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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5250408" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 192: April 1993part 5/6Role-playing reviews decides to go the lycanthropic route, apropos of nothing. Werewolf: the Apocalypse gets a fairly long and not entirely positive review. Rick still isn't keen on the idea of entirely nonrandom chargen, which reminds us how long ago this is now. And he gets a quite substantial number of cracks in at their Metallica obsession and overall melodramaticness. Lars Ulrich really really isn't all that. <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" /> And WW's editing sucks, as usual. But as with Vampire, he's still impressed by the underlying ideas. Fix the Mechanics! Night howlers is the D&D offering. It's both less impressive, and less mechanically problematic, and focusses quite a bit on infected lycanthropes learning to control their condition. This takes quite a bit of work for players, but seems like it could liven up an existing campaign. Rick also directs his amusement at death cheese, and other excessive setting building of recent books. All sorts of systems are getting into it, from D&D to shadowrun. As usual, some do better than others. Watch out for both silliness and dullness, sometimes at the same time. How does that happen? Mostly when you have page count to make up, so you throw in any ideas you can come up with without editing to pad it out. The ecology (love life) of the lamia: Brendan Farwanderer returns for a third time, with the author finding yet another way to twist the traditional series title. Even more so than yuan-ti, lamias are an inherently degenerate race, requiring regular infusions of human seed to keep their progeny from becoming sterile animals. Since they're also bug<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> nuts with hair trigger tempers, and they drain the common sense of those they touch, this is almost a textbook recipe for a dysfunctional relationship. (I will kill the first person to say they've been out with girls like that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) Once again Spike delivers an excellent bit of fiction, combining titilation, horror and humour with aplomb. And their new ecological cycle is pretty distinctive and nifty as well. This adds new depth to them without upsetting previous assumptions. He's definitely proving himself as one of the best ecologists currently writing in. Now, if only he'd do so a bit more frequently. Forum continues with much the same topics as last time round.  Philip Edwards is one of those who thinks psionics is indeed overpowered. It needs more saving throws, more playtesting, more checks and balances! You know that stuff slows things down if done wrong. Jon Winter gives a full bunch of rather official sounding nerf suggestions for psionics, some of which would be incorporated later. He's particularly keen on psionics-magic transparency, which does help, after all. Again, watch out for the play-slowing finickiness. Shlomi Chetrit thinks that balancing psionicists is easy. Just enforce training rules strictly and force them to find someone to teach the powers they want. Never mind that that isn't particularly in keeping with the literature, which often has them manifesting new powers abruptly. But training times might well be a good idea, especially at higher levels. Jason Jex doesn't think psionicists should have restrictions just because wizards have them. After all, clerics don't have the same ones. But that doesn't mean it doesn't need a little nerfing. Balance must be struck, but the game must also be kept interesting and varied. Charlie Frye has a bullet-pointed list on how to deal with monty haul cheaters. Just make sure you have copies of their character sheets, and all the dice are rolled in the open. That keeps the worst excesses under control. Justin D. Somma also offers point by point advice on how not to deal with Monty Haul characters. It's not easy to take stuff away without them complaining to high heaven. And make sure cheaters don't prosper. There's nothing wrong with kicking them out the group. Dragonmirth really needs to sort out it's fashion and design habits. Yamara finds out what her husband got up to before he married her. Hee. Finella decides to bite the bullet and get married as well in twilight empire. Man, they're having a lot of relationship dramas these days. And many of them are inter-racial, too. Interesting, that.</blockquote>

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