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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5029141" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 160: August 1990part 5/6Super jobs for super talents: Rather than a marvel article this month, they choose to have a system free bit of roleplaying advice suitable for any supers game. This is another one of those ones that tries to inject a little more realism and logical consequences into your superhero gaming. Questions of human rights, international treaties governing the treatment of use of powers and treatments of captured supervillains, This kind of thing has been on the rise for some time now, and this pushes forward that agenda decently, with a bunch of speculations, adventure hooks, and sample setting details for you to draw upon. Course, another thing that's on the rise is railroading, and the writer has some very definite "proper" solutions for his scenarios, and doesn't want players with inconvenient powers short-circuiting them. This adds up to another interesting but irritating article that needs a bit of customisation to your own campaign and the players involved before you can use it. Oh, the hassle of writing for characters who actually have a little power. My media empire for someone who can do it consistently and still make fun stories. Novel ideas: The Buck Rogers line is the subject of a little more promotion here. We see how much the upper management are actually paying attention to this one, with Lorraine, Flint and Mike Pondsmith all contributing quotes. The book series is if anything, more important than the gaming side, because that's where they're really going for the mass market penetration, to match the old comics and TV show. This is not to say they're not trying for consistent worldbuilding as well, attempting to put some hard sci-fi speculation and strong continuity into the old pulp stories. This attempt to do everything may be half the problem with the line in the first place. When management is giving out all sorts of tricky and somewhat contradictory orders at once, but not explaining how to carry them out, things become tremendously stressful for the actual writers, and it shows through in the actual products. Another interesting indicator of exactly why tensions were running high in the TSR offices around this period. What are we to make of this. It does make me wonder how things would have been different if the line had been a success, and continued rather than being cancelled a little while later. Certainly a topic worth speculating on. What effect did Buck's flopping have on Flint and Lorraine, and their approach to the company in general? The game wizards: Ravenloft came out a couple of months ago. Might as well slip in a little more promotion. Andria Hayday tries to set the mood by telling us how it got under her skin during the writing process, alone late at night in the TSR offices with the wind whistling around the windows. Frightened? I think I might die from sheer cliche overload. The way the descriptions are done is a very definite reminder that horror has a rather larger proportion of female readers than straight fantasy. (Indeed, I suspect that's why it gets it's own section in the bookstores, while fantasy and sci-fi get lumped together for the browser to figure out what's which.) Mixing attraction and revulsion, romance and the threat of violation seems to be a formula that works, and I can understand why, even if it's not one of my personal kinks. Anyway, this is another attempt to make promotion entertaining, with mixed results. But it's given us an interesting conversational topic, so that's ok. TSR Previews: Lankhmar takes pole position this time, unusually. LNR1: Wonders of Lankhmar. A book full of short adventures. How will they differ from the several books of generic short D&D adventures already out? The forgotten realms, once again, is getting more products and faster than any other world. David Cook delivers The Horde boxed set, the centrepiece of this year's metaplot maneuverings. Welcome to fantasy mongolia. See the sights, meet interesting new creatures, and get killed by the long harsh miserable trek between interesting locations. R A Salvadore, on the other hand, is staying well clear of this mess. Drizzt proved the most popular character in his first trilogy, so he gets a prequel trilogy on his origins in, and escape from the dark city of menzoberanzan. Mmm. 'cesty. (Unfortunately true.) Part one is called Homeland. Dragonlance is continuing to get more novels and other spin-offs than actual gaming products. What's with that? The Gates of Thobardin by Dan Parkinson sees the dwarves bickering again. Can someone find the legendary helm and unite them? D&D is still in a roman mood, in DDA2: Legions of thyatis. Following directly on from DDA1, this should keep your players busy for a few more sessions. Marvel Superheroes gives us the second module in it's gritty street level trilogy MLA2: Night Moves. Noo yoik is having gang wars? Par for the course back then. What do you expect us to do about it? And finally, we have Battle of Britain, another fun little wargame. Another fairly self-explanatory name. Fly planes! Bomb buildings! Hide in air raid shelters! Listen to inspirational speeches. Or something like that, anyway. Oh, and first power play apparently got delayed a month, because here it is again. Silly shippers. Never mind.</blockquote>

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