general, this won't change that.
Oriental adventures is of course AD&D's attempt at covering these topics. And a pretty successful one it is too, integrating all the basic themes into the game in a mechanically codified way, without altering AD&D so much that you can't use them alongside western characters and monsters. If you haven't got it already, do so. Jim also gives brief reviews of the first two OA modules, Swords of the Daimyo and Blood of the Yakuza. Each provides both adventures and setting detail, helping fill in the lands of Kara-Tur some more. Seems reasonable enough. My only real complaint with this review is that we see another instance of their creeping desire to downplay Gary's contributions. Zeb Cook gets all the credit, while Gary and the other people who contributed to the book, but are no longer with the company do not get mentioned. This is rather telling. There is corporate culture crap going on here that they would rather we not see.
Catching some rays: Gamma World's article this month is a little expansion on the effects of lower intensity long term radiation exposure. This is definitely on the more realistic end of things, with radiation primarily giving you health problems and detrimental mutations. One of those articles that definitely won't be good for many games, with it's greater lethality and playing up a problem you can't fight directly. Serviceable but dull.
The role of computers: Dream Zone is an adventure game where you go from reality to a dream world, and then have to escape the dream. It uses the same framing trick as the wizard of oz movie, making reality black and white, while the dream world is in colour. The puzzles are typically obtuse, with a strong sense of humour involved as you navigate your way through the corrupt and obtuse department of information. Definitely seems like an inventive little creation.
Strike-Fleet, The Naval Task Force Simulator is one of those big strategy games where you have to learn to control a whole bunch of things at once, and then play out various military scenarios. Ship and submarine scenarios are quite different experiences, and you have to learn to both wait patiently for the enemy to make a mistake, and react fast in response. This will take quite a few tries.
The Pawn, another adventure game, gets a rather short review. While positive, this is actually mostly concerned with the capabilities of IBM computers as compared to more common gaming platforms. The graphics card you have can make a quite substantial difference to your gaming experience. Another one of those bits of historical context that reminds us just how far computers have to develop.
Gary Gygax presents Fantasymaster! We will compete with our former creation and blow them away! Yeah, right. Any opinions on this one?
Warhammer 40,000 gives us a big statblock as an advert. Buh. Does that work? Have you ever been sold on a game by looking at it's statblocks?
The ultimate Addenda's addenda: Another bunch of extra powers is this month's Marvel contribution. As they often do with monsters and magical items, these are the result of lots of people's ideas being submitted over time and then compiled. So here's 8 new variant powers, demonstrating the ingenuity of various super-heroes, plus 8 new "meta-powers", which improve your capabilities that work by messing with the quirks of the game rules. Change the Karma criteria, pool and combine your stats and powers with those of others, and choose everyone's place in the initiative order, these can be pretty effective. Once again we see how adapting ideas from other games can have quite different looking results when applied to other systems, and this can be very interesting. A pretty nice bit of new toys for a game which gets less than it's fair share of them around here.
Dragonmirth leaves things half-done twice. Does that make a complete joke? Snarf makes new friends. Possibly. Things could easily go horribly wrong again.
Yamara! Looks like they've found a replacement for Wormy. Already there is PvP. I remember the later issues of this, and I eagerly look forward to seeing the whole arc in the proper order. Not that they'll get that much done, as they're only tiny monthly strips. Still, it's how funny the journey is, not the destination, that really counts. And they're already off to a decent start in that respect.
We get a map showing where all 10 of the gazetteers of the Known world are covering. 640 pages between them. That's a lot of setting detail. Better than Oerth ever got. Goes to show how much the supplement mill has accelerated in the past couple of years.
Time definitely marches on in this one, with an unusual number of references to both the past and the future in this issue. You can definitely tell we're in the middle of gearing up for an edition change. This time, it's the D&D stuff that works best, while the coverage of other games feels a bit sub-par. Still, they seem to be maintaining fairly consistent ratios in what they're tackling. What will happen next, when the edition change really goes into full effect? What format changes, what flame wars will next year bring? Certainly looks promising.
part 5/5
Role-playing reviews decides that it's their turn to have an oriental special. Better late than never to jump on the bandwagon, as it's popularity shows no sign of abating around here. As usual, Jim talks about what should make playing in this milieu different from any other game, and the standards he is using to judge the products by. You have to balance the cool powers with the social ties and responsibilities, the realistic elements with the fantastic, and capture the strangeness of the cultures without making them inaccessable. Oh, and there's gotta be ninjas.
How will he judge the current options? Bushido is one of the more Old Skool games out there. With dense, poorly organized rules, it'll take several full readings to figure out how everything fits together. If you can do this, it's a crunchy games that does capture the Oriental feel fairly well. And you don't have to worry about keeping up with tons of supplements, although he doesn't see that as a positive either. Could be better, could be worse.
Land of ninja is a supplement for 3rd ed Runequest. It integrates pretty well with the existing rules, introducing plenty of new skills and powers. It is however lacking in martial arts, and the maps referenced in the adventures seem to be missing. So while generally of decent quality, the whole thing feels a bit unfinished, and if you don't like how the Runequest system works in general, this won't change that.
Oriental adventures is of course AD&D's attempt at covering these topics. And a pretty successful one it is too, integrating all the basic themes into the game in a mechanically codified way, without altering AD&D so much that you can't use them alongside western characters and monsters. If you haven't got it already, do so. Jim also gives brief reviews of the first two OA modules, Swords of the Daimyo and Blood of the Yakuza. Each provides both adventures and setting detail, helping fill in the lands of Kara-Tur some more. Seems reasonable enough. My only real complaint with this review is that we see another instance of their creeping desire to downplay Gary's contributions. Zeb Cook gets all the credit, while Gary and the other people who contributed to the book, but are no longer with the company do not get mentioned. This is rather telling. There is corporate culture crap going on here that they would rather we not see.
Catching some rays: Gamma World's article this month is a little expansion on the effects of lower intensity long term radiation exposure. This is definitely on the more realistic end of things, with radiation primarily giving you health problems and detrimental mutations. One of those articles that definitely won't be good for many games, with it's greater lethality and playing up a problem you can't fight directly. Serviceable but dull.
The role of computers: Dream Zone is an adventure game where you go from reality to a dream world, and then have to escape the dream. It uses the same framing trick as the wizard of oz movie, making reality black and white, while the dream world is in colour. The puzzles are typically obtuse, with a strong sense of humour involved as you navigate your way through the corrupt and obtuse department of information. Definitely seems like an inventive little creation.
Strike-Fleet, The Naval Task Force Simulator is one of those big strategy games where you have to learn to control a whole bunch of things at once, and then play out various military scenarios. Ship and submarine scenarios are quite different experiences, and you have to learn to both wait patiently for the enemy to make a mistake, and react fast in response. This will take quite a few tries.
The Pawn, another adventure game, gets a rather short review. While positive, this is actually mostly concerned with the capabilities of IBM computers as compared to more common gaming platforms. The graphics card you have can make a quite substantial difference to your gaming experience. Another one of those bits of historical context that reminds us just how far computers have to develop.
Gary Gygax presents Fantasymaster! We will compete with our former creation and blow them away! Yeah, right. Any opinions on this one?
Warhammer 40,000 gives us a big statblock as an advert. Buh. Does that work? Have you ever been sold on a game by looking at it's statblocks?
The ultimate Addenda's addenda: Another bunch of extra powers is this month's Marvel contribution. As they often do with monsters and magical items, these are the result of lots of people's ideas being submitted over time and then compiled. So here's 8 new variant powers, demonstrating the ingenuity of various super-heroes, plus 8 new "meta-powers", which improve your capabilities that work by messing with the quirks of the game rules. Change the Karma criteria, pool and combine your stats and powers with those of others, and choose everyone's place in the initiative order, these can be pretty effective. Once again we see how adapting ideas from other games can have quite different looking results when applied to other systems, and this can be very interesting. A pretty nice bit of new toys for a game which gets less than it's fair share of them around here.
Dragonmirth leaves things half-done twice. Does that make a complete joke? Snarf makes new friends. Possibly. Things could easily go horribly wrong again.
Yamara! Looks like they've found a replacement for Wormy. Already there is PvP. I remember the later issues of this, and I eagerly look forward to seeing the whole arc in the proper order. Not that they'll get that much done, as they're only tiny monthly strips. Still, it's how funny the journey is, not the destination, that really counts. And they're already off to a decent start in that respect.
We get a map showing where all 10 of the gazetteers of the Known world are covering. 640 pages between them. That's a lot of setting detail. Better than Oerth ever got. Goes to show how much the supplement mill has accelerated in the past couple of years.
Time definitely marches on in this one, with an unusual number of references to both the past and the future in this issue. You can definitely tell we're in the middle of gearing up for an edition change. This time, it's the D&D stuff that works best, while the coverage of other games feels a bit sub-par. Still, they seem to be maintaining fairly consistent ratios in what they're tackling. What will happen next, when the edition change really goes into full effect? What format changes, what flame wars will next year bring? Certainly looks promising.
