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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5628429" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 240: October 1997part 6/8KotDT suffers once again from players missing the point. Dragonmirth is very topical, with magic eye pictures. I remember those! Ye gods that was irritating. Swordplay also miss the point. Floyd is now officially a target of the demonic invasion.Role-playing reviews: Requiem: the grim harvest is of course the Ravenloft supplement that lets you play the undead, along with overturning Ravenloft's established order in the accompanying adventure. Rick's main complaints, ironically, are where it sticks a little too closely to established D&D rules cruft, limiting options in some ways, while presenting too many irrelevant ones in other cases. It might be entertaining to play, but it's not going to win many people back from White Wolf. Children of the night: Vampires looks like a collection of NPC monsters, each with unique abilities of their own, but really, it's a bunch of mini-adventures as well, as each one has their own history, agenda, and in many cases lair and minions detailed. Not all of them are great, and some are silly, but it shows just how varied you can make them these days, which is important for a long-term Ravenloft campaign. After all, that's what they're trying to promote now. A guide to Transylvania gets a fairly middling review. It's useful if you're playing a gothic earth game, but a bit dry, and doesn't have ready-play adventures. Still, this is one case where the folklore wasn't all stuff I'd seen before, including some rather interesting expansion on the piper of Hamelin mythology. And it's system light enough that this book is one I still find useful now. Some things age better than others, and this has actually been one of them. A world of darkness 2nd edition looks like a general WoD book, but since Vampire is the most popular line, can you guess who gets the lion's share of the screentime? Yup, it's time for another gritty, highly detailed, and not so highly edited dive into a world not too far from our own, and sometimes so over the top that the horror flips round into being funny from Rick's PoV. I should look this one over again as well, see how it's held up over a decade later. Constantinople by night is cut from much the same vein. You still expect indexes from them after 6 years? More fool you. And of course, it's very much for mature readers. Gee, ya reckon? Shame you can't fleshcraft common sense onto someone. Chicago Chronicles Vol 1, by contrast, shows that they have actually developed quite a bit, by compiling two old supplements from the early days of the line into one. The artwork is noticeably worse than more recent supplements, and the writing less polished. But that doesn't make it less fun to read, only trickier to use in actual play. Horror's heart is for Call of Cthulhu, and shows up the sanity threatening side of Montreal. (don't laugh) Spooky locales, gruesome monsters, and an overarching plot that is full of interesting bits, but doesn't quite climax properly. Still, since the end of a story is where you have most leeway to change things, hopefully that can be fixed in actual play. Ye Booke of Monstres II also showcases the cthulhu designer's twisted imaginations, expanding the universe beyond Lovecraft's original writings. The main complaint here is that the illustrations aren't that great. Compared to TSR or White wolf's recent output, they really don't blast the SAN like they should. Guess it's back to using your imagination to fill in the details again. The complete masks of Nyarlathotep, on the other hand, does manage to pull everything together and make a mega-adventure that holds up all the way through. It might be an old one, but surely standing the test of time is a good thing. Now, if only they'd come up with some new adventures that match it.</blockquote>

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