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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5094229" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 171: July 1991part 5/6Role-playing reviews: Fittingly for my first issue, this is talking about introductory modules. At this point in time, the balance of releases has probably skewed a little too far in favour of experienced players. Most of the classic old B series are out of print, and AD&D 2nd ed does't seem to have an obvious introductory adventure at all. This is a real problem. Still, there are some adventures intended for 1st level characters out there, and as ever, Ken wants to help you buy the good ones, so you enjoy your game. B11 kings festival & B12 kings harvest get fairly good results, both individually and chained together to introduce new players to both the dungeon crawling and role-playing sides of playing D&D. They might not be a keep on the borderlands beater, but they'll do the job. Ken also mentions a houserule of his that I quickly adopted, that of giving characters a bleeding out buffer equal to their Con score to make them less fragile (which was also used by Monte Cook later on) Guess that's another way this issue influenced me. DDA1 Arena of Thyatis & DDA2 Legions of Thyatis get a somewhat less enthusiastic review. While a nice plot, it doesn't seem that well suited for a novice DM, and you'll either have to do a bit of railroading, or be ready to improvise when the players take a route the adventure isn't prepared for. Good luck. DMGR1 Campaign sourcebook and catacomb guide is another recommended product. Full of advice for the inexperienced DM, and handy reminders for veterans, it's certainly a lot quicker to read through that than all the stuff from various issues of this magazine if you want a good checklist. Dungeon master's design kit, on the other hand, doesn't do very well. Aaron Allston produces something that works by filling in forms, which bores Ken, and he suspects the average reader will agree. Only for the OCD then. DLS1 New beginnings also gets poor marks for making learning the rules too much like work, and also being overly specific, not really working well unless you're playing a Dragonlance game set on Taladas. The odds of a player sticking around if this is their first experience don't seem particularly great. LC3 Nightwatch in the living city, on thew other hand, gets top marks, having been honed to a fine sheen by it's extensive RPGA playtesting, while still having enough genericness to be applicable to fantasy cities other than raven's bluff. If this is your first experience, you're much more likely to become someone who thinks and talks their way through problems, rather than killing everything. Plus it doesn't take itself too seriously, WG11 Puppets also gets a fairly positive review, with Ken considering the whimsical elements a plus. Well, he is also a Paranoia writer. And this kind of humour seems to be common even with TSR's best writers of this period, like Ed and Bruce. Like the fashion crimes of the 70's, it's tricky to judge them harshly for it, even if this is one of the modules that's considered rather embarrassing these days. Conquer the solar system - By mail!: Hmm. I remember this one well as well. By this period, Jim Ward was very much part of the upper management, not one of the boys. And since that was my first impression of him, and his management approach, my impression wasn't that favourable. Course, even at that age, I quickly realised that he couldn't be that big a tyrant if they were publishing stuff like this in their own magazine, but it was still a little strange. It didn't seemlike the best way to promote your new game. Of course, it all makes a lot more sense this time round. Buck Rogers was still the bosses baby, and so they really were constantly demanding impossible things from their employees, and meddling with the product. If anything, the experience of coding and playtesting the PbM was probably even more grueling and less funny than it comes off here. Still, this is the first Buck Rogers article the magazine has had in 10 issues, so my fears that it would wind up taking over a load of space in the magazine for a while haven't come to pass at all. Looks like the employees are managing to stymie Lorraine's :roll of thunder, stab of organ music: ambitions in all kinds of little ways. I wonder how long this managed to run before being shut down.  Google is singularly unhelpful in finding out anything about this, just as it was with the old AD&D PbM.</blockquote>

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