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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5419475" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 217: May 1995part 6/8Role-playing reviews is particularly strange and wide-ranging this month. A novel, a computer game, a card game? This isn't roleplaying! Very curious. On the other hand, a little variety does help to stave off the boredom, so I am interested in seeing how this shakes out. Theatrix is one of those games that plays with the concept of what roleplaying is, moving it a lot closer to improv acting than wargaming. There's no dice, and the overall direction of the story is scripted in advance. The fun is in finding out exactly how you get from A to B. This takes quite a bit of adapting to for people used to lots of stats and dice rolls, but does make a fun game, and would be an excellent framing device for giving drama students a degree of narrative control within a play. Lester highly recommends it. The empire of Elwolf, on the other hand, gets slated in amusing fashion. The days of Spawn of Fashan are not over. So proclaims King Blasteem Baltamax! Stupid names. Inane dialogue, delivered with all kinds of weird descriptives. And oh god, the terrible terrible riddles. Really, it's not a good example for your roleplaying at all. Avoid at all costs, unless you wish to do an MST3K reading. HOL is technically a roleplaying game, but really, you can't exactly play it as written, and the primary entertainment is in reading it. The whole thing is hand-written and illustrated, and it's all deeply deeply twisted in an amusing manner. A home-spun gem that would be ruined by trying to treat it in a professional big budget manner. Superhero league of Hoboken is a computer game putting you in charge of a team of misfit heroes with mostly useless powers, trying to fight crime in New Jersey. Shame Squirrel Girl isn't around to show them how it's done. Of course, this being a RPG, the odd powers and items all become crucial to solving at least one puzzle over the course of the game. The tricky puzzles, challenging combats and amusing bits all combine to create a rather neat package. Whispering vault is another 6 pip groundbreaker of an RPG. The rough edges from issue 208's prerelease copy have been sorted out, it looks great, and the gameplay combines tremendous freedom in character creation with an easily understood formula for adventures. Horror does not have to be disempowering or bogged down by angst. Dangerous prey is the first supplement for Whispering Vault. Not too surprisingly, it's a monster book. In any game that differs from the norm, a GM is going to want a little help defining the boundaries and conventions, and this has more than enough weird creatures and their lairs to keep PC's on their toes for a while. And they'd better get on it, for I get the impression normal people may have a hard time even affecting things like this. On top of this, we have quick reviews of The Great Dalmuti and Battlebots. A card game and a tiny board game. Man, this is some pretty insane variety. That's one definite benefit of the editorial regime being in flux. You can get away with quite a bit if you pick your time right. Rumblings: Ooh. TSR releases the cancelled Ivid the Undying as a free download. Greyhawk lives on over the Web! That's not bad news, is it. It certainly sets the stage for further internet support for lines that don't merit full books any more. Also very historically interesting is seeing WotC consuming various other companies IP with great gusto. The TSR takeover had plenty of precedents, and they certainly weren't shy about buying properties they liked, even if the companies weren't even in trouble. The other two bits of news aren't quite so significant. A trio of fanzines get promoted, along with some talk about what's in them. And the guys behind Whispering Vault have a new project in the pipeline already. Given the positive reviews that got, the people in the magazine are interested to see more. I can't say I disagree with them.</blockquote>

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