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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4886039" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 136: August 1988part 5/5The role of computers: Dungeon Master is one of those adventure games where you create a party, equip them, and take them through adventures, fighting monsters and leveling up as you go. Seems like they review a lot of those. Well, this is an RPG magazine. It gets a highly detailed review, with lots of screenshots, and plenty of praise. There's plenty of hidden stuff to find, (familiar looking) foes to to beat, resources to manage, and all that jazz. Visually, they are definitely improving quite a bit lately. Basketball Challenge is a strategy simulation game, where you train up a basketball team, and dictate their tactics in games from the sidelines. Not too bad an idea, but not really my cup of tea. Fantasyzone is rather more quirky. Primarily an arcade shoot-em-up, you also have to collect coins from fallen enemies, and get to spend them in shops for all kinds of upgrades. Picking the right power-up can make a big difference, particularly when facing the bosses. With an interestingly designed soundtrack and visuals, it's challenging, but a good player'll get a little further each time. Which is how it should be. Gamma life in the big city: Gamma world joins in with the theme this month, despite not actually being in the themed section. The stereotype in postapocalyptic settings is that most of the cities are largely abandoned, with only small communities of scavengers picking through the rubble. But things get more interesting if there are still at least a few sizable communities. Course, this requires that there be the resources to support this population, and enough safe living environment that they not die too frequently and go into terminal decline. This frequently leads to insular attitudes and heavy fortifications. After all, resources must be protected, and only shared with the worthy. if you let mutie scum in, who knows where it'll end? This dials down the strangeness a little, but doesn't neglect it, pointing out plenty of ways you can derive humour from the settlements imitating and misinterpreting modern institutions. This is actually considerably more detailed than the earlier articles, giving you a one-stop set of info on using them both as home bases, as adversaries, and as locations for adventures. With sample characters, plot ideas, and plenty of advice, this is almost as useful as the other ones put together, and eminently convertable as well. Rather pleasing. Role-playing reviews is also in theme, with reviews of products covering city settings. City-state of the invincible overlord gets a very negative review, both as an updating of an older product, and as one in itself. The old nicely medieval, if rather hard to locate stuff on map has been replaced by a a fantasy Milton Keynes, everything neatly laid out in grids with lots of space between stuff. The metaplot isn't properly integrated with the setting, the way monsters just show up on random tables, yet the city doesn't react to them makes no sense, the religion is just a flavourless mishmash, the new races are twinked, there's just no cohesion in general. The only redeeming feature is the index. And what's the use of that if there's nothing you want to find? Zing! Now that's an entertaining slating. Lankhmar: City of Adventure gets a rather more positive review. While there are a few irritating omissions that really need a supplement to fill them in, it presents a nice compromise between feel and detail, giving you plenty of room and tools to design your own adventure locations within the city. Massively downgrading the power and speed of magic to emulate the original stories, it shows you how you can mod AD&D to be more fighter and thief centric. Still, these rules changes, combined with the very strong flavour, mean this may be tricky to use in an existing campaign. Carse is another generic citybook, produced by chaosium. While not brilliant, and rather too focussed on the little details over giving you the knowhow to use them, it's still better than the city state of the invincible overlord. One you'll really need to figure out how to make the most of yourself. Tulan of the isles is another book in the same series, set in the same world. It manages to be slightly better in most respects, more general atmosphere, more detail on individual buildings, and more setting info on the world surrounding the city. It seems much easier as a starting point to build good adventures from.  The game fair update: Big ambitions, big hassles, as usual. They've been promoting the conventions strongly all year, but they've still had problems with organizing stuff. Stuff being late, stuff being overbooked, last minute changes, there's some people running around like headless chickens, trying to get everything done here. Will they pull it off? Will they put an optimistic spin on things no matter how badly it goes? Guess I'll have to wait for the aftermath. Let's put some Dr Dre on while we do so. Crank that bass, synchronised head nodding is go! Dragonmirth is speciesist again. Yamara tries to fool joe the cleric, another of her companions. Win some, lose some. Snarfquest is still all about the races. Our boardgames for Dragonlance and Buck Rogers are advertised in the back pages. How long before the magazine is forced to run articles on Buck Rogers products as well? A fairly average issue overall. From good to bad, they run the gamut. Should we leave or stay put? Hang around too long and we'll be late in the terminal sense. And then this'll never be complete. Turn the page, shut the door, and open up the next one.</blockquote>

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