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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4799852" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 120: April 1987part quart in a pint mug/5Fiction: Dragon meat by Robert Don Hughes. Now the writer of this has definitely read revenge of the nobodies and taken some serious notes. The funny, but still fairly logical tale of the poor muggins who was assigned to clean up a dragon's corpse after the big hero had swooped on in, saved the princess, and buggered off to his lah de dah pointy spired castle. The corpse is starting to stink, the taxman wants paying, and the bureaucrats are gonna take every opportunity to poke their nose in. Thankfully, you can make a lot of money from selling dragon bits. If the neigbours start to complain, give them a job. When the big hero comes back to complain about your profiteering, point out that this dragon won't last forever, and if we make it into a franchise, everyone can make tons of money from this endeavour. Before you know it, the draconic race'll be extinct. Ok, so that'll then cause an economic crash, and possibly mess up the ecosystem by removing an apex predator, but humanity as a whole benefits. Woo. And there are plenty of other supernatural creatures to profiteer off. An entertaining tale that is still full of ideas that could be used in a sensible game. Just what the april issues should have. Operation zenith: Now this is one that's been lurking in the slush pile for ages, apparently. When the Ares section was doing pieces on the moon for various systems, Merle wrote one for Top Secret. But he massively overwrote in terms of size, then they canned that idea, and it's been just sitting around. Until now. Originally intended as a 3 parter, here we get a full 10 pages on adapting the rules of the game to handle spacefaring spy adventures, a la Moonraker. Learning how to function in zero g is an expensive and rather icky proposition. It's obvious that this was done before they started work on the new edition, because the emphasis is very much on a fairly realistic crunchy representation of the real troubles spacefarers face, and the bureaucracy surrounding it. This'll definitely slow even experienced characters down until they spend a good deal of xp. And unlike D&D, you can't cast a quick spell and then wander around in incredibly hostile environments unhindered. You can see why they wanted to publish it now, because that's a lot of work that would otherwise have gone to waste, but it's still not that useful to me or enjoyable to read. And what's more, there's plenty more to come next month. Ho hum. Not nearly as fun as the gamma world lunar stuff. Space-age espionage: Top secret just went orbital. Now Traveller goes espionage, with a new career path for spies. What an amusing convergence. I'm sure that's why they put them next to each other. Anyway, whether you're working for the government, or secretly plotting to overthrow it, these paths are some of the trickier ones to get onto. And there's plenty of risk of dying or rotting in jail for years. But as with the more apolitical larcenous path a while back, it's full of skills that are just perfect for the adventuring life. Pretty useful, and a good example of the editor connecting things up in a pleasing way. Kudos to Roger. The game wizards: Doug Niles writes the column this month to talk some more about thew new edition of Top Secret. As I said a bit earlier, they're planning to dial back on the crunch a bit, making all the really detailed bits optional, and try to emulate espionage movies and tv shows more, rather than the real deal. Luck points are in, to make sure the heroes can act like big damn heroes and not die horribly if they run in guns blazing. And like FASERIP, they've taken to resolving everything with a single D100 roll and consulting a table. Interesting. This definitely sounds like they're trying to make the game appeal to a wider audience, but may also cause flame wars from people annoyed at perceived dumbing down. I definitely look forward to seeing what happens next in this thread of history. Hopefully they'll support the new game as reliably as they did the old one for a good few years yet. Just because D&D is getting seriously revamped, doesn't mean we should ignore the other stuff. Here comes the cavalry: Hmm. Not enough rules for ground warfare in star frontiers? Like swimming, I guess this is because the game knew what it wanted to focus on, and cut out all the extraneous stuff. Fortunately, since their rules for space combat are already mostly 2D for simplicity reasons, it's not that hard to adapt them for land vehicles. So here's 7 new vehicles and a bunch of optional rules to make the system work better at a ground based scale and speed. Another article I have no objection too, but at the same time, can't get particularly worked up about. Once again, they seem to be just running through a checklist of systems to cover each month. Born in the ruins: Gamma world's article this month is on social class. Even after the apocalypse, the family you are born into massively influences your prospects in life.  Exactly how that might be expressed may vary from area to area, but even in yer basic stone age tribe, the bosses kid gets the best food. So here's yet another quick article giving us a table to roll on, and the mechanical effects of said social classes. Since it's pretty much all positive for being higher class, this will probably not be good for player harmony, with yet another reason for one to simply wind up better than another due to random rolls. Still surmountable, but not really a very useful one. Welcome to the machine: Jeff once again cedes the floor on the Marvel article due to more pressing commitments.  So they throw in a Pink Floyd reference, and give us stats for Machine Man and the Midnight Wreckers (tm, etc etc.) Not to be confused with Iron Man, because they approach this superheroing thing from completely opposite directions. Once again we see some time jumping weirdness in their story, and the depiction of a possible future that is probably well out of date and retconned by now. Nothing particularly great or terrible about this entry. You know, you don't have to cover the same games every month. There are plenty of others who would love to get a few pages in the magazine.</blockquote>

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