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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5506874" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996part 4/8The role of books has a Magic: the Gathering special this month. Since role-playing reviews has already done that recently, this means it has become such a breakout hit that no-one's quite sure where to put it anymore, and so anyone remotely related is trying to get in on the act. Ahh, the joys of becoming a breakout hit that creates a whole new genre. Until the shine wears off, and the world puts you in a niche, you get to do virtually anything you want. It's a brilliant position to be in. The pocket players guide for magic the gathering is already up to it's 4th edition. They must be releasing them every 6 months or something. Still, being released by the official writers, it's got a better ability to keep up with the breakneck rise of CCG's than any third party competitors. Apart from the attempts at IC banter, which fall a little flat, it's a pretty solid explanation of the game, well organised and indexed. That should make them quite a bit more money by handling their own support industry as well. Learn Magic cards, by Larry W Smith, PhD, on the other hand is just plain innaccurate in a lot of it's details, some of them worryingly basic. This problem is compounded by the fact that the writing is smooth and authoritative and consistent in it's misreadings. Unless it's John who has the rules interpreted all wrong, which isn't completely beyond the bounds of probability. Still, it is worrying, and he can't recommend it. Curious and interesting. Any comments on this? The unauthorized strategy guide to Magic: The gathering by Gregg Williams and Paul Dreyfus (man, these titles really are getting stupidly huge) isn't bad, but it is very focussed upon helping newbies. This means serious tournament players are likely to outgrow it fast. If you just want to have fun with your family, on the other hand, this might be the right guide for you. Deep magic by Charles Wolfe & George H Baxter, by contrast, is aimed at experts, particularly those with the cash to spend on buying tons of booster packs to get those rare cards for really brutal deck-building. It's so focussed on these optimal strategies that it neglects the more achievable builds, which means it won't be useful to a lot of people. Still, it's a good way to keep people buying more booster packs, isn't it. <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" /> Targen's tome: A masters guide to Magic by John M Corradin, looks like another attempt at writing from a semi-IC perspective. With quite a bit of humour, and accessible top tens of most useful cards, it's both useful and a good read despite being a bit rough around the edges. Remember, a game should be played for fun. Taking the whole thing too seriously kinda spoils it for everyone. Network news: Once again this column clearly and concisely states what it's trying to accomplish. To make these conventions work, they need people able to write good adventures. After all, they can't keep reusing the tomb of horrors for eternity. We need self-contained, easy to understand adventures that can be played in a single session, with pregens that are correctly tailored to the challenges of the adventure. You need to submit your idea first, and then be willing to test and edit afterwards. As with most of the company these days, it's not particularly accessible to newbies anymore, but still, it's probably an easier way to get a foothold than going straight into freelancing for official books. And it's easy enough to understand what you have to do here. I just wish they didn't have to repeat themselves so many times in slightly different formats to get the message across.</blockquote>

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