Ok. I didn't own this issue at the time. I knew about it of course. I believe, in fact, I am sure I first saw it at +Scott Thorne's Castle Perilous. I didn't know how good I had it then, to be honest.
Does it feel like I am avoiding the issue? Yeah. I am. It's an April Fools issue and not at all one of my favorite ones. Let's get into because there are some seriously nice gems later on.
The cover. Daniel Horne does some great work. This is not one of my favorites, but it is one is funny. Besides, haven't we all made this joke or some form of it before?
Letters. Ok, these are all fake letters in an attempt to be funny. Yeah. Not so much really.
Ad for Dungeon magazine. Man, I loved Dungeon. Maybe when I am done with this I could something with Dungeon.
First up in the April Fools section is Not Necessarily the Monstrous Compendium. A collection of "funny" monsters. Ok, some are fun and I would use them in a crazy adventure like an Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or something with a lot of mutants.
A cool ad for I.C.E.'s Cyber Space game. Was anything more 90s than that? Cyber Punk vampires maybe.
Razznarock! is an adventure.
Yet Even More [Gods Forbid] Outrages From the Mages is a Pages From the Mages spoof.
It's not that I don't like humor in my games, it's I just don't find these all that funny.
The Game Wizards covers the newest in computer games. Mechwarrior from Activision, Champions of Krynn from SSI/TSR and Sword of the Samurai from Microprose. This is less of a review and more of a "coming attractions".
Another ad, this one from TSR itself, from their book department.
They sponsored a Writing Workshop! Looks kind of interesting.
I wonder if anything came of this?
Speaking of the book department. J. Eric Severson is up with Novel Ideas, featuring three new Forgotten Realms novels: Iron Helm, Horselords and the Wyvern's Spur. Again this is half preview, half advertisement. In the 90s novels were TSR's big cash cow. I personally never read any of the Forgotten Realms books (well, till this year) but I bought and read every single Ravenloft novel printed. Hey some of those Ravenloft novelists went on much bigger and better things, P. N. Elrod, Christie Golden, Elaine Bergstrom, Tanya Huff and newcomer on the scene, Laurell K. Hamilton. More on that when I cover those issues.
Other Side favorite Vince Garcia is up with Can You Swim? Juggle? At the Same Time? a new skill system for D&D. Now this is for the D&D game. The BECMI version, not the new AD&D 2nd Ed game that had a skill system. Like everything with D&D it is simple and easy to learn.
It is no where near as complicated as his magnum opus Quest of the Ancients might later imply.
Dale A. Donovan is up with the Marvel-Phile with a bunch of villains I have never, ever heard of. They seem to be based on Alice In Wonderland.
Wrestling with Style is Greek wrestling adapted to AD&D by Janne Järvinen. It seems to mostly be based on the Illiad, which of course is fine. At this point I had read the Illiad about two years ago, but damned if I remember any of it.
Let see, a ballot for the Origins Awards for 1989.
Sage Advice is split by a program for the Gen Con Game Fair for 1990.
The whole thing is still really small.
TSR Previews has the "must buy" items for March and April 1990.
Characterization Made Easy: A little personality goes a long way for all characters comes to us from Scott Bennie and is a guide for giving your character some more personality. At three pages it is not exhaustive, but the tips are nice especially in what is essentially a Pre-Vampire the Masquerade world.
Interesting note. All the adds on these pages for companies in Great Britain. Made me wonder at first if I had a British edition of this magazine, but my CD-ROM version matches it.
Through the Looking Glass has some great horror minis to show off shading techniques.
Convention Calendar has a lot of cons to hit for the Summer of 1990.
Ken Rolston is next in Role-Playing Reviews. There is something to notice here first.
The review is copyrighted by the author. This comes up every so often when people ask whay can't Wizards do another Dragon CD-ROM (well, Blu-Ray ROM now) collection? OR (and this is my least favorite) since TSR is gone all those old Dragons are in the public domain (no. they are not.)
In this case this little copyright hits on both of those. WotC, just like TSR before them, does not have the rights to this article. Sure they printed the first Dragon CD-ROM and they got into a LOT of trouble for it.
Also. If you are reading this right now the Dragon copyright will not "expire" till long after you are dead. Sorry. I don't make the rules.
So back to the reviews. These focus on City and Urban adventures. Now I LOVED playing in cities at this time so this review was heaven-sent. I grabbed Greyhawk Adventures: The City of Greyhawk and I totally ignored the Forgotten Realms: City System. I should have gone the other way around. Though both products have their positive and negative aspects.
The Role of Computers gives us a proper review of Champions of Krynn, saying it is the best AD&D computer game yet!
There are few pages missing from my issue so I turned to the CD-ROM to find that some barbarian had cut out +Bruce Heard's first installment of Voyage of the Princess Ark! I think I am going to take one of my "This Old Dragon" days and do a retrospective on this. I have been dying to see it all together in one place as a whole for some time now. Alas for toady though I can't talk about it since it breaks my rules. If it is not in the magazine I can't talk about it.
Missing is the first page of the Ecology of Behir. This would have been fun when my players ran into one recently.
Dragonmirth has a bunch of comics complete unfamiliar to me. Well, I guess I know of Yamara and The Twilight Empire, but I really don't know anything about them.
So the April Fools stuff aside, this turned out to be a fun issue.
While it was published back in the Halcyon days of 2nd ed, it did not contain a lot of 2nd Ed material. The Greater Behir was notable.
Even at 27 years old this Dragon, for some reason, still feels newer to me. Maybe because I never owned it back when it was new or maybe because it was out in a time when I was not playing so much I don't attach a lot of nostalgia to it.
What are your memories of this issue?
LOL!
ReplyDeleteYes, cyberpunk vampires might be the most '90s possible.
ReplyDelete