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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4873976" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 132: April 1988part 4/5Cash and carry, gamma style: Another article asking you to apply proper economic principles here. Course the economic pressures on a community in gamma world are very different from those in D&D, modern day earth, or Star Frontiers. Strangely powered mutants are both an obstacle and an opportunity, but good food and water is much rarer, and as a result, much much more valuable. The power to defend what you've got also becomes more important, for if there's not enough to go round, people will fight and kill to survive personally. Yeah, this is exceedingly low on the gonzo scale, trying to introduce considerably more realism and worldbuilding to the game. Combined with the fact that most of this is stuff we've seen before for D&D, and this isn't a hugely consequential article. Another month, another bit of filler. TSR previews: Still a bit messed up in here, smudging the stuff for last month and the one before together. Lets just look at now, shall we. AD&D is getting OP1: Tales of the outer planes. Like with oriental adventures, they've opened up a milieu with a spiffy hardback, and now they want to milk it. Will we see any more in this series? Guess it depends on sales. Top secret/S.I. gets High Stakes Gamble. A boxed set focussing on suave high society adventures, it certainly seems a good way to continue their desire to make the game more cinematic and social encounter based. Marvel Superheroes gets ME1: Cosmos Cubed. I'm guessing the E stands for epic, because this is a really high power one. Are you ready to go cosmic, again. Are you ready to go back if it doesn't work? Special Forces is our wargaming contribution. An SPI Sniper™ game, this seems to be a game of modern counterterrorist actions. Interesting. Rather a risky topic, really. Our solo gamebooks are also tying into this theme, with book 5: ULTRA Deadly. Don't let the Nazi's crack the allies secret code early, change the course of history. Appropriately, we get two Double Agent books this month. Hollow earth affair/The royal pain and Web of danger/Acolytes of darkness. Sebastian Cord and Agent 13 penetrate secrets and kick ass. And finally, in pure fiction we have The Legend of Huma. Read about the legendary knight of Solamnia and his part in keeping evil from taking over Krynn. Poor Takhisis. She tries so hard, and never gets a break. A little less super: A DC heroes article? They are covering different systems quite a bit lately. And as the title says, this is sort of a nerfing one, from someone who would prefer that not every character ends up at superman levels after a few years play. Curiously though, it's also one that would prefer not everyone starts at street level either, increasing the randomness in power levels at character generation, and then implementing a few house rules to ensure that while characters still advance, they don't go through the same kind of quantum leaps in power level. Which I guess brings things closer to the way things actually work in comics. It'd definitely require the right type of group to keep the game fun for everyone despite the power disparities. But it's still a good idea. I think we can make this one work. Superheroes alive! Jeff Grubb gets in on the book reviews under a different name The encyclopedias of super heroes and villains by Jeff Rovin are a pair of massive books that do exactly what they say. Not just the major comics, but cartoons, mythical characters, pulp novels, and anything else with superpowered characters gets meticulously combed. The villains one isn't quite as well written or edited as the heroes one (diminishing returns strike again), but both are massive, rather impressive works. You can both learn quite a bit, and get some enjoyable reading out of flipping through these. Superman at fifty: the persistence of a legend by Dennis Dooley and Gary Engle is another bit of historical analysis. How did he become such an iconic figure, and how has he changed over the years to maintain that status. A whole bunch of people contribute, with examinations from the scholarly to the humourous, throwing their own interpretations on his personality, and why he works so well. As with so many successful characters, peoples ability to project their own ideas onto him seems to be an integral part of his success. Even Krypto the wonder dog can't spoil that. Aces high, and jokers wild, edited by George R.R Martin, are the second and third books in the Wild Cards series. It continues to apply superhero powers to a decidedly non comic-booky world, weaving together stories by various authors into a larger whole. We find out a lot more about the history, and possible future of their world. Not entirely family-friendly, this is nonetheless highly recommended as story and a worldbuilding exercise. Even before getting it's own game, it seems very gamable.</blockquote>

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