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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5400694" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 214: February 1995part 5/8Eye of the monitor again changes hands, with Lester Smith taking on this month's review. Once again I get the sense that the level of organisation in the TSR offices is declining, as people struggle to get everything done with declining budgets and workforce. Compounding that is the fact that this isn't very long, is covering a game they've reviewed before, and is completely lacking in screenshots. So this is another look at the Space Hulk computer game. Lester thinks it's a great game, and sets out to repudiate Jay & Dee's review one point at a time. You've got to use military tactics and think ahead, it's not an arcade blaster. There are valid reasons for using both the overhead and personal views. The monsters spawn randomly, so you can't win by simple memorisation anyway. Even their grasp of the basic controls seem shaky. It's as if they weren't even paying proper attention. Perhaps they should have read the manual. So this is a somewhat curious review, that does have traces of snark and condescension in it while remaining civil and avoiding any ad hominem attacks. It's certainly not as interesting as Gary's old rants, but it does stand out against the current tone of the magazine. This is definitely worth noting. Just how haphazard will this column get before they cancel it altogether. The game wizards: This column is taken up by spellfire stuff again. No-one outside the company is sending articles in it seems, so it's purely company pressure that's putting it in here. As they did with the Buck Rogers boardgame back in issue 157, they show us how to adapt the rules for a solitaire game. Which is very appropriate, given the difficulty of finding people to play these games. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> The opponent is completely predictable, but gets several substantial advantages over a human player because they're largely an aggressor, and don't need to worry about realm maintenance. They should still be quite tough to defeat, unless you build a deck specifically intended to work poorly for them. And if you're spending that much money on fine-tuning a deck you'll never use for a proper game, I think a little derision is not entirely undeserved. So this is exactly what they ought to be giving the game, and I mean that in the meanest possible way. Forum: Paul Morgan goes back 19 issues to the multiclass character problem. He's found that while more powerful at first, as time goes on, they become less and less so compared to their single class companions. Long term balance, not per encounter. Christopher Davis has his own fairly mild solution for multiclassed characters. They're not that much of a problem. Always spreading xp half and half between their classes no matter what they do, on the other hand, isn't such a great idea. They should be able to concentrate on one or the other a bit. Jarmo Gunn is another writer reaching back well over a year. His characters survive despite having several below average stats due to their ingenuity. Don't just throw yours away because they don't have multiple 18's. John Morris. Jr is horrified by all the people playing drow all of a sudden. They're mostly ghastly twinks too. Bob Salvadore has a lot to answer for. What are we to do with these pesky dual-wielding bandwagon jumpers! Hee. Another overpopular thing gets it's much deserved backlash here. Philip Dale reminds us that sometimes problem players are a result of the DM, and it's your responsibility to figure out what the problem is and fix it as it is theirs. But if all else fails, go freeform, then they can't game the system. Or just kick them out. That is an option, you know. Thomas Martin reminds us that nearly every RPG system has some exploit that'll make characters unfairly powerful. D&D's new bard kits certainly aren't alone in that. You've got to address the problem on the player level as well s the mechanical one, otherwise they'll just find some new trick to exploit. Andrew McLeish comes to the defence of bard kits. Penalise them when they play them wrong, and don't be overgenerous in handing out magic items and they'll be fine. Ha. Gray Calhoun makes the tedious statement that you should balance the twinked bard kits by social hindrances. I think that theory is getting a bit frayed around the edges now. It doesn't really work very well, especially with this most social of classes.</blockquote>

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