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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5217510" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 187: November 1992part 6/6The game wizards: Another perspective on convention season here for some reason. Thomas Reid follows in Kim Mohan's footsteps by telling the story of his first con experience. And it seems they remain just as exhilarating and bewildering over a decade later, if not more so. After all, gaming is considerably bigger now, and so the workload on the poor staff is pretty mental. Food remains likely to upset a sensitive stomach, and three days of being on your feet may stress the sedentary gamer, but these are crosses you'll just have to bear. The whole thing still corroborates Roger's story that plenty of fun was had there, and the TSR crew still have plenty of leeway to be silly in the way they promote the game and interact with the public. Just don't piss off Jim Ward. He's still got the murderous monty haul touch. Yeah, this series is definitely getting better at making you forget it's a promotional tool, with no obvious plugs here, just lots of fun being demonstrated. Come next year, my pretties, oh yess. We will have such sights to show you. :steeples fingers: Yup, I think I enjoyed reading this. The role of books has an unusually high quotient of collaborative works this month. That's an interesting theme to choose. The forever king by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy gets a rather negative review. A good idea is nothing without proper characters and execution. Yeah, we've heard that one before. Learn from your mistakes and hone your craft some more. Knights Wyrd by Debra Doyle and James D MacDonald also gets a mixed review. The fantasy and real world elements of the story don't mesh perfectly, even if some of them are quite good. Still, this is one case where the reviewers quibbles don't seem like something I'd have a problem with. Heros completely bucking the rules of their society and not having role models is a perfectly reasonable method of generating dramatic tension. Catwoman: Tiger hunt by Lynn Abbey and Robert Asprin is a licensed batman book that doesn't make very good use of the property. With the titular character both poorly characterized and only playing a small part in the story, I suspect an existing idea of the author roughly shoehorned into the DC universe as a quick moneyspinner. In any case, the editors should probably have rejected it, or at least made some serious edits to make it fit with the other stuff coming out at the same time. Dark force rising by Timothy Zahn is one of his licensed Star Wars novels. This on the other hand does manage to capture the right style and characterization.  reasonably well. Of course, we know now what an continuity nightmare the EU will become over the next couple of decades, but hey, it's not all his fault is it. Except maybe Mara Jade. <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" /> The crown of columbus by Louise Erdrich & Michael Dorris starts a whole section of colonial books. (well it is the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering America.) Trouble is, it's a rather dull one, with characters that the reviewer finds unbelievable. Again. Sturgeon's law in fully in place this month. What might have been: Alternate americas, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H Greenberg, on the other hand is another solid anthology from the king of them. As usual, he's quite capable of both getting the big names in, and ensuring quality and diversity in the writing while staying on theme. Yesterday we saw mermaids by Esther M Friesner finishes things up by going above and beyond the formula, producing something that's both experimental and high quality, while still being fun reading. Guess she knows what she's doing. We also see Terry Pratchett mentioned here for only the second time. He's been busily adding to the Discworld series in the past 4 years, and is about to reach his creative peak with Reaper Man. Not that this reviewer realises that yet. Funny how that happens. I wonder if he'll ever get a proper feature. Dragonmirth has a joke that actually surprises me for a change. The good guys start watching the events in their crystal ball this time round in Yamara. Meanwhile the plot seems to be simplified, but then gets a lot more complicated again in twilight empire. Shapeshifters mean you're never quite sure what's going on.Through the looking glass: As with the computer games column, they have more than enough material to review here, so no point wasting time on preamble. A mechanical drill vehicle thing like the TMNT one to burst out of your floor and unleash who knows what enemies on the battlefield. A mounted chaos warrior and an infantry one, possibly usable in tandem. A skeleton riding a motorcycle. Heavy metal Death approves. A young dragon that has recently kicked the butt of a knight. A drunk guy. Not very impressive in the circumstances. Fortunately the town watch are here to escort him away. There are three different elf models from different companies, a couple of dioramas, another dragon, and more adventurers and monsters than I can be bothered to list. Yup, this is another bumper christmas. Whatever the state of wargaming, minis are still a thriving industry. Looks like this column isn't going anywhere, even if they seem to be running out of fun framing stuff to write. Let's hope they can find something to keep it interesting next year, because this isn't as varied as it used to be. Come on, give us some painting and sculpting advice again. Another issue that feels very much like business as usual. Quality is as high as ever, but returning to the same old topics again and again does result in a feel of diminishing returns and filler. They'll have to get in a regular supply of new young players if they want to sustain the magazine in this style. I suppose it works for many companies as a business model. But it does remind me that I eventually lost interest for quite a while, and there was good reason for that. Oh well, I'll keep on sifting for forgotten gems anyway. Far too much invested to quit now.</blockquote>

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