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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5093249" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991part 4/6The voyage of the princess ark: Welcome to Slagovich. We get to see the precursor to the Red Steel setting here, as the Ark runs across a land poisoned by it's soil, and forced to rely on supplies of cinnabryl to alleviate the effects on people's minds. As this depletes when people touch it, and the stuff is also used as the primary currency there, this results in a rather unstable economic condition, prone to regular attacks of deflation. It's not all useless though, because some people have found ways to create powerful weapons and gain red-tinged magic powers that don't require components or correspond to regular wizard or cleric spells. How very intriguing. This is definitely deserving of some further investigation. Will they find out more about this? You'll have to wait and see. In this month, we also finally get stats for Xerdon, who is proving to be easily the second most important PoV character. A maxed out Elf, he may not quite be the equal of Haldemar, but he's certainly no slouch, and if anyone's going to take over, it's him. We also see that the bloody morals brigade have penetrated here as well, resulting in them stepping very awkwardly around the topic of religion. This is definitely a part that feels quite different to read now I have the benefit of hindsight. So much context I was missing before, so many characters I now have a better understanding of. It's all tremendously satisfying. The nature of the beast: A second minis article this month, this one focussing on painting monsters. Colour and fine detail, my dear, these are what make a mini captivating and lifelike. Even if it isn't a real creature, they usually have body parts drawn from them. And if not, then your imagination is the limit. One of those articles that is helpful because it give lots of specific examples of the effects they're aiming for and how they tried to achieve them. If you want to hone the synasthetic properties of your creations, then you should learn to think like this. I regularly use similar processes when composing music to try and get the right mood to match the lyrics, so this has probably been an inspiration in some small way. Can't say it's a particularly amazing article, but it more than does it's job. The role of computers: Eye of the Beholder is our latest excursion to the Forgotten Realms. With graphics and sound substantially improved from previous games, it gives you a great dungeon-crawling experience, with the 3D interface meaning you can be attacked from behind if not careful. Just don't expect much actual roleplaying. Buck Rogers: Countdown to doomsday is another prong of their multimedia assault with this property, once again proving it's getting a lot more money thrown at it than Gamma World or Top Secret ever did. It gets a fairly positive, but not brilliant review.Dungeon Master:Chaos strikes back is a sequel where the difficulty level picks up where the first one left off, making it damn tricky if you come in with starting level characters. The first encounter in particular is a nightmare. So you'll need to persevere to get to the fun bits. Lemmings is another classic game that caused me almost as much entertainment as Tetris, although it doesn't seem to have had quite the same longevity. Still damn cool though, and it's nice to be reminded of it after all these years. Spirit of Excalibur sees you trying to unite the country after the death of King Arthur. They list the bad points first this time, but then go on to deliver a fairly positive review. Funny how that works, but at least it lets you decide if it's worth buying it. Fiction: Child of ocean by Eluki Bes Shahar. Another if our returning writers delivers a somewhat poetic piece which is essentially about deciding to say <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> you to destiny in a flowery way. Which when you consider her previous one was about denying the demands of your evil magical item and putting it to practical use, does make this a bit of a theme. Still, promoting themes of independence and believing in yourself is hardly a terrible thing, even if it can get a bit cliched and cheesy in the wrong hands. In this case though, I find myself appreciating the story a lot more than I did when I was young, as the questions of adulthood, what you have to sacrifice to achieve it, and if you even want to make those sacrifices at all obviously resonate in a way that I couldn't even conceive of then. It's clobberin time!: A second superheroic article this month gets meta, looking at the roles superheroes play in their teams. The powers they have naturally push them towards contributing towards a full scale battle in a particular way, particularly when they are in a group. While not as regimented as 4e's role system, (particularly as many heroes fall into more than one category) this is certainly in the same vein, with tactical advice for both individuals and groups. This is another one that was probably an influence, getting me into looking for patterns and symmetry in character groups, and figuring out how to cover your weaknesses while striking at the enemies flaws. Still seems pretty decent, if a bit dated now. Tactical advice for teams is something they haven't covered much, despite it being crucial to playing D&D well. Hopefully they'll have something analogous for Top Secret as well before it disappears for good.</blockquote>

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