Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5197323" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 184: August 1992part 5/8The game wizards: Our second wave of trading cards this year gets it's obligatory promotion. It's zeb's turn on the mic again, bringing his customary Wahoo enthusiasm to the proceedings. New Artwork! Improved formats! More personality for characters! Customised and owned magical items! Course, it was not without it's problems in the making. Even within the TSR staff, there are substantial disagreements on what the rules actually say. Getting all the stuff you want on the back of cards requires some serious editing, and was sometimes impossible. And the rare cards required some awkward last minute switchings around. As with last time, this is statistics, but presented in a fun way, including a questionnaire and plenty of humour. They're getting to stretch their creativity a lot more than last time, and everyone is throwing in ideas and bouncing off each other in a healthy way. At least if you believe the ad copy. In any case, this is one of their more successful promotional columns. Role-playing reviews: Having done some odd stuff in the last few reviews it is very literally back to the basics. Rick decides to see which introductory roleplaying products do their job best. After all, we always need new gamers, don't we. And christmas will be here before you know it. Perfect time to give them a free hit of your gateway drug of choice. The new Dungeons and dragons boxed set scrapes in at 4+1/2 stars. It's a tight, well organised presentation, but the underlying rules are unchanged and starting to show their limitations. And alignment languages still give Rick a headache. We got rid of them in 2nd edition, why are they still here? Shrug. Once again it seems that the people in charge think the rules are good enough as they are. Lord of the rings, on the other hand, strips things down quite substantially from full MERP, which is quite funny when you consider that's already streamlined Rolemaster. Rick likes this one as well, but I really didn't. Even at that age I felt patronised by it's oversimplification, although that's probably because I already owned MERP, and I was currently looking for more crunch, not less. Why would I want to start again? Tunnels and trolls 5th edition is another one that has changed precious little save in presentation, and gets a mediocre result because of it. There is quite a bit to be picked apart in the rules, and it does have some silly elements. It does seem quite newbie friendly, but whether it'll keep them for long after this is debatable. Toon deluxe edition is another one that gets much love, with a couple of little caveats. It's an absolutely brilliant game, providing you get the right GM. Yes, but palladium can be a brilliant game if you get the right GM. Still, I can see why that might make it not the perfect recommendation for an all new gaming group. Rifts vampire kingdoms! Another setting gets in on the act, although with a rather different spin to the WoD or ravenloft.</blockquote>

Verification