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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4717550" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 104: December 1985 part 3/3Profiles: Looks like this is gonna continue for a while. We get two profiles this month. Harold Johnson is the director of game design. This means you don't see his name as often as you do the writers, but he's a critical part of the organization, running from one department to another, getting them to all co-ordinate on a project. He also wrote C1, and is responsible for the hiring of lots of TSR's famous names like Jeff Grubb and Tracey Hickman. Obviously it'd be a different company without him. David "zeb" Cook is a rather more famous name, having been responsible for designing lots of cool stuff of various kinds, from big stuff like Oriental Adventures and Star frontiers, to little games like Escape from new york. His favourite word is Wahoo!, and he subscribes to the philosophy that the person who dies with the most toys wins. Ok then, I suppose that's a pretty good philosophy for a game designer. He seems to be quite the prankster in general, really livening up the TSR offices. Unless that's just what they want you to think. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Still, he's designed plenty of classic stuff, so he must be doing something right. TSR Previews: The number of new releases per month continues to plummet. Guess the leadership struggles and layoffs to deal with their debt problems are really starting to bite. So to fill the page, they once again devote a big chunk of it to recent and distant releases, rather than stuff shipping now. The new Lankhmar series gets it's first module, Swords of the undercity. Three short adventures in the seedy underbelly of the place that can be combined to create a larger arc. The Super endless quest series gets renamed, in a blatant attempt to boost sales by tying it more closely to the AD&D wagon. It's also rather topical, with the latest adventure being Test of the Ninja, in which a samurai is tempted to join the secret society of the ninja. Will you accept, or fight this treacherous scourge? And regular Endless quest gets book 31: Tarzan and the tower of diamonds. Once again, they crossover their properties in various combinations in the hope that'll help. Ho hum. I shan't bother reiterating the already out stuff. However, the more distant releases teased are: February, the start of the new Dragonlance Legends series. The immortal level boxedset, A1-4: the updated collection of the slaver series, and part two of the greyhawk adventures series in the spring, and Agent 13: the midnight avenger in may, plus two more unnamed surprises. What are we to make of this? Star law returns: Looks like this is getting yet another follow-up, as people take the original description and expand on it in different ways. Once again, this is a definite attempt to turn down the freewheeling nature of the original for a more sensible and realistic game. Which is about as easy as doing so for star trek. Yes, there obviously has to be an infrastructure behind the scenes, but too much worldbuilding constricts your fun, as canon nitpickers show up to complain. One of the most important things you can learn as a creative type is when to stop and move on, because further additions and tinkering will just be a waste of energy, and possibly even make things worse. And this is one of those cases. Sigh. Hexes and high guard: Jeff Swycaffer gives us a set of optional rules for traveller. Tired of your ship combat being just a slugfest with only the most abstract rules for positioning. Well, this is the article for you sir! This puts your ships on a hexgrid, and gives the needed adaptions that result from this change, so the reserve rules make sense, and you know how far you can go in a round. Since it's space, this may involve a bit more bookkeeping as you handle gravity, acceleration and deceleration. Be thankful it's a lot simpler than real world 3D space maneuvering. Once again, he's turned in pretty good work. This all seems pretty well thought out and easily integrated into a running campaign. The exterminator: Ha. Gamma world gets a rather topical monster this month. The Exterminator. No, not ripped off from a certain recent movie starring Arnold Schwartzanegger at all. They do pretty much exactly what you expect, tromp around being virtually indestructible, and kill seemingly arbitrary targets. Pray your PC's aren't among them, because they really are rather good at their job. On the plus side, if you can beat them, you can get their plasma rifle, which is also pretty badass. This does rather neatly answer the question of how to challenge high level gamma world PC's, and they're not even slightly out of place here. You could even insert the whole skynet backstory without anyone blinking an eye, given the several centuries of lost history in the game between the present and then. After all, even if John Connor wins, it's still a radioactive wasteland after the war. I am amused and approve. The kzinti have landed: Well well, it's these guys again. Welcome back. It's been years. This time, they're being given stats for the star trek RPG. Well, I suppose they did appear in the cartoon, so they are a semi-official race. The question then becomes, how do you distinguish them from the Caitians, another, fully official feline derived star trek race. Pretty easily, actually, given their rather unique societies, gender division, and psychic capabilities. There is, of course, a slight problem merging their known space history with the star trek universe, but you should be able to work something out if your players start picking at it. In addition to the basic stats, we get nice spreads for standard NPC types, plus a sample spaceship for them, which will enable you to get a crew up and running, ready to make your players lives miserable at short notice. Another pretty well handled conversion. The marvel-phile: Jeff fills in the gaps left by this month's special feature with stats for Bucky, Baron Zemo I, and Baron Strucker. They are, of course, all dead now, but that means little in comic book universes. With children, relations, time manipulation, secret plans set in motion decades ago, and outright retcons, they can still influence present day plots. He also reveals what happened next to the pregens from the adventure, which is nice of him. A fairly satisfying entry, and a good example of joined up thinking, which makes several articles more than the sum of their parts. Wormy realizes the benefits regenerating creatures have in wargaming, and puts out an advert. Snarf splats a giant and meets another hot woman, who looks just like all Larry Elmore's other hot women. What does he have for curly haired brunettes? Eh, I suppose as kinks go, it's fairly vanilla. A nice mix of articles this issue. Lots of short ones and a long one. Roleplaying advice and random tables, conversions and original ideas. I find it interesting that it's the more old skool ones that I've generally liked better. There certainly seems to have been a high quotient of stuff you can insert into an existing campaign, no mess, no fuss. Which is nice. After all, if it takes ages to set up your presents, you might well not bother. In addition, with Unearthed arcana, Oriental adventures, and the temple of elemental evil out, they've finally managed to release all the stuff they said they would when they started AD&D. The game feels complete in a way. Any further expansions will have to involve bringing new ideas into the game, moving it in new directions. If you were going to have a happily ever after ending for the movie of the dramas behind the making of D&D, this would be a good place to finish the first story. Of course, real life doesn't work like that. There are some signs that rougher times are ahead, but this is still a pretty decent finisher to the year. So lets see what big changes next year brings, and if they are to my taste or not.</blockquote>

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