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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5038662" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 162: October 1990part 4/6Fiction: A prayer for the dead by Deborah Millitello. Still in theme here as well. They must have no shortage of horror submissions, with Ravenloft drawing in even more writers from that field. This is a ghost story of passion, misdeeds and vengance, where an undead horror needs laying to rest, and the townsfolk are not being entirely honest about the causes. It's going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, but the ending is a happy one, without being saccharine. Another quite likable bit of fiction.Novel ideas: Probably one of the trickiest, but potentially most rewarding part of the book department is figuring out what books to publish outside the established gaming fiction ones. They don't have an established name to give them guaranteed sales, but on the other hand, they don't have an established logo putting off casual browsers. So they're the ones that really need promotion if they're to recoup their costs and reach an appreciative audience. So more free adverts for other parts of the company here. :sigh: Outbanker by Timothy Madden, a sci-fi cowboy adventure. The road west by Gary Wright sees a highly trained ranger face problems both inner and outer. And The alien dark by Diana Gallagher stars cat/bear aliens looking for a new planet to call home. Okey dokey then. Once more, this is mostly promotion, with a bit of behind the scenes stuff about the writer and how they made the book. This is rapidly coming to replace Giants in the earth as the most kickable regular article in the magazine. It's neither useful nor particularly entertaining. Once again I sigh. The marvel-phile: Oh dear god. Dracula II: Daughter of Dracula. The schlock factor, it is through the roof. The engines cannae handle it cap'n! So Marvel is working hard to shake off the remaining vestiges of the comics code, and one of these is bringing back all the vampires, making the world a little darker and bloodier. Lilith <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> the daughter of dracula, cursed with eternal life by gypsies and trying to make unlife miserable for her dad down the generations. Family, eh? Who'd have one? Cheesecake outfit, cliches galore, yup, this has a very distinctive style that it's rather hard to take seriously. Get the whips out boys, we're goin' vampire hunting, and there may be flying medusa heads involved. The game wizards: Yet more horror stuff, as they promote Ravenloft some more. Actually, this is a pretty close rehash of one of the articles from last month, only slanted towards horror. The big thing about horror is keeping things surprising. So you've gotta switch things around, and keep them mysterious. Obfuscate details, exaggerate, never use proper names, keep throwing curveballs. Not bad advice, but yeah, oh so very done last month, only with less pretentiousness. This is the kind of thing the editors should catch and screen out. Once again this column seems to be largely a mouthpiece to drive more sales for their products, and the entertainment aspects ring a little false. Bleh. Still, at least it's better than Novel Ideas. <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" /></blockquote>

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