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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5384310" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 211: November 1994part 6/6The role of books: Dun lady's Jess by Doranna Durgin puts a horse into a human body, and has her trying to make a living, find her rider, and get turned back. This premise is followed up logically and avoiding cliches. It seems like an excellent introduction that won't be easy to follow up. A prince among men by Robert N Charrette is in sharp contrast to the previous one, too many ideas, poorly developed. And Arthur returns to a cyberpunk setting? That seems very cliche, since Shadowrun and Rifts cover much of the same ground. Why bother? Aurian by Maggie Furey also draws upon a bit of arthurian mythology, but manages to take it a completely different direction and make both the characters and worldbuilding convincing. It's large, but makes easy reading, and looks like it could become a good trilogy or even longer. And we know our book publishers like their shelf fillers. Batman: Knightfall by Dennis O'Neil is the one where batman gets his back broken, and Jean-Paul Valley replaces him. It does not get a positive review at all. Batman gets handed the idiot ball so the plot can work, the plotting is poor, and of course, the reset button gets pushed at the end. Bleah. Another reminder that 90's comic continuity was a sucky business. The raven ring by Patricia C Wrede gets a blandly positive review. It just seems to be generally good all round, without any hugely distinctive features to generate controversy. So while it may be good, it's unlikely to make the leap to megasales. The godmother by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is one of those twisted modern day retellings of old fairytales. This is another one that feels awkwardly stitched together, drawing on so many stories, and introducing so many characters that no-one really gets enough spotlight time. Either make it longer, or edit it better. Dragon's eye, edited by Cristopher Stasheff is an anthology set about dragons. To make sure this doesn't become monotonous, they draw on plenty of different regions, times and mythologies. From the usual celtic stuff to bibilical, napoleonic and WWII. The main complaint is that it's a bit expensive for it's size. Costs for everything seem to be going up too much around this time. Must be the economy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> Tarant loses his head, but keeps on ticking. The first story of Libram X comes to an end, but is left very much open for further adventures. After you've had a taste of the multiverse, how can you be happy going back to a normal life? Dragonmirth has more thoughts on dungeon hierarchy and ecology. Yamara and co establish a working relationship with those damnable insects against a greater foe. Through the looking glass: Since Robert is now only bimonthly, he has to use this one for christmas shopping, otherwise he'd miss it entirely. When you count the lead-in time, he's probably writing this in september. If he didn't have an established relationship with the minis companies, there's no way he could do that. You have to work your ass off to establish a business, but hopefully if you do things right, they'll become automated after a while, so you can relax a little and do something with your life other than nonstop work. Or not. It all depends on if you're succeeding or not. A dragon-riding warrior kicks off our minis this month. It's not a very big dragon, but as we've found before, three hundred foot great wyrms are a bit of a pain to represent on the tabletop. A cyberpunk street biker, looking like they're in the act of a drive-by shooting. A whole tribe of lizardmen, with predictably primitive weaponry. Shame there's no decent roads where they live for you to do a drive-by on them. Some more hard-bitten streetrunners and mercenaries, heavily dressed and armed. And some slightly less heavily dressed (but hardly immodest ) victorian ladies round things out. As usual, they're covering a wide range of eras and genres in here, even if the sales might not reflect that. TSR Previews: A surprisingly light december this year, with the major push having happened last month. So the people manning the presses can enjoy time with their own families a little earlier. Planescape gets The Deva Spark. The slightly awkward adventure that tells us that free will and moral agency is a complicated, and often incredibly stupid business. And can be liberally <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ed around with by magic in D&D. Be careful what you eat. The Forgotten Realms competes the "Marco" Volo trilogy series of adventures. Who is he really, and why is he on the run? Is the reason ridiculously improbable and nothing to be ashamed of at all. Mystara releases the Poor Wizards Almanac for 1012. They may have shifted the universe sideways a bit, but they're still keeping the timeline consistent. It's a lot easier this way than having the metaplot changes scattered around in supplements as they come up. They did a magic encylopedia a couple of years ago. Now they're doing an Encyclopedia Magica. I dunno. :shakes head: Almost as bad as demons, deamons and demodands. Anyway, Slade is in charge again, but the scope is much bigger this time. These tremendously pretty faux leatherbound follies attempt to collect every item TSR has even published. I still have all 4 of them. Still, this is one of those things that I'm very glad we have the internet for these days. Living documents are so much less expensive and inconvenient than things like these, which are out of date even before release, and need yearly updates to even come close to staying relevant.The Amazing Engine releases Tabloid! A world in which all the stories in the tabloids are true, and you play one of these beleaguered bastions of journalistic integrity trying to find the truth and get it out there? Muahahaha!!! They do have amusingly weird imaginations. Endless Quest gets Forest of Darkness. Another choose your own adventure. Which path will you pick, and will it get you home safely? And finally, there's The Hidden War by Michael Armstrong. Just another basic sci-fi conspiracy novel. Cue the X-files theme music. Between the themed section, the Realms articles, and the fiction, this manages to be a fairly pleasing issue for me. There's a whole bunch of cool ideas in them, many long overdue. Once again I am reminded exactly why I press on through this even when some issues are mostly useless. The constant churn of writers and fashions mean that even when they do cover the same ideas again, there's often at least a different perspective on them. But still, screw the cover versions. It's the new originals I'm really interested in. Bring them on, if you please designers.</blockquote>

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