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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5224230" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 188: December 1992part 6/6Mind over matter: Ooh, a 2nd ed psionics article at last. All the sage advice and forum brouhaha has paid off. Rich Baker, who would of course go on to write a full sourcebook on this issue, helps you figure out what to actually do with psionicists in actual play. Unlike fighters or thieves, what they're really good and bad at isn't immediately obvious from a casual readthrough. And unlike wizards and clerics, you really do have to pick your powers wisely for maximum synergistic effectiveness, for you can't hot-swap them from day to day and draw on millions of supplements and magazine articles. Like Greg Detwiler's work on specialist wizards in issue 163, this isn't that big, but packs a lot of solid mechanical advice into it's paragraphs. Power picks, tactics, fitting into a team, DM advice, this is an end of issue filler article that transcends that status quite handily, and will be very useful for the not so mechanically adept indeed. And it's very pleasantly readable too. I can see why they picked this one up to be a regular writer. Two thumbs up. Dragonmirth apples more modern sensibilities to medieval tropes. Yamara gets level training the hard way. Twilight empire has another battle scene that advances the plot. Well, it keeps things more interesting than if the fluff and crunchy bits are separated. Through the looking glass: Tis the season to be selling, with this column getting nearly 8 full pages of reviews. Battletech mechs cut from last month's column. More big stuff that you can spend quite a bit of time assembling and customising, above and beyond the usual paint jobs. Some rather tall Dream warriors, with all the mutant surreality said name indicates. An Eldar tank for Warhammer, proving they can pull out some pretty big guns too. A Dragon trick or treating, which they really should have done a couple of months ago. A wizard kicking back and relaxing on a skulled throne and putting his feet up on a pile of books. An angel supporting a holographic image of the world. God, that technology really is advancing quite a bit at the moment. Still costs $40 to buy though. The Visionaries were barely half that. Plenty of cheap ones though. A barkeep, a female rogue and a man-at-arms all go for a mere $1.25, so you can grab them as an impulse thing to round out your cart. I diorama of barbarian violence. Gee, like you never see those anymore. A pair of well-armed centaurs. Plenty more barbarian warriors, including some official woodwoses from LotR. Some miserable straw pallets for a little more realism. An armorer's workshop. Some dwarf cavalry. And a trio of wizards with staves substantially bigger than they are. No, not compensating for anything at all, really. Ahh, the joys of trying to maintain anatomical accuracy in widely varying scales. TSR Previews: As usual for january, next month is relatively quiet compared to recent month. It's still a lot bigger than busy months a few years ago though, showing how much the supplement treadmill has accelerated. Dragonlance is the busiest setting this time. DLR3: Unsung heroes stats up all the stuff that's appeared in recent novels. Once again we see that the book line is the primary driver of this setting, and has been for some time, while the gaming merely follows. Also, they finally finish the Meetings Sextet, with The Companions. Just how many of the team will be together by the end of this? The forgotten realms starts off a series that will become quite a lot bigger. Volo's guide to Waterdeep presents a different perspective to previous sourcebooks, with a much closer to the ground, more fallible narrator.  Well, it helps keep Elminster from getting overexposed.Our generic AD&D stuff this month is PHBR8:The complete book of mary-sue twinks (elves) See some of the most powerful kits, and try and persuade the DM to let them into your game, along with enough lovingly crafted setting detail to choke a dwarf on their own beard. They're also filling out more general NPC's. REF6: Rogues Gallery. People from all worlds and none. Will you be able to find a place for them in your campaign? D&D gets something very similar. The character and monster assortment gives you a ton of new models to represent your creatures in battle. You can never have too many kobolds to swarm your enemies with. Marvel Superheroes continues to release sourcebooks focussing on characters. MHR3: Avengers archives is of course all about their history, villains, home base, and other useful stuff for your game. Who will get the spotlight next? So we say goodbye to the Princess Ark, and hello to the Wizards Three this month. That's a pair of fairly significant column changes that say next year isn't going to be the same as this one, even if their overall policy hasn't changed much. As is often the case, we get both great articles and not so good ones, familiar faces and unearthed stuff. We do seem to have an above average number of historical pointers and groundbreaking articles this month, so even if it's not all good news, this is one issue I certainly don't regret reading. Lets see how 1993's crop come out.</blockquote>

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