In the editorial Ian Livingstone talks about how Britain is catching up to the US in terms of Fantasy RPGs. While hindsight tells me that this is partially correct (the entire industry was hitting the mid-80s slump) it had always been my perception at the time that the best things were coming out of Britain. Sure it was my perception as a young anglophile, but the games I saw from Britain seemed "grittier" to me and that meant "better" in my 16 year old mind.
Haunters in the Dark brought non-mythos monster to your CoC game. I had bought this issue for this article alone back in the day. Though I had forgotten I had until rereading it this week. I remember wanting to convert the Black Dog to Chill and use some of the other information for D&D. I was always looking to expand undead and the first house rule "notebook" I put together included some of this information.
Interestingly enough I never cared for Will-o-wisps as undead, thinking them more like some sort of evil Fae creature.
Open box covers Pacesetter's StarAce (or Star Ass as we used to call it) and some Dragonloance modules. StarAce didn't get enough credit from me then, I still prefer Chill and TimeMaster for my Paesetter fun. It barely got any credit though from Marcus Rowland, giving it a 5/10. Graham Staplehurst covers DL2, DL3 and DL4 from the Dragonlance Modules giving them 7, 8 and 9/10 respectively. He praises the amount of information in modules and says there is plenty for DMs to do with them. I reread them recently myself, I did find them to be fairly rail-roady, even moreso that I recalled. Oliver Dickinson wraps us up with 6/10 review for Monster Coliseum from Avalon Hill. It gets knocked down I think due to the price.
Critical Mass has an embarrassment of riches, claiming that by 1987 there will only be enough room in the column to list the names of the books and authors and that's it. I am not sure if the out of Sci-Fi/Fantasy books ever reached that, I do know it began to wane though soon after. For my part I had moved over to the darker stuff like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Insights anyone?
RuneRites covers Barbarian magic. Useful for any FRPG with Barbarians in a magical world that distrust magic. Odd thing really. Is this trope from Conan?
A Champions/Golden Heroes adventure is next, "Peking Duck". Phil Master wrote this so I am likely to to like it. But I know so little of Golden Heroes it is hard to judge.
Starbase covers "Wordly Wiles" or Social Customs in Traveller.
Michael Heaton brings us A Murder at Flaxton, an AD&D adventure for low-level characters. Pretty simple and straightforward, but easily dropped into any game.
There is also an article "Parlour Game" about the Arachnid Assassin.
Fiend Factory takes an odd turn this issue. First it is now listed as Bi-monthly. Also it presents an NPC. I say its and NPC, but it could be a type of "monster" or a PC class with some work. The vivimancer or a spiritual helper. I am not happy that FF is going to every other month. On one hand it was my favorite feature, on the other the quality has been suspect for a while.
Tabletop Heroes covers photography of minis.
Treasure Chest has a collection of useful backpacks for AD&D.
We end with ads and the notice board.
In general the quality of the issue is up even if the amount of useful material to me personally was down.
