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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5140219" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 178: February 1992part 3/6The voyage of the princess ark: Another jaunt westward along the savage coast brings us to Eusdria, another blatant real world rip-off, in this case scandinavia. (despite it being a pretty warm locale, after all, this is even further south than the Baronies.) They're actually pretty civilized for such a warlike culture, thanks to the presence of lots of elves, and more than a few half-elves. (including the current king) Unfortunately for Haldemar, they're allied with the Heldanic knights, which gives them a perfect excuse to capture them (again) and have them tried for their "crimes" Once again, though, the ruler of the nation proves themself to be a smart cookie, more than able to deal with this kind of politics and come out ahead. Honestly, Haldemar, you really need to do more research. You have crystal balls and the like. Use them. Then maybe you wouldn't be in trouble so much of the time. <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=";)" /> We see in the OOC bit that Eusdria isn't quite a stereotyped as it first appears. Although they may be descended from your basic northern viking warrior types, they are properly integrated into their new environment, with technological developments, properly defined relationships with their neighbouring states, and an interesting plot hook that allows for raiding goblinoids to be a continuous problem. I'm surprisingly impressed by this. We also get lots more variant classes. Rules for elven clerics and druids. Rules for elves to become Paladins and Avengers, and rules for half-elf PC's of all kinds. All are pretty simple and efficient, and have drawbacks as well as strengths. At this rate, BD&D will soon have as many class/race options as AD&D. Do we want to remove our strong fixed archetypes? Very good question. Even if they're not too unbalanced, you should consider carefully if you want to allow this or not. Fiction: River's friend by Josepha Sherman. Another fairytaleish story from this author, this time with an eastern european dressing. But underneath the trappings, it's the same old hero's journey, as a boy from poor origins has to prove his worth to the people at court, and more importantly, to himself. Which is transferable everywhere, as there's always social class and an in and out crowd. More interesting are the human/supernatural interactions, with the fae creature in this one forced to interact with people on their own terms, but retaining a degree of it's own alienness. Overall, I Can't say I feel particularly strongly about this one either way. The role of computers: Pools of Darkness continues the Realms story, allowing you to reach higher levels than before in a D&D computer game, while also improving on the visuals and sound. This allows them to regain that prized 5 star rating. As ever, don't expect it to be easy, and note that this time, the demihuman level limits are a real issue, so bringing in your old characters from previous games may or may not work too well. Still, that should keep their clue corner busy for quite a while. SimAnt sees the sims series get educational, while still being pretty entertaining. Turn your hive into the biggest, baddest swarm in the garden by getting the right proportion of workers to soldiers and then bogarting all the food supplies. Less open-ended than the city one, it still has tons of replayability, with circumstances being different each time. Gunship 2000 is another one they're pretty generous with. Get your heavily armed supply helicopter to the needed place, destroying any opposition along the way. Tactics will work much better than trying to charge in and use twitch reflexes, as usual. Police Quest III doesn't get such a good review. It's fiddly, crash-prone, and has "adult subject matter" Seems like that's going to be this year's pet peeve for these reviewers. They're really not going to like Mortal Kombat then <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" /> Swamp gas visits the united states of america is a surprisingly good educational program. Combining geography questions with arcade action, it sounds silly, but I guess some of those things would manage to be good by luck. Not that it'll make it any easier for parents to persuade their kids to play them. Shining in the Darkness is another decent enough Genesis adventure. It's no phantasy Star, but uses a lot of the same elements and should keep you busy for a while. Vapor Trail is a top-down shooter, for one or two players. Apart from the choice of 3 planes with different capabilities, this seems very formulaic indeed. Yawn. Arcus Odyssey also seems quite familiar, having a lot of design similarities with Gauntlet. Fantasy arcade action with plenty of hack and slashing and exploring, and a bit of roleplaying. Another one that'll fill up some time. Remember to write down your passwords. On the conversions side we have The Immortal. Another RPG which uses passwords rather than saving, which does get rather annoying given the length of levels and the fiddlyness of the codes. They also praise the Wing Commander strategy guide. Even they don't find these games easy, so this is quite welcome. A bit cheeky though. Well, I guess the book reviews have done plenty of books about computers so turnabout is fair play. <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" /></blockquote>

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