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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4800484" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 120: April 1987part perfect sentai/5The role of computers: We return to Bards Tale to deliver some extensive hinting. Due to the pressures of review time turnover, it seems our writing duo didn't find many of the secrets, or figure out the most optimal ways to configure their characters. Fear not, their loyal readers have wasted no time in writing in to help out. And once they've shown it once, you can bet that more people'll join in, in the hope of getting their name published. They may have to make this a regular part of their columns. Following on directly, their main review is of Bards Tale II: The destiny knight. Considerably bigger than the original, it introduces new spells, ranged combat, brutal puzzles, animated 3d graphics, and to top it off, you can bring in your old characters from the previous game to kick butt with. They give it a pretty positive result. Lots of other smaller reviews as well. Steve Jackson games continues it's multimedia push with Autoduel and Ogre computer games. Design your locations and arsenals and engage in a little postapocalyptic violence. Explore the underground mazes of the Zork trilogy. Solve puzzles in your dead uncles mansion in Hollywood hijinx. Explore the epic Might and Magic (more on this next month) Play star trek tie in The Promethean Prophesy and save Kirk and co's lives. And check out the new improved Atari version of Phantasie. Rather a scattershot column, overall, as they tinker with their format. Well, it's still been less than a year since they started. Lets hope they come out of this bit of self-examination stronger. TSR Previews: D&D gets CM8: The endless stair. An archmage has died? We have to take his stuff! For great justice!  And because if we don't some evil wizard will. Course, wizards being wizards, the place is not unguarded. And since this is a companion adventure, the tricks should be pretty tricky. Otherwise, how are we to level up? More importantly, we also have GAZ1: The grand duchy of Karimeikos. Finally, they've decided to put out info on the Known World setting beyond the minimum of what is needed for the current adventure. This is a very big sea change in their worldbuilding style. Before you know it, we'll be in the early 90's in all their richly tapestried glory. Let's do this. AD&D is not quite as interesting, but is still trying something new REF4: The book of lairs. A whole onslaught of little encounters that you can throw in fairly easily. It's a definite step up from just having tables. And some of them, such as the rakshasa and spectre ones, are quite cool, not just combat encounters. One I do not regret buying. The art of the Dragonlance saga arrives. Coffee table books, peh. Well, I guess it's fairly easy to produce, since it's mostly recycled art. But is it profitable? Marvel superheroes gets MX1: Nightmares of futures past. Mutant internment camps come to your hometown. Will your characters fall prey to the inquisition? How very dystopian. Gamma world gets GW8: Gamma base. Welcome to the new edition! However, its the same old /Dungeon full of magic items/ ruined base full of ancient technology to explore and loot. Not very inspired sounding. Amazing magazine gives us it's third anthology, covering 1936-45. Understandably, WWII looms large in the consciousness. Introduced by Issac Asimov, who also has stories in it. Magazines really have fallen quite a bit in general with the coming of the internet, haven't they. The cultural zeitgeist moves ever onwards. One-on-one gamebooks is up to number 9, Daredevil and Kingpin in The King takes a Dare. I think this is pretty self explanatory. Question is, will the good or bad guy win, and how much zap, pow, kersplating will it involve? Their fate is in your hands. And finally, we have the start of a new adventure gamebook series. Catacombs. Apparently closer to a real roleplaying experience than any solo gamebook before, this advert fails to explain exactly how, which isn't very helpful. Anyway, the first in the series is Faerie mounds of dragonkind. I suspect whimsy may be involved. Approach with caution. Profiles goes up to covering three people this month. Karen Martin is one of our newest arrivals, having been here barely a year. But she's certainly been busy in that time, editing dozens of products. And maybe moving house again. Watch out for that commute. She seems more than geeky enough to fit in around there. Margaret Weis is of course one of the creators of Dragonlance. Assigned to co-ordinate it, she took command, churned out 5 chapters in a couple of days, and it's been non stop work since then, producing several full novels plus a whole load of short stories every year. Goes to show what you can do when you don't spend ages fiddling around with the small stuff. Can they bottle lightning twice and top that with their next project? Hee. Tracy Hickman is the other half of the dynamic duo who created Dragonlance. Thick as thieves, they even interview each other for this article. Not likely to produce a very objective result is it. Still, his career is a great example that writing is much quicker and more fun when done collaboratively, instead of chaining yourself to a desk alone, slogging away at a typewriter. First with his wife Laura, then with Margaret, he has increasingly assembled a great team around him to produce stuff with. Living the dream and creating family friendly entertainment with a strong moral message. That's the life. Robots grasp sarcasm in snarfquest. And then there is pointless comedic bickering again. I don't think I'd enjoy playing in Larry's game. Dragonmirth mocks disney (deservedly). Wormy shows off the giant's talents. Do not <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> with them. Good, bad, they're all scary when you're on the other side. A pretty good april fools issue, full of stuff that is both useable and amusing. They've definitely used the year off to make sure that they have the best material for this one. The non comedic parts of the issue are rather weaker though, particularly the non D&D articles. If I was reading at the time, I'd be complaining about them wasting their space on them. Are they not getting the good articles, or are they deliberately sabotaging them so they can claim public demand when they cut down even further on the number of them they include each month? In any case, it averages out to produce an, um, average issue. But I'm sure there'll be plenty more ups and downs to come in the other 2/3rds of this journey, both in the magazine, and my emotional state. Lets hope I can finish it, preferably without going completely mad.</blockquote>

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