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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4805122" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 121: May 1987part 4/4TSR previews: D&D gets M4: Five coins for a kingdom. Another epic adventure spanning planes, and ending in a battle inside the sun. Sounds like a suitable challenge for players that level. At least the world doesn't hang on their success this time. D&D gets an attack of rehash, with I3-5: The desert of desolation. Tracey Hickman's early modules get complied and revised in light of his new popularity. Venture into the desert and face ancient undead foes. You know the sort. They generally wear bandages. It also gets I13: Adventure pack one. A collection of short OA featured adventures, it seems rather appropriate for this issue. In the solo gamebook realm, we have book 13: The gates of death. Prove your paladinhood by saving a princess? All in a days work, really. At least, if you survive to become an experienced hero. <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 many don't. Lot's of novels this month. We get our first forgotten realms novel even before the rulebook comes out. Doug Niles delivers Darkwalker on Moonshae, an epic tale set in the Realms' britain analogue. Be afraid, for the stakes are high, and the writing of questionable quality. Lets get this treadmill of endless trilogies rolling. We also get 2 Windwalker books, Rogue Pirate, and Trail of the Seahawks. John Gregory Betancourt and Aradath Mayhar continue to work for TSR. Life is hard for a jobbing writer. Lazer Tag also continues to roll out the supplements. Book 1 is High spy, and book 2 is Danger, second hand. Looks like they're bringing plotting and character arcs to what could be just a simple game of competitive violence. I wonder how these'll do. And finally, we have an SPI imprint wargame, Onslaught. In an attempt to stem the decline of wargaming, they're going for simpler games that you can complete in a single sitting. Ha. If you don't market it right to attract new people, all this'll do is irritate the grognards, who will then ignore it after a bit of bitching. And that's no good for anyone. The role of books: Hmm. Red and yellow-green. Much better than last installment, but certainly not perfect. But this should really be about contents, not the wrapper. This is the equivalent of bitching about what some starlet is wearing on the cover of her new single, and completely ignoring the merits of the music. Don't judge a book by it's cover, and other such cliches. The folk of the air by Peter S Beagle is a rather well crafted and unorthodox bit of fantasy, with much of the weirdness remaining purely in the mind, while creating a mythic air. Seems like another one that would be good for Changeling: the Dreaming players. The maze of peril by John Eric Holmes isn't an official D&D novel, but it is obviously based on a D&D game, with spell levels, dungeons, and other such metagame conceits showing up and playing integral parts. This does not translate to novel form too well, and indeed, the fact that it's only a small press work, even though he did manage to get an official D&D novel published in the past speaks volumes of it's quality. Boinger will struggle on regardless! The burning stone by Deborah Turner Harris is the start of another trilogy. It has the same editor as Tolkien's LotR. Wait! Come back! It's actually quite good, with a nicely thought out magic system and social order developed to regulate that magic, realistically ruthless villains, and several plot threads that weave together to create a fast paced story full of cliff-hangers. The reviewer certainly wants to read the next two books. Stalking the unicorn by Mike Resnick is a tale of a new york private eye who travels to an alternate reality at the behest of his new employer, an elf who has lost his unicorn, and needs it back fast. (don't laugh) It applies logical thought to a distinctly fantastic setting, to create a nicely plotted, suspenseful mystery. A voice for princess by John Morressy is a tale of a wizard's attempts to completely reverse the transformation on a princess formerly turned into a frog (hence the title) Originally a series of short stories in a magazine, it doesn't quite work as a full length novel. Hopefully future books in  the series will avoid that problem.  Dragon's pawn by Carol L Dennis is another fairly meta fantasy novel. While it uses lots of cliches, it's characters are aware of this, and manage to twist them to their own ends. Another one that seems likely to spawn additional follow-up books. Cybernetic Samurai by Victor Milan is the story of a supercomputer programmed with the knowledge of an ancient samurai ruler, and how it deals with the conflicts of the modern day business world by applying those values and lessons.  Seems like the kind of thing real geeks would do. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> In any case, it seems an entirely valid bit of oriental styled cyberpunk. Wild cards, edited by George R R Martin, is another of our shared world anthologies, a series of stories about superhumans in WWII. Not nearly as comic booky as you'd expect, this has lots of strong characterisation, is well presented, and the stories meld together well, thanks to the editing. An idea that would go on to spawn an RPG, this is definitely an interesting one to report upon. Operation Zodiac: We continue the series on Top Secret adventures in spaaaace with a whole bunch of extrapolative future history and plot hooks based around this. As is often the case, these seem sadly out of date these days, as we've actually gone backwards in terms of space exploration capability since those days. A sad state of affairs, really. If only the cold war hadn't ended. Now that was a nebulous media excuse for fearmongering and directing our tribalistic hatreds you actually had a hope of beating. <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=";)" /> Still, as an excuse for lots of weird and wonderful adventures, this isn't bad at all, pushing the boundaries of (then) modern tech, without going into outright sci-fi territory. If only it had turned like that. Life would be rather more interesting than it is. Profiles: Michael Breault is one of those names that seems like they've been around forever, when actually, they haven't. Curious, that. He's been around quite a bit of interesting stuff, seeing half his class flunk out due to overaddiction to gaming,  working on a far right magazine (whether he subscribed to their beliefs is not revealed), and getting a degree in astrophysics. And he's already edited lots of TSR's recent big books. Having just become a dad, he's going to be a busy bunny in the next few years. Another familiar name finally gets a face. Robin Jenkins has considerably more style than the average editor. Snappy dresser, party animal, movie buff, excellent dancer, he's got so much fashion sense he regularly gets mistaken for a woman. (along with several other members of the crew <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=";)" /> ) One of our best written interviews, most of the attempts at humour in this one hit the mark nicely. He obviously applies his lesson of learning how to communicate to himself. Barbara G Young's article, on the other hand, doesn't quite work for me. Much is made of her hippyish tendencies, but this is a bunch of life snapshots that doesn't really help me get into the head of the person behind them. Hmm. Never mind. Plenty more where that came from. Snarfquest jumps into the future. Can the adventurers use their anachronisms, or will they just blunder around amusingly as usual. Dragonmirth gets in on the oriental stuff. Wormy is full of hostility, racism, and possibly treachery. A very smooth issue, that went down easily, with plenty of mildly positive articles, but no real radical highs or lows. The big central feature meant that there was less text to digest than usual these days, which resulted in me finishing this one quickly. It fulfills it's thematic remit quite reasonably, and there were far fewer articles that seemed tacked on purely to make up the numbers than the last one. They seem to be back on track again, and getting the hang of their new remit. Lets hope they keep that up.</blockquote>

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