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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4642255" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 87: July 1984part 2/3The ecology of the dryad: Ahh, another of the popular sylvan creatures. How many people have fantasized about being charmed by one and lured off to be their love slaves for a few years. And how many adventurers have found them an almighty pain in the ass. All we wanted to do was cut down a few trees to make a fire with, and cook the animals we just killed for our dinner. Plenty of detail is gone into on their lifecycle, and a few new words are invented as well. They finally manage to strike a decent balance between fiction and footnotes in this one as well. If they'd included a little more action, rather than the fiction just being a load of sagely pontification, it would have been perfect. There's always some little nitpick, isn't there. Keep trying guys. Gods of the suel pantheon: Len continues his elaboration on greyhawk gods, with Kord the brawler (now there's a familiar name) and his son Phaulkon, god of the open air. Seems like he's quite the Zeus figure, with tons of kids all over the place, more than a few of which become demigods. Your PC can become one too if they can roll 2 18's for their stats. Shades of Synnibarr here, as they reward arbitrary luck with even greater fortune. Once again a whole page is used up recycling the generic god abilities as well. In short, this is a rather poorly thought out piece, that I would recommend you keep in the Lendore isles where it belongs. There is an excellent reason why this style of game design has been largely abandoned. If you try it, you'll find out why pretty soon, when all the other players start complaining. The legacy of hortus: A load of botanical fluff about a wizard who transferred his lifeforce into the plants he created. Lots of very very bad pun names are used as the basis for animal/plant hybrids of various kinds. It all gets rather silly. And they don't even make stats for them either. I strongly disapprove. At least when Jim gets silly with his mutants he does so inventively, and with decent crunch. I'm sorry, but dedicating the article to a dead person doesn't get you a pass on quality judgements, and I pronounce this article very much wanting. Reviews: Stalking the night fantastic combines modern day occult, and the spy genre, like an early X-files. Unfortunately, the cool premise and setting is ruined by seriously clunky, poorly organized and overcomplicated rules. Steal from it and convert to conspiracy X or something. The forever war (another product they've been advertising in here for a while.) is a wargame loosely based off one of the scenarios in the book. Again, the potential offered by the book is left unfulfilled, with big chunks missing or not very well modeled. While not a terrible game in it's own right, it does seem like rather a waste of a license. The review is notewothy for being the first mention of "beer and pretzels" gaming in the magazine though. Guess I get to pinpoint the popularization of another catchphrase, which pleases me. Whiteout: A 16 page top secret adventure. Head to the antarctic to figure out what the hell the Children Of Neptune (not literally, we aren't straying into crossover land here.) are up to. The previous adventures that appeared in the magazine were all part of a larger plot by a villainous mastermind! Can you foil their plan? The fate of the world rests in the balance. Looks like an open ended and rather tricky mission designed to be a climactic part of an extended campaign. The PC's have chance to make a real difference in the world with this one. That certainly makes a change from all the completely disconnected D&D modules. (particularly the railroaded metaplot ones where the difference you're gonna make is predetermined, no matter what the players do.) I very much approve, apart from the continued tendency towards silly names. Top secret has definitely come quite a way in the last few years from pseudo dungeon crawls in Sprechenhaltestelle. Fiction: Simon Sidekick by John E Stith. Sci-fi manages to stray out of the Ares section in this fairly long piece about, oohh, yet another little boy learning how to come of age, and the people and things that help him through the experience. Angst is felt, the plot is nicely telegraphed and twists where it ought to, and the end is bittersweet. No great surprises here. File under solid but unexceptional. Dragonriders of pern game and calendar available now! Buy it! Hee. Freeze! Star law!: It's not easy enforcing the law properly out in Star Frontiers land. With such a huge area to cover, and much of the power in the hands of huge corporations who essentially are the government on many planets, a star law ranger's gotta be a pretty badass character, who can track a fugitive down over the light years, and get the job done by underhanded means and compromises if neccecary. Now that's a job custom suited for adventurer types, who even if they claim noble ends, often wind up using the most sociopathic of means to achieve them, and care nothing for collateral damage. You can even have a whole team of PC's working as a posse, and they actively encourage that, as well as drawing fun old west parallels in other ways. This is almost a textbook example of how to open up a new mileu of play and make it seem fun and inviting. (unless you don't like space exploration and cowboys, in which case you are dead to me <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> ) The bureaucratic rules are handled with a light touch, and you have plenty of leeway to be a maverick and push their limits without being kicked out. I love this idea, and would very much like to play something in this style at some point.</blockquote>

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