Casus Belli No. 8, April-May 1982, 40 pages.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner ... The Sulfurhorherk is the result of a contest, creature tentaculaire qui secrète de l'acide sulfurique. La bête de Tenser (White Dwarf #16, décembre 1979) est une idée ingénieuse, un Disque porteur du sort de Tenser devenu permanent et tournoyant comme une sorte de roue tranchante. Le Squelette calorifère (WD #17, février 1980) est moins original, un mort-vivant aux phalanges bouillantes qui réchauffent le métal de vos armes et armures.
Jouez un monstre par T. Martin est une adaptation de l'article " My Life As A Werebear " de Lew Pulsipher (dans White Dwarf #17, février 1980, décidément un numéro très réutilisé). It gives tips for playing monsters. The original article proposed the werebear the lammasu and Stone Giant, and even mentioned the possibility of playing as one character a pack of Blink Dogs , these loyal dogs, good teleporters - that playing a pack could recall the race of Tines . The article did not translate the French original. It offers a complement, the Hill Giant the Tigris werewolf and henchman of underworld ( Hell Hound , loyal bad, but as an individual, an idea that seems really less interesting than the pack of blink dogs ). Each race has its own progress in levels and hit points and it does not seem excessively unbalanced (outside the magic Lycanthropes resistance to non-magical weapons). Found in the illustrations Schronks module of No. 7 and the idea of playing a bunch of Schronks as one PJ is attractive.
C & S. A magic realist is still an article of T. Martin (see No. 5). The title is an oxymoron repeated several times with the utmost seriousness that this is a simulation that gives some plausibility effects superior to other games. The author explains some basics of the system of hypercomplex Chivalry & Sorcery : (1) Magic Resistance basic (RMB), which is roughly the percentage of failure by default spell the mage can decrease in s' leading, (2) the need for a Focus (like a wand, an amulet or a Rune) on which we have already sent down a spell of magic resistance for use as a base, it is an amplifier of spell that allows the magician to lose fewer points of fatigue when he launches his spells. A good example is that Devin has enchanted a set of tarot cards which can then be used as focus. The author praised the fact that a beginner magician has the right to cast spells of higher level with a penalty but the chance of success.
Space Opera the same T. Martin is a presentation of the game SF FGU who was indeed created by one of the authors of C & S , Edward Simbalist. The article acknowledges that the game is complex but carries the same moral puritanical than the previous article: it is nothing of value that does not require the sentence, praeclara omnia tam quam rara sunt difficilia . I admire the sometimes rigorous endurance of the 70 players by compared to our current habits. He discovered in passing that there are no real games "Character classes" (although there are archetypes in Space Opera) and skills (what Traveller, 1977, and RuneQuest , 1978 were of course already before).
[Off topic but there is also, just before the page microphone, an advertisement for the ZX81 . It was the cheapest of all the microphones, about 1500FF of 1982 with its 16K of RAM (about 450 € 2010). One oddity is that the ZX81 could read the programs presented in the form of audio cassettes (although I never managed to make this 3D maze with Tyrannosaurus Rex Palantir , my first microphone).]
AD & D module is "The Pyramid Forgotten" (3rd Level), D. Guiserix and FMF. We return to the Egyptian theme of No. 1 and it is to plunder the tomb of a Pharaoh in the desert, guarded by various undead. Some traps are far too deadly for the 3rd level and meeting table gives 1% fall on a Lich (but then it is advisable to avoid ...). The sectional drawing of the pyramid is, as usual, really nice. But in this genre in a few pages, it can not meet the interests of the module B4 The Lost City .
News Front said that the new Italian game Legio VII (International Team) is a "Rolls-Royce motor scooter" (all prime numbers Casus Belli repeat that wargames of International Team of the stew are well presented). Page recommends trying a new game called Call of Cthulhu (I wonder if it'll work, they do not develop the original) and signals the release of the game post-apocalyptic Aftermath! (FGU) and of Land of the Rising Sun (C & S adapted in Japan, GUF).
There is also what must be the very first mention of a size-Nature Casus . This is the United Kingdom, in a Castle in Cheshire and it must be Treasure Trap at Peckforton Castle Victorian (Treasure Trap was also frequently mentioned in White Dwarf and stopped in 1985 after embezzlement financial, but there are ersatz today at the University of Durham and Cambridge). The text says that the monsters are "real" (instead of saying that students were poorly disguised) which had to worry about young readers ...
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