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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5086955" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 170: June 1991part 4/6Chill once again beats white wolf to the punch with a lycanthropes sourcebook. Still, it's not who gets there first that really counts, it's who gets there best. The role of computers: King's Quest V demonstrates that it's about time computers moved to CD's as their primary game distribution method, as putting a 12 mb game over 10 floppy disks sounds rather like torture to me, from both a coder and loader PoV. Still, all this data is reflected in the visuals, which do look pretty good for their time. Seems like a fairly standard point and click adventure game, in hindsight. Computer games have many more joys to show us in the future, as they grow ever more sophisticated. Rise of the Dragon is another adventure game, this time a cyberpunk one where you play a hard-bitten PI who was kicked off the force for being a loose cannon. With action, talky bits, and movie-esque narrative devices, it appeals to them, and gets 5 stars. Space: 1889 sees another RPG property converted to computer game form. It's certainly not just D&D that's jumping on that bandwagon. The sound is a bit crap, but the storyline isn't bad. The big problem is telling all the NPC's apart, which does slow down investigations quite a bit. So be prepared for frustrating situations where you have everything but one piece of the puzzle, and have to grind for that. Dragon kings: Nothing to do with dark sun, I'm afraid. Still, another boardgame as the magazine's centrepiece rarely goes amiss, especially since it's both a C. C. Stoll one and in theme with the issue. Unfortunately, as with the last one, they forget to include the board in the scanning, making it once again useless to me. Seems like whoever scanned the archive is becoming less and less meticulous about peripherals and proper indexing and searchability as they go on. Which is understandable since they had to do 257 of them and the later issues are a lot bigger, but still damn annoying from a reader viewpoint. All the more so when the rules seem pretty good, giving you a decent terrain for up to 4 clans of dragons to have a real battle royale, sustaining and recovering from horrible wounds. If anyone still has this lying around in their collection, I'd strongly appreciate being able to get my hands on a scan of the board & pieces. Until then, I leave this case open. TSR Previews: The Forgotten Realms sees Ed doing a little rehash, a little new material in Drow of the Underdark. Browsing my copy of this is a very different experience now I see just how much of this stuff appeared in bits in this magazine, some of it a good decade ago now. We also see the start of this year's trilogy. Last year, they did mongols. This time it's off to Anauroch for some desert nomady fun in The Parched Sea, part one of the harpers trilogy. Troy Denning continues to produce both game and novel material prolifically. Spelljammer is also mixing the two sides of publishing. Nigel Findley creates SJR4: Practical planetology. Lots of ideas on how to create your own world. Sounds fairly invaluable, if something like an extended version of an article here. It also gets it's first novel. Beyond the moons, part 1 of the cloakmaster cycle by David Cook. As is often the case, a normal guy from a normal planet (well, Krynn <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" />) is thrown into very weird situations. Just the way to sucker new people in. Lankhmar is still getting a decent amount of attention as well. LNR2: Tales of Lankhmar has 7 more mini-adventures. Seems that's their preferred format for this world, paralleling the original short stories. And finally, D&D gets a new introductory module for those who recently picked up the new basic set to grab. DDA3: Eye of Traladar. Just how easy and dumbed down will this one be? The marvel-phile: They're Baaaaaaack. Not that surprising really, in a comic universe. The grim reaper has probably fitted a revolving door where heaven's gates used to be. Still, they don't always escape unscathed. Cameron Hodge, for example, has gone from a normal person with some unsavoury beliefs to an indestructible insane disembodied head with a cyborg body. (who is likely to be even more insane next time, after his method of ambulation was destroyed again, and he got buried. ) Speaking of the Grim Reaper, the Marvel version of him is back, stronger than ever, courtesy of Nekra, and equally reduced in sanity. Well, villains don't get buds offering up inspirational speeches to snap them out of their traumas. A good reminder that while comics may get a lot of flak for their frequent use of the reset button, there are some changes that stick, and these are generally the cool ones. Getting rid of the ones that prove unpopular is probably good for their long-term commercial survival. It's also a good demonstration how comic book changes are rarely as linear as character advancement in RPG's, with some substantial respecing taking place, and powers as often gained as lost. Seems like they've got lots of interesting stuff to report on for a while.</blockquote>

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