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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5099822" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 172: August 1991part 4/6Forum: Andrew M Curtis finds the players want to kill every NPC, even the ones that are friendly and want to join the party. Sounds like you might need a little aversion therapy. If word gets out you have a tendency to kill your employers and employees, you may find discovering more adventures gets increasingly tricky. Perhaps a prison adventure would be fun. Lyle Wiederman travels back in time from 2114 ( <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) and reveals that the same old gaming debates are still going on then. In particular, Kender and thieves are proving particularly intractable and irritating. The solution, as often seems to be the case, is fudge, and making sure you go beyond the RAW in the ways you manipulate the game situation. Anjuan Simmons Points out that there are plenty of examples of nonevil thieves in literature. They have good reasons for what they do, and definitely aren't all backstabbing bastards who'll steal from their friends as well as their foes. PC's who play them like that are seriously missing the point. Graham Ross also gives us reasons why thieves ought to work with others. A lone wolf will have no-one to train them or help pull complex heists, and is likely to be caught or die. They might not trust each other, but they have to learn to work together for maximum profit. And they certainly shouldn't admit they're thieves to potential marks. Utilise your brain. Scott Wilbur thought he could have a PC and DM at the same time, but couldn't resist abusing his OOC knowledge. Now he doesn't do that anymore. Live and learn. I can't help feeling that it was probably the being caught that did it, not guilt. Eric Durfee, on the other hand is still juggling godhood and characters with limited power and knowledge and having fun. It isn't impossible, by any stretch of the imagination. Christian Stoudt has also reached a compromise on the PC/DM hybridisation front by temporarily passing his characters to other players while in the DM's seat. This of course requires a certain degree of trust amongst the team. But after he killed off his own character once to prove the point everyone else settled down. Remember, characters aren't hard to replace. Friends are. Des Garrett is another person who's wrestled with the DMPC problem. Looks like this one's really hit a nerve with the readership, and is going to run and run like the sexism and satanic complaints. He has lot's of solutions to suggest though. Hopefully we should come to some kind of consensus eventually. The role of computers: Darkspyre gets a surprisingly mediocre review for a leading product, seeming too generic, and also running too slowly on their computer. This is going to be a problem all through the 90's. Unless you have the disposable income to spend several thousand a year on upgrading, you're going to be out of date in no time. Robosport does rather better, giving you a nice little game of competitive violence for one or two players. You can record your games, and replay them at various speeds, which does take up quite a bit of memory, but sounds cool. With turn by turn games, it can be tricky to get a real feel for the flow going. Warlords also gets a good result. Fight up to 8 enemies for control of the kingdom. The old RISK scenario then, albeit with rather more complex rules. Raise your armies, secure supernatural assistance, and build up defences to protect your holdings. Strategilicious.Shadow Dancer is the third in Sega's Shinobi series. You (and your little dog) engage in the usual ninja style awesomeness that builds on on the last two nicely. Rescue hostages, squash enemy ninja, I don't think I've actually played this one, but would be able to pick it up pretty quick. Y's books I &II Show us what you can do with CD's as your loading medium. Animated cutscenes ahoy! Massive step ups in music quality! Soon, you'll be taking this for granted, just like all the previous advances. Zombie Nation is another mediocre review to finish things off. Formulaic shoot-em-up. Not worth the time of anyone but addicts.</blockquote>

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