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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4678158" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 96: April 1985part 2/3Coming attractions: A bit small this month, but with a nice scroll backdrop. Our main feature is Castle Arcania, a one-on-one adventure gamebook. Sounds interesting. Anyone remember these things? Indiana Jones gets the Judges survival pack, and module IJ4, The Golden Goddess. Rules expansions, and an adventure directly tied into the first movie. Lets get our payback. Marvel Superheroes gets MH6: Thunder over Jotenheim. A solo adventure for the mighty Thor. Who dares! Endless Quest gets it's 27th book, Lair of the Lich. Recover your father's secret spells from the dread liches catacomb before they're used to cause devastation. D&D gets X9: The savage coast. What lies to the west of the Known World? One of the most fun bits of world you'll ever explore, and one we'll revisit quite a few times in greater depth. If you finish that, you can go straight into module CM4: The earthshaker. The Known World is at threat as a great danger awakes. Head back from your domains in Norwald to defeat it. We also get Dragons of Winter Night, part two of the Dragonlance Chronicles. The heroes split up. Well, since Tolkien did it, it's virtually obligatory to have the forking subplot. Otherwise it's not properly epic. Off the shelf gets its title back: The bishop's Heir by Katharine Kurtz gets a rather mixed review. While for any normal author this would be great, for her it's slightly subpar, with the antagonists never really developed enough. Wait for the paperback if you like her stuff. Moonheart by Charles De Lint on the other hand, gets a truly fanboyish response. Originality, characterisation, worldbuilding, style, all get top marks from this reviewer. It spans multiple genres and is pretty cool. Brisingamen by Diana L Paxton takes an ancient norse macguffin and places it in the hands of a student in san francisco. Can you guess what happens next? Plot! Thankfully it's an interesting and well researched plot, which manages to feel real despite the supernatural elements. The fire sword by Adrienne Martine-Barnes causes the reviewer much frustration. Something's not quite right with it, but he can't quite pinpoint it, and so kept reading and feeling unsatisfied, like scratching at an itch making it worse. He encourages you not to start. An interesting way to condemn a novel, and not one I remember seeing before. The vulcan academy murders by Jean Lorrah is, as should be obvious, a star trek novel. While not that great as a murder mystery, with a bit of idiot balling taking place, it's a good source of more setting details for your own star trek games, with lots of stuff on Vulcan culture. And for all the reviewers distaste for Star Trek Fiction, is what D&D is doing with it's dragonlance novels any better? The handy art of forgery: A new special skill for assassins? Cool, I guess. It seems like a reasonable ability for them to have, so why not. As is common in 1st edition, it's odds of success are determined by a fixed % roll with a few basic modifiers. And you don't really give anything up to gain this new power, which is still a definite issue. A good idea that is flawed by the overall level of game design technology at this point. What are you gonna do. Books to games? Perhaps!: Yeah, stealing settings seems like a good way to save time and get lots of cool stuff. However, it has definite problems. Gary is already aware of this, and has made his feelings on doing so very clear. But it's certainly not a terrible idea. You just have to pick your setting carefully, and make sure it has enough room for stories beyond the original one. Changing things to deal with spoileriffic players, setting it far in the past or future, hybridizing the settings and themes of several different books, all help. We get conversion and plot examples for Gor (!) Barsoom, and Middle earth settings. A pretty solid article that should help you if you're considering this course of action.  PBM update - news and views: Mike Gray is back, following up on his previous examination of the play by mail scene. Rick Loomis' attempts to regulate the hobby seem to be working, and the hobby as a whole is chugging along nicely. So he gives us reviews of 5 new games. Battle of the gods, World of velgor, Illuminati, Capitol, and Quest for the great jewels. All get crisp and fairly positive reviews that go into a decent amount of detail on their workings. Another good example of the diversity of stuff they're covering in this period, and it's interesting to see how this related field fares compared to RPG's. See you again next year, I hope. Nogard: The ultimate high level Adventure to end all adventures! The most epic, exciting adventure ever. You will not believe how awesome this one is. April Fool. The what's new dragon. Aww, isn't it cute. We get D&D stats for this little terror. Growf growf. We also get stats for the quazar dragon, a planet eating monstrosity for when your players have got too big for their boots. Neither are really legal, so don't worry too much. If they show up, you're screwed whatever you do. Your best hope is to amuse the DM enough that they don't utterly humiliate you with them. The meanest of monsters: Two more spoof monsters, the Killer DM, and the sleep inducing DM. Once again, be very afraid, because there's no way you can win a fight with these guys. Soft Barbara Streissand music, booga booga booga. What worse fate could you face. There's no Robert Smith to save you this time. Also notable for introducing the scariest critical damage system evar. April fool. It takes all kinds: Enraged Glaciers and Ghouls finally gets round to publishing race descriptions. Humans, Kobolds, Fairies, Goblins, Biters and Bogies. None are exactly what you would expect, as they put a unique spin on each race. An extensive matrix describes their relationships with one-another, but they have no actual stats. Maybe next year. April fool. Rules to lose by: Ever wondered what the most underpowered class ever was. Look no further. Welcome to the hopeless character class. Even regular commoners could kick this guys ass, if he didn't kick it for them by accident first. Technically legal, but you'd have to be mad to play one. A hundred, of them, naruto style, on the other hand, could be fun. April Fool. As with everything else, you'll have to make of it what you will.</blockquote>

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