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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5187969" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 183: July 1992part 3/8Role-playing reviews: We are of course in theme here, with a couple of sci-fi games. And a bit of complaining about the difficulties of selling hard sci-fi in RPGs. When people actually have to pay close attention to what's possible, and carefully justify and examine the ramifications of what isn't, sales are hit. But we keep plugging away, for the speculations in them are useful for reality in a way star wars never can be. Mechwarrior second edition doesn't do too great. Character generation is a real pain, with tons of number crunching, derived stats, and general sluggishness. Combat is similarly complex, and of course it's incomplete without the mechwarrior game to actually handle the giant robot side. Rick once again demonstrates that he's not patient enough to regularly play games that heavy. Still, he appreciates it for what it is, and the cool setting stuff, even if the system isn't his cup of tea. Aliens adventure game gets an even worse review. Tons of random dice rolling in chargen, tons of dice rolls for even simple actions in game, brutal and unpleasant combat, it all seems heavily focussed on realism over fun. It also doesn't do horror very well, being far more focussed on the second film's military violence than the first film's atmosphere. Unless you want a very specific flavour of game, leave this out. Rick also gives us a quick rundown of most of the Buck Rogers RPG supplements. The line may be running down rapidly now, but of course they still have lots of unsold stock to shift, and he gets roped into doing his part. NEO in the 25th century and the Luna sourcebooks come off best in his opinion. The role of computers: Civilisation is one I've spent many frustrating hours with. Gods, that game can eat up tons of your time. Course, that is because it's fun, and incredibly open-ended. Will you rush to the spacefaring stage, or take advancement slow and concentrate on taking over the world. Read the manual, because it's big, and really will help. Bard's title Construction Set allows you to build landscapes for your fantasy game. It also includes stuff for noting down your game's idiosyncracies of equipment, spells, monsters, etc. It uses point and click design, which makes it a good deal more user friendly than old programs. And the graphics and memory improvements of recent years allow you to both save a decent amount of stuff and print off images.  That means you won't be completely tied to your desktop come game night. The viking's dragons: I thought last month's selection of Linorms was missing a few. Multi-part special articles have decreased in frequency over the years, but we have one here. As with last month, here's five more highly malevolent dragon types to terrify your players with. Since we've covered the basics already, let's get straight to the monsters. Flame linorms make red dragons look decidedly weedy, having substantially greater physical abilities and slightly better magic too. They're definitely another one for the high level adventurer who really needs that extra bit of challenge. Gray linorms rub in how much bigger linorms grow than normal dragons by being described as relatively small-bodied, when their bodies are still actually bigger than most chromatics and metallics, while their tails are longer than a even a gold dragon's combined total length. One of the less powerful and smart Linnorms, they're still more than powerful and magically versatile enough to be confusing and deadly to fight. Rain linorms are relatively small and weedy physically and in terms of spells, but get tons of cool innate abilities, including exceedingly good regeneration at their uppermost levels. They manage to be even more egotistical and greedy than normal dragons, which is quite a feat really. A little comeuppance before they get too big for everyone's boots would be a good idea. The corpse tearer is an absolutely terrifying singular horror with energy draining claws, a breath weapon that may well leave you permanently crippled if you survive, and enough undead slaves to conquer a small country. It's wealth is similarly substantial, and it really does make an epic foe that would be a good climax for an entire campaign. The Midgard linorm is even bigger and more powerful even than corpse tearer, but seems a good deal less aggressive and proactive in it's seeking of food, wealth and temporal power. Which is a bit of a relief really, as you really don't want the world serpent peering it's enormous eyes into your window as a prelude to eating your house whole. Actually, in some respects it's less powerful than a regular great wyrm, as it has neither discretionary spells or flight, but you'll still need both power and luck to get this monster. And flavour-wise this is a definite success. It's easy to get jaded with dragons, forget just how nasty they actually are. This lot bring that right back.</blockquote>

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