TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 82: Sep/Oct 2000



part 1/6



116 pages. Long time no see. These past couple of months have been very busy indeed, but we’re finally through the renovations and ready to go back down into the dungeon. Still, it’s definitely not your father’s dungeon, with a lot more color, a lot more spikes, somewhat more belts for some reason and a lot more creatures that are the product of interspecies mating. Let’s see what facets of the new rules the first crop of adventures showcases and if they still manage to come up with good stories on top of that.



Editorial: Chris has actually been playtesting 3e right from the start of development, which explains why many adventures over the past couple of years used design concepts from the next edition. But he was strictly sworn to secrecy so he couldn’t even hint about this in his editorials, which probably took some effort. But now he can show off some of the things he got to try that are substantially easier under the new rules, such as a half Drow/half medusa druid. He’s got to think in terms of longer timelines, play around with the basic assumptions of the game and use new races & classes in lots of interesting combinations. Hopefully when you start a new campaign under the new system you’ll feel similarly inspired. Another reminder that the first year or two of 3e is going to be a time of wild experimentation, particularly in the 3rd party d20 games, with all sorts of ideas that would never have got close to being published before. Will Chris be allowed to publish any of that in here, or will he be forced to stick to official WotC content only? Hopefully he can get away with some things they weren’t allowed to do before, otherwise the rest of the run will get very repetitive.



Letters: First letter is full of general praise, but particularly for Leah the Giant-King and the two big underwater adventures in issues 78 & 79, which give them plenty of room to build a lengthy and memorable campaign under the sea.

Second is strongly in favour of the quirky open-ended worldbuilding of Khazefryn. They’ve been way too heavy on plot-centric adventures lately and it’s nice to see one you can pass through repeatedly and use in all sorts of different ways rather than being wrapped up neatly in a session then forgotten about.

Third thinks they ought to hold a competition to fill in the many empty regions of Undermountain. That’s a 10 year old and long out of print product by now. If they redo it for 3e it’s likely to look very different anyway. Expecting lots of submissions based on a specific supplement like that seems an overestimation of how hardcore the average reader is.

Fourth is very strongly in favour of more maps of mystery. They add so much extra usefulness to the magazine in so little space. Keep it up.

Fifth is in favour of adventures that primarily require brains to solve, as they can be used with a wider range of party levels than combat-fests.

Finally, one that praises the more sophisticated system of level scaling in Door to Darkness and also asks more general questions on becoming a freelancer. Since they need lots of submissions for the new system right now, they’re very keen to encourage that.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 82: Sep/Oct 2000



part 2/6



Evil Unearthed: No surprise that the very first adventure in the very first issue using the new edition should be aimed at 1st level characters, quite possibly to be the very first adventure you play with them. (the other choices at the moment are the example dungeon in the DMG and The Sunless Citadel) A priest of Hextor (who’s never been mentioned in the magazine before, showing how they want to push the new set of core deities hard in the fluff) is planning to tunnel into the ruins of Castle Overlook, releasing the ancient evils reputed to lie there. Being a villain, he’s not content to hire workers legitimately to do the job under the pretext of mining or property development, but is kidnapping and enslaving people from the local villages while pretending to be a virtuous priest of Heironeous. These disappearances have attracted the attention of adventurers, but the ones who went before you have also disappeared. Is your group large and well-prepared enough to succeed where they failed? A mid sized adventure that fits firmly in the Village of Hommlet mould, where you could go straight to the dungeon, but there’s also fun to be had playing detective in the village itself, which will soon attract attention from the infiltrating villains and reprisals (which will eventually point you in the direction of the dungeon anyway.) Competent but also intentionally very formulaic, this is an almost perfectly average adventure that’s only notable due to it’s position. If you want something familiar feeling so you can run the roleplaying beats on autopilot while getting to grips with the new rules it more than does the job.



Nodwick wonders why you only ever seem to hit caches of sealed evil when exploring underground and what would happen if you came across an ancient hidden good in a dungeon instead.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 82: Sep/Oct 2000



part 3/6



Playing with Fire: Last adventure should have just about brought you to 2nd level, putting you at just the right level to do this one, which demonstrates how much faster advancement is supposed to work in this edition. This time, the PC’s don’t need to engage in tedious digging to get to the sealed away evil because they’ve just found the key in a previous adventure. One Legend Lore spell or a few hours hitting the books later and they’re off to fight evil fire cultists. Unfortunately fire doesn’t tend to do too well in enclosed spaces and the fire lord is already dead. He had a plan to bring himself back to life at a later date, but that’s been spoiled by the Azers and Grimlocks trapped in there with the cultists, who are not loyal and really just want to get out. If you play it right, you don’t have to fight them (but they’ll cause trouble back at the village if you do, which may have long term consequences) but you will have to fight the bound fire elemental & mephits which are summoned by any disturbances. If the PC’s are higher level coming into this, it’s easy enough to change things so the fire lord does get raised successfully and the PC’s can have a dramatic confrontation with him at the end instead of just looting his body. Slightly smaller, but also more interesting than the previous adventure, this does pretty well at making the dungeon feel like a living place where the creatures have sensible motivations. The two are also thematically similar enough that it would only take a little fudging to have one directly lead into the other, which makes putting them right next to each other a good choice by the editor. Well, it definitely makes it easy to get a campaign going that way.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 82: Sep/Oct 2000



part 4/6



Dark times in Sherwood: Now for something a little less generic and a little more ambitious. A tie-in adventure to the Robin Hood themed stuff in issue 274 of Dragon. Evil baron Isembart de Belame isn’t just content to be just a baron, he now wants the Sheriff of Nottingham job as well, which seems like a step down and a lot more day-to-day work to me but oh well. The current occupant already has low credibility due to being repeatedly made a fool of by those pesky outlaws so it should be easy enough to stage some chaos the next time Prince John visits and present himself as the natural candidate to clean up the forest. Whether your PC’s are merry men themselves or just visiting, they’ll need to stop this. The result is a scene based story rather than map based one that encourages you to run it in a swashbucking style, but could probably be slowed down and retooled to a more whodunnit style of play. There is some tension between the D&D rules and the generally low magic source material, with what magic there is framed in a very christian way of good church vs evil necromancy, which means transplanting it to other settings may take some work, but at least it’s trying to do something different. Overall, it’s a success, but not by a huge margin. 3e may add a plethora of new options, but it still needs some more hacking for a genuinely gritty low magic game to work out.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 82: Sep/Oct 2000



part 5/6



Eye for an Eye: Having made it up to 3rd level already, this adventure raises the possibility that you might go up multiple levels during the course of it, which definitely never happened in previous editions with their training requirements and rule that you lose excess XP if you somehow did gain too much in one go without a chance for that downtime. So the first part of this is aimed at 3rd level characters, but it definitely escalates by the end. A deformed young man got his hands on a magical artifact with mind-controlling powers and promptly set out to destroy his home village and everyone in it who bullied him over the years. He’s already mind-controlled a bunch of people and set them to damming the swamp, which will then be released in one big burst to flood the place. Your basic school shooter scenario, only made more fantastical and convoluted by the subtraction of guns and addition of magic. To top things off, he’s also trying to get hold of a nice false eye, which of course he doesn’t intend to pay for legitimately. This turns out to be his downfall, as the PC’s happen to be passing by when his minions kill the merchant and take the eye. Hopefully curiosity or a sense of justice will lead them to investigate. If not, they can still be sucked in by being framed for the grave-robbing that got hold of the eye in the first place, or being asked for help by the family of intelligent wolves that protect the balance of nature around here. So this is all quite pleasingly open-ended, with lots of optional encounters over a fairly detailed wilderness area, then a short linear dungeon at the end. Lots of the encounters can be resolved in a noncombat way, particularly if you realise many of your opponents are mind-controlled and dispel it instead of attacking them. It’s a pretty good adventure even if it does feel like it was written in 2e and then converted to 3e by the editors, and some of the symbolism (drain the swamp!) feels even more on the nose now with the rise of incels as a cultural subgroup rather than just individual frustrated young men. Another thing we can thank the internet for, I guess. Bringing people with similar interests from around the world together whether that’s a good idea or not. You could definitely get a strong emotional response out of running this adventure for the right group of players even now.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 82: Sep/Oct 2000



part 6/6



Submission Guidelines: These are a lot longer than ever before, spanning a full 11 pages. There’s a lot of basic assumptions that have changed with the release of the new edition, some more obvious than others. You still have to type things up neatly, use good SPG and remember your SASE, playtesting is always a good idea, but now there’s a very particular order for all the character stats, a lengthy list of class abbreviations, you need to include scaling info to make it adjustable to a range of levels above and below the base and remember finicky little details like never creating magic items that add Dodge bonuses, as that messes up their type stacking system math. The theme of the edition is Back to the Dungeon, so they want lots of interesting dungeons, but at the same time, overdone cliches like rescuing the princess, finding a magic artifact to save the day or closing a gate to an evil plane will get judged particularly harshly. Adventures that only fit in a single setting that they haven’t released rules for under the new edition are definitely out. 3e may be opening up a lot of new opportunities in terms of character and creature builds, but it’s also much stricter in other ways, some of them imposed by upper management for commercial reasons rather than the designers trying to make the best game possible. There’s definitely some campaign concepts that would be better served by sticking to the old rules, particularly this early in the edition before the supplement mill gets going.



The first two adventures in here feel very firmly written as introductory ones for the system, and are competently done but not very interesting, while the second two are more interesting conceptually but also feel like they were written for the old rules and then converted to 3e afterwards. This issue definitely shows the disadvantages of an abrupt changeover vs the gradual one of previous editions. The overall quality level of all of them is still usable, but hopefully there’ll be better alternatives along in the future once people have got more playtime in and are writing adventures accordingly. Time to see how the big Polyhedron merger is doing by comparison.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron issue 144: October 2000



part 1/6



68 pages. Well, we’ve finally gone full color here as well, with a quite practically dressed centaur on the cover, although I question his ability to climb the waterfalls immediately behind him. Still, if salmon can make jumps like that there’s probably a way and at least there’ll be no shortage of food for his human or horse sides during the journey. Time to find out how different everything feels in here with the new rules and decor.



Before we even get to the articles, we have an advert for the Scarred Lands Creature Collection, reminding us that White Wolf managed to rush that into production before the release of the official Monster Manual. Ok, so the rules editing might not be as good, but at least you get to play something instead of waiting around another month to use enemies other than humans & a few basic animals and this way there’s much more implied setting flavour to the creatures.



Network News: You can already see some of the changes they’ve made on the cover and contents pages, but here they’ll explain them again. They’re now a truly international magazine, incorporating the best ideas from the old regional ones, plus a whole load of other tweaks based on all those survey results. Like 3e as a whole, there was a load of focus-grouping and statistical analysis that went into figuring out how to make a better product, not just leaving it up to the whims of a different writer for each chapter, then having a editor force consistency on it post-hoc. They won’t stop listening again now they’ve made all these changes either, honest! Keep on sending in those surveys and letters if you want the newszine to stay as good as it is or get even better. All pretty consistent with their stance in the other magazines, with the exception of continuing non-D&D coverage in the form of Living Seattle and the like. Another very optimistic editorial that I know won’t turn out to be true in the long run, as I see the small number of issues still to go before they merge with Dungeon and completely change their focus. What could have gone so suddenly wrong? I guess I’ll have to keep pressing on and find out.



Around the Horn: They continue to push the increasingly international nature of the RPGA by giving each of the branch managers their own little news section. Wes Nicholson talks about the general growth of gaming in New Zealand, some of the differences between gaming elsewhere, and their particular desire to get a Living Dragonquest game going. I’m pretty sure that one isn’t going to happen, unfortunately, given how out of print the game is. Back in the USA, they’re expanding from 11 regional directors to 25, which shows how fast they’ve been expanding and how many more middle managers they need to run things properly. (although it’s still less than the 40-odd they had in the mid 90’s when this was an unpaid position) If you think you’re up to the job, don’t hesitate to apply. The european branch is getting closer to actually covering all european countries, reaching as far as Greece & Russia, although language barriers are still a problem. The UK, Ireland & South African branch continues to expand as well, with Ian Richards still at it’s head and pleased to be able to keep in touch despite ending their newszine as a separate thing. As with the main editorial, these are all firmly optimistic. They’re in full good vibes only mode and any minor troubles arising from the changeover will be swept under the carpet until they become too big to ignore.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron issue 144: October 2000



part 2/6



Secrets of the City of Ravens: For a long time, the Forgotten Realms novel line steered mostly clear of Raven’s Bluff, because it was such a busy and fast growing place that it would be very hard for a novelist to stay consistent with all the lore. But Rich Baker has finally taken on the job, showing us what happens when a swashbuckling rogue/sorcerer (he obviously had access to the 3e rules before they were released) gets himself involved in Myrkyssa Jelan’s latest plot. A big part of that is trying to get hold of a magical book called the Sarkonagael, and unsurprisingly, the new spells in it turn out to be important to the plot. Are they actually worth it and do the power levels match up with core ones of the same level? This kind of new crunch mixed with setting material continues to be a popular type of article despite the edition change, as if anything they’re need more than ever with so many old spells still not converted.

Abolish Shadows does exactly what it says on the tin, disrupting any shadow based effects and causing lots of damage to creatures of the shadow type. Unfortunately, it’s only instantaneous, so the darkness will soon close around you again if you don’t have some more persistent form of light as well.

Shadow Bolt causes a moderate amount of temporary Str + Con damage with a reflex save for half. Most useful for sorcerers, who can spam the same spell multiple times and take down nearly any creature in a few rounds, since ability scores don’t scale with level as much as hit points and far few creatures will be immune to this than fire, electricity or nonmagical weapons.

Shadow Simulacrum lets you create a shadowy clone of someone with all their powers. By default it attacks the original homicidally and disappears after beating them, but you could also order it to do more sneaky things and make it exist for longer by spending XP, giving you lots of evil twin based plot options that hopefully get exploited in the book.

Shadow Sight is also pretty self-explanatory, letting you see through shadow and darkness, even magically generated stuff easily, foiling any attempts to hide via that method. Camouflage or invisibility will still do the job though. A much better choice for dungeon exploration than bringing bright lights everywhere that instantly mark you as a troublemaking surface dweller and make surprising anything with eyes much harder. These are all pretty practical and useful for a wide range of parties.



Forgotten Realms 2000 Survival Kit: It’s still a good 8 months until the release of the new FR corebook, but it’s their most popular setting and they have all the Living game conversions to think about. So here’s a dense 6 pages full of some of the crunch that’ll be appearing in there so you don’t have to take a break if you want to switch. Stats for the various demhuman subraces. A loosening of the multiclassing restrictions on Paladins & Monks for the followers of specific deities with appropriate portfolios. The domain options for clerics of 123 realmsian gods. Three new feats which can only be selected by people from specific regions, which are noticeably more powerful than the ones in the PHB. They’re getting started on the power inflation straight away then. Some of these, like Luck of Heroes, will wind up going into general circulation in the future, reminding us that balancing greater mechanical power with fluff limitations is rarely a stable arrangement. Finally, conversions of 15 magic items and one spell that should be familiar to long-term fans. Wizards still get to pull out of context tricks like making themselves insubstantial to metal in this edition that completely ruin a fighter’s day, even if the duration isn’t quite what it was. A reminder that even after all this work to make the system more balanced, game balance is a fragile thing in a game that’s constantly having new stuff released for it. All it takes is one poorly thought out supplement, or several things from separate ones that seem innocuous on their own but combine in highly effective ways the writers didn’t consider and the power creep starts all over again.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron issue 144: October 2000



part 3/6



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ed’s column is crunch free as usual, in sharp contrast to the previous article, and also as usual feels like it could have been written years in advance and who’d know the difference? We’re off to Oparl, which is essentially the Las Vegas of the Border Kingdoms. Propped up by an inflow of Calishite tourist money, it has the twin problems many desert cities have of getting in enough water for everyone and then disposing of it afterwards, with sewer system maintenance a definite problem when it’s regularly infested with monsters. But where there’s a will (and conjuring magic) there’s a way, which means it’s grown into a hodgepodge of glitzy palaces and their private gardens, each basically a law unto itself, which also frequently have monsters roaming the grounds to discourage uninvited guests. Another place that seems like fertile ground for adventurers, whether you treat these places as social challenges to get invited to parties at and do deals, or ones where you sneak in, kill monsters and try to get out alive with more treasure than when you went in. (or maybe both, because getting invited in gives you a good opportunity to scout things out for a future heist. As a DM that gives you free rein to have odd combinations of monsters and traps together without worrying about ecological concerns, as it’s all propped up by the whims of some rich eccentric keeping them as pets. As is becoming increasingly common, this is a multiparter, so it’s obvious more detail is still coming about both who’s in charge and what things are like in the poorer parts of town, but it already looks like this is another place you could easily have years of adventures in, then when you have enough money, build your own palace which you have to think up sadistically inventive ways to defend from other adventurers. That’s the great circle of life in this world, as we’ve seen before many times, expressed in different ways.



Feats Don't Fail Me Now!: Feats are one of the biggest changes between the old and new editions, so a bit of basic advice for each class (that will rapidly become outdated once supplements come out and the charop boards really get to work stress testing what combos actually work well in actual play) seems an obvious way to fill a few pages. It’s mostly in alphabetical order, but puts fighters at the front and spends more than twice as long on them, since they get more than twice as many feats as any other class. Quick Draw is invaluable if you’ve packed multiple weapons for different situations. Spiked chains require substantial feat investment to get the most out of them, but become very dangerous once you do, combining reach, being usable on adjacent enemies as well and tripping. Lightly armored swashbucklers can be just as awesome as heavily armored tanks. Nearly everyone will appreciate improved initiative, but you should skip toughness unless you really need it as a prerequisite for something else. Remember you can select weapon focus for ray spells, which may well help out your low BAB score wizard. If you’re a full spellcaster, investing in item creation feats is a massive asset to the party and don’t worry too much about XP costs because the scaling CR system for XP means it’s hard to fall more than a level behind the other PC’s for any length of time. They’ve got a fairly easy job at this point so it’s hard for them to screw up the advice too much. The real tests will come several years later if they do another version of this.



The Big Game Hunter: Following directly on from last issue, Greg Detwiler still has plenty more to say about hunting, only moving from the medieval era to colonial times. If spears, dogs and traps are a bit unfair to the quarry, muskets stack the deck to a ridiculous extent, turning it from something where there’s still a decent risk of getting hurt to a trip that rich kids treat like a big party, with the term Champagne Safari becoming a thing. (although part of that is because more sensitive alcohols didn’t travel well so champagne is all they had) Like golf, going on a big hunt in a foreign land became a way to meet other rich people and network. This went on through the whole victorian era and into a good chunk of the 20th century, only going out of fashion when big game became scarce and we had to actively work to preserve it to have any left at all. (which means banning it for the lower classes first and calling them poachers if they carry on, while rich tourists can still get away with it if they know which palms to grease) A reminder that the reason real life isn’t more like D&D is because we’re just too good at forming small groups and working together in a co-ordinated way to beat larger creatures, to the point where we run out of challenges and naughty word up the ecosystem in the process. Then we need to fight each other to get a decent challenge or make up increasingly elaborate fantasy games to channel that urge in a non-harmful way. Speaking of which, this isn’t completely stat free this time, but includes stuff for building a big game hunter in the Call of Cthulhu system. Even if they can take on charging elephants without flinching, coming across a shoggoth or some byakhee while delving the jungle will remind them that who is the hunter and who is the prey can still flip in the right circumstances. A good reminder that this is definitely a milieu you can have a lot of fun adventures in, even if it’s not politically correct at all these days. Just got to keep your fantasies separate from reality. Hopefully you’re not wringing every cent out of your former friends IRL after playing monopoly, and you won’t be heading to Africa after this to bag one of the last few wild rhinos.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron issue 144: October 2000



part 4/6



Ecology of a Dungeon: Now there’s a title we’ve seen before, in Dragon issue 211. Despite removing that section in the monster entries, there’ll still be a fair few ecologies released this edition, although some will be rehashes of old ones. This is indeed pretty similar to the old one, hitting most of the same beats, just in a slightly different order. Why was it built? By Who? Who lives there now? Where is it? Why would the PC’s want to go there? The difference is that the new one has a shorter word count, and a greater degree of acceptance that although working up all this ecological stuff may be interesting, sometimes you will just want to cut loose and do an insane megadungeon that makes no practical or logistical sense held together entirely by magic, and it’ll have all the more impact due to the contrast if you have put some carefully worked up logical locations in the same campaign. Which I think fits the general trends in design now. We’re getting over the 90’s shame about the fact that D&D is built around delving dungeons and killing dragons, and although it may branch out to engage in some quite elaborate worldbuilding and getting into character, it’s always going to come back to that starting point eventually. As C.S. Lewis said, when I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of being childish and the desire to be very grown up. Overall, the new version is probably slightly weaker overall, but both do the job and are quite useful to a newer reader, and a 6 year gap is probably long enough for the repetition to not be annoying.



Arachnia Australis: A little more non D&D coverage this issue with a look at mutant Australian spiders (as if the real ones aren’t terrifying enough!) for the latest edition of Gamma World. Let’s find out if their mutations are merely exaggerations of real world species or they’ll reach the heights of wackiness the game managed in the 80’s.

Artraks have an extremely potent neurotoxin that they can bit or spit that’ll kill you within minutes. Only the fact that they’re two meters tall on top of that and spin webs of corresponding proportions is unrealistic.

Yaager are scaled up hunting spiders, lacking webs but able to sprint at cheetah-esque rates. Once again, scary, but no more so than a real world animal.

Shwarsfrou have human level intelligence, mind-reading and illusion generation powers, using them to create a lure that’s just what the victim is looking for and leads you into their snares. Supernatural, but in a logical, non-wacky way, that’s definitely the kind of thing you watch out for in a dungeoneering situation.

Lampor can talk, and delight in using that to terrify their prey even further before they eat you. Their venom is necrotic, so you’ll have several days of agonisingly watching yourself rot from the bite point outwards before dying which they can taunt you in. A very effective horror story villain, but once again, not wacky at all.

Lupinus take their name pretty literally, with wolf-like social structures. Thankfully, they’re also around wolf sized rather than towering over humans like the other ones here so they’re still a manageable combat challenge.

Pretexis are friendly to humans, but hunt other spider species with great viciousness and have venom tailor-made for the purpose. This means they’re very handy to keep around and will make your settlement much more pleasant in general as long as you can tolerate them. As with the rest of this collection, this is firmly in the useful, but not wacky at all camp. The general sensibleness of the D&D designers at this point is definitely rubbing off on them.