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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4847621" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 128: December 1987part 3/5The game wizards: Jim Ward turns up to give a combination of advice and teasers this month. As ever, people are asking how you become a writer for TSR, and as ever, they are happy to provide their guidelines. Don't expect it to be easy getting in though, with competition as stiff as it is. Secondly, he gives us an overview of the big products coming next year. (which reminds me, what happened to TSR Previews? It's been AWOL for the last half a year. ) Castle Greyhawk (wacky edition with no input from Gygax ) will be out in January. Look forward to much humour, and much screwage. Sigh. February features the first volume of the Gamers handbook of the Marvel Universe. So many preexisting characters that need covering, it's going to take a total of 1024 pages. It's a bit excessive, frankly. March has quite a lot of stuff. Top Secret is getting a snazzy mega adventure boxed set, High Stakes Gamble. It's also getting two books. Well, two halves of books. They're releasing books with two stories in, one a Top Secret one, and one an Agent 13 one. This smells like a gimmicky attempt to boost sales for two product lines that aren't doing well enough individually to credit continued releases. Dragonlance is also getting a book, The legend of Huma. April sees a new wargame, The hunt for Red October. Based on the novel, this is another attempt to bring in new players that's not going to turn around the decline. May sees another wacky licenced experiment. The Rocky and Bullwinkle roleplaying game? Man what. Who's gonna want to play that? What exactly do you do in it? June sees the 1989 forgotten realms calendar, 6 months early. Now that's one you definitely ought to have held back on a few months if you want to maximize sales. No-one thinks of buying calendars in June. Agent 13 gets a graphic novel, while greyhawk gets a solo adventure gamebook. Is is just me or is he deliberately not taking about actual D&D products. July sees another double whammy of board games, with Dragonlance and Buck Rogers both getting one. August sees Greyhawk get a new corebook, 5 years after the last big setting book for it. Just how will it have changed in the meantime? Given it's war torn history, they have plenty of leeway to mess with the political situation. September gives us another art book. Like the Dragon best of's, money for recycled material is an economical way to go if you can get away with it. October sees Oriental adventures rewarded for it's continued popularity with a big boxed set giving extensive details on the realms of Kara-Tur. Now that's more like it. And of course, this helps fill out the forgotten realms as well, so it should sell extra well. November is all about the spies, and the Buck Rogers. Bleah. Lorraine (roll of thunder, stab of organ music) has wasted no time in figuring out how to draw extra money from her new company. December sees Lords of darkness, a sourcebook for the undead; the 10th D&D gazetteer (which means plenty more are coming out next year, even though they didn't mention them earlier) and another Oriental module. So there are some cool things coming our way, but it also looks like there's lots of dross as well. With the new edition planned for 89, and everyone well aware of that, they've probably seen a drop in AD&D sales, so they're concentrating on the settings and diversifying their product base. Another interesting one to draw on for a little historical perspective. And so we wind ever closer to the present. Fiction: The spirit way by Leigh Anne Hussey. Ahh, initiation tests. For becoming is among the most dangerous aspects of our life, and so it is the one the greatest number of stories are about. This is typical teen insecurity stuff, set in a generic tribal backdrop. The lead character is the niece of the shaman, and she'd really rather like to live up to her family legacy. But so far, she seems pretty lacking in magical talent. Will she come back from the wilderness a hero, a nobody, or dead. As this is currently a fairly family friendly magazine, and likes to encourage the heroic ideal, I think you can guess which one it is. Weep not for her, but for the ones that don't get to have stories told about their exploits. This does actually have a few interesting twists, so it's not that bad. But the formula is very much there. Writers gotta make a living, and all that.</blockquote>

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