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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5394845" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 213: January 1995part 6/8Role-playing reviews: While D&D does have resurrection, dying in RPG's is still a serious business, and frequently a session ruiner. But the great thing about gaming  is that you can imagine characters so dramatically different from mundane humanity that conventional labels of alive and dead don't apply, and then figure out what it's like to exist as one of them. Sure, it may be challenging, and probably won't enjoy the same kind of sales as something which tries to speak directly to the human condition, but it'll be interesting and different. I know there's been times when I've had all I can take of romances and heroes journeys, so I'm exactly the target audience for this month's kind of experimental gaming. Nephilim sees Chaosium take a leaf from white wolf's book, putting you into the role of a bodyhopping spirit trying to achieve godhood down the centuries, described in decidedly florid prose. There's a lot to learn, with the magic system being a bit of a mess, and the campaign material sparse, but it has the potential for truly epic campaigns spanning generations, even more than Pendragon. Good luck trying to get a group together capable of fulfilling that potential. Wraith: the Oblivion is also difficult to keep a game together, but for far more depressing reasons. Chief amongst these is of course the shadow rules, which are cool for a single player, but frequently cause a group to devolve into dark comedy and internecine bickering. The relentless grimness doesn't help either. Even more than Vampire, you are pretty damn screwed as a ghost. It's pretty much the height of white wolf as an uncompromising newcomer producing gaming as art, before they started to bow to the realities of practical design limitations and make sure their settings worked as places that are good to adventure in as well as read about. Once again, good luck getting a group together, with so many other inhabitants of the World of Darkness vying for attention, even though this might be remembered by many, you're more likely to wind up in a crossover game than pure ghost story. Rumblings: White Wolf has a pretty prominent place in this column as well. After much bickering, some of which was via email and has been preserved for posterity on the internet, SJG and White Wolf have agreed to put out GURPS Mage: the Ascension, but stop making any further products together. Neither side is very happy, and I'm not really sure who was wrong in the first place. Rereading them, it all seems a combination of misunderstandings and petulant overreactions.  Definitely wrong, on the other hand, is White Wolf's new Black Dog imprint, where they push the envelope, already pretty elasticated, well beyond breaking point, mostly for sensationalism's sake. The road to maturity does require going through adolescence, unless you want to end up like Michael Jackson, spending a lifetime trying to recapture what you missed out on at the time and looking increasingly creepy in the process. In other news, there's a whole bunch of multimedia crossovers coming out soon. Cyberpunk 2020 is getting a soundtrack. The Death Gate Cycle and Battletech are both getting computer games, while Tank Girl is going from comic to movie and RPG. True ambition is never satisfied with conquering one medium, but must keep going until it overreaches itself and falls over. I wonder which of these were any good.</blockquote>

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