TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 62: Nov/Dec 1996



part 3/5



Grimjaws: All these supplements may take a lot of keeping track of, but they sure do add some nice nuance to originally one-note monsters. Take Lizard men, for example. The conflict between neutral Semuyana and chaotic evil Sess'innek for dominance of the race explains why some tribes are a lot more unpleasant to encounter than others. If you don't know the area, it can save you a lot of hassle to talk instead of going straight to violence. (presuming you speak the language, and all these isolated tribes speak the same racial language as well instead of drifting like they do in the real world. ) A smart lizard man from Cormyr is investigating his rather less pleasant cousins in The Vast. He's managed to make some interesting discoveries about the nature of the evil in the swamp, but unfortunately a crocodile he killed was taken over by said evil energies, came back as a mummy and infected him with mummy rot. Now he's slowly dying and it's carving out a territory in the swamp. Will you save him when you come across his hut and make a useful ally, or just kill him, the mummy crocodile and everything else that crosses your path on your trek? Another short encounter, but with much more potential to be expanded outward, introducing a possible recurring NPC with long-term goals that the players could get involved with and giving hints as to other things you could put in the vicinity. If you've been paying attention to the many hint-filled little articles about the Forgotten Realms, combining this with some of them would be a logical way to put together a larger adventure. This is solidly in the decent range, encouraging a more thoughtful solution without railroading you into it. I can see myself getting some use out of it.



The Rat Trap: As a lycanthrope, it can actually be a good idea if you aren't too infectious, particularly if your tastes run towards human flesh, as if you infect or kill everyone, what will you do next? Issue 14 showed what happens if you have a virulent strain that's going for full takeover. The ones infesting Carn Perrin are trying to manage things a little better, but still have their uncontrollable appetites to deal with, making people suspicious about the recent spike in mysterious murders that leave no bodies. Can you figure out the cause and hunt them all down, will you get some but miss the true wererat lords, who'll skip town and start again somewhere else once they feel threatened, or will you wind up their latest dinner? The kind of adventure that has a bunch of general setting information and a timeline of things that'll happen, but if you get all the way to the end of the timeline without interrupting it you probably aren't getting the best ending, and the big bad will probably show up again at some point in the future to get revenge. It loses maybe one point for being a repeat of a very specific idea, but it's still a pretty decent adventure with both plenty of opportunity for aboveground investigative roleplaying and sewer based dungeoncrawling with intelligent enemies and a new monster variant at the end. There's room for the two to co-exist, possibly even appearing in the same campaign and linked together, as they're aimed at different levels.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 62: Nov/Dec 1996



part 4/5



Wild in the Streets: Another short adventure that's a variant on a familiar theme. In issue 30 you had to catch escaped baby dinosaurs, preferably retrieving them non-lethally if you wanted the full financial reward. This time your targets are even more varied, as you have to retrieve a baby displacer beast, anklyosaurus and rust monster released when the wagon containing them crashed. Now they're wandering around the town making a nuisance of themselves and the PC's are the only adventurers in the immediate vicinity. You'd better apply your brains to figure out how to trap them, particularly that rust monster, which could get very expensive in property damage if left alone too long. A lighthearted trio of encounters that shouldn't last more than a session. Then just when you think it's over, it gets much more interesting, because it turns out the owner of the monsters is a grifter who'll pay the PC's in fool's gold and get out of town. You'll probably want to chase him down and get revenge, in the process possibly finding out the dubious way he got hold of his menagerie in the first place. (then if you kill him, having to figure out what to do with them a second time) As with the previous adventure, this loses a little for being repeated concept, particularly as comparing them demonstrates how the average adventure has become shorter, less map focussed and more talky in the intervening 5 years, but is still in the usable range overall quality-wise. Both of these concepts are still less overdone than vampire counts or trap setting kobolds.



Esmerelda's Bodyguard: Paul Culotta returns once again with a short swashbuckling scenario that would be particularly well suited in a Red Steel campaign. When walking through civilised terrain, they come across a villa guarded by a particularly obnoxious dandy of a swashbuckler who'll insult all the male PC's and hit on the female ones. When things inevitably descend into violence, he'll seem weirdly unaffected by any hits the PC's land upon him for several rounds, before just freezing in place. Turns out he's actually a highly lifelike clockwork swordsman who's just wound down. He was created by a wizard to protect his daughter, who is now thoroughly sick of his ludicrous antics driving any potential suitors away. She'll come out and explain the situation, offering you the pick of stuff from dad's old laboratory if you'll just take him away for good. (whether you then wind him up again and persuade him that the adventuring life is better than guarding her or just have him disassembled for parts is up to you) Of course, there are some things down there which can be pretty dangerous as well, keeping the adventure from being too short and easy. Yet another one in which the external threats aren't particularly threatening, but are designed to encourage interesting roleplaying from the players as they decide how to respond to them, whether they'll lean towards being merciful heroes or ruthless murderhobos, quite possibly leading towards the characters introduced here becoming recurring NPC's if allowed to survive. Also usable, but probably not all in the same campaign at once.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 62: Nov/Dec 1996



part 5/5



Side Treks - The Ghost at Widder Smithers: All the way up to 7 adventures in one issue, which is very unusual. Once again, the dial is firmly set to roleplaying heavy and somewhat comedic, as what initially seems to be a ghost haunting turns out to be two wizards released after 50 years trapped in stasis. They were in the middle of a magical battle, and once freed will want to resume straight where they left off. Will you leave them to it, remain neutral but at least try to minimise collateral damage, try to figure out which is the good guy and side with them, or just kill both? Which one is right or wrong isn't obvious, but they have wildly different personalities the DM is encouraged to ham up. The kind of thing that appeared in Polyhedron's short-lived Adversaries column, this is so 2eish it hurts. If it was just one lighthearted article in a decent spread of different things it would be ok, but after wading through this issue it's very irritating. This new editor isn't getting off to a very good start.



An issue that manages to be well above average in both repeating already done ideas and implementing them in a shallow way, due to the large number of small adventures. That combined with the very strong emphasis on roleplaying over fighting, and subduing or rescuing over killing even when you do get into conflict makes this particularly unsatisfying for people looking to play D&D in particular, as the scenarios work against what the rules do best. It all feels both tired and tiresome to read. A fitting note to say goodbye to the old management on, as they obviously don't know what they're doing here. Time to see how things change in here once the new bosses get going, and if they'll spend a few years playing it safe like they did in Dragon.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 63: (Not!) Jan/Feb 1997



part 1/5



68 pages. Well, this is a bit of a mess. Dragon at least managed to scrub the date off the issue of their return and update the staff list, even if many of the other contents were still inaccurate in light of events or well past the deadlines when they would be useful. Dungeon is still saying it's jan/feb in the contents page, and number 2 in the editorial, because being the little brother means less attention is paid to it. Of course, being mostly adventures means there's less date dependent material in here anyway, so they might still have picked some good ones from the old slush pile, but it's not a promising start. Time to get to work on the WotC era and the many changes it will bring.



Letters: Chris Perkins remains as hyperactive as ever despite the hiatus, pointing out an error in his adventure last issue. Good timekeeping and spelling is particularly important when you live underground and most of your writing is on stone, so you lack day-night cycles to keep everyone on the same schedule and do-overs are expensive.

Second is from someone who mostly plays White Wolf games, and thus likes the ones that are more concept than mechanics, with Jigsaw being a particular highlight. The only complaint is the wonky table of contests, which they've just stopped doing anyway.

Third is also irked by the table of contents, as well as the increasing number of basic errors in recent issues, overly long adventures in highly specific settings, and official designers doing adventures for their own settings that aren't held to the same standards as freelance work. Keep that nepotism under control, it helps no-one in the long run.

Fourth liked Centaur of Attention and Jigsaw, but once again points out some basic artwork and legal errors. Somehow I don't think GM's will hold off on photocopying player handouts just because there isn't a specific disclaimer permitting them every single time. It's hard enough to stop them from seeding massive multi-GB torrents.



Editorial: As in Dragon, the editorial is the one thing that is up to date and apologising for the gap in transmission. The past 6 months have been a rolling nightmare of things going wrong, but let's not dwell on that. We're now owned by Wizards of the Coast! Who's management are huge D&D fans and very excited about what they could do with their own CCG skills and the D&D property! Just like the Dragon one, this feels like forced optimism rather than giving any in-depth information on the things that caused their downfall in the first place. Reassurance is the primary goal here, not hard-hitting journalism. Save that for the more investigative adventures.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 63: (Not!) Jan/Feb 1997



part 2/5



Hunt for a Hierophant: Wizards go to all sorts of complicated and costly lengths to extend their lifespan. Meanwhile druids get it for free as a class feature if they get to a high enough level and what do they do? Snooze the centuries away. The world just isn't fair. Still, that means there are some serious big guns hidden away in case something radically upsets the balance of nature and the world needs saving, if you can only find them and figure out how to wake them up without being too cranky. A plague of highly organised bullywugs? That'll do the trick. There's way too many to fight head on at your level, so you need to evade their patrols and follow the directions in an ancient prophesy to awaken the druid Leander. Not wanting to be awakened for anything unimportant, he set a load of puzzles in the cave he rests that you'll need to solve to reach him. This is made harder because his treant best friend has gone insane in the intervening centuries and will be actively unhelpful in solving them unless cured. So this is strongly in the Tomb of Horrors vein, only less lethal, a puzzle-centric adventure aimed at the brains of the players rather than the character's stats which can be solved entirely without combat if you're smart enough. Challenge of Champions brought those back after an absence of several years and it looks like they might be on the up, since they've been trying to push more adventures with noncombat resolutions in general. A pretty interesting cover story, albeit one that needs a lot of expansion on what happens before and after the dungeon part to make it fit into an ongoing campaign, as waking the druid could well be just the start of the real challenges, leading into an epic quest to assemble people of all races against the bullywugs and their master, possibly even getting to break out the mass combat rules. But no, that would be too ambitious. Can't be having that around here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 63: (Not!) Jan/Feb 1997



part 3/5



Gnome Droppings: Our first spelljammer adventure in 3 years and it's a comedic one featuring gnomes with giant space hamsters. Why, Chris Perkins, why?! Being attacked by pirates, they jettisoned their most valuable cargo to the planet below in the hope of retrieving it later. This happens to be near the PC's, who will see it as a shooting star. If they choose to head for the place where it landed, they'll find themselves entangled in a whole series of irritations. First, the grimlocks in the cave next to where it crashed, which will be typically belligerent towards any intruders. Then you have to deal with the contents themselves, some rather damaged and prone to malfunction autognomes, with all sorts of random possibilities of how they could be a nuisance to interact with. Then some spriggans turn up to investigate and try to take the stuff from you. (and unless you have a gnome in your party, the autognomes will automatically side with them if they're still functional after the previous encounter.) Then several hours later the actual space gnomes will turn up to retrieve their cargo while making lots of Star Trek references. Will you let them have it or fight them as well? The kind of short, linear and wacky adventure that would be better homed in Polyhedron, this leans into the worst aspects of spelljammer while also being aimed at introducing newbies to the setting, which seems like a stupid combination of things to do if you actually want to attract new players. This won't encourage WotC to revive a several years cancelled setting.



Huzza's Goblin O' War: From a short, somewhat silly adventure involving a spaceship, we go straight to a short, also slightly silly adventure on a regular ship. Huzza is a hill giant pirate who's become the scourge of the sea of fallen stars (or wherever else in your own campaign.) He uses his giantish throwing skills to hurl goblins onto the other ship to loot and pillage. Now he's added a couple of margoyles to the crew who pick them up and drop them over, which is slightly safer for the goblins since fewer overshoot and wind up in the drink, making for a goofy but tactically formidable combination. He also has a goblin shaman casting spells to back up the regular crew and a captured human wizard (who'll betray them in an instant if it looks like the PC's might win) to help them get close unsuspected before attacking. So this adventure is all one large, chaotic melee scenario against an interesting combination of enemies of widely varying power level who use good tactics that could be used whenever the PC's are traveling somewhere on a ship. Probably won't fill a whole session but does look pretty fun to play out and lets PC's and their hirelings make valid contributions to the battle at an equally wide range of levels. It also earns a little extra for considering what happens if the enemies surrender and get turned over to the law, or alternately, the logistical problems you'll face if you kill them all but want to keep their ship instead of abandoning it to drift. You can go on my random encounter tables any day.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 63: (Not!) Jan/Feb 1997



part 4/5



Blood & Fire: Chris Perkins regularly submits adventures that push at the size limits of the magazine. In sharp contrast, John Baichtal says that this 21 pager was enough hassle that he's never doing an adventure this big again in the preface. (a promise he sticks to, looking ahead) We're off to Zakhara to rescue a prince who's been kidnapped by the Brotherhood of the True Flame. (of course!) Can you restore proper succession of the monarchy, or will the proud city of Qaybar (girl, I wanna take you to a) be forced to put some commoner in charge. (shock, horror) First, you need to venture into the great desert to find the former vizier, who's the only person who knows where the Brotherhood's lair is. (apart from the hostile ones inside, of course) Unfortunately, the ruler of the new town he's vizering for doesn't want to let him leave, so you need to go kill a particularly large and nasty Dragonne that's been hanging about the area for decades. Then you'll have to go through more tough mountainous terrain to get to the hidden valley where the Brotherhood and their various minions can be found. (many of which are poorly treated and can once again be persuaded to turn on them if you approach the scenario that way) A quite densely written adventure that could easily have been expanded a little more and turned into a standalone module, this has a fairly linear sequence of encounters, but gives you plenty of options in how you approach each one, that are intentionally variable based on the party makeup, particularly whether they're natives or outlanders and their specific social station if they're natives. You aren't getting through this one without at least some combat, but it does offer opportunities for taking the stealthy or social approach as well. An interestingly ambitious and specific adventure that I think justifies all the time and effort he spent on revising it, even if it won't fit in a lot of campaigns.



Side Treks - Invisible Stalker: Adventuring isn't all big prophecies and things from space. You also have to deal with the little annoyances like a horny idiot who just won't take no for an answer. While walking the streets at night, possibly after a busy evening looking for mysterious quest-givers in taverns, a young woman bursts out of her house in a panic while still wearing her nightie. She thinks she's being harassed by the ghost of her stalker, who she stabbed in their last encounter. He actually survived and is doing this with the help of a ring of invisibility, but of course you won't know that until some way into the adventure. In the meantime, you have to deal with the question of how you guard someone from a ghost. Let's hope whatever preparations you make are also effective against a corporeal but tricksy enemy. Your basic bait and switch, made much easier if you have access to divination magic and use it to do research instead of just jumping to conclusions. Probably won't last a full session unless they really go overboard on the planning, but another decent bit of filler if you like your urban adventures.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 63: (Not!) Jan/Feb 1997



part 5/5



Beauty Corrupt: Consistency? In our hags? I think not. Issue 29 featured hags for whom being made beautiful was the worst curse they could conceive of. This trio is doing the exact opposite, trying to make themselves permanently beautiful, which apparently is a lot harder when you're doing it consensually to yourself because consistency? In our magic system? So they've spent years painstakingly gathering ingredients, culminating recently in stealing the voice of a sirine so they can be as pleasant on the ears as the eyes. This may prove to be their downfall, as it sets off a comedy of errors in the neighbouring village that will attract adventurers. Before having her voice stolen, the sirine was involved in a tentative friendship with the chief negotiator of the city. Unfortunately, said negotiating skills did not extend to being able to understand her attempts to mime what had happened to her (genius level intelligence and she never learned how to write or use sign language?) and in her frustration she used her int draining touch on him, turning him into a blithering idiot with a weird obsession with always having a shoe on his head. Unfortunately, this came just as his skills are critically needed to keep the town from being taken over by a nearby larger city via complicated legal technicalities. Now you have to deal with the slapstick scenario of trying to stall the negotiators and keep his condition strictly secret while also finding out what caused it and getting hold of a cure. This may or may not involve splitting the party, but either way, does look like it involves lots of cringy comedic misunderstandings. Basically, it's an episode of Frasier with supernatural elements added. Not what I was expecting and not really a playstyle I have any interest in, as it's hard enough to just watch let alone participate in. The fact that it's structured in acts & scenes further reinforces the TV comedy feel of the whole thing. I can see how someone might like this, but it just doesn't work for me at all. Too much whimsy, too many implausible contrivances in service of the plot.



The Statement of Ownership shows a 14% decline in readership to 29,000 copies, most of it in the last few months before the hiatus. As usual, this slightly improves their ratio compared to Dragon, which went down 17% over the same time period, but it's hardly good news by any stretch of the imagination. Goes to show that TSR were losing a fair chunk of their customers before they crashed for various reasons. Now they've lost even more as the subscriptions expire and have an uphill battle to win them back, but we won't see the effects of that until next filing.



Despite saying Jan/Feb on the cover, this issue feels more like they decided to keep all the april adventures in, with lots of roleplaying heavy adventures of various degrees of whimsy. Once again we're very firmly in 2e territory for better or worse and it remains to see how long it'll be before the WotC policy of back to the dungeon kicks in in earnest. Time to head on through this interregnum period and see how the the new boss is and isn't the same as the old boss.

 

[(un)reason]

The Raven's Buff Trumpeter 1-1: March 1997


4 pages. Looks like I was wrong. The Trumpeter wasn't cancelled at the end of '96, it merely moved online, and better still, all(?) the electronic issues are still available for free download at Trumpeter Once again the RPGA is ahead of the rest of TSR when it comes to adopting electronic stuff. Now freed from Polyhedron's tiny page count, they can make the news somewhat longer as well.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the war is still going after all, and most of the news feels like a serialisation of events from recent tournament adventures. Heroic priests of Tempus proved instrumental in destroying the Armor of Bane and it's wearer. Unfortunately, the artifact was the kind that explodes as a last sting in the tail, so they also died in the process, but their names will be memorialised forever. They also lost the high priestess of Selune and a whole load of her subordinates when followers of Talos attacked the temple, and enough wizards that the Ministry of Art and the Wizard's guild have decided to merge, at least until the war is over. There are plenty of positive signs though. New alliances have been forged with the island of Gull Easel, bringing back some of their signature hunting dogs to serve as guards and trackers. Noted drow mercenary Hathmar Blademark has agreed to switch sides … for the right price. Evil armies just can't get loyal minions these days. All those potions from the shut down magic shop are really coming handy, particularly the potions of speed for hit and run attacks. Goes to show that the things that make the difference between winning & losing are often more idiosyncratic and tactical than just having a few more fighters with decent swords & armor.

So this all feels pretty similar to before, only bigger and busier. Of course, to keep that up they need news stories, so they encourage players to send in their own entertaining stories from the tournaments and interactives, as well as various rules questions that need clarifying. They could definitely do with the distraction right now, given how much is still up in the air.

 

[(un)reason]

The Raven's Buff Trumpeter 1-2: April 1997



5 pages. They thought it was all over - it is now! The evil army is defeated, although Myrkyssa Jelan escapes to try another evil scheme next year, Mayor O'Kane is finally rescued and things snap beck to normality, if anything a little too quickly. The wizard's guild and ministry of art split up again, the lords & cleric's councils appoint new representatives to replace the people killed, plus a new seat for the new, less obnoxious god of the dead Kelemvor, who's clerics have proved very helpful in the last few battles. Much of this sudden turnaround can be attributed to the heroics of Lady Amber Lynn Theoden, who kept supplies coming in through the siege, negotiated the betrayal of Hathmar Blademark, and is now founding a new knightly order, the Knights of the Lady, to add yet more protectors to the city. Of course, people who've read ahead will know that Amber is an alter-ego of Myrkyssa, so this is all another big manipulation. (although whether the writer of the paper already knows that and is complicit in setting it up, or it's a retcon I don't know. ) Lots of dramatic stuff going on, and it's even more interesting in hindsight. This isn't the last of the big metaplot developments for Raven's Bluff by a long shot.


Living City Q&A: Does Nap help clerics regain spells faster as well? (Yes)

Should I revise my character in line with the upcoming rules changes now, or wait until Gen Con? (now is good)

What happens to my classes if my character changes race? (it only matters if it's a permanent change, in which case anything forbidden by the new race is lost. But adventure writers shouldn't be forcing big permanent changes like that onto your character in the first place, so something's got screwed up in actual play or the approvals process.)

How do I buy land? (come to an interactive. We promise to do more of that now the war's over.)

Can I send my actual play stories to the Trumpeter? (yes, and we strongly encourage that. We can't be everywhere and write this all on our own.)