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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5279122" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 196: August 1993part 3/6The known world grimoire: Bruce manages another burst of inspiration this month. He might not be able to manage them frequently enough to run a proper narrative, but there are still areas of the known world to fill in, and by gosh he's going to keep at it. He visited the manscorpions in issue 192. Now we head south to see the orcs that give this nasty swampy peninsula it's name. With a particularly big, tough battlescarred red dragon as their overlord, the various tribes may bicker with one-another, but they're more than organised enough to repel any attempts at civilising these lands. As with many aspects of mystara, this is a set-up designed to give the players challenges at whatever level they may be, from fighting individual raiding parties, to being able to take on entire armies and do world-shaking deeds that'll get them into the Immortal pantheon. Just be careful you don't bite off more than you can chew and get the attention of the big guns too soon, for huge dragon breath killing the entire party in one hit is a real day spoiler. With the usual mix of IC and OOC perspectives, and plenty of references to the other parts of this massive intertwined world, this is a pretty pleasurable read, able to support plenty of adventure while leaving room for expansion of the specifics by the DM. I just wish they were coming more frequently. While he may still have the skills, they mean little without the creative will to channel them. It becomes increasingly difficult to see a future for this series. Mutant chronicles gets a very eye-catching advert. Nice colouring job, dude. Fiction: The only good orc by Liz Holliday. Aka the story of orc jesus, and the stuff he goes through to get to sacrifice himself for the sins of his race. This involves a certain amount of deception, but mainly because people don't believe an Orc can be good, so the truth wouldn't be believed. The result has a pretty decent number of twists and turns, and the requisite bittersweet ending. It's not often you'll see PC's sacrifice themselves like this, so you need every good example you can get. It's all pretty decent. The role of computers comes to an end. Or at least, the crew of writers leave for other fields, to specialise in Mac games in another magazine. Once again cementing the fact that they don't have a great track record in picking successful systems. <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" /> We've had some good times, we've had some dull times, we've had some strange moments. We've seen systems rise and fall, games go from 0 to 6 stars, (wing commander is still unsurpassed) and lots of complaints about stuff not working properly. (well, it wouldn't be a computer column without them. ) They've been one of the most consistent columnists since 1986, and I can't escape the feeling that this magazine's computer game coverage won't be the same without them. I know it's only a couple of years before they cut out computer stuff entirely, so the people who replace them certainly won't have the chance to build up the same level of familiarity. Challenge of the 5 Realms is an ok fantasy RPG, if a bit dated in presentation. Overhead walky stuff, slow dialog balloons, instruction manual based copy protection, this all sounds very familiar. is this the 90's or what? The Journeyman Project pushes at the current limits of data streaming, and consequently runs annoyingly slowly on their computer. It's no good having these fancy CD's if you don't have the read speed to really take advantage of it, or the RAM to buffer most of the info for instant use when needed. Can't win either way. Too primitive, they give it poor marks, too advanced, they can't run it properly yet. Legends of Valour doesn't do too well. It may look good, but play is both tedious and fiddly. If you don't have the hint book, you'll waste tons of time trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Whatever happened to the instruction manual guiding you through the basics? Pax Imperia is one of those epic space games where you have to not only build an empire, but manage it too. I some how doubt we'll be seeing nearly as many of those under our next regime. S.C.O.U.T combines action shooter with puzzle game, as you have to find keys, negotiate railroads, teleporters, mirrors, and all manner of other tricks to get around the alien base and blow them to bits. Spaceward Ho! V. 3.0 is another, slightly smaller scale space exploration and resource management game, where you have to think more about controlling individual spaceships. They finish this off with another load of clues on how to play it well, which seems appropriate since these things can get pretty complicated.</blockquote>

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