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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4596750" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 70: February 1983part 2/2A second Volley: Ed Greenwood returns to the idea of putting firearms in D&D. Having done cannons and muskets last time, this time it's handgun's turn. Remember, old guns sucked. It took several minutes to reload, and there was a substantial risk of hurting yourself if you loaded it wrong. Still, at this point wizards took 10 minutes per level of the spell to memorize each one. (yeah, like any of you really enforced that one) A fireball represents 30 minutes work in the morning. Comparing damage outputs by that metric, they don't seem that unbalanced. As ever, Ed does a sterling job of both research and writing the piece. Mehica: Another module that takes AD&D to new places, this time mesoamerican jungle. Which means step pyramids, human sacrifice, werejaguars, and lots of stuff to loot. Sound like fun to you? A 12 pager, this still finds the space to introduce a variant character class ( a neutral ranger type) and plenty of twisted setting detail. As is often the case in this era, there are several challenges that are way out of the league of the stated party level, that the group is expected to avoid rather than fight. (what 7th level group would have a chance against a 26th level cleric?) A pretty solid module that shows once again, dungeoncrawling does not have to involve literal dungeons, and humans can be just as monstrous as any actual monster. How to make the most out of FRP tournaments: Hmm. Seems like we have a returning article theme. How do you do well in tournament games? Since it's been a few years, this has evolved a bit. A very long article (11 pages, although after removing ads, probably only 8 pages of writing.) this goes into quite a lot of detail on the process of preparation for a game and advantageous ways to behave during play. Learn the rules, figure out what kind of GM and module you're up against and adapt your play accordingly. Sort out who's boss in the team and work together efficiently. Keep things moving because you only have a limited amount of time. Don't walk into obvious traps. And try to have fun through all this. Not an easy task, by any metric. Seems like playing to win that hard would suck the fun out of gaming. You certainly won't get the chance to do much roleplaying in any case. The game within a game: Ahh, another perennial question. How do you represent skill in something in game without bringing player skill into the equasion but also allow for some measure of personal choice. Skill rolls modified with rock/paper/scissors general strategy list selections isn't a bad way to go about it. Now, if only AD&D had a proper skill system. But that's not the fault of this article is it? They're doing the best with what they have. Off the shelf: The book of the dun cow by Walter Wangerin Jr is a story involving speaking animals. Thankfully, they aren't disneyfied talking animals, as that would be a bit crap. Special Deliverance by Cliford D Simak is a supernatural mystery story. Can the protagonists survive and solve it? Read it and see. The man who had no idea by Thomas M Disch is a collection of his short stories. Both comedy and horror are well catered for, and none of them outstay their welcome. Magician by Raymond Feist is a novel by a gamer. But that does not make it bad by any means. Quite the opposite. The reviewer hails it as a classic, putting together an intricate and epic plot and resolving it nicely, but still leaving the world open for further books. The odds are murder by Mike McQuay is another featuring his future-noir detective, Matthew Swain. Having hit rock bottom, and lost his license, he's got to claw his way back up again, and take out the people who put him down there. The author convincingly captures the emotional journey he goes through using real life study.The secret, (by an entire writing team) is both a book about fae stuff and a competition. Hidden in the book are clues to 12 treasures, buried somewhere in America. Can you figure out where the hell they are before anyone else does. No chance by now, given how long it's been. There've been several books like this since then, because I remember seeing this gimmick used a few times. Anyone remember how this turned out? The venetian court by Charles L Harness is rather simplistic, with 2 dimensional characters, and fails to please the reviewer. Manshape by John Brunner is another tale of sci-fi drama and confusion, with a well developed setting and characters. Reviews: Citybook I is a generic RPG supplement to help you build your own urban areas. Obviously you'll have to do quite a bit of adapting to the quirks of your own campaign, but it'd probably still be quicker than creating everything wholecloth. The reviewer is as usual, pretty positive about this. Civilization is a boardgame that does pretty much what the computer game would later do. Develop your technology, grow your population, and beat all the other players to become the ultimate empire in the world. It goes surprisingly quickly given its scope, and would make a good way to spend an evening for the whole family. Daredevils is of course a 30's pulp adventure game. This of course means it's in direct competition with TSR's Gangbusters. The reviewer finds the level of crunch in it rather impenetrable, and therefore it's only recommended to hardcore gamers. Reservations aside, it is one of the most comprehensive modern games out there, with interesting mechanics for things beyond just combat. If you want to run an investigation centered game, this could be one for you. What's new posits the future when gamers are grown up. Reality is less impressive. Wormy uses up his breath weapon. Another issue that starts off annoyingly and then improves as it goes along. Still, at least they can justify the changes they're making at the moment, even if I might not agree with them. You do have to do a certain amount of dumbing down to maximize popular appeal. But not too much, otherwise people feel patronized, and it doesn't work. Come on, we need a new editorial policy. I'm getting tired of this one.</blockquote>

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