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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5511039" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 227: March 1996part 8/8TSR Previews: The forgotten realms takes twinkitude to 40th level, 10 more levels than generic characters can manage, in Faiths and Avatars. As if gods weren't scary enough. It also gets Realms of the Underdark, another collection of short stories giving drow fanboys some more material to consume, and Tangled Webs by Elaine Cunningham, the second book starring the exiled drow princess Liriel. Busy busy busy. Planescape gets Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. You've already had the general guide. Now you can get more full stats and relationships between characters. Oh go on then. More generally useful but not essential stuff. Ravenloft sees Van Richten's ghosts come home to roost in Bleak House. And then he may well become a ghost himself. In any case, this is another big metaplot event, with a fairly substantial amount of railroading crap involved. Be ready to acquire derangements, possibly lose stats permanently, and deal with long spells of tension building bits trapped in fixed locations. Not suited for hack and slashers at all. Mystara finishes off it's current book series with Dragonmage of Mystara. The good guys and the bad guys have to join forces to deal with the even worse guys. Sounds fairly familiar. And our generic book is Den of Thieves. Do we not already have a complete handbook for this class. What do you have to add to the pot, huh? The current Clack: This year continues to be the one that really changes the roleplaying landscape, mostly for the worse. GDW shuts down, giving the rights to most of it's games back to their original creators. It's better than bankruptcy, but not by much, and still means Traveller isn't going to get any new books for ages. Meanwhile we get some more elaboration on why White Wolf engaged in substantial layoffs, despite the fact that their sales are still increasing. Just like TSR in 1983, they'd been expanding beyond their means, and living large like they were going to keep increasing exponentially in profits forever. Goes to show, at least a few people got to live like rock and roll stars for a while from roleplaying. But now they have to learn to be a sensible company if they want to survive long-term. Bah. Adulthood sucks. So it's not all bad news, but it is still a bit dispiriting. You can only be carefree and happy-go-lucky if someone else is taking care of things for you. It's definitely becoming less of a struggle to review this year than it was the last one, but once again, there is a good deal here to be bored and/or unsettled by. The gaming landscape in general is shifting in uncertain fashions, and they're not sure whether to experiment more, or retreat into safe territory, and as a result are trying to do both at once in a manner that's tentative and lacking in confidence. Which doesn't quite work. Better to go out with a bang than a whimper, and at the moment it feels more like a fizzle. It all makes me want to move on to better times all the faster.</blockquote>

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