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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5353007" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 205: May 1994part 6/6Through the looking glass: The lead bill is overturned! Yay! Course, coming well after the 11th hour, this technical victory is still a loss in real world terms. Which is really the worst possible outcome, as it leaves both the advocates and defenders frustrated and unhappy. The only people who win are the lawyers. Bah. I'm repeating myself aren't I. Nevertheless, the problem remains deeply entrenched in the system. I don't see a solution coming any time soon. And as I'm not in a position to make the problem work to my advantage, ( I may be able to master legions of arcane rules, but I don't really have the public speaking ability or interpersonal skills to make a good lawyer) I shall keep complaining. Back to the minis though. A marine standing on top of an armoured vehicle, defending it from all comers. A trio of skeletal musicians, playing drums, flute and bagpipes. Yeah, you know the overlord is truly evil when they make their minions play bagpipes. Two heavily armoured futuristic soldiers. Their heads are obscured, so they'll be easily reduced to mooks in the face of real heroes. A rather malformed earth elemental, approaching close enough to humanoid that it's starting to go down the uncanny valley. Dracula and a werewolf, a little late for halloween. A dragon having a good snooze. Two more dragons in flight, quite possibly about to fight. Some rather heavily armed and armoured space rangers, with spare weapons so you can customise them. A whole bunch of flags and standards, that you can again use to make your minis army look more professional. A vaguely enterpriseish little spaceship, designed to serve as an escort to larger ones. And a trio of non-cheesecake female rangers, ready and able for kicking butt and trekking through the wilderness. Sci-fi seems to be doing better in minis than it is in RPG's these days. Ral Partha does a newspaper style advert. Nice to see one of them pop up again. TSR Previews:  Looks like I spoke too soon last month. Barely 3 years since the last basic D&D set, they release another one, entitled The classic Dungeons & Dragons game. Once again, I am curious as to how this version differs from the previous ones. AD&D, as usual, is stuffed to the gills. First up is another spectacular boxed set opening up a new world and milieu. Council of Wyms! Finally, you can play as a dragon. A substantially nerfed dragon in comparison to NPC ones, but a dragon nonetheless. Now, um, what do we do next adventurewise? How do we compensate for the truly ludicrous XP requirement disparities? Oh well, can't fault them for trying, just the execution. A third boxed set this month as well, the revised Ravenloft setting. They too have been busy metaplotting away, and now the world has been substantially rearranged, with somewhat less nerdrage than Dark Sun or Greyhawk. Get another set of tarroka cards as well. Meanwhile on the novel front, they get Mordenheim, by Chet Williamson. Venture to the far north with two amateur necromancers who really don't know what they're doing, and see the Aaaangsty history of the monster and his maker in much greater detail. Who next? And Al-Qadim gives us a 4th, somewhat thinner boxed set. Jesus H their printers and assemblers must be working flat out. Cities of Bone would fit right in in Ravenloft. Still, at least here it's easier to escape the desolate desert horrors stuck in their eternal routine and get some benefit from the treasure. Planescape starts it's first adventure, The eternal boundary. See the fun you can have without even leaving sigil. Really, the adventures come to you. The Forgotten realms gets "Marco" Volo: Departure. A fake Volo? Who'd want to claim responsibility for writing that stuff? A wacky adventure for low level characters? I'm hating it already. Shoo. Our setting free AD&D books this month are PHBR12: The complete paladin's handbook, and Temple, Tower and Tomb. See Rick Swan fail to do as well to expand their characterisation as he did for rangers. See three nasty little dungeons and try to survive. Then maybe you have a chance in the tomb of horrors. Maybe. The Amazing Engine updates one of the oldest settings they have, in Metamorphosis alpha to omega. It's been a loooong time since we visited the Starship Warden. This should be interesting. Endless quest is getting Al-Qadimish, with Secret of the Djinn. Rescue the king of the genies? Oh boy. A tall task for a young pearl diver. Can you guide him the right way? And finally, wackiness seems prevalent in the books department too. Captains Outrageous by Roy V Young. The world is about to be destroyed because the court jester offended the court wizard, and his three musketeers have to foil him. Oh boy. Can I skip this one. Spellfire occupies the back page. Yes, TSR are now officially in the collectable trading card game business. Yet another sign of their impending doom appears on the horizon. Another issue full of contrasts. There's some great articles here, but even they have some elementary editing errors. There's also a lot of promotional articles, some of which manage to be quite good, but the fact that they're custom-ordered by the company rather than reader submissions is also very obvious. It makes me feel that the magazine is probably being interfered with more by the people in charge of finances, which means the editors are distracted and having to add and remove things at the last minute. It's all rather unsatisfactory as a complete product. They've managed to get through it before, but with sales dropping, will the noose tighten upon them? The 18th birthday would be an ironic time to lose a bunch of your independence. But that's for next time, as I've said many a time before.</blockquote>

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