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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5186800" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992part 2/8Advice to a high lord: A second TORG article (see issue 174) Well, it's more than most 3rd party games get these days. And once again they make it seem like a pretty cool game, that I vaguely regret not having got into at the time. It's been out for around 2 years now, and has both supplements and novels. And here's some GM advice on how to make sure it's idiosyncrasies are an advantage to your game rather than a problem. Interestingly, the writer also explains things in a way that makes them pretty clear to people who don't own the rules either. After reading this I have a much better idea of the effects and limitations of the drama deck, for example. It also reads nicely as a throwdown to other games to have dramatic over-the-top plots that give players a greater than normal degree of plot control. So it's useful both for owners of the game, and in selling it to people who may have seen the adverts, and are still on the fence. Another very good result. If only their official themed articles could balance their promotional and add-on aspects that well. Avast ye swabs and heave to!: How could we have a space issue without a spelljammer article? And how could you have ship-based adventuring without boat-to-boat combat and piracy playing a part? Beats me, but Rich Baker seems to think too many campaigns are leaving them out. In the case of ship-to-ship combat, that's probably because the rules are a pain, so like grappling, people ignore tactics that work well in reality because of the game's poor modelling. But the rest is easy enough to fix. The long months of waiting around for ships to actually pass by can be skipped over. And the joys of never knowing how badass the people you'll meet can be simulated effectively by random table. Really, it's less dangerous than dungeon delving, and if you go privateer, you still get to have a homebase in civilisation as normal. And if it goes wrong, you might even get arrested instead of just killed, which leads to other adventure styles if you know how to run it. This is a bit more pessimistic about the prospects of lawbreaking and the relative morality of who you're killing and taking the stuff of than I'd like, but I suppose they have their family friendly image to consider. So a cool topic, presented in a middling manner. Unidentified gaming objects: We finish off the section with a system free look at modern UFO mythology. The usual ideas about them being secret weapons, fae, creatures from the clouds, parallel dimensions, even molemen from the centre of the earth. It's all very amusing. People come up with a ridiculous amount of crap, much of which can't be the truth simply due to mutual exclusivity. As is often the case, the magazine can barely scratch the surface, but it makes up for this by having a good bibliography at the end that'll take quite a while to read. Seems like a decent enough way to turn on people who've previously had no interest in the topic, and indicative of it's growing popularity at the time. Funny to think that this is more than a year before the x-files comes out. Wonder if that'll get any mentions in here. Shadowrun gets it's second edition. Which is probably a good thing, as I've never heard anyone say 1st edition was better than the following ones, despite how the 2/3/4 edition wars rage. The voyage of the princess ark: Just west of Bellayne is the mysterious nation of Herath. Seemingly just an ordinary Magocracy, (as far as there is such a thing) it's actually a nation comprised largely of Araneas who have developed the ability to assume a humanoid shape. This is of course a huge secret that no-one in the setting must be allowed to discover, and they will go to any lengths to keep it. And as usual when there's an elephant in the room like this, the protagonists come close to discovering it right away where everyone else who spent years there failed. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> Oh, plot, how depressingly predictable you are. We also see the start of the Wrath of the Immortals metaplot event brewing, as the wizard king drops cryptic hints to Haldemar. What does this bode for the Ark and it's crew? Nothing good, I'll wager. On the OOC side we of course have stats for the advancement of Araneas, which means they can be used as PC's, but this might be tricky, given their hefty XP penalties, and serious social restrictions. After all, keeping a big secret like that from the rest of your party may cause conflict, and if you do let them know IC, that marks the entire crew for some serious trouble from other Aranea. And while it may seem fun at first, once you've dodged the dozenth magical death squad, you may find it a bit tiresome. This does make this one of the more troublesome installments of this series.</blockquote>

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