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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5005514" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 156: April 1990part 6/6The role of computers:Champions of Krynn gets a 5 star rating, filling the reviewers with sadistic pleasure as they use Kender to taunt the enemies, getting them to perform tactically unwise actions. It uses lots of other dragonlance stuff integrally as well, including the moon phases, Knights of solamnia, gods, etc. As Jim Ward noted earlier this issue, it's bloody hard right from the start, so optimization will be rewarded. Most of this turns into advice on how to play the game, and I suspect we may see more of that in future issues. Sounds like the designers know what they're doing. Harpoon is a naval simulator, and also gets 5 stars. Very simulationist, with lots of freedom in how you act, and the potential for supplements with new scenarios and stuff, it seems well suited for lovers of those Tom Clancy novels. Populous: The promised lands is an add-on to the ironically popular game. A whole bunch of new cultural options, including wild west and lego. Once again, they have great fun, giving it 5 stars. They are in a good mood today. Risk: The world conquest game is a 4th 5 starer in a row. It's pretty faithful to the board game, only faster and easier to keep track of, of course. Little comment needed. Tiger Road is a fairly decent conversion of the arcade game. They give a whole load of play advice in this review as well. Interesting trend. I wonder why. Manhunter 2: San francisco gets unrated because the mac port sucks. Stick to the PC version. Blah. The voyage of the princess ark: Our charming commander once again proves himself to be both devious and a master of understatement. Nearly sunk by a massive storm, captured by the heldanic knights, treated to the classic villainous monologue, contingency triggered time stopping his way out of there. Stealing the body of a god, hiding it on another plane, and then using it as a negotiating chip to escape from the treacherous knights and rescue the rest of the crew. All in a few casual diary lines. One has to wonder if he's exaggerating here. After all, this is a diary entry, and he's certainly not an omniscient narrator. Could he be embelishing his deeds for posterity to paint himself in a better light? Very good question. Maybe we'll get some clues later on, but for now, he's our only source of info. This month's crunch is of course info on the heldanic knights, who are an excelent example of how chaotic=evil is a common association in BD&D land, with a strong organization and loyalty to it demonstrated despite their alignment. They also seem able to cast cleric spells while not adhering to the usual weapon restrictions clerics have to deal with. I guess that differentiating priests of different gods was well established in AD&D, so it's not that surprising. But it will probably result in players either complaining, or wanting to play one. Maybe not the smartest move on Bruce's part.  The ecology of the behir: What do you get if you cross a blue dragon with a centipede? No, it's not a joke, because the answer is something like this. Whether that's how they really came about, (we know dragons are omnisexual pervs.) wizardly experimentation strikes again, or it's merely a co-incidence is not revealed. That they have variants for other climates that do not directly correspond to other dragon colours is a mild negative to this theory. The providing of detailed stats for their various stages of growth seems to be on the up, as they do so for the 3rd time in 4 ecologies, and once again, they talk about training the creature. (futile task, really. Stick to things smaller than people.) Anyway, this is one with fairly average fiction, but pretty good footnotes, giving us plenty of detail about their lifecycle and little mechanical extras for you to slot into your game. Noncontroversial and useful. No problem with that. Dragonmirth has several different types of release this month. Ralph gets evil in Yamara. The twilight empire: A new comic, it seems. Yamara's been all on her ownsome for too long. We get thrown in in media res, and the protagonist is seriously off-guard. Ends after a cliffhanger. What is going to happen here. Will the comic stick around long enough for the plot to get anywhere? We shall see. The artwork is pretty damn good, in any case. A rather better issue than the last few. With plenty of stuff that's actually funny, and some pretty good articles unconnected to the theme as well, this managed to satisfy me. The upper management may be trying to push them to promote the companies products at every point possible, but there's still plenty of writers who's primary goal is making our games better. And as long as that's the case, there'll still be some worthwhile issues for me to delve into. Onto the next one.</blockquote>

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