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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4915368" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 140: December 1988part 4/5The game wizards: Jim Ward decides to do exactly the same thing he did this time last year, and use this column as a way of letting you know about their biggest projects for the next year. Best laid plans, and all that. I wonder how many of them will actually arrive when he says they will. January gives us a second Tom Clancy licensed boardgame, Red Storm Rising. He seems to be quite the flavour of the month.  Dragonlance starts a new module series, DLE1: In search of dragons kicks of a trilogy of new discoveries. Once again, the big flying lizards take centre stage. If you can find them. Amazing how good things that big are at hiding. February sees the Forgotten realms statting out lots of it's NPC's, in Hall of Heroes. If editorials are anything to go by, expect huge chunks of them to not be PC legal. Meanwhile, Top Secret kicks off it's own epic module trilogy to compete with Gamma World's. Welcome to the Web of Deceit. In March, 2nd edition finally starts to arrive. This time, it's the players handbook that's first out the gate. Doug Niles also finishes his moonshae trilogy, with Darkwell. Will there be McGrimDarkness™ involved? <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=";)" /> April sees dragonlance go prequelific with the start of a new trilogy. See how the stars got to where they are. Well, quite a few of the main characters died in the first trilogy, so this is the only way they can satisfy fan cravings without divisive resurrections. Watch out for continuity errors. It also sees the return of Tom Wham, with the Great Khan Game. What tricks do you have up your sleeve to solve this one? May will hopefully see the new DMG arrive. All the errors taken out, rewritten for clearness, better looking, less flavour. Also revised and expanded is the Dungeon! boardgame. Been quite a while since we heard anything on that. How will it fare in a market quite different to the one it was born in. A new boardgame, High-Rise, seems to be trying to tap into the monopoly/sim city market. And Buck Rogers starts getting novels, courtesy of our great CEO, (roll of thunder, stab of organ music) and her brother. June completes the new edition with the first monstrous compendium. A ton of loose leaf sheets, so as they add to them, you can put everything in a single file in alphabetical order. Course, for that to work, you'd need every monster to have it's own double page spread. Shoulda thought that one through a bit more carefully.  <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" />  Marvel superheroes also gets revised for clarity and released in it's own boxed set. And our non-rehashed release this month is Cities of Mystery. Another one with lotsa bits to cut out and put together yourself. Don't see much of those anymore. July's biggest releases are a pair of boxed sets. AD&D gets Greyhawk city, while D&D receives Dawn of the Emperors. Another onslaught of setting detail, including all kinds of odd little bits and pieces you couldn't put in a book.   August sees the 2nd ed supplement mill kick up a gear, with the second monstrous compendia. There's a hellofa lot of monsters that need updating, so the gaps between releases are shrinking. Another quirky release are the Dragonlance Trail Maps. In a push to make their setting seem more real, they're releasing maps in the same format as real world ones. Slim fold-out things you can stick in your jacket pocket. Just the thing for if you stumble through a magic portal unexpectedly. <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=";)" />  In September, the first 2nd ed specific setting is unleashed upon us. And quite a doozy it is too. Spelljammer! AD&D in Spaaaaace! Take that, unadventurous naysayers! On the less imaginative side, we have a second volume of compiled D&D art. Guess more people bought the first one than you'd expect. October gives us a proper Dragonlance boxed set. They try some more to make it a full world, rather than just a backdrop to a specific set of adventures. Marvel super-heroes continues to rack up the supplements as well. November has something old and something new as well. The Battlesystem is revised for the new edition, now written to be more easy to understand and focussed upon using minis to represent your battles. Far more important though, is the Complete Fighters Manual. Welcome to the birth of kits, and the rise of the splatbooks. :dramatic music: None shall be spared! You will be customized! December gives us another splatbook straight off the bat, with thieves getting their turn next. After all, it's the non-spellcasters that need more differentiation the most. The others'll get their turn soon enough.They also finish off the Dragonlance prequels. That is, if they can get them written in time. Eh, Tracey and Margaret have proved up to the job before. And now they have more writing experience. Why shouldn't they be able to pull it off. Whew. I'm exhausted just reading all that. And it's just a fraction of their total output. Just think how hard the team must be working to produce this much. No time to waste here. An assortment of knives: Weapon porn has always been part of D&D. Having dozens of different kinds of polearms stretches right back to the strategic review. But so far, knives and daggers have managed to be passed by for bigger and more impressive looking weaponry. No more. Now you can choose from 7 new varieties of knife, each with their own little nuances of damage, speed and cost. Apart from throwing knives, which can be rather scary if you have a nice bandolier full of them, thanks to their high RoF, (Magic missile? Hah. They call me Brett Riverboat.) these don't seem particularly unbalanced. So another bit of power creep by increasing breadth of options. Meh.</blockquote>

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