3.0 Era Polyhedron

[Achan hiArusa]

I know that many D&Donliers hated the combined Poly/Dung issues, but in my lifespan as a gamer I may have used three Dungeon adventures (if that) but the d20 rules variants in those combined issues saw constant use at the game table and when I am tinkering with the d20 rules (even HiJinx and DeathNet). All those minigames and general articles were gold. So a shout out to all the Paizo staff who made them possible for that short period of time. Thank you.

 

[Erik Mona]

Thanks! Those Mini-Games were super fun to do!

--Erik Mona
Then-Editor of Polyhedron

 

[Achan hiArusa]

You're more than welcome. I have three of them on my desk right now, flipping through them. Now if I could only focus and write something instead of filling my harddrive with half-done games.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

Man, that era of Polyhedron was great! Pulp Heroes, Iron Lords of Jupiter, Thunderball Rally and Hi-Jinx were my favorite.

That team was really pushing the d20 envelope as far as it could go, and I really miss it. The combination of high production values and the wild, experimental spirit -- along with the brevity of the magazine format -- made for some really great stuff.

I was sad when the mini-games stopped, but at the same time, the quality of Dungeon went up across the board. Really -- and this is IMO of course -- I think that Dungeon Magazine during the 3.0 - 3.5 era will go down as one of the most fondly remembered RPG magazine eras, along with pre-Warhammer White Dwarf in the 80s.

In an issue of Dungeon you would get one or two great maps (the Map of Mystery and maybe a two-page "Forgotten Realms" specific maps that could be easily placed in any fantasy campaign), adventures for an era of D&D when building encounters and balancing monsters had become a little more time consuming, and usually several pieces of great art that you could use to represent a monster, npc or anything else.

I think it was Dungeon (might have been Dragon, I'm not sure) which had the cool comic "Downer" which I still need to buy in a collected format.

With the new John Carter movie coming out, I think I'll dig out Iron Lords again.

The person (I assume, person) who wrote ILoJ -- Lizard -- also wrote a cool GURPS mini-supplement called Tales of the Solar Patrol.

Pathfinder isn't really my thing right now, but I love how these guys are continuing to succeed. I predict -- perhaps with foolish hope -- that we'll see them branch out again. Maybe a new publication of mini-games?

 

[Piratecat]

Erik, did you ever publish the mini-games in a compilation?

 

[Erik Mona]

Nope. I think Wizards of the Coast considered our Shackled City compilation to be competition for their own offerings, so after that they denied pretty much all of our compilation requests.

And the rest is history....

--Erik

 

[Echohawk]

Any chance we'll ever see the rest of Downer compiled? (I'm guessing that WotC doesn't have the rights to Downer or Zogonia, based on the earlier compilations.)

 

[Alzrius]

It wasn't the mini-games in Polyhedron that wowed me, but rather the articles that it included.

I can't tell you what issue, or who wrote it, but there was a great short article on having "alertness levels" in the dungeon that made the denizens become more proactive as a general alarm was raised (by invading adventurers). It was pure gold, and still holds up today as a great piece for anyone who wants to run a dynamic dungeon.

I really need to go dig that out sometime soon.

 

[kitsune9]

Here's my shout! I really enjoyed them.

 

[kitsune9]

Any chance we'll ever see the rest of Downer compiled? (I'm guessing that WotC doesn't have the rights to Downer or Zogonia, based on the earlier compilations.)

Zogonia even made a big hit in China.

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