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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5266392" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 194: June 1993part 5/6Castle Falkenstein! Another highly entertaining and idiosyncratic game gets teased here. The game wizards 1: Promo goes into overdrive this month. The Amazing Engine was released last month, along with it's first two settings. And while it isn't getting the same kind of push as Buck Rogers, there's people here who want it to succeed. Particularly the ones who wrote the books, such as Lester Smith. Left to himself, he would have developed a rather crunchier system for Bughunters. But under Zeb's direction, he's kept it simple stupid and squeezed everything into 128 pages. Which since it's a game designed to model sci-fi military action stuff such as Aliens and Predator, is counterintuitive but probably more fun than something that details guns and equipment in fetishistic detail. (like the official licence, for example) Course, that isn't going to stop the whole thing from dying within a couple of years, but so it goes. The fact that settings are only getting a single book each and then it's on to the next one probably hurts the attempt to build up marketable IP. Still, the overall ideas sound good. It's a case where it's a little depressing how TSR's other RPG's kept dying. What could make a comfortable living for a smaller company was a gross waste of resources for them. It's all a little saddening. Bazaar of the Bizarre: Spike T Jones takes a break from ecologising for a little itemising. He contributes an interesting grab bag of bottles, and things which fit inside them. Once again we see how a sideways theme can be more interesting and varied than a straightforward one. Tenser's Tantalus lets you carry a whole array of potions and scrolls on it, secured and protected, but coming away at a touch ready to use. No more frustrating rummaging in backpacks in the middle of battle, like extradimensional storage, this'll change the life of adventuring parties to the degree that they won't know how they managed before it. Better make sure enemies don't smash or steal it. Bottles of preservation keep anything in them fresh. Since some monsters are both highly perishable and can be used to make magic items, this could allow you to multiply your profit from an adventure, presuming the right buyer is available. Or possibly make prettier, better smelling flesh golems, if that's your perversion of choice. Brains in a jar make for good props anyway. Bottles of trapping shrink you and suck you in, leaving you to be put on the shelf, complaining in a squeaky voice. No mention is made of it removing your bodily needs, so being a prisoner in a bottle may get rather humiliating after a while. It can also lead to some amusingly cartoonish scenes. Very mean. Nerve tonic lets you stay completely calm. One that you could probably make lots of money selling to non-adventurers. Let's hope the ingredients can be farmed and mass produced. Oil of monster repulsion does exactly what it says on the bottle. Course, it only affects a specific species, so it's hardly a great cure-all. Another one that'll be most handy when you can make it yourself, instead of just finding some random variant of it in the treasure pile. Oil of neutral scent stops you from smelling, which is very useful when dealing with things like tracker dogs or grimlocks. The experience of being completely smell free may become addictive, which will be very expensive for the fastidious and paranoid. Just the quirk to give to your campaign's equivalent of Howard Hughes Pox potion is yet another way your creative attempts could go horribly wrong. It won't be fatal to experienced adventurers, but it will make your life pretty unpleasant until you can get a cure disease in. Ships-in-a-bottle grow to full size when you break them. Unfortunately, they can't be made to shrink again after use, so you're stick with a full size ship. Perhaps more research on this matter is needed. The solution is probably going to be expensive. Skunk water makes whatever it's added too smell utterly foul. Do not drink under any circumstances, save possibly trying to blend in in troglodyte territory. Smoke of fire quenching is another one-use item that may save your life, but only in very specific circumstances. Stock up on a whole bunch of them if facing fire elementalists then. The game wizards 2: Hmmm. TSR's trying to get into the new FMV game scene. Stuff like Atmosfear started appearing a couple of years ago, and as with many gimmicky things that're easy to learn, they've sold like gangbusters, yet only been played once or twice before being relegated to the attic. Not that this bothers the manufacturers much, as we've already given them our money. This is in sharp contrast to AD&D, which is now pretty dependent on the return dollar (another reason why the non D&D RPG's keep getting dropped by the company) So Bruce Nesmith was the muggins who got tasked with developing a new boardgame at short notice to try and catch the money before fashion moves on again. Say hello to Dragon Strike! Created in a mere 3 months, it seems to have all the hallmarks of the genre. The tape is only 30 minutes long, so games should be easy to play, and it has enough variant adventures, random cards and shiny bits and pieces that it should manage a dozen or so playthroughs before getting repetitive. And hopefully by then they'll have read the advertising pamphlet and been lured into full D&D. Yeah, this is pretty blatantly another attempt to create a gateway drug. It's also interesting from a historical perspective as a precursor to the multimedia stuff they'll start including in AD&D products next year, First Quest and all the other things with Audio CDs that "enhance" the adventure. I guess from that we can assume it was at least a modest success. It does feel a bit odd for them to be so blatantly admitting that this is a gateway drug and produced on a worryingly short notice, but I guess the higher-ups don't mind that, for some reason. Not sure what to think about this one at all. I guess one important question is Was the game Fun? A lot of corporate crap can be forgiven if the final product is good.</blockquote>

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