Dragon Magazine Issue 131: March 1988
part 4/5
Sage advice: Will a monster join a party if asked (We had this one last time. As ever, proper application of common sense based on the monster's intelligence, personality, and situation will determine under what conditions it will do so, and if they will stick to any bargains they make. Smart adventurers should always be ready for treachery.)
Can you change a captured monsters alignment. (Possible, but not easy. Remember, you catch more flies with a little sugar than with a whole vatfull of vinegar. )
How do you determine effective HD of monsters with only hp listed (divide by 4.5, unless stated otherwise)
Where are psionics explained (In AD&D, not D&D. )
What weapons work on ochre jellies (none. You'll have to blast them. If you don't have a wizard, torches and flaming oil'll do the job as well. )
How do you determine if a gray ooze destroys your weapon (Roll to save vs acid )
What is a magical creature ( Complicated business. It's just an excuse so really powerfull creatures can't be beaten by some weak thing that's immune to nonmagical attacks. )
How do you fight a phase spider without magical aid (Win initiative, then hold your action. Smack it when it appears. Zelda is as ever, a good source of visual demonstration )
Do giants get strength bonuses. (Not normally. PC's are special, everyone else is just abstracted)
What missiles can giants catch (anything big and non pointy. )
Can monsters use magic items (That is so broad a question as to be meaningless. Some can, some can't)
Can monsters get weapon specialization (not unless they have class levels)
Can a spellcaster exceed their normal spell limit by eating obliviax. (Yes, if they make the save. There's a potentialy lucrative cultivation industry in there for enterprising adventurers. )
Do draconians count as persons, or giant class monsters (yes and no)
How many eggs do dragons lay at once (take the max number appearing, and subtract 2. Easy enough. )
What is the mind flayers mind blast (same as the psionic power)
Where is the info on 0 level demihumans (There are none. They might not have the same limits of advancement as humans, but their baseline of badass is considerably higher. )
Gold dragons can polymorph themselves without harm? (Oh yes. They are rather badass)
What does molecular attraction do (Oops. Our bad. That should be molecular agitation. Duergar are pyromaniacs, not cave climbing geckos. )
Mutations Unlimited: Gamma world actually gets 3rd ed specific material this time around, with (no
sherlock) 16 new mutations for your PC's and NPC's to enjoy or suffer from. Would you like to pull a Jesus, with energy healing, light creation and water walking? Would you like to be a genius at figuring out social situations, with a perfect memory. A perfect assassin, with silence and darkness generation, 360 vision, disruption of electronic devices, and the ability to leave invisible plasma bombs lying around as traps. All these are options, purely using the powers here. Plenty of handy bits and pieces, in other words. Now, what are the odds of you getting nicely synergising suites like those with random rolls? Not likely. Still, that's the fault (or good point) of the system, not the article. In any case, the powers are useful, and the whole package is nicely presented and likably written. So it's another positive result overall here.
The game wizards: Doug Niles returns to give us some feedback on the reception of Top Secret/S.I . Choosing to make a redesign that big was a stressful decision, with a lot to lose. Thankfully for him, the number of people who've written in are 5 to 1 in favour of the changes, so it's sigh of relief time. This pretty good showing also means that they get to go ahead with a whole bunch of supplements, adding on lots more crunchy stuff, as is their wont. Guess we'll also be seeing articles around for another few years then. Another chirpily optimistic little article in this series then. Just how much of that optimism is real, and how much of it is a show to boost sales, on the other hand, is less certain. Should I be a little less suspicious? Better safe than sorry.
Role-playing reviews goes sci-fi. There's certainly been no shortage of sci-fi games, although they've never been a serious competitor for fantasy's supremacy. You have plenty of choice between hard sci-fi universes, and ones that are basically just fantasy with rayguns and spaceships instead of wands and dragons. It would make sense to review a wide spectrum of games, so people can make an informed choice as to what they want to buy. So that's exactly what they're going to do.
The star wars RPG by West End Games, as you would expect, falls firmly on the side of fast paced action. With a simple multiple action mechanic that allows high power heroes to do quite a few cool things in a single round, character templates that allow you to get through character generation and into the action quickly, and force points giving everyone the chance to push themselves for that extra edge in a pinch, it certainly seems to be aiming for fast paced cinematics like the movies, which is definitely a good thing. The work of familiar names Greg Costikyan and Bill Slavicsek, this is one that may be defunct, but still gets plenty of positive mentions on forums, which is definitely a good indicator of it's quality. Let's hear your tales of playing with this.
Traveller 2300, on the other hand, takes the opposite tack. It retains the same gritty atmosphere, with a well developed lengthy character generation process that really defines your past, but has no system for advancement beyond that; but puts it in a setting that's rather closer to home than the previous edition. Earth is just recovering from WWIII, and we're starting to extend out into space. The reviewer doesn't hesitate to point out the flaws in the system and presentation. The adventure guidelines are rather sketchy, not much help to novice GM's. Ship combat is exceedingly brutal, with one mistake spelling a TPK for the whole party. And of course, still no advancement system. No getting away from it. It may have been innovative a decade ago, but it's all starting to seem a bit dated now. You can see why they slid into obsolescence and went out of print for years.
Battletech is an interesting fish. It's basically a mech fighting boardgame, with the rules for roleplaying the pilots and doing human level stuff tacked on afterwards in a supplement. Unsurprisingly, it's very combat focussed, and also has plenty of focus on the stats needed to design, build and repair your mech, making support characters invaluable. Certainly seems distinctive, even if the ground level stuff doesn't quite hold up as a game in it's own right. Guess it depends if you like that kind of stuff.
As in many of these games, frequent saving is essential, and exploring everywhere and not taking the most obvious route to immediate benefit will result in greater long term profit. Learn new spells, find new weapons, and go delve those dungeons. 
) in his equally dread abode. Now that's a nice way to kick off the new, more story focussed edition. Have fun. Hang on, wait a minute, 2nd edition isn't out yet. And this doesn't come out until 1994. Tch. Looks like the person assembling the archive messed up. Well, 250 issues, you can't get it all perfect. Mutter mutter mutter grumble. 
