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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5319415" data-attributes="member: 27780"><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuqhbd_dragon-issue-200-reviews_videogames#.UKaP6I6Rn8s" target="_blank">Role-playing reviews</a>Adventure time again. Over the year, Rick has been doing quite a bit of playtesting of official modules. This means that while it may be a while after their release date, he does have more to go upon when reviewing than just his own opinion. And he's pretty harsh really. Even though these are supposedly the cream of the crop, none of them earn that coveted 5 star rating. I guess that makes sense, since the number and quality of them did seem to be declining around that period, pushed out by the bloat of splatbooks. Dragon mountain is huge, impressively presented, and damn tricky. In fact, it may be a bit too huge and tricky, even for the levels of characters it's supposedly aimed at. The fact that a full third of the boxed set is devoted to the prelude is an issue to Rick, who thinks that's poor pacing. Since B2 took about the same proportion to get to the actual caves, and T1 devoted a good half of the module to the village, I am dubious that it's an inherently bad thing. It's more likely just the implementation in this case. The mountain itself has more than enough variety of encounters to maintain his interest through the difficulty level, although he's not sure about some of the goofier traps. I guess that kind of thing is a matter of taste. They're more serious than they were a couple of years ago, but whimsy and punnery is still a staple of the TSR writers even in serious supplements. Shadows on the borderland is a rather good Runequest adventure from our other longtime reviewer Ken Rolston. The visuals aren't that impressive, but the plotting is, telling several good stories without railroading you into a fixed conclusion. Only the stabs of goofy humour again spoil the package. You know, a world where sentient ducks are a common PC race is never going to be able to maintain GRIMDARKness with a straight face for long. Dorastor: Land of doom is another Runequest one. They've turned around their late 80's slump quite nicely. It seems to be as much an region supplement as it is an adventure, with plenty of info on the quirky creatures and dangers, but not a huge amount of plot. The spectre king is a set of adventures for Pendragon. This is the one that wins top marks, with multiple adventures that fit together well, great writing, well researched historical detail, and interesting twists to the stories. That it wasn't even nominated for awards last year is shocking! Pendragon seems to garner nothing but praise, yet remain a very niche product with an unstable company history. It is a bit bemusing. Honorable mentions this month go to GURPS Cyberpunk Adventures, Dragon Strike, Corporate Shadowfiles, and TWERPS. Two of them are notably simple and suited for introducing new players, while the other two are more sophisticated. None are perfect, but they all have something to recommend them to readers. He does tackle a pretty broad variety of games, although he seems to prefer slightly lighter systems. Well, I suppose they are easier to pick up and try on the spur of the moment, and then give a comprehensive assessment of. You always have to take practical considerations into account. Social board games: Allen Varney follows Rick by contributing something that's about halfway between a review and a feature. So your game got abruptly cancelled, but there's plenty of people here. Let's get out a board game! But which one? Oh, the decisions. So here we have microreviews of 13 games, along with some general pontification about what makes a good multi-player competitive game. You ought to keep everyone involved most of the way through (by which criteria Monopoly is a failure) and allow for turnarounds at any point. Players need at least a moderate amount of personal agency, otherwise the game will soon grow tiresome. (again, snakes & ladders disproves that) I suppose this shows how detached serious gamers become from the mainstream, for although I've heard of some of these games, I don't own any of them, and the advice seems nice in theory, but not backed up by reality, where books like Twilight are huge commercial successes despite the obvious technical flaws in their writing and punk is popular precisely because of it's simplicity and sloppiness. Quality and commercial success  seem to have a pretty low degree of positive correlation in actual situations.  In the end, I am forced to simply shrug bemusedly at this article, as it doesn't seem to have much of use to me, and hope that maybe I'll get to try some of these games personally.</blockquote>

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