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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5248583" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993part 3/6In praise of one night stands: Hee. As if we didn't have enough dirty stuff being suggested in the letters page. But a piece on why one-shots are a good idea is exactly the kind of thing the magazine should be doing. It gives you a chance to experiment with new systems and ideas without ruining continuity and thematic consistency of your long-running campaigns. It lets your regular GM take a break and players experiment with holding the reins without having to build a whole world. And if the regular DM flakes out, having a back-up plan is always a good thing. Only a page and a half long, this mirrors well how it's subject matter should work. Get straight to the point, don't overwrite, and make sure you have cool ideas ready to go right away. Which makes it one of those supposed filler articles that's actually a good deal better than anything in the main featured section. Model your game on movies rather than series, and provide a full setup and payoff in a few short hours. Just don't fall into the trap of doing a sequel just for the money, when you don't have a good idea for it. Forgotten Realms new campaign setting coming soon. Well, they've got six years of metaplot to incorporate. Not everyone's been buying all the supplements. Cyric is the supreme god of evil now! The role of computers: King's Quest VI gets one of those 5 star reviews where they praise it as both a game and a technical feat.  And in the process remind us how far we've come since then.15 megabytes? I've got single photographs bigger than that.  We used to manage classic games with mere kilobytes. Time ticks onwards. Battle Chess Enhanced CD ROM is yet another game that tries to make chess cool. With speaking tutorials, and a wide range of difficulty levels, it doesn't do too badly. But chess really doesn't need the gimmicks anyway. It looks like it'll be around long after civilisation collapses and both computers and roleplaying are forgotten. Cobra Mission gets a complete fail completely on the crappiness of it's content, rather than due to buggy programming, which is pretty unusual for them. Yikes. Plus it's not kid friendly at all. Come now, that'll just encourage prurient teenagers to waste their money. Kingdoms of England II: Vikings, Field of Conquest sees you fight a bunch of other would-be kings to take over fair albion. Sounds like a fairly typical strategy wargame. Miner 2049er doesn't get a rating, but it's review is quite positive nonetheless. One of their few game boy reviews, it shows the gradual takeover of consoles. Even these guys have to heed it, although they don't seem that keen on doing so. Quest for Glory III: Wages of War also builds upon it's previous instalments, and manages to surpass them, in these reviewers opinion. You can even import your character from previous games, which is always a nice touch for this kind of epic RPG. Does sound like there's quite a bit of resource management though, with keeping track of food supplies a vital part of your adventuring. Shadowlands has some spectacular visuals and interesting ideas based around light sources and the manipulation of shadows to complete the adventure. Unfortunately, its hindered by a clunky interface that can result in your death as you try to engage the right actions mid battle. Always a danger for complex RPG's, especially if they don't have pausing. Waxworks is much easier to play, using the increasingly popular point and click play method. Video games are definitely becoming darker and edgier these days, as this is another one full of gory thrills. Visuals are finally sophisticated enough that you can do this without looking stupid. Wolfenstein 3D is duly recognized as an excellent, if rather bloody game, offering you plenty of freedom of movement and a spectacular array of weaponry. You'll need it of course, particularly against the bosses, which are right SoB's at higher difficulty levels, and neither trading shots face to face or turning your back to run are wise choices to beat them. Novel ideas: Ravenloft's novel line continues to grow in prestige amongst the department, as befits it's sales. This means it gets better authors in, including some previously published names who have fanbases of their own. Elaine Bergstrom and P. N. Elrod are both about to produce pretty big books for the line, and they're pretty confident that the results will let them go to another level critically and commercially again. Which is actually a fairly accurate prediction for a change. Dragonlance may have peaked and gone into decline creatively, but Ravenloft and the Realms keep on building. Like the Dragon Project, this is a good reminder that there's still plenty of cool things to come before the company goes completely off the rails. You've got to separate the politics from the product.</blockquote>

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