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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5820254" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 265: November 1999part 7/7Role models: Ha. We have a particularly inventive bit of minis advice this month, as they advise you to make scenery out of milk cartons and cereal boxes, (after all, nearly everyone goes through plenty of those) and show us how to emulate video game style fog of war in a minis scenario using plastic cups. That's brilliant, funny and useful. Once again, this column is a font of cool ideas crammed in a small package, and is really proving it's value as part of the magazine. Get out your craft knives and scissors and turn your food waste into an opportunity for more fun. Not playing with your food is something you tell your kids, not something you have to stick too yourself. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Once again I approve strongly of this column, and just wish it was a bit longer, so I'd have more to talk about. The voice: We've already had one Alternity fast-play in the magazine. But they're releasing a second setting, so here's a second, smaller one to introduce us to Dark Matter, their modern day action/conspiracy setting. Once again, it's a pretty simple plot, all about introducing the basics of both combat and various skills to that player (which is easy enough since the system uses a universal mechanic) It does railroad more than a bit, with no real choices you can make to affect the outcome of the plot beyond succeeding and advancing or failing in your dice rolls and facing further complications. So that does make this pretty unsatisfying, like most of these fast-play adventurers, because they don't include even a few token choices, which wouldn't be impossible to do even in an adventure of this size. As it is, even a computer could play this. I certainly wouldn't want to be introduced to roleplaying without being given any options on how I played. In addition, the illustrations have obviosly been traced directly from photographs of real people from around the office, which just doesn't quite look right somehow. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to fail this one both on story and presentation. You need to lead with at least one good adventure if you want to make a new system accessible, and this is not it. Dragonmirth takes things rather too literally. KotDT figure out how to get cheaper hired help. TSR Previews: Planescape may sorta be cancelled, but it's influence is still being strongly felt. A guide to hell sees Chris Pramas do officially what he'll do again slightly less so in the D20 era. Since we're no longer covered by the same editorial restrictions, expect all the old names to be back and ready to rock. Meanwhile, Planescape: Torment gets a novelization by Ray & Valerie Vallese. Still doing the multimedia thing to considerable success I see. Greyhawk does much the same thing, only the other way round. Return to white plume mountain follows the book in short order. Bruce Cordell is responsible for revising, expanding and adding a load of plot to this one. The realms rehashes too. The temptation of Elminster gets reprinted in paperback. I still don't know why they bother to tell us that. And Drizzt gives us his own Guide to the Underdark. Guess Volo called in sick for this one. Wonder if they'll manage to accurately reproduce his voice from the books, given a different writer is responsible. Dragonlance does, yeah, yet more expanded rehash. The original trilogy get directors cuts with added material and author commentary, just like the module series. They really are trying to scrape every last inch of the barrel dry before they move onto the next edition. Alternity, on the other hand, does get 2 new products. Dark Matter is a new campaign setting featuring modern conspiracy weirdness. Mindwalking: A guide to psionics is a general book, but seems likely to be useful to it. A likely precursor to the Agents of Psi setting for D20 modern. What's new is Baaack! After 15 years, some of them spent dealing with CCG's, they return to the world of roleplaying, tanned, with new hair, ready to reveal the deepest truths behind the creative urge. And crack cheap gags. Well, they can't go too far from their core, or they'll lose their audience. With several articles that fail in interesting ways, this isn't the greatest of issues, but was reasonably entertaining for me to pick apart. That's certainly preferable to bland articles that leave me with nothing to say. And as usual, there are a few articles that are genuinely enjoyable and useful amidst the dross. It does feel like they're hitting the accelerator in general as well. If that means more little details get messed up because they're concentrating on the next edition content, then so be it. That'd be an understandable flaw to take the blame for.</blockquote>

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