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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5611836" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 238: August 1997part 7/8Rogues Gallery: Silent Sheehan is our only character this month, a grave-robbing dwarf sucked into Ravenloft and given a snake's tongue for his incessant lying. This has slowed him down a little bit, since Ravenloft peasants tend to be superstitious and take weird stuff like that seriously. He definitely seems like he might be useful as an antagonist or uneasy ally, and could develop (or degenerate) with the party as a campaign went on. Obviously it doesn't work so well in another campaign world, but this definitely has potential, and works quite nicely thematically. I think I approve. Dungeon Mastery: Some 5th age stuff in this column, as we get advice on building an intrigue focussed campaign. Actually, it's system free, and the 5th age stuff is merely used as an example, which is one of the better compromises they can do to keep it's profile up in the magazine without getting in the way. And the advice is quite solid, while the example is very amusing. A scheming spoiled teenage princess as the main villain. Who'd suspect that when you aren't playing in a high school drama? <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" /> I like this. I didn't think I would at first, and it is a bit more long-winded than I'd prefer, but it's still quite an enjoyable read once I got into it. And it also shows that the 5th age game's different mechanical focus means it might be better suited to this than D&D. Which does help us justify buying it as well, so this does it's job. KotDT has an aesop's fable to deliver to everyone out there in readerland. Dragonmirth has some ridiculous weaponry. Swordplay are actually working together properly for a change. Floyd is about to face an empire of tiefling bunnies. Er, maybe. Role-playing reviews: Back to Sci-fi again. Seems it's doing better than it has the last few years. Or maybe it's just doing better by comparison, given that D&D, Runequest and Rolemaster are all undergoing difficulties at the moment. Well, at least there's no shortage of games to choose. Buy now, because you never know when they might disappear again. Traveller 4th edition tries to take things back to basics after the fragmentation of megatraveller and the new era. Character generation is mostly the same as ever, and the setting information in the corebook has been stripped back considerably, while taking us to after the war. So really, if you like it, this would be a good time to try and get new people interested. Fading suns seems to be an attempt to apply the White Wolf aesthetic to far future sci-fi. Civilisation is in decline, resources are running out, and everyone is dooooooomed. Eventually. In the meantime, the stage is set for a rich and atmospheric universe for you to explore, and plenty of adversaries both internal and external for you to face. It all seems ready for a good long line of supplements filling things in, such as Byzantium Secundus, which gives us plenty of extra detail on the history and politics of the central worlds. And since it managed 7 years, 34 sourcebooks, plus d20 and LARP conversions before going on hiatus, I think this counts as a reasonable success. Gatecrasher 2nd edition goes completely the opposite direction, converting the rules to FUDGE, and filling the setting with kitchen sink zaniness of the highest order. That's not to say it isn't highly playable, with plenty of the elements having potential to be quite scary if played straight. After all, transdimensional chaos means never knowing for sure what the rules are, which gets very stressful if you have to live through it the whole time.</blockquote>

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