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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5155946" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 179: March 1992part 5/6Wonders of the land of fate: Surprise surprise, with the release of Al Qadim, (already mentioned twice this issue) we get an article promoting it. Ok, it's not the full-on special Dark Sun got, but it's better than nothing. And it's actually a lot more useful than the stuff in the Dark Sun and Buck Rogers specials. Ok, so it's mostly cut material from the corebook, but it's good material, as well as being appropriate to the theme of the issue. A ton of new magical items, many obviously derived from the arabian nights stories, and new random determination tables so you can get a good idea of their respective frequencies. The descriptions are very short, but do the job, and still manage to sneak in a decent bit of flavour. It does get released officially after all a bit later in the Land of Fate boxed set, but this is still useful stuff, and seems a good one for drawing people into the new setting. Jeff Grubb has done his job well, producing so much cool stuff that he can't fit it all into one book. Ars magica gets a 3rd edition. Now with more crossover with the WoD. Watch out for those tremere. Role-playing reviews: Back to fantasy gaming again. So many people who think they have some neat ideas to contribute to the genre. Some of them may even be right. This time it's Lester W. Smith who's our compere. Fifth cycle gets an all round positive review. The worldbuilding is good, the system makes sense to him, and the magic has a nice internal logic to it. It has enough supplements to fill it out without overly bloating things. If you want another decent alternative system, go for it. Barony gets a slightly less positive review, mainly due to it's small press origins being pretty obvious. But the ideas therein are rather more innovative, and it includes a rather spectacular treatment of Dragon battles, for some reason. If they could just tidy up some of the more pretentious and idiosyncratic language and make it more accessable. Pff. I'll bet I could understand it no trouble. After all, we had to deal with high Gygaxese for over 10 years. Stuff O' Legends is halfway between an RPG and a boardgame, combining diplomacy and battle in a game of heroics revolving around the Trojan War. It's full of military and supernatural elements, as you build up your heroes and get them into position for the eventual inevitable conflict. With lots of optional rules that add further variety, it looks like an interesting edge case that could be taken either way. Ladders to the sky: The shine is probably starting to wear off spelljammer around the office, as the realities of the first couple of year's sales are in, and they aren't so great. It's not dead yet, but new products are starting to slow down. And aside from the special, and rather a lot of Sage Advices, it hasn't seen much stuff submitted to here either. Allen Varney tries to spark things a little by reminding you how easily you can incorporate space stuff into an existing game. All you need is a means of going up! And this being spelljammer, cheesy ideas work just fine. Giant plants which shoot up into space as part of their mating cycle. Hired by a passing ship with a crew shortage. Random portals that send you somewhere unexpected one-way. Many of these would also work fine for introducing the planes as well. And a nice reminder that it's not hard to shake up a game that's getting stale by changing the environment and removing most of the familiar cast. Just be careful, for as many a TV show can demonstrate, this kind of trick can kill a series as easily as it can revitalise it, and pushing the reset button afterwards may not help. Good luck pulling it off.</blockquote>

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