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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4920281" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 141: January 1989part 3/5Orcs throw spells too: From stealth to spellcasting. Although they can't match up to humans and elves, many of the humanoid races detailed can get rudimentary spellcasting abilities, more commonly priestly than wizardly. And even a couple of well chosen spells can seriously improve the odds of a whole team of monsters. Be rather thankful they're quite rare, given the lack of formal education in their societies. Quite a long article, this gives plenty of design and statistical advice, to help you build them, flesh out their religious practices, and customise them appropriately for their racial tendencies. Many of the gods have ridiculously strict advancement criteria, which is an amusing example of their self-defeating tendencies. All in all, this is a pretty good article, giving us lots of extra depth without overlapping previous material. Very handy. Boulder-throwers and humanoid hordes: Giants. The subject of the very first module series. Curiously, they're a race that is usually played as dumb, but can get quite substantial benefits from being played smart. This gives us tactics that are good for fightery races, thus completing the symmetry. They're quite good at ranged attacks, tremendously strong, and can often move faster than their foes. This means they can choose when they attack, and control the terrain. Much shorter than the last one, this still has plenty of neat tricks up it's sleeve, to help keep them challenging even once the PC's are loaded up with magic items and tricks, and remind you to vary the capabilities of your adversaries. Once again, pretty pleasing. Hey, wanna be a kobold?: Ahh, the joys of people opening up races to become PC's. Few things are sweeter, or more potentially destabilizing to game balance. But lets face it, kobolds are not overpowering at all. If you don't use your brains, they'll be rather weedy. Still, they're considerably better in terms of stats and abilities than gully dwarves, more versatile than half-ogres, and a lot more applicable to campaigns in general. This also includes the stats for orcs, goblins and xvarts. In general, they are rather less capable than they would be in 2nd edition, and it's pretty clear why they usually lose to the PC's, but they are good enough that you could still have a fun game with them incorporated. Definitely a good contribution here. Fiction: The ulfjarl's stone by Mickey Zucker Reichert. Ahh, the vikings. A decidedly ruthless culture in a lot of ways. The icy arctic snows require strong men to survive there, and even stronger ones to lead them. And often this requires a little more strength than simply prowess in battle. So here's a story that shows off the norse attitude to life, death, magic and riddles. Not connected to the issue's theme, but still fairly appropriate to it, this continues the fairly strong showing. Role-playing reviews:Megatraveller gets a rather long review, as befits a boxed set of this size. The reviewer seems considerably more impressed with this than they did with Traveller 2300. The advancements in timeline have made the setting rather more unstable, and as a result, there are considerably more adventure hooks wherever you may go. The career system is considerably expanded, with lots of the paths introduced in supplements (and this magazine) incorporated and they finally have a decent in play advancement system. Some bits are simple, some bits are possibly still a bit too complex and clunky, but as a whole, it's considerably better than previous editions. GURPS Space gets a rather shorter review. Obviously, since it's a generic sourcebook to help you build your own settings, it isn't even trying to compete on that front. This just gives you lots of rules and example stats for creatures and objects. It does so in the usual clear and concise way, with well designed rules. No great surprises here.</blockquote>

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