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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4735686" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 108: April 1986part 4/4Profiles: Doug Niles is our first profilee. He's one of those people who ended up at TSR by a number of improbable strokes of luck. While not particularly suited as an editor, he's a great designer, with a real love of pulp stuff like Tarzan and Indiana Jones. And now he gets to write official modules starring them. This is why you should learn your craft. You never know when you're gonna get your big break, and you'd better be ready when it comes. Jean Blashfield Black is in charge of the book department. She's a nongamer, but has had a pretty interesting career before joining TSR. Head of a major writing project at 21, consultant on a book by Lord Snowdon, chronicling the space program and getting taken to special events while writing about it, she's rubbed shoulders with lots of big names. And now she edits the dragonlance books. Of all the weird turns to make in your life. She has a daughter named Chandelle, which is actually a technical term for an aircraft maneuver, but sounds amusingly chavvy. Wonder how she's turned out since then.  Fiction: the grey stones by Josepha Sherman. Man, that is one bored looking bard in the main picture. Anyway, celtic stuff continues to increase in frequency, with this tale of a bard matching her musical talents against the creatures of the night. You really ought to get a priest to sort these bastards out, but when you're a hero, you don't get to say no to jobs just because you're not optimized to deal with them. A fairly standard heroic test story that's neither brilliant or too dull. The cover to the Ares section is particularly good this issue. Welcome to Kitty Pryde's imagination. High tech and beyond: So traveler tech doesn't scale very well. Once again, we are confronted by the fact that our own technological advancement has outpaced sci-fi in several areas. Most notable of these is miniaturization. They think that improvements come in the realms of percentages when IRL they have come in the form of factors of thousands. In other word, this is a very dated feeling article, that's not really very useful to us these days. One to skip without regrets. An Honorable Enemy: Oriental adventures comes to the Hero system, with this adversary group for you to put in your game. Let by a villain who resembles the traditional japanese demon, this is a similarly traditional group of japanese career criminals, with ninja, samurai, and gadgeteers among their ranks. Good to see there are writers who are au fait with manga tropes in that era. Nothing hugely surprising here, but still something that gives you a good example of how to build characters in the game, and using them as an adversary when you're short of ideas wouldn't hurt. An ok read that would probably be more interesting in actual play. Old yazirians never die: Well, actually, they do, as they're the shortest-lived of the 4 main races in star frontiers. Oh, the irony. This is a single page article that essentially transfers the D&D aging system to Star Frontiers, with middle aged, old and venerable categories each taking their toll on your capabilities. It's obvious that medical technology has advanced a lot, with the average human having a pretty good chance of making it to 200. It does exactly what it sets out to do, leaving me with not much to say about it. I suppose stealing from other games when your current one lacks an important feature is quicker and easier than making stuff up whole cloth. Meh. The marvel-phile: Well, at least someone's doing a proper april fool themed article. As the cover hinted, we're off to the alternate universe of Kitty Pryde's fairytales. Bamfs, who may or may not be related to Nightcrawler, and regard him as the mack daddy of their race, to the embarrassment of everyone. Mean, the fiend with no name; a parody version of wolverine, with his automatic creation of six-packs of beer and deranged digging ability. Pirate Kitty, our heroine's cooler self-insertion character. Big Lockheed the dragon, a supersonic irish pacifist. And shagreen, a vaguely shark-like wizard from another dimension who is the villain of the piece. Even without Jeff and Roger's framing banter, this would have been a pretty entertaining piece, while with it, this comes close to being laugh-out-loud worthy material. Once again we see that they're not afraid to point out and embrace the sillier aspects of the source material. He's managed to brighten up what has been a pretty heavy going issue. More mutant fever: Ahh, it's the follow-up to last month's article on disease in Gamma World. I almost thought they'd forgotten. 16 nasty diseases, both serious and comical (Sometimes at the same time. Monty Zoomers revenge is no laughing matter. ) Some are lethal, or may permanently reduce your stats if you're unlucky. A nice range of stuff, viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic, that gives you plenty more options to make your characters lives unpleasant in ways that combat can't solve. This is definitely an occasion where a little evil laughter seems in order. On the three everybody. 1. 2. 3. Muahahahahahahahaha!!! Dragonmirth once again misinterprets peoples wishes. Snarfquest titilates and confounds. Wormy sets up a trap. Will it get turned back on him? Not quite as bad as last one, this issue was still a real slog to get through, with lots of so-so or dull articles. They really do seem to be doing a lot of didactic application of realistic principles to gaming articles, and it is not producing fun results to read about. Combine this with the general dearth of humour this year, (apart from the Marvel and gamma world stuff) and we have definite cause for worry. Playing games is supposed to be fun and I am not amused.</blockquote>

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