A wizard in his magic laboratory works a scrying spell to spy on a hero in the midst of a battle. Behind him, the open window offers a view over a forested land with another fortress citadel in the distance.
That window also provides a major workplace safety risk, as do the other ones you can see out of it. Just look at the height of the windowsills and consider how easy they make it to fall out if you stumble, slip, trip or get a light push. Hope you’ve got Feather Fall memorized, pal.
Lore of the Land (Andrew Finch): We return again to the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to detail some new character classes for the various Lore Lords of the novels. They are a form of magic user/cleric, and while this makes them quite potent I can’t really see them joining an adventuring party very easily as this feels more on an NPC class. Still, some useful options can be found here.
That series is much reviled for its sexual assault scene early in the first book and has been for years, but this is yet another proof pf how popular it was back in the 80s. The hype around it was enormous at first, and Donaldson really rode Tolkein’s coattails better than just about any of his peers other than Brooks.
I was 14 at that point and I remember needing to get permission from a school counsellor to read the last Narnia book, but Thomas Covenant? Sure, go right ahead, that’s okay. In hindsight, I wish I’d skipped both.
Survival (Bob McWilliams): This is a pull out solitaire board game set in the Traveller universe, which seems very similar to the previous “Barbarian” game several issues ago. The player is a scout who has got stranded on an alien planet after escaping their ship in a lifepod. Can they make it across hostile terrain to the Aid Station where they can call for help, or will they fall prey to the flora, fauna or terrain of the planet beforehand?
The better of two solo games from the mag that Task Force Games bundled into the Survival/the Barbarian microgame. Unlike Barbarian, it actually has some replay value and multiple scenarios, has some decent support through their Nexus magazine, and your choices matter more than raw luck. Barbarian has one boring scenario and relies entirely on luck for victory.
Character Conjuring: This issue the character class is The Merchant by Roger Moore. This class is well considered, with their main ability being to talk and make deals, even if the people they want to talk to are fighting. Like the Alchemist, it’s hard to see them as adventurers, but they might certainly accompany one of their own caravans to make sure it gets to the right place.
Many years later we get the Peddler in Forbidden Lands, who is very definitely a useful player class with supposedly mundane abilities that are far more magical-feeling (and more useable with less risk) than anything the actual spellcasters have. Sure, everyday wandering tradesmen can just pull random items and money out of their inventory when they feel like exerting themselves. Totally not magical, you bet.
Another new release “Treasure of the Silver Dragon” comes with a real world treasure hunt. Play the game to uncover clues to the location of a silver dragon statue. Although it seems no one found the statue, but whether it was because the game didn’t sell or the clues were too hard I can’t seem to discover! Comment if you know any more to the story.
That’s the first of two “treasure hunt” microquests from Metagaming, using the same engine as Melee and Wizard (ie a simpler version of The Fantasy Trip). The prize was found by Thomas Davidson six weeks after the game was released, and there was also a $10K cash reward as part of that prize.
The semi-sequel Treasure of Unicorn Gold had the same general setup, and even today there’s debate over anyone found the prize or if it even existed at all, since Metagaming shut down completely not long after release and long before they would have been holding a random draw if it hadn’t been found. Several people have claimed to worked out a location of the statue and found nothing, and there’s never been any announcement from Howard Thomson AFAIK. There’s continuing doubts about whether the prize (which included the same cash payout) even existed or if this was a scam. Howard wrote both of them and is probably the only person who could say for sure unless someone does find the statuette.
Used a slightly tweaked version of the earlier Snapshot rules. Amusingly, you sometimes see the opposite claimed (ie Snapshot arose from AHL) but no, SS came out two years before. Probably the largest set of deck plans ever for Traveller, despite many decks (fuel tankage, mostly) using the exact same map. Even the gigantic FASA ones didn’t top this game. Also had quite a few scenarios to play, including one where a crippled ship is gradually “sinking” in a gas giant and native life forms have begun boarding.
By far the strongest of TFG’s solo games as well.
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