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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5288269" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 197: September 1993part 4/6Forum: Clarissa Fowler points out an interesting conflict in the TSR camp, between Roger's support of GLB (but not T yet) gamers, and their code of conduct, which tries to sweep all that ickiness under the carpet. This looks like another topic likely to cause further debate now it's been exposed to the light. As well as that, she offers some more advice about how to make gaming more inviting to people of various minority groups. Things are gradually getting better, but only due to the hard work of people like her. Kendal Miles encourages you to involve your players in creating backstories for their characters collectively, instead of sending them away to produce several page essays of pretentiousness. That'll help them find reasons to get the party together and all working on the same goals. Erik Munne also encourages you to talk about what characters you and your players want when building a game, instead of working in a vacuum. Communication is integral to gaming, so of course improving your skills at that will help.  Les Bowman laid down the law when it comes to timekeeping and food during his game. He did lose a couple of players, but now the whole thing runs so much better. A little discipline is a very good thing. You wouldn't want the people who can't buckle down to it anyway. Steven Cox brings the Complete book of Dwarves into the overpowered kit debate. As with the bard ones, it's the multiclass stuff that really brings the cheese. Another voice joins the list of people clamouring for a solution. Is it any wonder 3e overcompensated and wound up going the other direction with multiclass power levels. Eyal Teler doesn't find psionicists overpowered. Course, that's because his wizards have houserules that substantially increase their versatility. In any case, you shouldn't expect them to work in the same way, as that gets boring. If you do encounter problems, he has some relatively reasonable sounding nerfs to keep them from getting too complacent. Mage gets a rather odd byline. Truth until paradox. And there are ninjas with shades and people riding hoverbikes firing lots of guns with telekinesis. That'd certainly invoke lots of paradox in the actual game. Guess we have another unfortunate case of artwork disconnect. I suppose you've got to lure people in. A bit of false advertising never hurt anyone. Role-playing reviews: The HERO system is Allen's choice of review material this month. Like GURPS, you can do a hell of a lot with it. But unlike GURPS, it has a definite focus, with the Champions game seeing the lions share of it's supplements.  With it's effect based point buy design, it does stand out, and has some fanatical devotees, but not enough to keep it financially stable. As a result, we get a quick history lesson as well, telling us how ownership has shifted around over the years. It once again cements Allen's position as a good reviewer who knows the context of what they're talking about. Dark Champions: Heroes of vengeance sees a decidedly mixed review, with Allen recognising it's quality, but also rather uncomfortable with the violent, nihilistic worldview it espouses, where the heroes are barely better than the villains. This may be just a reflection of the recent changes in comics, but it's a decidedly depressing one, and he wants no part in games based upon it. Fight the grimdark! High tech enemies gets listed, but then almost forgotten about in the actual prose of the review. The only important detail is the sheer brutality of some of the enemies, who are quite capable of kicking the average parties ass. Better get accumulating those extra points then. Champions Universe is a bit of a headache, as it tries to consolidate the work of all the previous setting books into one rather large unified supplement. Unfortunately, it's not nearly large enough to stand on it's own, and raises as many questions as it answers. You'll have to reconcile the inconsistencies exposed yourself. Normals Unbound is the only supplement that gets serious praise, with character sketches that are both appropriate and fun. They may not have special powers, but that doesn't make them any less critical to the story. It's one of those areas where campaigns often struggle to emulate the source material, and this bunch of prefab example characters go quite a way in showing you how to do it. Allen also mentions the monster book, adventures, official magazine, and online ventures by the community. There does seem to be the persistent theme of plenty of potential, but patchy implementation. Just can't get the staff, it seems, so they have to rely on the fans to keep the fires burning. I suppose that puts them in a good position to have their fortunes revived by the internet age. The marvel-phile: This issue has been pretty light on new crunch so far. Here we get some rather unexpected new stuff for this game. The proportion of badass normals in comics has been increasing in recent years, and it's got to the point where they really need to represent this properly in the game. Steven Schend does just that, allowing you to generate characters who rely on skills and gadgets for any exceptional capabilities they have. On the plus side, they get more contacts than regular heroes, and a whole bunch of talents, which means they may not have the world changing powers, but they will be more versatile. Hopefully they'll be able to hold their own with the likes of Batman and Captain America. Not a bad article at all, even if it does highlight another area of growing conservativeness in the company, that of gradually backing off from high level coverage in their adventures and supplements. As usual, any actual play experience with these optional rules is welcome.</blockquote>

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