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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5072631" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991part 3/6Role-playing reviews skips the roleplaying bit, and just does reviews, under the pretext of giving us something to do when the DM cancels abruptly. If you can't play the regular game, but a load of people are already there, you need a quick pick-me-up. A bit cheeky, but a very valid consideration. Dungeon! is TSR's own attempt at stripping down D&D to a competitive multiplayer boardgame. It was actually made right back in the 70's, and got a few mentions in the early magazine before slipping into obscurity. It's been rereleased, but Ken doesn't seem overly enthused about the whole thing. While not bad, it's a bit too simplistic for him, and doesn't have much replay value. There are better competitors around these days. The great khan game is rather more sophisticated, with Tom Wham's particular sense of humour and naming tendencies strongly noticable. It's probably not for novice players, but the rules do support plenty of depth once unraveled. This shows up the difference between organic and calculated design processes. Heroquest is of course the game that brought Games Workshop's grim world where chaos is rising to the mainstream market. It's another good example of how to make games visually appealing and incredibly easy to learn without being patronising, and rake in the cash in response. It is a bit simple for Ken, with it's limited advancement options and rather weak enemies, but I guess that's what the Advanced version is for. Still, if you want a gateway drug for young relatives, this very much fits the bill. It also has quite a few supplements, jacking up the challenge and adding new minis. I have quite a few fond memories of this. Space crusade has quite a few parallels with Heroquest, but is a more sophisticated game, with the blip system and mission objectives adding quite a lot of tactical consideration and replayability to the game. Like Heroquest, it get gets plenty of support in White Dwarf magazine, has great visual presentation, and plays a substantial part in making Games Workshop the juggernaut it has become. Dungeonquest is a conversion of a swedish game. The theme seems pretty familiar. Get in, get the treasure from the dragon and get out alive. With randomly generated dungeons, it's good for solitaire play, and nicely brutal. He actually prefers it to the more mass market games. Arkham horror attempts to do for Call of Cthuhu what Dungeon does for D&D. It gets critically acclaimed by ken, but doesn't seem to be able to match these others for commercial success, having just gone out of print. Which is a bit lame, but such is life. Good luck finding it on ebay. Got all the 7 monstrous compendia released so far? Send off this form to get a rebate. Isn't that nice of us. The voyage of the princess ark: The Ark finishes reconfiguring itself this month. However, it takes a whole week of IC time to do it, in which Haldemar and co think they've lost her. So they set off on foot through the jungle, and once again get themselves in deep trouble with the natives. All's well that ends well though, as Berylith saves them. Now if Haldemar can just get over the shock, everything'll be cool again. The majority of this article is taken up by the new deck plans of the Ark, and their description. And it is both odd in several respects, and very impressive indeed, with a detached levitating section, magical elevators and teleportation circles, personal gravity to allow for spectacular acrobatics without everything inside getting bashed around, cloaking, plenty of weaponry and security measures, all wrapped inside a pretty aesthetically pleasing package. Or in other words, DROOL!! WANT!!! This is the kind of thing that will make you the envy of other adventuring groups, and a quite possibly a target for enemies, but hey, at high levels, you need lots of XP to advance, and suitable dungeons are not always easy to find. Let them challenge you. Then you get to blow them out of the sky in a spectacular arial dogfight, bombard their armies on the ground, root out their infiltrators and assassins, and generally prove just how awesome this thing is. Rock.</blockquote>

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