Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4970237" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 150: October 1989part 5/5The role of computers: Populous! Simulating godly machinations since 1989. Now there's a game for you. Empower your followers, get more worshippers, kick the butt of the other gods followers and take over the world. Can be played against the computer, or online against a real person. Muahaha. A direct ancestor of Black and White, this is one I remember. They give it a five star review too. Now that's why God would actually hate RPG's if he were real and anything like the old testament god. Puny mortals pretending to have my station? Hubris! Smite them! Axe of Rage is an arcade fighter/platformer. Take the role of a male or female barbarian, and hack and slash your way through all sorts of beasties real and fantastical. Enjoy the gore, and collect items so you can hack and slash even better. Sounds rather familiar, really. Hidden Agenda is a game of political management in a fictional south american country. Pick your ministers, and try and balance the interests of the ridiculous number of power blocs to stay popular, while dealing with unexpected crises. Tricky, but probably a lot easier than real politics, especially if you read the guidebook. Gauntlet's mac version only allows for two players at a time, not the 4 player dungeon-crawling extravaganza certain other platforms support. Still, most of the other elements seem to be in place, including the endlessly respawning monsters. We're really getting into familiar territory now.  Interestingly, they start a new section, Dragon Bytes, featuring mini reviews sent in by Joe Q Public. Well, they've been doing it in the clue corner for a while. And it does mean less work for them. Trust and betrayal, the legacy of Sibot is another very different game of diplomacy and second guessing your opponents. You play a psychic, and have to use various mental powers with rock-paper-scissors relationships to one-another to beat them. The talks before the battle, where you try and figure out their capabilities and preferred tactics are a crucial part of the game.  Sounds like poker players would do well with this one.  Barbarian gets a rather sketchy review. Sure you've got to kill the monsters and save the kingdom, but is it top down? side scroller? first person? Arcade, roleplaying? I am not feeling very informed. Makes me wonder if this little experiment is worth it and going to catch on. Darkest secrets: Top Secret's article this month is about the idea of PC's having hidden advantages and flaws. One of those things that has become fairly well known since then, with BESM being probably their most notable user. But this is the first time I've seen them in the magazine, so it's another fairly innovative bit of design tech at this point. And the idea of getting greater power in exchange for enabling some interesting plot surprises along the line can seem like a win-win situation for many people. So this is a rather cool article, in an issue that is proving to be full of good ideas, pushing things forward. And Roger sneaks in another amusing reference to the fact he has the same name as a certain film star. If they keep this up, this issue will well live up to it's big number. A final frontier of our own: An article for star trek as well? We haven't seen this many non D&D articles in a single issue since the ARES section ended. This is a rather long one too, bringing the usual campaign building advice to the rather specific future and tropes of the Star Trek universe and narrative conventions. You don't want to end up like some of the so-called official books, which mangle the characterizations and don't follow the tone. <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" /> You need a strong ensemble, but you also need an actual chain of command, with the other PC's (usually) deferring to the person playing the captain. Unlike the shows, you can have your characters not being the big people in charge, at least at first, and advancing through the ranks as the campaign progresses. You can also change the ship as well, upgrading as they become more experienced, or giving them a tricky mission using something smaller to shake them from complacency. Advice on handling death (ah, the redshirts and officers distinction. ) the various races, the prime directive, roleplaying  in the star trek universe, and lots of other stuff is examined in plenty of depth, and several examples from the writer's own campaign as well, which earns him a few extra marks. One of the freshest and most in depth articles of this sort in a long time.       Once again, a very pleasing read. Unspeakable secrets made easy: Dean Shomshak gets a second CoC article published in the same issue. He is doing well for himself and the game. This is about the proper application of eldritch sanity imperiling texts in your game. If you make up a new one every session, then players don't have a chance to develop the proper dread of them, because they can't even keep track of them. Far better to have a few new ones, plus the old familiars that the players can really get their dread on over, and dole them out conservatively. It keeps the players from getting jaded, and their characters from going mad too quickly. He also gives his own examples, quite possibly from his own campaign. Yet another solid birdie, this is a good reminder that pacing is crucial to a campaign. You can't be all shiny, top volume and full speed the whole time or people will get fatigued and bored, and quit. The music industry is learning it to their chagrin, and gaming needs to remember it too. Dragonmirth mocks flumphs. Well, all the cool kids are doing it. Poor flumphs. Yamara takes on a commission from some decidedly mysterious and dubious patrons, to retrieve a decidedly dubious looking device. Although not as big a step outwards in scope or spectacular in terms of celebrations as issue 100, this has managed to be a very good issue, with both the classic D&D articles, and the far greater than normal number of non D&D ones. After a year that has been very short on both of those, this has been nicely refreshing. Chances are, like that issue, it'll be an outlier rather than an indicator of future directions, but it was still fun. Let's press onward. Issue 200 is waiting, and I know that's an even more spectacular one than this. The big question is just how long and rocky the road between will be.</blockquote>

Verification