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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5645523" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 242: December 1997part 8/8Role-playing reviews gives us another look at D&D's competition in the fantasy arena. Old Ones is for the Palladium FRPG, and has been updated for the second edition recently. When they say old ones, they of course mean cthulhuesque world eating monstrosities, not geriatrics.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The book is filed with plenty of info on them and the dark kingdom that worships them, and manages to make things suitably strange and gruesome. Kevin certainly doesn't lack in drive and imagination. Dragons and Gods also sees him pilfering liberally from existing media, but more than putting his own spin on it. There may be plenty of bits of egyptian myth mixed in, but really, no-one could tell it quite like him. Who else would have an intelligent dagger with paranoid schizophrenia? Adventures on the high seas is scattershot, but also full of interesting details, covering not just the sea, but plenty of coast, trading & economics, and some seemingly unrelated stuff like gladiators and necromancy. As prolific as he is, perhaps an external editor might help make the products more professional. Monsters and animals, on the other hand, disappoints Rick, being just another load of monsters, only without much descriptive verve, and far too many stats for mundane animals. Do we really need those? I suppose a chipmunk might come in handy at some point, but I can't recall ever using them. The Earthdawn survival guide is essentially a book of essays, with whimsical, mostly IC writing, and all statistical stuff confined to a few pages at the back. This means it's easy to steal ideas for another system, which Rick is keen on because he's not too fond of high crunch games. There are quite a few supplements like that these days. Might be a fashion thing. Until D20 comes along, people have to try and grab the generic dollar any way they can. Throal: the Dwarf Kingdom Game is also for Earthdawn. Robin Laws creates a mountain fastness that's a little more chaotic and filled with political tensions than your average lawful good D&D dwarven setup. Which means it should be fun to adventure in. Ricks only complaint is that it needs better maps and maybe a prefab adventure. Since those are falling out of fashion, he may have to keep complaining. GURPS Dinosaurs is the kind of supplement a comprehensive generic game ought to have. After all, who doesn't think dinosaurs are awesome? Well, unless they were ruined on them by watching all 13 land before time movies. <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" /> Other lines could learn from this. Still, it is a GURPs supplement, and that means it is a bit dry at times. GURPS planet krishna is one of their fairly obscure licences, based on L. Sprague de Camp's series. It's a sufficiently strange one that it keeps Rick's interest, and tests the system nicely. Plus there's plenty of humour in there. You could really kick it old school with this. Aeon has indeed been renamed Trinity. Now their clever aliterative naming system has been messed up. TSR Previews: February sees things continue at the same pace as last month. The Forgotten Realms finally fills in another place that's been on the map for ages. Hellgate Keep is perfect for another megadungeon. Be careful delving it though, for you may let out even more unspeakable evils to plague the world. Speaking of unspeakable evils, Cyric finally pisses off the other gods enough that they put him on trial. Troy Denning tells another of the Realms' more lighthearted stories, as superdick gets his comeuppance. Dragonlance concludes it's first 5th age trilogy, with The eve of the Maelstrom by Jean Rabe. Some old favourites are brought back improbably to help deal with the really big dragons. Will they be enough to deal with them for good? Ravenloft has another adventure in which you are caught between two dubious sides, Servants of Darkness. Will you choose the witches, the inquisitors, or just kill everyone for maximum xp? Also monstrous, but rather more lighthearted, is Moonlight Madness. Skip Williams once again proves that when you let him lose to write adventures, he doesn't half produce some goofy crap. Stick to the rules lawyering. And the Wizard's Spell compendium reaches volume 3. No surprise that this one is turning out at least as bulky as the magic item encyclopedias. The Current Clack comes to an end. Whether they continue their gossip under another format or not we shall have to see. But as they've just lost one of their strongest opponents, Patricia Pulling, and let's face it, the amount of media controversy D&D has faced has declined dramatically in recent years, gossip doesn't seem like such a worthy use of their pagecount. So this is a reasonable change, especially as the replacement, bringing back employee profiles, looks like fun. In other cool news, we're getting a new Marvel Superheroes RPG from them. Since the previous one was easily their second strongest game for nearly a decade, this has definite potential to get quite a few articles in the magazine and keep me from getting bored by ubiquitous D&D coverage. I look forward to it. (although I do wish we'd heard more about why they lost the licence last time. ) This issue is nicely focussed and has tons of usable crunch, although it is maybe a bit too Realms heavy. They really ought to be giving their other settings at least at bit more love, rather than blanketing us with ubiquitous coverage of the setting that's already the most covered by a long shot. Still, most of the individual articles are good, it's just that these days they really seem to struggle with getting sufficient variety to make the magazine feel satisfying as a complete package. Instead, it's more for dipping in and out of. I suppose that makes more sense when you're reading over the course of an entire month. Let's hope they can keep at least a little continuity going next year, instead of resetting to basic article topics yet again.</blockquote>

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