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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4726581" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 106: February 1986part 3/3TSR Previews: Plenty of stuff this time, in another double page spread. However, once again, the SPI games are delayed. It's pretty obvious where their priorities lie. That's going to piss quite a few people off. Anyway, back to what's actually coming out. AD&D gets OA1: Swords of the daimyo. It fills in lots of details on Kara-tur that the main book didn't have space for. So lets get playing! We're also getting N3: Destiny of kings. A low level module, designed to be solved by cleverness rather than force. Nothing unusual there. D&D gets B10: Nights dark terror. Step out of the dungeon and trek acros the wilderness in this module designed to bridge the gap between basic and expert set play. What lies beyond the duchy of Karimekos? If you're rather higher level, you can play CM7: the tree of life. Designed for a team of maxed out elves, you have to investigate what's happened to a hidden kingdom. Guess sometimes this stuff is mysterious even to the poncy near-immortals. The second book in the Gord novels, Artifact of evil, is also out now. Gord starts to rise to fame from his humble beginnings. Ahh, the epic hero arc. How we love thee. Partyzone gets two books this month. Number 2 is Inheritance. JJ Caldwell (that Caldwell clan sure do get around) is dead. Who killed him? Is it you? Who will get his inheritance. Number 3 is the Knave of Hearts. Quite the soap opera here, as the big drama happens in the scenario. Certainly sounds amusing, and it's nice to see them tackle other, very different types of RPG's. Lankhmar and the one-on-one series team up for book 5: Dragonsword of Lankhmar. Are our heroes turned against each other? And finally, Amazing stories is also releasing two full books. Starskimmer, by John Betancourt, and Death of a mayfly by Lee Enderlin. More sci-fi and horror, by the looks of things. Profiles: Jon Pickens is our first profilee. He's the acquisition editor, which means he's the muggins who has to read through all the crap in the slush pile for potentially publishable material. So he's our first line of defense against twinks and stupidity. He's both a wargamer and a RPGer, and has been into them before TSR was founded, so he was well placed to get a job in the industry after graduating. Seems a reliable sort. Steve Winter is the manager of game editors. His is a postproduction job, taking written games and getting them into shape, tightening up both the writing and rules.   He's another person brought to RPG's by the wargaming path, and managed to get into TSR just as they were really expanding. He's married to another person in the business, and they probably have well grown baby geeks by now. His next project is something called Sniper Patrol. Looks like he's going to be producing cool stuff for us for years to come. Fiction: Intruder by Russell Madden. What does a powerful predator think when some rival encroaches on it's territory. Does it care about what it is beyond the basics of how to get rid of the opposition, and if it'll make a decent meal? This is one of those bits of fiction that vividly shows you the PoV of the monster, making you unsure which side of the conflict you want to win. The human side is decently covered too, telling the story of two humans from an orbital station exiled to the primitive planet below for being dissidents. Neither side comes off very well from the experience, but they both learn valuable lessons about life. A nicely involving bit of writing. The ARES section drops it's intro pages, and gets straight to the articles, just like they said they would. Notes from the underground: The computer is your friend. Reading this article is treasonous. Please present yourself for summary excecution. Thank you for your co-operation. Yes, Paranoia is getting an article this month. How doubleplus good. Ken Rolston gives a rather amusing how to survive and prosper article. This is a game unlike most others in that you are expected, nay, encouraged to put each other in impossible situations, kill each other, and generally be a complete scumbag. All in the best possible taste, of course. :Crosses legs: Quite a long article, which is also very useful in getting across the playstyle to anyone reading who has no idea what the game is about. This may well have sold quite a few people on it back in the day. The illustrations are rather amusing as well. Once again, it's nice to see them cover different games. What will they get up to next? Lets hope we see this one again, because I've always had a soft spot for Paranoia. Stellar feedback: Roger Moore decides to let us know how things are going to develop in the Ares section in the future, based on your feedback. Unsurprisingly, marvel stuff is keeping up it's strong performance, with gamma world running a reasonable second. Star frontiers is also doing reasonably, and it's not as if they're short of requests to cover other stuff. So it's the usual problem trying to figure out how to please as many of the people as often as possible in a limited page count. This is why how you filter and interpret your info is important. Maybe we should develop a statistical algorhythm. Meh. It'd never match up to human intuition. <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=";)" /> The marvel-phile: Jeff is heading back oop north to Canada to keep us up to date with the latest developments in the Alpha flight team. Madison Jeffries and Vindicator are the new heroes; a mechanic, and a power suited mobility focussed fighter. We also get Delphine Courtney, one of their recent villains. A robot wearing a bigger robot suit? That doesn't seem right somehow. I guess if no-one suspects it, then it makes a good plot reveal. Jeff is also busy trying franticly to get the Advanced game out on deadline, so apologies if he messes this one up. Thankfully he doesn't, keeping sight of the people behind the powers as well as the cool stats. He may be working hard behind the scenes, but from the front, it still seems pretty effortless. The new humans: Oh, this is an amusing picking apart of rules quirks. Why are supposedly normal humans in gamma world so bleeding tough, especially compared to the ones in AD&D, but also to the real world. Even Robots can't compete with little girls. Even in a harsh environment, there's no way everyone should be the equivalent of level 8 at 10 years old. How do we justify this? Widespread genetic enhancement! Man, what a load of cheek. <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=";)" /> So much for them being the easily identifiable with everymen when they're actually one of the most technologically modified and scientifically advanced groups. And the way it conflates mutants with dumb religious types makes it clear where the author's biases lie on the science/religion divide. All in all, this is an entertaining bit of lampshading, that I probably won't actually get to use, but still found thought-provoking. This is probably a case where the game is better off for not being as realistic as it could be. Whether you want to gloss over or call attention to the rules quirks is up to you. Still, this should help you choose. Wormy continues mixing drinks. Snarf continues being a reluctant hero. Dragonmirth is dreadfully untrue to the source material. Shocking, shocking I say. Seems like we have a lot of examination of the basic assumptions of the games this time. And most of the time, they've turned out fairly well as well. They're definitely keeping up their desire to encourage experimentation with different games and playstyles. And the new drive for more efficient use of space seems to be a success  as well, because the issue feels fuller than recent ones. Guess a little freshening up the format was just what the doctor ordered, to get me enjoying this again. Course, the battle to find something new to keep ennui at bay is never-ending. How long before this in turn grows dull. Only one way to find out. When tomorrow becomes today, the next step will be revealed.</blockquote>

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