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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5062706" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 166: February 1991part 5/6Role-playing reviews: Welcome to the kitchen sink! <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" /> Yes, this month's RPG's take the concept of strict adherence to genre and laugh at it, throwing in all manner of stuff, with room for further expansion and adding odd bits and pieces from nearly any source. Now that's definitely an amusing development. There are now several games taking that approach, competing for your gaming dollars. Let's see which one Jim prefers.  TORG gets a fairly good review. The conceit used to explain why the world has been turned into a multi-genre mash-up, and the PC's are superhuman (or at least, super lucky) is actually quite a clever one, allowing you tons of room to create your own plots, while also providing a theoretical overarching campaign goal that could be achieved eventually. The system is nicely open-ended in terms of power scaling, and handles large groups of creatures quickly and easily, while the Drama Deck and the dramatic editing (with neat IC explanation ) provides the cinematics. There are a few clunky bits, and the artwork could be better, but overall, it looks like a good deal of fun, that can be played in lots of different ways, or mined to create settings based on the individual genres incorporated. Which aspects would you like to emphasize? Rifts gets a somewhat less positive review. The system is clunky and poorly explained, with little logic to how sections are ordered, and the enormous gap between regular creatures and things with Mega Damage causes some serious problems in terms of structuring fights. Looks like Palladium are already starting to fall behind in terms of design finesse. Still, they have many years of regionbooks and other stuff for this world to come, so it goes to show, system quality is not a huge indicator of success. Novel ideas: A fairly formulaic entry here, as they inform us about the new novels they have coming up by talking about the people behind them. We've already seen stuff on Jeff Swycaffer and Mary Herbert, now say hello to L. Dean James, Michael C. Staudinger, Damaris Cole, and Robert B. Kelly. Course, since all 6 are crammed into less than 2 pages, to say there's not much depth would be an understatement. They do need to promote their standalone novels the most, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to sell people on them. Oh, if only I could think of a better way. But then, if I could, I'd be the one making millions. Sigh. Forum: Christine Wellman contributes a long and fairly amusing letter which touches upon character stereotyping, the alignment system, and the sexual proclivities (or not) of halflings in idiosyncratic manner. This is indeed quite enjoyable to read about. Remember, individuals can have quirks that go against the bulk of their alignment without it tipping them all the way to another one. Rob Williams talks about finding the optimum challenge level to keep players interested and enjoying the game. It's most fun when adventures are challenging, but the players eventually win, and feel they've actually achieved something. Similarly, resurrection is best used when the death was arbitrary and not the player's fault. If they were genuinely dumb, they should also reap the rewards of that and learn from the experience. Jeremiah Lynch also talks about how hard he thinks you should make resurrection. Again, tricky, but possible if they really work at it seems to be the standard here. Craig Hardie complains about the people who are overreliant on using the existing campaign worlds for their RPG's. Whatever happened to your creativity? Even if you do use existing stuff, adapt it, make it your own. Otherwise everyone who's read the book will know all the answers. Jeremy Bargen thinks that the psychological changes a lich goes through thanks to undeath are more severe than Erik Martella does. I think this is one instance where I'd rather have it vary widely from individual to individual. Alan Grimes reasserts his points against Dan Howarth's criticism. Computers are no-where near as good as real DM's for roleplaying against. So there. I suspect you may be talking at each other, rather than too. Steven Zamboni picks holes in the astral taxi service in issue 159. Despite it's power, there are some quite substantial holes in their defenses, and githyanki are scary fast on the astral anyway, able to hit and run to wear them down quite effectively. And then there's the moral issue of using harvested brains as slaves to power your items. Even if they are evil, that isn't going to endear you to anyone. Hmm. Now I want to run actual combat simulations, see just how those ships actually fare against the various high level challenges mentioned. It'll definitely be interesting if this one is responded too by the original author.</blockquote>

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