Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4635416" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 85: May 1984part 2/3The ecology of the ixitachitl (I hope I spelled that right): Ed gives us another ecology, tackling the demogorgon worshipping manta rays. While intelligent, they do not think remotely like humanoids, given their drastically different environment, lifestyle, and physiology. And despite not having hands, their magical abilities and vampiric rulers make them quite capable of being allmighty pains in the ass to other undersea creatures. For a second time, the amount of footnotes exceeds the amount of actual description, and contains extensive rules clarifications and suggestions. And of course, a guide on how to pronounce their dreadfully annoying name. While the game information is exemplary, the fiction on this one is a bit dull, as if Ed was on cruise control when he wrote it. Still, even an average Ed article is well above the general average in terms of overall quality. Fiction: Valkyrie settlement by Susan Shwartz. Honor and valor come in many forms. And as important as knowing when and how to fight is knowing when not to fight. Sometimes oaths have to be broken. Sometimes losing with style can be better for you in the long run than winning at any cost. In short, things aren't always black and white, even in a proud warrior culture. This is a pretty cool bit of fiction, that manages to incorporate historical and supernatural stuff, cool fight scenes, and gender politics. Amazing how much depth some people can fit into these little stories. Three cheers for beowulf: Like they did for bounty hunters, they make another attempt at reminding us the D&D isn't all one true way by presenting us with three different versions of his stats. While always a fighter with ridiculously high strength, his level and other stats vary in their twinkedness between incarnations. As ever, he has powers PC's can't match, and may overshadow them if included in a game. As a thought exercise, and a demonstration of how different writers can interpret the same material, this is quite interesting. As something that's useful for an actual game, not so much. Like so much of the GitE material, this winds up leaving a bad taste in my mouth. The twofold talisman part two: Another 10 pages finish off this module. The dreadful humour becomes even broader and more irritating in this installment. The screwage also continues, with quite a few annoying tricks that automatically work with no chance to resist. And a poorly done wizard of oz ending. Ugh. Once again, I reiterate, do not put this into a regular campaign. Most players will hate you for it. Definitely not one of the magazines high points. Ooh. New module submission guidelines. As with their general guidelines, these are a combination of the obvious, such as type it up properly, keep a copy for yourself, Spelling, punctuation, grammar are critical, stay in theme, don't rip off currently existing modules wholesale, and the specific, like don't send a module in to multiple companies at once, avoid railroading and deus ex machina (A rule you guys really ought to remember to stick to yourselves), keep the size between 8 and 16 pages, and stay out of Greyhawk. As ever, the details change, but the basic principles remain the same. Interesting that they are currently trying to avoid "unrealistic" and nonsensical dungeons. Also interesting is the avoidance of "family unfriendly" topics. They don't want to engage in any social commentary at all. Honestly, being controversial got you one of the biggest publicity boosts in your existence. Why would you want to avoid that? Still, I guess it leaves a big hole in the market open for White Wolf to exploit. And listening to media misrepresentation does get deeply tiresome. Fiction: A stone's throw away by Roger Moore. Part two of our dragonlance teasers. Say hello to Tasslehoff Burrfoot. Bloody kender. If anything causes more irritation to both their friends and their enemies, I don't want to know about it. Especially when they have narrative protection as well as plenty of skill, so things always turn out all right for them. I mean, Demogorgon likes him. Admiral Crankypants himself. What chance do we have? As ever, Roger's writing is pretty good, even when it's subject matter and the implications it has for the game might not be. For now, they can keep their optimism. Reviews: Warhammer FRP gets a fairly positive review from Ken. It is quite a bit better at presenting large scale fights than most RPG's on the market, and while the human scale stuff is rather simplistic, at least it's fast and easy to make new characters. They already have a supplement mill up and ready. It provides a nice middle ground between wargaming and full RPG's. Reaper is the warhammer system's predecessor. Like OD&D, it requires substantial GM extrapolation and houseruling to make work. While it still has plenty of interesting elements, these days, it would probably be preferable to salvage the ideas and transplant them into a more robust system. Lost worlds is a cleverly detailed combat system based around selecting maneuvers and going to the appropriate page on a little booklet. This does rather limit the range of character and creature types you can play within the system, and buying a booklet for each type will get expensive. This is the problem with that level of tactical detail. Every addition multiplies out the overall permutations and resulting complexity. But it does allow for an exceptional amount of transparency, ease of use and realism for the amount of detail covered. Cry havoc is a fantasy wargame. Well presented, easy to learn, with plenty of interesting scenarios, it gets easily the most unreserved praise of the reviews here. Another of those cases where what gets good reviews at the time, and what survives longest bear little relation. WHFRP also gets a second review by Katharine Kerr. This is rather less enthusiastic than the first one, calling out the absolutely terrible typing and editing. While the mass combat stuff may be a good game under the poor presentation, the human level stuff is lacking in basic abilities, and the random generation produces ridiculous results. In short, in her opinion it needs to seriously clean up it's act next edition if it wants to be a usable game on the individual scale. Like the fiend folio and call of cthulhu reviews, these varying perspectives are very interesting in hindsight. The different reviewers place different amounts of weight on the flaws of the product, and have different priorities in their gaming. Who's side are you on? Are's section:The federation guide to luna: Part two of our lunar series, and they turn their eye on the star trek universe. As this is pre TNG, (another instance where things seem very dated) this may not be compatible with future canon. As it's now pretty easy to get too and from (the waiting time at either end is way longer than the traveling time. ) and well settled, this is definitely not a place you boldly go where no man has gone before. More a place where you can engage in research and politicking without feeling in too much danger (at least, until someone accidentally destroys the universe again. ) Better than last issue's attempt (we already know the federation is a happy utopian culture, so there's no need to make a point of rubbing it in) this is still more than a little dull.  Could you try and put some more adventure hooks in next time please.</blockquote>

Verification