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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4706947" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 102: October 1985part 2/3Elvira officialy endorses the Chill game with a set of adventures, Evenings of Terror. Are we seeing the start of the goth and roleplaying scenes intermingling that would reach its zenith with the world of darkness? That's certainly a pleasing sign from my point of view. Nine wands of wonder: And here comes the most regular of all our regulars with another Forgotten Realms piece. Elminster starts using magic casually as part of his conversations. I'm guessing it's not long now until he's revealed in all his, er, glory. Anyway, this month's topic is magical wands. So we get nine of them. The Wands of Magical mirrors, of Hammerblows, of Banishment, of Armory, of Darkness, of Displacement, of Obliteration, of Teeth, and of Whips. While many of them are quirky, there's none of the cursed, or partly cool, partly damn inconvenient powers that many of his previous items have possessed. Guess even he falls victim to the desire for mechanical superiority and making things more convenient in actual play. Or maybe it's that FR wizards are quite happy to put conditional drawbacks on their companions equipment like swords and shields, due to their evil sense of humour, but want the stuff they actually keep for themselves to work smoothly. In any case, it's another well written piece, full of stuff you can put in your game easily enough, while still developing the Realms as a setting. I continue to approve of this. Villains and vigilantes: Another superhero game now out. They do seem to be rather common back then. Trouble is, how can you compete with the two big official licenses? Coming attractions: Oriental adventures is occupying pole position in the promotions field this month. We went years without seeing the basics of AD&D changed, and now we get two big hardbacks within a few months of each other, introducing huge amounts of new classes, items and stuff. This is a quite substantial change in developmental policy. AD&D is also getting DL10: Dragons of dreams. The epic adventure continues as they free the elven kingdom of the silvanesti from the literal nightmares that have engulfed it. D&D also gets a pair of adventures. M1: Into the maelstrom takes you into space to save the world against an incredible evil. You know you're playing with the big boys now. If you haven't quite made it that far you can instead play CM6: Where chaos reigns. Still pretty epic, with the fate of the world once again resting in the PC's hands, and time-travelling involved. Honestly, can't we have a good high level adventure that doesn't involve saving the world? It should be big enough and ugly enough to take care of itself by this stage. Gord's first novel is out. Saga of old city is set in greyhawk, and shows the start of the eponymous rogues rise to fame. Gary already has a quadrilogy planned out. Ok then. Star frontiers is also doing pretty well for itself this month, with SFAC4: Zebulon's guide to frontier space (With apologies to David Cook), and SFAD5: Dark side of the moon. (With apologies to Pink Floyd) An expansion and an adventure. How will they fare in the harsh environment of the modern market?The marvel superheroes RPG gets MHAC8: Weapons locker. Gear, gear and more gear. Don't feel your heroes are super enough with just their innate powers. Here's where you should go then. The Amazing stories imprint releases two books this month. Number 3 is Portrait in blood by Mary L. Kirchoff. Number 4 is Nightmare universe by Gene DeWeese and Robert Coulson. Yeah, there's a definite horror theme here, be it gothic or sci-fi. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Endless quest is up to book 30: The fireseed. Oh no! You've been kidnapped by pirates. You must escape! How will you accomplish this? And finally, we have two new SPI brand wargames. Barbarossa is a strategic level game covering the Russian front of WWII. An epic battle covering 5 years and half a continent. How will it go this time round? Terrible Swift Sword is a regimental level american civil war game. Now updated with the latest in civil war research, it's now more historically accurate than ever! Mmmkay then. Now that's firepower!: Hee. Not long ago they said they'd never allow military grade firepower in the Top Secret game. Well guess what. So much for that statement. Here we have stats for machine guns and missiles, and the quite disgusting amounts of damage they can do to both people and structures. Missiles in particular are prone to inflict instakills on you, which is never good from an adventurers point of view. You should definitely use this stuff with caution, for TPK's do not a happy party make. Thankfully the writer realizes this, and puts in plenty of warnings and advice on how to help with this. If used properly, it could add to your campaign. I guess you can't have the rope needed to cross a chasm or climb a cliff without also having enough rope to hang yourself with. The more freedom you're given, the more able you are to do things wrong, and mess them up for other people. It's a definite problem with game design in general. Guess you just have to find a game which does what you want. Valley of the earth mother: This month's module is a 12 pager intended for fairly low level characters. Despite the name, it's not actually that wilderness focussed, with the majority of the actual adventure set inside the dungeon area. It also features an anti-ranger class, the huntsman. Who are complete bastards (shock, horror, peta girl flails her hands frantically and then starts making placards.) and not recommended as PC's. Add this to the neutral rangers in Mehica, and we have variants for all morals. Might as well just get rid of the alignment restriction entirely, since your moral state is apparently irrelevent to how well you know how to (mis)use nature. Someone send a deposition to the relevant deities. Try not to mislay it in the post for 15 years. So yeah, this is a fairly typical dungeon crawl that has a few neat touches, but nothing that really makes it stand out from the crowd. Just another day at work, clearing out pests.</blockquote>

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