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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5493458" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 225: January 1996part 8/8Floyd escapes the undead by the skin of his teeth. And his saviour is starting to pick up his snarkiness. TSR Previews: A rather slow month in february, once again, however, they also mention two new supplements for this month they forgot last issue, so I'll do those first. Land of the Minotaurs by Robert A Knack sees us return to Taladas for the first time in 4 years, as Kaz deals with conspiracies in the royal court. Go him. Planescape also gets it's first novel. Blood hostages by J. Robert King starts a trilogy focussed on the Blood War. Well, with a card line as well, it is one of the most popular plot drivers. Anyway, next month sees the forgotten realms complete it's secondary splatbook series. Warriors and priests of the realms makes our tank classes more powerful and integrated, as usual. Ravenloft shows how to make artifacts even more sadistic than regular campaigns, in Forged of Darkness. Great power, even greater drawbacks and prices. Remember kids, just say no to artifacts. The buzz may be hot, but before you know it, you're an undead monstrosity who'll die if you give up the artifact or fail to sacrifice a baby to it every full moon. Dark sun moves it's supplements IC in The Wanderers Chronicle: Mind-Lords of the last sea. Well, at least he's not annoying like Volo. And it's another pretty boxed set. They retain their collectors value better than books. And finally, the Blood wars card game gets it's 4th expansion pack. The inner planes decide to make the long trip to join the fray. I play the yeti with tentacle arms! <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" /> Rumblings gets renamed to The Current Clack, which sounds like a reference to something, but I'm damned if I can figure out what the joke is. It seems to be designed to catch the attention of people who pick up the magazine and start reading from the back, newspaper style, with the overspill placed several pages earlier in the magazine. Which would work better if they hadn't just started polybagging the magazine. :facepalm: Classic case of departmental uncoordinatedness really. The news has some pretty interesting stuff though. Games Workshop is cementing their dominance of the minis market by taking over their own distribution. This means smaller shops are being squeezed by their minimum order numbers, and they're being sued for unfair trade practices and anti-trust breaches by their former distributors. Meanwhile, White Wolf magazine has recently died, after a year in which they tried to revamp themselves by changing their name and turning up the attitude knob. Once again their decision to do that on this magazine too looks not just laughable but thoroughly misguided. ( A let's read thread for White Wolf magazine would be very welcome too, by the way) White Wolf the company, on the other hand, are doing very well from turning the attitude knob up, which I do find rather curious. Just as interesting is Jolly Blackburn's leaving AEG and coming here, bringing Knights of the Dinner Table with him. There's plenty of other bits and pieces, but these are the ones that stand out. Is the gossip going to get more salacious with the new format? Well, there are worse ways to get readers than emulate the tabloids. There's certainly quite a bit to dislike here, but it's not as bad as I was fearing it would be. Some of the ideas they're trying are not only good ones, but properly implemented as well. On the other hand, there's quite a few articles that are not only rehashed, but just plain worse than their previous appearances in the magazine. And they're really struggling to get the mechanics of the game up to scratch, which is a lot more noticeable now they're putting more crunchy articles in. It is very interesting though, as we're starting to see the growing pains that'll eventually flower into 3e. So there are signs they'll get through this. It's just a matter of how much they'll suffer and lose on the way. That makes me a little more enthusiastic about pressing onwards.</blockquote>

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