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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4741556" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 109: May 1986part 4/4Fiction: Valkyrie by W. J. Hodgeson. Love. It has caused much joy, and much suffering. Sometimes both at once, such as when a supernatural being falls in love with a human, and has to either watch them age and die while they stick around forever, or become mortal and suffer the ravages of time with them. A bittersweet result at best. On the other hand, if you're very lucky, the gods might show you mercy, and grant you an ironically happy ending such as this one. After all, they move in mysterious ways, and sometimes what they secretly want is someone to defy their word and prove their worth as a true hero. So this is an unusually happy ending to a story given the source material. I don't have any objection to this. Fighting the good fight: Space Opera is our first stop this month in the Ares section, with a bunch of new tricks and variants for combat. Facing, parrying, and disarming.  Three elementary matters that have been abstracted away in the game's combat system. Is it any wonder that some people want to insert them. Some will call that unneccacary crunch that misses the point of the game's design. Some will call that perfectly reasonable. I've been in both camps in the past, but this time I fall in the perfectly reasonable one. After all, without options like that, the game just becomes one of basic taking turns to attack, gradually wearing each other down. And where's the fun in that? Patriots, terrorists and spies: Looks like metaplot has already snuck it's way into star frontiers, with cults suddenly increasing in frequency in FY 111 due to a supplement. This is an interesting development. And as ever, people will always want to introduce a few more, and this magazine is a good way to go about it. So here's 8 new cults which your players might theoretically join, but it's much more likely that they'll appear as adversaries. They include socialists, racists, religious fanatics, psychics, and those that fear them, and general self-advancing secret societies; and generally exist to provide plot hooks for players to investigate. Hey, you can always use a few more of those. Another one of those cases where due to the space limitations, they have to boil them down to their basic concepts, leaving out all the nuance and specifics. You'll still have to do a ton of developing if you want to use them in your game. The double-helix connection: Mutants. A fairly familiar sight in here, thanks to gamma world. But they're not so common in traveller. Nor are they as powerful, with flaws almost as common as drawbacks. But then, Traveler is a lot more realistic than gamma world. That's not to say they have no place as PC's, as characters being exceptional in some way does help build interesting stories. So if you like, when generating a character, roll to see if they are a mutant, and then roll to see what powers they get. Your odds are around the same as your chances of getting psionics in D&D, and it's just as much of a crap shoot whether you'll get abilities that are useful and what you want, and learn how to control them properly. Still, that is the Traveller chargen way. If you don't like the way a particular character's developed, just roll up another one. Nothing hugely wrong with this article. A change of diet: Speaking of gamma world mutants, they don't get neglected this month either. But they don't get too much either, as this is only a half page article. Seems like they're doing lots of short articles this month. So yeah, six awkward dietary restrictions your character could suffer from. What fun, everyone!!!! Anyone? No, I'm not enthralled either. Nuff said. The Hero system makes a joke about it's own complexity in an advert. Pretty amusing. The marvel-phile: Just as he did last year, Jeff provides an index of all the characters detailed by them so far, in every supplement, module and magazine article. And he intends to make this a yearly event, since this is an ongoing process for an active game line. So from Abomination to Zsaji, we're now at over 300 superheroes, creatures and organizations. Still plenty more to go though. Just don't ask us to do Transformers, Godzilla, GI Joe, or most of the other properties marvel does comics for, but don't actually own. They're not part of the license, no matter how we might wish otherwise. Onward! The advanced game is now out, and there's still tons of bits of this huge tangle of a universe we haven't filled in yet! Ahh, Jeff. You always know how to brighten my day. The keys to good SF: Having made a visit to all their usual stops this month, they finish off this month's Ares section with some general role-playing advice. Sci-fi has the potential to allow quite different plots to fantasy, but often, the goals remain the same, with only the window dressing changed. Unfortunately, unlike the Top Secret article earlier, the writer fails to take her own advice, and gives us two and a half pages of yer usual world and character building advice. Because lets face it. Hard sci fi is hard, and of interest to a far smaller sunset of people that stuff that uses the ray guns and funny shaped people as merely backdrops to human drama. Once again, I am forced to say ho hum. Dragonmirth gives apprentices some schooling. Snarf uses his anachronisms. Wormy continues setting up for the ultimate wargame, while others plot his downfall.  Despite the presence of several amazing articles in this issue, this has mostly been another long slow slog. Are they just not getting enough really good articles to justify their size? Are they deliberately playing it over-safe by rejecting weird stuff and publishing ones similar to the ones they've done before? Are they holding their A material back for the birthday issue again? Was the magazine losing it's sparkle around this time for you as well? Or is it just me, consuming too much as usual? I think I need a bit more exercise to work all this information off. Still, that's why I changed my schedule. Now I'd better make sure I make the most of those extra few free hours a week.</blockquote>

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