NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4642692" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 87: July 1984part 3/3Luna, a travellers guide: As the pun name suggests, welcome to the moon in the Traveller system. As Traveller is set waaaaaaay in the future, the moon has a history of habitation stretching back thousands of years, and a population of 8 million. It's a fairly decent place to live, but there is a substantial minority of Solomani extremists, and plenty of other things going on to keep it interesting for PC's. Marc Miller personally oversees this, turning in a well integrated and thought out piece that makes it feel like a real place with plenty of built up cultural quirkiness of it's own. Seems like the entries in this series are continuing to improve as they go along, which is definitely promising. If they can keep this going for a year or so, we should get some pretty cool variations by the end of it. A field guide to lunar mutants: Jim follows up on last month's lunar article, as he promised. We get three examples of each of the two big competing genera, macrobes and plants. That should get your evil imaginations started.Sword macrobes are giant amoeba with a vibrablade tentacle. Now you can have lightsaber battles with amorphous monsters on the moon. That's a pretty cool image. What more could a cinematic adventurer want. Ball Macrobes look like a certain brightly coloured kids toy, and throw exploding stink balls at you. Such a humiliating way to go. Eye Macrobes look like giant disembodied eyes sitting on a wall, duh. They're the brains of the single celled organisms, using their psychic powers to organize and direct all the bacteria in the area. If you spot one, expect trouble to follow soon after. On the plus side, if they're intelligent, you have a shot of negotiating. Hmm. What does a giant psychic eye want? Coners are mutant pine trees. Not only do they shoot their cones, but they can plug themselves into a socket and use that power as a weapon. Rosoid are ambulatory roses. Yeah, it's as silly as it sounds, but remember, roses have sharp thorns. And when they're 3 meters tall, you don't laugh at them for being froofy unless you want a fistful of thorns in the face. Shooters are mutant dandelions that shoot their flowerheads like giant shuriken. Ouch. And if you don't dig them out fast, they'll start to grow a new flower inside your body. The old tricks are the best, eh. As ever, the gamma world contributions are often rather gonzo and silly. That certainly hasn't changed. In a way, the game is already starting to seem outdated compared to the new more sophisticated settings. Still, it is funny and inventive. And it's certainly not generic in any way, despite allowing a pretty kitchen sink selection of add-ons. Jim really knows how to switch things up, and would probably be great fun as a GM. I'm sure these guys would make for a fascinating game in actual play.Star questions is headed by Roger Moore this month, and is tackling the Universe game, one of the properties TSR snaffled up when they bought SPI. So while they may not have designed it, anything he says is Official Material now. What new stuff are you making for the game. (lotsa new articles in various magazines. We shall remain curiously silent about any bigger stuff. ) What unpublished stuff do you have for the games. (lots more articles, some quite big. Write lotsa letters and we'll consider putting them in the magazine. )What do the interiors of starships look like. (You tell us. We're all agog and fascinated to find out as well.)I want more info on star systems. (You can get more info on stars in any good astronomy books. Star systems in the game, on the other hand, are all made up, because our telescopes just aren't good enough.) Why do many stars have such silly names (Because there's a lot of stars, and a lot of bored astronomers trying to name them. Strings of numbers are hard to remember, and they ran out of sensible god names ages ago.) Hw do you get a meteor storm in outer space. (When a comet falls apart, it can make space hazardous over quite an area. especially when you're traveling through at high speeds. Pinprick punctures are a pain in the ass. ) Wormy is still on a fishing trip. Talanalan gets metagame. Snarfquest is off on another mission. Apart from the saggy bit in the middle, this has been a pretty impressive issue. The Ares section continues to gather steam, and the forum is finally starting to have recurring writers. We're seeing an interesting mix of new and old style articles, as they might be moving away from the game's roots, but there are still quite a few people writing and playing games like that. Still, as that results in an interesting variety of articles, it keeps things interesting for me. I can definitely see why this can be considered a classic era for the magazine.</blockquote>

Verification