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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5247495" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993part 2/6Weapons of mass destruction on sale now: From one joke about the gnomish space marines to another. Blarg. Still, this is the only joke article this year that also has usable crunch. 5 scary, if rather unreliable bits of gnomish machinery that you could add to your spaceship. Or possibly your normal ship or ground based siege engine. Mechanical flails (based upon that popular joke monster, the flail snail. Fire and electricity blasters. Mass launches of buzzsaws and crossbow bolts. All almost as much a danger to the user as to the enemy. These could fit into an otherwise moderately serious campaign, just as normal Gnomes and Kender do. So it's easily the best of the bunch this year from a usability point of view.  The Dragon Project: Oooh. Another new column starts off. Welcome to the last resurgence of non TSR RPG material, courtesy of a conscious push by the official writers. This has been gradually drifting downward since the start of the decade, due to lack of submissions, and they're not particularly happy about this. And of course, the less they publish, the less people send in. It's a vicious circle. So they hope to reverse that trend by asking writers for other gamelines to send stuff in. Not a bad idea at all. We start off with one for TORG. Dragons fit in pretty well in fantasy universes, but struggle a bit in sci-fi ones. How to integrate them? Cyberware! As if they weren't scary enough. With a history that serves to reveal a bit more of TORG's interesting history and political dynamics, and a statblock that shows it uses a system in which skills are keyed off particular attributes, this feels a bit artificial, but in an appropriate way. I'm still not sure how they'll compare to PC's in overall power, but I suspect one will be a suitable challenge for an entire group. In any case, this is another cool move by the editors, and shows that as is often the case, they're actually more progressive than their average readership. It's also a sign I should enjoy this while I can, for it will be gone all too soon. Born to blossom, bloom to perish. Compost to grow the next generation. The known world grimoire: Bruce finally gets his groove back, in what feels like it would have been a continuation of the Princess Ark series, situated directly southwest of the last instalments as it is. Previously, we've had dog people, cat people, turtle people, spider people, several variants on lizard people, and flying squirrel people. Now, it's the Manscorpion's turn. Course, PC's with at will instadeath poison is not something they're wiling to allow, and so that aspect of them gets a good nerfing. On top of that, mystaran manscorpions have the dreadful indignity of being vulnerable to sunlight, courtesy of a magical curse. They can still go out in the sun, thanks to developing incredibly thick all-over makeup vampires would probably pay quite a bit for, but it does make integrating with groups of other species pretty tricky. They're obviously intended largely as antagonists. But it does have to be said that they're antagonists with style and plenty of built up setting detail. You aren't going to be able to wade in an exterminate the whole nation, even with a few landscape destroying spells to expose them to the sun and make them fry like bugs under a magnifying glass. They have a higher level limit than demihumans, and there's hundreds of thousands of them. Like Iuz's dominions, settling this tension is the work of a whole epic level campaign. A pretty awesome return to form for this department. The marvel-phile: No surprise that this column still has a few april-fool suitable characters that they haven't had the chance to cover yet. Such as Slapstick. He's basically a living cartoon, made out of the same stuff superhero costumes are made from. And I suspect that in terms of character, he has a lot in common with The Mask and Freakazoid, two other zany characters who are near omnipotent and indestructible as long as their actions are funny. Which means the humourless everywhere should walk, not run away ASAP, for trying to fight him is like hitting a mirror. It'll only get turned back on you, and the harder you hit, the more likely you are to wind up with a bleeding hand. His primary adversary is an 8 year old mad scientist, presumably even Marvel villains have enough common sense to steer clear of this. Better pray he doesn't get too many crossover appearances and wind up joining the great lakes avengers, for him and Squirrel girl seems like a pretty unstoppable combination. (and let's not think of the children) A pretty typical contribution from this department, I can't say I have strong feelings on this one. DC heroes gets a third edition. Man, seems like both the comic companies original games enjoyed long fruitful runs. What went wrong?</blockquote>

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