TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

The Polyhedron Issue 9: Nov/Dec 1982



part 4/6



Spelling Bee: This goes back to dealing with a highly specific class of spells. The highly flexible and oft-abused joys of shapechanging. Yeah, no surprise that they'd have problems with that, as they will continue to many editions into the future. Still, there are limitations. Transforming uses your action for the round, so you'll have to weigh carefully if the stat boosts are worth it in combat. You can only turn into things you've actually seen in person, although that won't be a huge limitation if you gained all your xp from 1st level the long way. You can't use it to extend your lifespan, and healing with it is awkward (although it's still your best option as a wizard) And a good dispel will ruin your day. It's hardly an auto-win button. Just got to make sure the people fighting the shapeshifter have plenty of options as well.



Christmas Carols: Dragon usually saved their filks for April. Polyhedron decides to do something a little more festive. This means the tunes should be obvious to everyone, as pop songs get forgotten, but the same christmas songs get dragged out every year. But the dreadful puns and tortured meter are the same as ever. They might work on the page, but you'd struggle to sing these. Trust me and don't even try.



The Knight-Error once again picks on a target way out of his league. Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas everybody.



Gen Con XV - Megacon: For all that these were called the golden days of roleplaying, these old articles show how much it's grown since then. Last year's Gen Con was 10 times the size of 1982's, and it's still growing. The golden age of gaming is now. But I guess once an event has got big enough that you couldn't see and do everything in it it doesn't matter precisely how big it is. Just keep busy having fun and trying new things and the time will fly by. As usual, we get to find out who won some of the tournaments and contests, what companies were active and releasing stuff that year, and what plans they have for next year. So it's another handy little bit of historical record to look back on, get a picture of how things have changed over the years. It's important to preserve these things, because you never know when someone'll need to double check them in the future.

 

[(un)reason]

The Polyhedron Issue 9: Nov/Dec 1982



part 5/6



Scholarship Winners: A year ago, they announced the competition for the scholarship fund. Good to see that get resolved. Brent Johnson gets the first prize, while Ross Reedstrom, Susan Thompson, Mark Oxner and Eric Johnson are the runners up. The prizes seem pretty small in light of inflation, and even moreso with the vastly above inflation increases in higher education fees over the past 40 years. That's one area the world has definitely got worse since then. What are we to do with these gouging institutions?



White Rabbits: Just the usual list of people they can't track down. Nothing much to see here.



Notes for the Dungeon Master: Having spent last column encouraging you to keep your spellcasters under control by strictly tracking their spell components, Frank turns around and contradicts himself, saying he's got no time for that in his games. In fact, you shouldn't feel bound by any of the rules in the books. You're the ruler of the universe, you can change them any time you want. You can make them make placebo saving throws just to keep them on edge, you can mix and match monster appearances and stats, you can create an area where magic is reversed, and suddenly all those +5 swords are healing the enemies, while the guy stuck with the cursed one because you haven't found anyone who can remove it yet is going to save the day. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and opens up the gates for rules lawyers to take control of the game away from you. Basically, this is all about DM as god-overlord playstyle. When you're one of the designers of the game, you're aware that it's just a bunch of rules someone made up, and they can be changed or unmade just as easily. I think the power may be going to his head a little. Careful not to go too far in this direction, or you might as well be playing freeform.



Letters is in the middle for a change, which is most unusual for these sorts of publications.

First we have someone asking if they'll do modules. They don't have any immediate plans too, and their size makes it logistically tricky, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Second, someone asking if TSR will sponsor their club. They have a mechanism for this now! Just flip forward a few pages and fill in the appropriate form.

More interestingly, someone who not only painted their minis, but did a shadow box up to look like a dungeon for them. Neat.

Requests for Polyhedron back issues and Dragon magazine subscriptions. Easy to solve. Act now while stocks last, and before prices go up!

And finally, they have to repeat where the various Gen Con's are this year, because someone wasn't paying attention in previous issues. This job does need a lot of patience with repeating yourself, it seems.

 

[(un)reason]

The Polyhedron Issue 9: Nov/Dec 1982



part 6/6



Notes from HQ: Speaking of repeating yourself, this editorial covers very similar ground to the letters questions. They are doing more RPGA exclusive modules, but they won't be appearing in the newszine for now. They want to organise more tournaments, but not until they have enough members to make the logistics work. They want to include articles by Gary and other big names, but finding space in his busy schedule is definitely a challenge. Basically, they're managing expectations, telling us what's achievable rather than overpromising. That's a better foundation for a long-term relationship than politicians making sweeping statements to get elected, even if it's not as glamorous. There's a lot they can and will do, but it all takes time and money. At no point will they be able to snap their fingers and provide you with an excellent gaming group on tap for free. Making the network good is your responsibility as well as theirs.



Treasure Chest: As they promised over the past few issues, we finish up with a catalogue of their various bits of RPGA exclusive merchandise. Random alignment dice. A tote bag to carry your dice, pens, and other gaming paraphernalia in. A fighting wheel to track combat rounds faster. Belt Buckles, caps, T-shirts, exclusive modules you can't get in the shops, an art book, and as mentioned earlier, back issues while stocks last. A mix of stuff every fanbase has a variant of, and things very specific to gaming. The prices seem much less altered by the passage of time than education ones. What kind of quality were these things? Have any of them survived the passage of time and remain in your possession?



Club Memberships: Along with the individual memberships that have been going for a couple of years now, they decide to add club memberships, so if there's a lot of gamers in a particular town, they can get an official title for their club, and for larger ones, your own heraldic insignia and bulk discounts on merchandise. That's a logical outgrowth of the membership drive, further encouraging you to evangelise to all your friends about how awesome roleplaying is and take advantage of those sweet economies of scale. I wonder if we'll get to see precisely how many of each type there are in the future. Another interesting development that shows they're thinking about how to best get and keep people engaged.



Definite growing pains here, as the increased size means they pad things out with recycled filler, and the rapidly growing membership means they have to repeat themselves a lot, because every issue is a significant percentage of the readers' first one. There's still both fun and historically significant stuff in there, but the hit to miss ratio is somewhat lowered. How long will it take for them to reach some kind of stable point? Let's see what the next year brings.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 10: Jan/Feb 1983



part 1/6



32 pages. Like Dragon before them, they've decided to drop their definite article. It just doesn't fit the grammar of how people talk about them, so it can be removed like an appendix without affecting the functionality of the product at all. Will the inside be similarly streamlined? The cover certainly seems aerodynamic enough, with an angel saving a barbarian from some gnolls. Let's see if they'll soar successfully, or aim too high and plummet to their death like Icarus.



ESP: Their rapid expansion has resulted in the amount of mail they get recently increasing. That's pretty welcome to them. What's not so welcome is that a lot of them are asking for polyhedron to do modules. They don't have the room! Stop going on about it! Subscribe to Dragon as well if you want that kind of thing. We're already doing those one-page scenarios based on the covers, and now we're adding prefab dungeon rooms as well, but you need to learn to put together your own full adventures. It's frustrating when you become successful, but your audience has a different idea of what you should be doing than you'd intended, and you have to decide whether to pander to them or maintain your artistic integrity. I suspect there'll be further developments on this plotline in the future, as I don't see the pressure going away with just one refusal.



Letters: Our first letter follows on from the editorial, asking for more fiction and rules updates. Oh, and a t-shirt would be nice too. Once agin, they have to explain that they're a more specialist publication than Dragon, and also have a much smaller page count. There's no way they can fit everything people are asking for in. Put that on your T-shirt.

Then they print another letter asking for modules, so they can deny the request again, just a page later. This is obviously getting on their nerves.

Then we have a young twink asking for the rules for godhood. I don't believe you worked your way from 1st to 30th level legitimately in play if you're also having trouble finding people to play with. Go back and do it again, showing your working this time around, and we might consider it.

Someone asking if they ever plan to sell polyhedron to the general public. They might offload spares at conventions, but it'll never appear in actual shops. Gotta hold something back for your hardcore fans.

Finally, we have another person struggling to find people to play with. First, work on your own communication skills. You can't hope to convert people if you can't even keep straight what edition you're playing when talking to us. Manic overenthusiasm can be offputting.



The Knight-Error has a perfectly standard equipment list for an experienced adventurer. This is much less glamorous than the stories make it seem.



Tips for the Beginning GM: The push to cater to their new arrivals from last issue continues with several articles aimed at beginning players of different games. First up, they encourage gamma world GM's to work on their worldbuilding, design characters based on their cool factor rather than powergaming particular combinations of mutations, and not overdose on the ancient artifacts too quickly. Not quiiiite the way Jim Ward did it back in the early days, but they are trying to set a good example to the kids and tone back on the twinkery. Maybe they can learn to be not just as good, but better than the original designers. Otherwise what's the point of carrying on with life?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 10: Jan/Feb 1983



part 2/6



Dispel Confusion expands even more than last issue and tackles all 7 of their active systems. A lot of new players coming in means a lot of people who don't fully understand the rules, ands a lot of stress-testing of their writing clarity. Just the thing to inspire them to write new, better editions.

Can water affecting spells affect ice or steam? (no)

What happens if your scores are drained below the minimum for a class? (I will contradict myself from a couple of issues ago and say they get to keep it. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds!)

Can any magic weapon be intelligent? (Yes, and why stop there? Let other items have some fun too. But don't do it with every item, or games will bog down with all their voices interjecting. )

When will the companion set be out? (1984. It will always have been out in 1984.)

Can spell-like powers be disrupted? (not as easily.)

How many things can a gaze attack affect (I per round. Yes, that's not how medusa worked in the original myth, but we're not that cruel. Usually.)


Do Boot Hill characters die straight away at 0 Strength? (No, we're a little more merciful than D&D, because they don't have magical healing to swoop in and save the day.)


Can you fire a long burst if you don't have enough ammo? (yes, curiously enough.

How do you round fractions? (usually upwards)


How do I determine stats for lots of NPC's? (As if the mooks rolled all 12's)

How do you destroy vehicles? (buy the next edition to find out)

What do serfs look like? (A lot more badass than real medieval serfs)

How quickly do forcefields recharge? (Technological one, round by round, mutant ones, daily)

Can PC's be Yexils or Podogs? (Yes. Gamma World encourages you to be as weird as you like.)


How do you get cronies? (when the player feels like adding them)

What happens if two crime syndicates set up on the same block (Sounds like an adventure hook to me. Have fun resolving it in play.)


What are the rules for spaceships (Buy the next star frontiers supplement to find out.)

Can a Dralasite move rolled into a ball (yes)


Equipment has two different prices in the Top Secret rulebook. Which is right? (The Weapons Chart version)

Can you drink yourself to death? (Oh yes)

How do you keep players from finding out each other's objectives (Lots of lying. Wheels within wheels.)

Can players be double agents? (Hell to the yeah. Backstabbing is all just part of the fun.)

Can you piggyback off other people's Tracers? (no)

 

[Hussar]

/snip
How many things can a gaze attack affect (I per round. Yes, that's not how medusa worked in the original myth, but we're not that cruel. Usually.)
/snip

Heh. You'd be SHOCKED at how vehemently people will argue this point thirty years later.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 10: Jan/Feb 1983



part 3/6



Reiga Nerd has to put a genie back in it's bottle. This of course involves a pun-based incantation and several undead jokes for dessert. Well, they've got to beat those dead horses once they've killed them, or it'd be a waste of good feed lines.



Mapping from Square One: A crucial part of dungeon-crawling is being able to find your way out again afterwards. A barbarian himbo rushing in with swords akimbo may slay the monsters, but if they can't find their way out, and preferably bring the treasure along, they may be in trouble long term. When D&D was being spread mostly by word of mouth, they could pass along the mapping conventions as new people learned, but now there's tons of new people coming in who don't know the unwritten conventions of the game, and this is causing playstyle problems. So unsurprisingly, this is Frank's attempt to teach them, make sure all the new tournament players know the exploration aspect of D&D is as important as the combat one, and you neglect it at your peril. Ultimately, a losing battle, as shown by the explosion of settings where dungeoncrawling was only a minor part in the 90's, and then 3e and onward official adventures concentrating on battle setpieces with much smaller, more linear maps connecting them, as the much faster advancement made extended sandbox exploration without scaling enemies much less practical. It's hard, seeing your baby grow up into something you didn't expect, but at some point you have to learn to let go. Not today though, not today. They'll be hanging on tight trying to get it to do it's homework and come back from parties before 11 for a good few years more.



Encounters: Turns out the cover image wasn't of a D&D celestial at all, but a Gamma World mutant that just happens to look like an angel. They certainly act pretty angelically though, with the ability to read the emotions of others and preemptively know if they're friendly or hostile, and several mutations that'd seem like magic to the primitive and credulous. If your PC's aren't psychopathic murder-hobos they might well help them out. If they are, they'll have a much harder time with the secondary plot hook here as well, as the savage mooks are being organised by some sinister power. Now that's a classic plotline you can really build upon. This column continues to be one of the best and most useful parts of the newszine, packing both plenty of stats and plenty of plot hooks into a single page.



Notes for the Dungeon Master: This column has entirely transitioned from cool ideas of things to do, to didactic lectures on what not to do. Gods are not characters or monsters. You can not fight them, you can not kill them, you can not trick them, you can not become one without centuries of tedious sucking up to them and joining at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and if you try you will be summarily erased from existence and memory. Yeeesh. That's not fun, and not the way it goes in most mythology at all. Even when the gods outpower the mortals by huge degrees, they can still be talked too, tricked and stolen from, and any revenge is usually of a dramatically appropriate kind rather than an abrupt curbstomping. Where did he get that attitude from? I know AD&D doesn't handle godhood well, with the numbers and bookkeeping becoming unwieldy before you even get to 20th level, but decades of other games have shown it is possible to create games where it's fun to play beings of immense cosmic power, puny mortals, and everything in between, and still have everyone able to contribute meaningfully to the story. So this is a very outdated rant that fully deserves to be left behind in the scrapheap of history, as it's been repeatedly disproved on both a narrative level and a mechanical one.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 10: Jan/Feb 1983



part 4/6



Basically Speaking: We've already had an extended set of rules questions and mapping for beginners this issue. This column continues the theme, but tackles even more ultra-basic questions, in even greater detail, such as what hit dice, hit points and movement speeds are. I found those perfectly self-explanatory when I first read the basic set, and I was only 8 at the time, so this is definitely pitched waaaaaay below my level, at people who struggle with basic reading comprehension or maths. Surprised they managed to successfully fill out the forms to join the RPGA, and then send letters asking for help to the correct address if they're having difficulties with concepts that fundamental. So this may have been of use to someone, but it's very boring indeed for me.



Under Construction: Their compromise between the people demanding modules and their space constraints is a single room per issue. Of course, since they have to fill a full page with it's description, they're all going to be interesting ones, no 10x10 rooms with an orc and a pie. (Unless it's a very well described pie) You'd only need a few of these amid the more standard combat challenges to keep the adventurers on their toes. First up, a quirky puzzle that'll kill anyone who doesn't engage with the riddle on it's own terms, but isn't too hard for a well-equipped party to solve. Very much an old school one, as there's no saving throws to resist, and your character stats are meaningless. It's all about the player's brain. Make sure your players are used to that kind of play before you throw this at them.



Getting started in Gangbusters: From basic gamma world advice, to basic D&D advice, to basic Gangbusters advice. This isn't so much about the specific rules, but more general GMing advice, oriented towards any system that's meant to be fast, rules-light and high lethality. Don't get too attached to your characters, because you can roll up another one in a minute or two. Broad strokes are better than detailed backstories. Be ready to improvise and extrapolate, let the players face consequences for their actions. Lengthy planning and detailed tactics are out of genre and not supported by the system, so just get on with it. Good to see them taking into account that not all roleplaying games are the same, and players need to adapt their playstyle to the system and setting if they want to get the best out of them. Now if only they could get their customers to buy all their other games in the same quantity as D&D instead of sticking with that and trying to use it as a generic system.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 10: Jan/Feb 1983



part 5/6



The Official RPGA Network Tournament Scoring System: Another bit of progress as they institute an official system for tracking who their best (or at least, most frequent) tournament attendees are. You'll need to be both rich and skilled if you want to catch up with them, as attending that many conventions takes a lot of travelling. Along with the formal scoring comes a new emphasis on making sure both the modules and the characters used to play them are strictly legitimate, with formal procedures if you think a DM or player cheated. This ironically means the very first tournament modules would be illegal if ran now, as they did introduce new monsters and spells not in the books. I suspect the new modules are a good deal less lethal than the Tomb of Horrors too. Really, this is setting themselves up for a thankless and interminable task, so I don't envy their job one bit. Trying to figure out which party in a gaming dispute is the wronged one without video evidence will often fall down to which one is more persuasive, and get the wrong side punished or banned a substantial percentage of the time. And if someone corrupt or abusive winds up as a moderator, it can cause years of misery. Good luck, because heaven knows you're going to need it trying to keep something like this running and internationally co-ordinated for any length of time. I look forward to seeing how it progresses, and what further rules they have to implement to try and keep a few naughty words from ruining it for everyone else.



Flights of Fancy: Fancy shooting down a zeppelin. Technically you can't in Dawn Patrol, unless you want to go all alt history on us, but they did have some fairly substantial spy balloons, which is almost as good. They're big, slow, vulnerable targets, but they're pretty good at spotting you coming, which means they have the time to scramble planes and man the AA guns to defend them. That can definitely make for a fun scenario. Can you shoot down the balloon and get out alive? Pick your pilot and roll the dice to find out. A pretty entertaining little article.



Spelling Bee: Rather than specific spells, this column digresses into talking about thinking as a team when selecting your spells. If you're in a large group, which was more common in those days, you might well have more than one character of each class. So it makes sense to talk with the other people in your group and each specialise in different things. Blaster, buffer, healer, trickster, etc. This would apply to nonspellcasters too, but until 2e allows thieves to allocate their skill points rather than having a universal table and all the classes have kits to further differentiate them, that's not really an option. So this is solid advice, that shows up how much more choice and power spellcasters have in the game at this point. They get to customise themselves, while the rest of you don't get to be mechanically distinct until you've accumulated a few magic items, and even then you're still doing your best with what the DM gave the group rather than getting to choose freely or make your own. Fair? Not in this edition mate! Toughen up or ship out!



White Rabbits: They made a particularly egregious error last time around, announcing the wrong person as winner of the Gen Con South tournament. Dear oh dear. On a more positive note, they now have a toll free number to order merch on. Don't use it to rant at them for not putting everything you want in the newszine please. (you just know someone will)

 

[Hussar]

Blaster, buffer, healer, trickster,

The game was so video gamey back then. XD