Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5006351" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 157: May 1990part 1/6116 pages. Another thing that I knew was coming and dreaded comes to pass. Buck Rogers gets an RPG. Which means the TSR staff are obliged to put him on the cover and give him a special issue with lots of articles devoted to him. Curse you, Lorrane Williams :shakes fist: This could get ugly. Are you ready to face it with me? In this issue:Letters: A letter from the new owners of the Timemaster game, letting everyone know it's back if you want to buy it. Another person asking for help playing paladins properly. It's not hard, you know. The more restrictions they put, the easier your choices become. A letter pointing out that there are several better magazines for those of you who want to learn how to sculpt and paint better miniatures. It's only a tiny part of Dragon's remit, but a big part of some companies livelihoods. A letter from someone pissed off at the attempt to pass norkers off as ogres. It's not quite as obvious as the goblin/kobold switchup in Dragon Mountain and the Monster Manual, but still, lazy art recycling is lazy art recycling. Your disdain is entirely justified. Dragonstrike. The first ever dragon combat simulator? Looks like a reskinned flying sim to me. You'll have to do better than that to impress me. Into the 25th century: Hmm. Looks like Kim Mohan is back on board. Now that is interesting. What happened to working for Gary? New Infinities folds, and he comes crawling back. Anyway, this sees him selling the new game, both it's setting and system. It's pretty similar to AD&D, so don't worry too much about that. There's plenty of room to adventure in, with plot hooks ready to go; lots of cool gadgetry, spaceship combat, pretty maps, cards containing iconic info, a GM screen, the works. It even has dice, so n00bs lured in by the name can get straight to playing. It all sounds pretty comprehensive, when you put it like that. But then, putting all those shinies in the boxed set costs lots of money, so that'll bump up the losses the company makes from all those unsold products. They're certainly pushing this one harder than they did Top Secret or Star Frontiers. Did our evil overmistress give the core a print run to match? In any case, this would be an interesting development even if I didn't know the context behind it. As I do, it stands out a little more against the D&D heavy backdrop of the current magazine. Buck is back!: A second, shorter promotional piece, focussing on all the other multimedia products Buck is going to appear in in the near future. A series of comics. A computer game. Another trilogy of novels. And a whole load of supplements for the RPG. If you were a Buck fanatic, this would eat up a big chunk of your disposable income. There is a bit of an overlap with the last one, but this is a pretty short, no-nonsense piece that doesn't really give me any hooks to actively hate on. Ho hum. A rather unthrilling start indeed. On we go, let's see if they've got anything else to say apart from "We've got cool stuff coming out! Buy it!"Chamber of the sci-mutant priestess? Now there's a name straight out of the pulp random title generator.  And the protagonist of the game is called Raven? And a mutant monkey thing is carrying a scantily clad girl on the cover? To the clichemobile! Buck Rogers flies solo: Ed Greenwood joins in to deliver the only article in this special that actually gives us anything we can actually use, rather than just being promotion. This is for the boardgame, and reminds me of the optional rules stuff he did for Divine Right, a good decade ago now. Basically just a set of behaviours for the enemy players if you want to play a solo game, this seems to have his usual combination of clever quirkiness, and plenty of options to allow you to boost your replay value. You'll probably win, but the big question is how well, with the margins he gives between resounding victory and failure fairly narrow. Hopefully that means he's playtested this a few times and has a good idea how it turns out. As with much of the non D&D stuff, I'm forced to ask the floor if this actually worked, but this is still easily the most interesting and useful part of this rather drab themed section. They really did struggle to get up enough stuff to really justify calling it that.</blockquote>

Verification