Open Box has two staples of "why I thought the British were just better" when it came to games. The FASA Doctor Who RPG was one of my favorite Sci-Fi games ever. Despite the fact there was some wonkiness with with the timelines (wibbly wobbly) and the system was just the Star Trek one. I loved it. It got an 8/10 but looking back on the game now I can see we were all just starved for anything Doctor Who.
Up next is Chaosium's fantastic Pendragon. It got a 9/10 from Graham Staplehurst. It should have gotten a 10/10. And just to really drive the point home, the only American company to have a game is one of my favorite companies, Pacesetter, delivering a game I had thankfully had forgot about, Wabbit Wampage. It gets a generous 6/10.
An article on Talisman and the new expansion set is up next after some ads. It is advertised on the cover as "Expansive Coverage" and it is, but it also feels a little like an advertisement.
Fear of Flying is a short Call of Cthulhu adventure taking place on a plane.
Heroes & Villains this issue covers mad and super science. It is written generically enough to use in any supers game, or even any steampunk one.
The Necklace of Brisingamen is next. An AD&D adventure for 7-10th level characters. Pretty high for a magazine adventure. It is also pretty long too. It is generic enough to use anywhere, but I like the Nordic feel to it. My first thought was it could be used as a nice side adventure while doing the whole GDQ series.
Pete Tamlyn covers character generation in Origin of the PCs. While there are some interesting ideas here, in particular to designing a new game, it is my experience that people come to the game with an idea of what they want to do early on.
Sliegh Wars is a Christmas themed board game for 2-4 players. Frankly it just doesn't look that interesting to me.
Crawling Chaos has a bunch of books for characters to read, not players. Too bad really. But these are still cool and can be used anywhere to provide some color to a Victorian or Modern horror game.
Big ad for the new game Dragon Warriors.
Treasure chest offers up some tables and events for characters. Things like "Arrested" and "rumors". Neat idea, but takes control away from the DM and players in my mind.
Tabletop Heroes covers dioramas. I knew this guy in high school that was fantastic at doing these dioramas of the Grenadier lead minis. I think he rather enjoyed doing those more than the actual gaming to be honest.
The last 14 or so pages are ads, including one for the D&D Masters rules, Marvel Super Heroes and more MERP.
I am happy to still be getting regular CoC and AD&D material. The adventures are still rather good. There are still some new games being featured. I am looking forward to seeing some Doctor Who material, if there is any, I don't remember. don't spoil me. Dragon only ever had 2 articles on it if I recall. More Pendragon is always nice. I always put Pendragon into that category of "Way Serious RPGs". I hope it gets covered more in the next 20 some odd issues.
4 comments:
Chaosium is an American company (San Francisco, as I recall), so I'm not really sure what you're getting at there?
Whatever else it was, Wabbit Wampage was more fun than Talisman's endless, grinding, Monopoly-like play.
So is FASA. From Chicago, I believe (which is why, in the Shadowrun universe, they infested it with bug spirits and then nuked it - I've got a feeling that ground zero for the explosion was their office).
Yes but both were "English properties", King Arthur and Doctor Who.
Ah, OK. I see what you're saying now.
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