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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4898643" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 138: October 1988part 4/5The end of the world: A slightly hyperbolic title. This isn't about inflicting a full-on apocalypse, but the kind of thing which "merely" wipes out around half of the population like the plague, and how it would impact on your campaign. There's plenty of room for adventures before, during and in the aftermath of this, and it's a good way to shake up a game that's getting dull. The players may not be able to save everyone, but they can certainly make a substantial difference on a local scale. Keep them guessing as to if they'll be infected, if they are, if they'll die, and play up all the dramas that sweep a community when people start dying and there's no apparent control over it. A very specific article, concentrating on the specifics of the historical plagues rather than extrapolating to a fantasy world, with all the ways magic affects society incorporated. Still, I'm having no trouble working outwards and thinking of variants on this idea, so hopefully you won't either. This is certainly a form of horror they haven't tackled before, so even though it's not perfect, it definitely has my interest. This has easily been the second best themed issue under Roger's run so far. Lets see if the nonthemed bits can also bring the awesome. Putting fire into firepower: Top Secret gets another way out of date article, with info on lasers for the old edition. Despite being invented only a couple of decades ago, they're already ubiquitous in sci-fi settings. They don't actually make that brilliant weapons, due to atmospheric attenuation and lack of collateral damage making them fairly inefficient in terms of cost/damage ratio. And indeed, this article tries not to stray too far from reality, forging you to wear a ghostbusters sized power pack to operate one portably, and featuring lots of crunchy details about charging times, the difference based on the type of gas used in the canister, and rather high chances of malfunction. This manages to make something inherently awesome dull, and is definitely intended for those who prefer the older more gritty game style.  How very tiresome. TMNT goes transdimensional. As with the australian sourcebook, this seems entirely appropriate to the source material. Fiction: Between lightning and thunder by Nancy Varian Berberick. A rather melancholy story, combining the sadness of a declining race, the horrors of war, and the rather more banal horrors of bullying into a seamless whole, and saying that sometimes there may be no good answers, but you should still try and go on living, because suicide is an even worse choice. Hey ho. Not sure if I like this one, as it has good goals, but approaches them in a slightly after-school special kinda way. Still, it's an interesting one, that isn't all flashy heroics, so that counts for quite a bit. I think that I approve, overall. The role of computers: Star command is a sci-fi roleplaying game. Like the more common fantasy ones, you build a team of characters from a selection of classes, and then do some asskicking, which is both ship based and hand-to hand in this case, and level up your characters and ships. It's more than big enough to accommodate months of play. They both recommend this, and give you quite a bit of play advice. Questron II is a 3D adventure. It gets a rather short and vague review that assumes you are already familiar with the first game in the series. Bards tale III balances familiar locations with drastic changes to the world, as you need to beat the new big bad before he completely mucks things up. There are plenty of new character classes, but you can also use your old ones from previous games. While it does what it does well, the reviewers have recently been spoiled by games where you can negotiate with your enemies, and the pure combat gets tiresome to them. Ho hum. Power at sea is another one that gets repetitive after a while. A naval simulator where you control a fleet of ships, there's only so much you can do tactically, particularly where landings are involved. Not that they actively dislike it, but it doesn't have huge amounts of replayability. Shanghai is a computerised version of Mah-jong. No great surprises here, but like chess, this is a game you can spend a lifetime mastering, particularly when playing two player. Combined with the good graphics and ease of learning, they give it 5 stars. Wooden ships and iron men, on the other hand, should have stayed a boardgame, getting a snarkily negative review. Just don't buy it.</blockquote>

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