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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4934743" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 143: March 1989 part 5/5The role of computers: For the first time in a while, a single product gets an epic review. Pool of Radiance is the AD&D computer game from SSI that they seem to be plugging most heavily in the magazine, and this column is no exception. This is quite understandable, as it's the closest they've come yet to replicating D&D in a computer adventure, and a big complex adventure to boot. They heap praise upon it, with the only real caveats being the way it rewards grindy behaviour, both in character generation and exploration, and the slow loading times on some systems. Buy it, and make sure we continue to have a job here <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" /> Although that's the only review, there's plenty of cool stuff mentioned in the previews. A game based on William Gibson's Neuromancer, complete with cyberjacking. Castlevania II reveals it's accursed self. Look forward to much frustration trying to solve it. Altered beast and R-type also are soon to be unleashed on gaming platforms aplenty. Wizardry is about to reach it's 5th installment. How will they find the space and time to review them all? Guess that's why the family works as a team. And they take the time to promote an open-source RPG platform, with lots of games available for virtually the price of a blank disk, and designing your own being relatively easy. Another thing that the net has really increased the frequency of, and ease of transmission. The better your networking capabilities, the more profitable pure sharing without asking for immediate reward becomes,  because you can absorb a few asses who take without contributing without ruining the system. The role of books: The dragonbone chair by Tad Wiliams aims at being a Big Important Book™.Thankfully, it's actually pretty good, both in worldbuilding and story. Whether it can keep the pretentiousness at bay for the rest of the trilogy is still in question, however. The labyrinth gate by Alis A Rasmussen is another one that combines lots of elements, but manages to make them feel seamless, more due to the characterisations than the plot. The will of the wanderer by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman tries to do too much, and fails to hold it all together. While the ideas are good, there's too many stories being told at once, and they don't interact very well, or give any clear right or wrong. Plus, arabian nights stylings are getting a bit overdone lately. Choose your milieus carefully, for oversaturation leads to crashes. Euryale by Kara Dalkey proves once again that she's a pretty versatile writer, in this story of the eponymous gorgon traveling to find a cure for her unfortunate tendency to turn people who see her to stone. Her wanderings take her to rome, which of course has lots of ancient lore collected, but also lots of complicated politics and people who want to use her for their own ends. This of course ends in nicely understated tragedy for them.  The horsegirl by Constance Ash is an interesting yet unsettling book, with incest, worrying plot twists, and lots of general messed-uppedness that the writer creates, and then leaves open for you to think about. Unless you share her fetishes, you may want to look elsewhere for enjoyable reading. Spellsingers, edited by Alan Bard Newcomer is (almost ludicrously appropriately for it's creators name) the start of an anthology series about Bards. It has a whole bunch of big writers, many of them regulars on the shared world circuit. A pretty good collection, it is nevertheless obviously compiled after the fact, so the main strength is in the writing rather than the editing and worldbuilding. Fool on the hill by Matt Ruff is a collection of tales set on a university campus bordering the realms of faerie. Stories within stories, narrative logic becoming reality, mythic creatures intruding into reality, it does get a bit meta, but can still be dramatic when it needs to be. A promising start for a young novelist. Dragonmirth has yet another bloody knight eating joke. That's getting rather cliche now. Yamara's team is reduced to two. That is not good. Snarf talks things over and comes to a compromise. You can't trust them. A strong issue, that is however very much of it's time. The edition change is right around the corner, and while the rules may not be changing hugely, the tone certainly will be. And the magazine is ahead of the times in this respect. Well, it's a lot better than being behind them. Will there be growing pains? Will there be drama? Will there be wackiness? Or will it be business as usual again pretty soon. In any case, it'll be business as usual on my end.</blockquote>

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