TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 88: Sep/Oct 2001



part 5/6



The Seventh Arm: We finish with another 34 pager that makes it clear that they’re going to routinely do adventures larger than any 2e one for the foreseeable future. (if not longer in actual play, but then again, statblocks are bigger now on average) Several decades ago, :cough: town was taken over by an evil wizard with the aid of a summoned marilith. The forces of Saint Cuthbert eventually freed the place and killed the wizard, but the magical medallion he used for summoning was merely sealed away in the town hall basement and forgotten about. Now another spellcaster has shown up, tried to buy it, and then steal it when they refused to sell. This failed, but they’re not going to take no for an answer and their subsequent attempts soon attract the attention of the passing PC’s. You’ll be sent off to the old tower of their ex-tyrant to see if there’s any connections or clues about the new adversary. The tower is in poor shape, but the dungeons underneath it are still filled with stuff, some old and some new monsters that have moved into the upper levels. The deeper you go, the fewer monsters you encounter and the more it shifts to static traps and puzzles, until you get to the very bottom, which contains a portal to the lower planes that you probably ought to deal with. Overall, it’s a decently put together mix of static and proactive elements that’ll fill a few sessions, but nothing particularly surprising. This one goes on the pile of stuff that’s usable, but neither brilliant or bad, leaving me with not a huge amount to say about it despite it’s size.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 88: Sep/Oct 2001



part 6/6



Monster Tokens - Set Three: This is pretty similar to the previous instalments, containing a mix of monsters from this issue and the last one. Regular size counters are Basilisk, Ghost, Fiendish Girallon, Ghost, Half-Dragon, Wraith, Ghast, Hill Giant, Kyton, Naga, Ice Mephit, Troll, Shambling Mound, Stirge, Frost Giant, Ice Golem, Vargoulle, Vrock, Darkmantle, Kurge, Wolf, Lamia, Krenshar and Goblin. (a lot of size variation while still occupying a 5x5 square.) Only one long monster this time, a two-headed Griffon, which is very specific to have a counter for. Things occupying a 10x10 space are a Tendriculos, White Dragon and Purple Worm, which are more likely to turn up in other adventures in the future and be reusable.



This issue feels like a 2e throwback in both the good and the bad ways, with significantly less dungeoncrawling and more chances to actually roleplay, but also more extraneous setting waffle and railroading. As such, it’s definitely useful to the people who are still on the fence about converting, or who want more variety in general, but the average quality level isn’t as high as recent issues. How will they balance the demands of their readers next time? Will they ever do any more solo adventures? When will they get around to the next big series of linked ones? We’ll find out eventually, but first it’s time to finish the final standalone issue of Polyhedron and see if that gets a good sendoff, or is rolled into the back of the larger magazine and driven away with barely time to wave goodbye.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 148: October 2001



part 1/6



47(68) pages. When is a man not a man? When they’re composed of multiple smaller men. Better make sure everyone is of one mind, otherwise the body politic could become quite literal. Is this a metaphor for how the RPGA is stronger together, or some kind of all too real fleshy abomination that wants to incorporate the adventurers into it? Perhaps they’re going back to the Planescape city in the Gray Waste that worked like this. Let’s find out if the answer is as interesting as the questions.



Network News: So things have gone very wrong; neither Polyhedron nor the LG Journal have been appearing at the frequency they promised at the start of the year. As they said in the previous issue’s editorials, it’s mostly the fault of the Pokemon crash. They’d started taking the flood of money from that for granted, and even though the RPGA itself grew by a fair amount this year, the money it brings in is nowhere near enough to cover everything they want to do. They’ve cut a bunch of jobs, which meant the remaining people working even harder to try and keep up, which didn’t work, mistakes were made because they were rushing so they had to redo big parts of it and now their Living City conversions are even further behind than if they’d just taken their time and done the job properly without going into crunch. So they’re outsourcing the Living City to Ryan Dancey’s Organised Play, Inc. (which obviously doesn’t work very well either, as wiki says it only lasts until 2003, although even more oddly, Sarbreenar goes on until 2008 which means they must have outsourced the UK stuff to an entirely different group of people entirely) They’re getting rid of free memberships, rolling LG Journal into Dragon and Polyhedron into Dungeon, which means you’ll have to figure out what to do with your subscriptions. That seems likely to cause more organisational mess and disgruntlement, but when you’re backed into a corner there’s no good solutions. Will offloading all that get their ongoing workload down to a manageable amount for the remaining staff? Since they go through another radical reorganisation at the end of next year, I’m guessing probably not. There’s no happy ending here, just carrying on in reduced circumstances trying to make the best of what they’ve got. All very depressing to read about.



Letters to the Editor: First two letters have exactly the same nitpick, pointing out that there are official 3e draconian stats in the back of a recent novel. You expect them to pay attention to a completely different department in the same company? Surely not?!

Third is an australian one complaining that the amount of non D&D material has been way down since the USA & UK Polyhedrons merged. He’s doing the best to be the change he wants to see, but needs more help. Of course, all that is going to be made moot next issue due to the reformatting, although at least their definition of d20 is a bit broader than just D&D.

Finally, someone who’s just found out Virtual Seattle exists and is overjoyed. They could stand to mention their smaller Living settings a bit more, so they can find all their potential players.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 148: October 2001



part 2/6



Pillars of Raven's Bluff: They’re still trying to make the Living City work, so here’s some more conversions of important NPC’s. (only some of which we’ve ever seen in the newszine before because consistency? lol) Apparently you actually got to play them in a recent adventure, letting you experience what it’s like being one of the big guns for a while as you rescued your regular characters. Sounds a bit railroady to me, but at least it’s better than the other way around, where Vecna kills all the high level characters by surprise and then your lower level ones have to face what they couldn’t by more improbable plot twists.

Relarn Dayspring appeared plenty of times in the Trumpeter, and is definitely feeling the trauma of having all these newsworthy events happen to him. As a result he’s growing increasingly paranoid and clinging to his Chief Prelate job agains all threats both internal and external. Let’s hope he doesn’t start going all ends justify the means and lose his good alignment & clerical powers, because that would definitely make a mess of the current hierarchy.

Tordon Sureblade is also a familiar name, having appeared in the trumpeter three times. Being Lord Magistrate and a paladin of Torm also earns him a fair number of powerful enemies who would prefer the law did not apply firmly but fairly to them. He also has the more mundane woes that come from being in his 50’s, still single and a fish out of water whenever he tries to go to parties to meet someone. A wis and cha of 18 and he still can’t hack it? What do those stats even mean then?!

Sheenra Duth is not a name I’ve seen before. One of the highest level Harpers in the city, she foiled a plot by the Bloody Fang Consortium and decided it was an interesting enough place to stick around. Being a high level rogue, she obviously prefers heists as a method of problem-solving, which has definite potential to cause a clash if she’s put into the same team as a paladin.

Chaney is a doppleganger, which means he’s eminently suited for the job of Raven’s Bluff’s Chief Spy. (as long as his superiors can keep track of him in turn) He has no real loyalty to them, but is smart enough to see the advantages of having at least one consistent identity that’s drawing a regular paycheck, unlike most of his kin. So he’s even more antiheroish in a way they’d never allow regular PC’s to be, giving you plenty of opportunity to stretch your roleplaying muscles as these 4 worked together to save the city.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 148: October 2001



part 3/6



Terrors of Gothic Earth: It is October once again, and despite being a little distracted by the horrors of finance, they still find time for the somewhat less scary problem of things that go bump in the night. There’s still plenty of real world monsters they haven’t done D&D stats for yet, especially under the new edition’s rules.

The Jersey Devil is pretty scary for regular NPC’s, but not too challenging to a bunch of PC’s with magic weapons. Having regeneration without a weakness means it’s impossible to kill for good though, so you’ll have to lock it up somewhere and hope some other blundering heroes don’t release it centuries later.

The Wicker Man fits in very well with their other recent articles showing that druids can be a lot more ruthless and bloody than 2e ones. It’ll scoop you up and imprison you in it’s chest for burnination. Being magical, it won’t be destroyed by the fire itself, so it can be reused year in year out.

The Thunderbird looks like some kind of pterodactyl throwback and its lightning powers make it a threat to anyone who thinks they can shoot it down before it gets near. Do you have thick enough rubber soles to soak that?

Rolling Heads are a pretty self explanatory type of undead that want to chew the rest of your body off so you can join them in gathering no moss for eternity. If they’re the head of someone you knew they’re entirely able to talk to you and exploit that knowledge. They might not seem like much of a threat without any limbs, but as they have paralyzing bites and damage resistance, all it takes is one mistake to become their chow. Fortunately, like vampires they’re not fond of being immersed in water so you can still beat them with clever tactics even if you can’t hurt them in a straight-up fight.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 148: October 2001



part 4/6



Nocturno Muerte: Well, this is an unexpected treat for their final issue. An 10 page setting outline for All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Eden Studio’s game of zombie survival horror. Deep in the amazon jungle there is a cursed valley where anyone who dies rises as a zombie the next nightfall. By default the year is 1936, and your PC’s are pulp explorers seeking the advancement of science or treasure, about to discover a lot more than they bargained for … if they can get out alive! The zombies aren’t particularly fast or strong individually, but there’s lots of them and they have sharp senses, so you can run but you can’t hide. To make things even more complicated and Indiana Jones-esque, there’s also a rival nazi expedition that got here slightly before you also fighting to survive. Will you decide any allies are better than none or wind up with them as enemies as well? Hey, at least you can get a nice refill of ammo if you beat them. So this is pretty cliched, but at least it’s a good implementation of the idea that doesn’t railroad you into a specific story and could last quite a few sessions, depending on if you decide to get out of there ASAP or press onwards to solve the mystery of why this is happening, maybe even break the spell. It seems quite usable both as a one-shot or as part of a longer pulpy campaign, as it’s self-contained enough that the zombies are no danger of causing an apocalypse scenario so you could have other supernatural weirdness elsewhere in the world. This is pretty good as both a farewell to non d20 material and a warm-up for the profusion of mini-settings they’ll offer in the next couple of years.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 148: October 2001



part 5/6



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: It looks like the series on the Border Kingdoms is never going to be concluded. Even Ed’s writing isn’t prestigious enough to hold back a format change this large. He will eventually release a full book on the subject, which I strongly suspect recycles all the material in here and hopefully more. (despite it being a century later, making all the NPC’s being the same a timey-wimey mess) For now, we’ll have to be content with getting to the end of the Owlhold entry. So follow him, follow, down to Jester’s Hollow, where we shall wallow in glorious filth, because it’s time to check out all the whorehouses and other places of hedonism this largely rural and lawless land has to offer. (which some people travel great distances to experience) The most notorious are Dalethra & Tasheera, ex-poisoners who’s house is done up like a gothic castle and has rooms set up for all kinds of erotic roleplaying. If you’re suffering from a bit of droop, their collection of philtres will help you go the distance for a little extra cost. If your tastes run a little older, there’s The Wizard’s Choice Companions, a semi-retirement home for escorts tired of the big city life that still lets them keep in practice and pass their skills down to the next generation. There’s also places where the hedonism can happen a little more organically as long as you’ve got a charming personality, such as the shop of Jarvathra Ploorst or the Jester’s Hollow Inn itself. It’s not all sex, as he also makes stops at the locksmith’s and multiple people with medical expertise of various types, but this is very much Ed completely unfettered by the editors rambling about whatever comes to mind, mixing the everyday details with the fantastical as he sees fit and it’s safe to say sex is very frequently on his mind. Looking back over the series, it’s striking to see just how much more autonomy he’s gained, and how the speed of progress has slowed down as a result. We got through The Vast in three years, Turmish in only one, but we’ve been plugging away at the border kingdoms for more than six years now and we’re still barely past the halfway point of the alphabet. So this is pretty interesting taken as an individual entry, but definitely not a satisfying conclusion to the series as a whole. Things could become another order of magnitude more detailed if he were given unlimited time and budget and still remain interesting.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 148: October 2001



part 6/6



The Polyhedron Review: La Guerre des Ombres is our first and probably last french language review. Head to the campaign setting of Archipels for some nautical-based intrigue. The story is quite interesting, but as usual there’s some obvious goofs with the d20 rules, plus a lot of casual sexism. Useful to mine for ideas, but not one the reviewer would use as is.

The Book of Eldritch Might has a rather higher pedigree, being produced by official D&D developer Monte Cook. There are some bits that feel like formula churning, creating spells that are similar to existing ones with a different energy types to fill up page count, but there are some genuinely cool ideas in there to give your spellcasters more options, some of which come with interesting implied setting details. Just don’t let your players have access to everything in it straight away.

Evil is Alderac’s attempt at a Book of Vile Darkness-alike, beating WotC to the punch by nearly a year. Unsurprisingly, it’s a lot less organised, bouncing between new monsters, feats, prestige classes and roleplaying advice in a stream of consciousness way. Another one where you can definitely spice up your game by including a few of the ideas, but all of them at once would be a mess.

Thievery 101 is a pair of short solo adventures for a low level thief by Wyvern’s Claw Design. Since Dungeon have yet to pull their thumbs out and do any of those this edition, these are your best choice if the rest of the party fails to turn up to the session.



Web Wanderings: The final instalment of this column looks for floor plans that’ll make it easy for you to run your adventures on a grid. There’s a fair few out there, but most of these are long gone now. One hosted on jsr.com, four on geocities and one on io.com, all lost when the host companies wiped all the personal profiles. Microtactix.com is also gone, but the domain parking in its place thinks there’s high demand for a name like that as it’s asking a truly exorbitant price. The only one still alive is tamerthya.freeservers.com and even that hasn’t been updated since 2003, leaving the floor plans there looking distinctly low-res on a modern monitor. A somewhat below average rating for one of these, but at least it’s not a complete bust. I wouldn’t have objected to seeing it go on a bit longer just to find out if the rate of hits to misses improved as I caught up to the present.



On The Trail: On the other hand, I have no great regrets saying goodbye to this column, as it’s been pretty blandly positive lately. Even they seem tired of trying to come up with something witty to say to differentiate one convention from the next, deciding to write fewer words and put more photos in their place. So here’s a bunch of photos from Origins & Gen Con, mostly of gamers sitting around tables, mostly male, mostly of above average rotundity, mostly wearing casual wear with a bit of cosplay thrown in. It was the first time since 1997 that they didn’t break the record for biggest Gen Con ever, but since they aren’t launching anything as significant as last year they’re not too upset by that. Maybe next year, if they even bother to cover it in some form after all the format changes.



Like the final Living Greyhawk Journal, this is a quite abrupt and unsatisfying end that makes it clear that this happened for reasons outside their control and they could have produced interesting material in the current format for several years more before it grew stale. Still, it’s all water under the bridge now. Time to look forward to the merger, see how uneasy the two magazines are as bedfellows and how their respective audiences react to the union in the letters page.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 89: Nov/Dec 2001



part 1/6



76 (116) pages. It’s been a few years since the great nipple ban officially ended, but here’s the first time they’ve actually put a female presenting one on the cover. However, they’ve definitely gone to quite some effort to make the harpy it’s attached to inhuman and grotesque looking, so it’ll be a tricky fap for all but the most ardent teratophile. (Hi, Rose Estes & Mika-Oba!) Once again we have ample evidence that we’ve reached the office culture that thought commissioning the book of vile darkness was a good idea. Will the adventures within be similarly boundary-pushing? Well, that’s definitely an interesting way to start off an issue.



Editorial: Chris Thomasson is not normally a fan of silly voices. If he’s in the DM’s seat anyone doing them persistently for their character will be rolling up a new one before long. However, some silly voices are more grating than others, and even he can accept that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do them. So he gives an example from a recent convention where the player did manage to do it right and why it worked for him when so many other people’s attempts didn’t. The voice was consistent, they didn’t dominate the group by talking over people and using it when it wasn’t necessary. A good actor gives the other people in the scene inspiration to play off rather than stealing the show all for themselves and chewing the scenery in the process. Another little reminder that roleplaying is a social activity, things may not go as expected and you will need to compromise to some degree to not have it all fall apart or be a railroad that’s no fun for the players. As long as you’re recruiting new players that lesson will need to be retaught in different ways every few years.



Letters: First letter is generally pleased with what they’re doing, but wants more solo adventures and the old issues released on CD. We know in hindsight they won’t do it, but the demand is definitely there.

Second letter is very tied in with the cover, a “Mistress Luxora” who finds half-dragons hot and would like to see a little more lovin’ and a little less fighting in the magazine in general. Let’s just say they don’t plan on granting xp for beating your enemies that way any time soon, but if you want to include it in your own adventures they’re not going to stop you.

Third wants more info on Hero Points. Go check out Malhavoc presses d20 offerings for the full runthrough.

Fourth is another person who wants to test the magazine’s limits on sex and other depravity, but also reminds them of the dangers of heatstroke wandering deserts in heavy armor. They’re fine with mixed-race creatures of all kinds, even quite improbable ones, as long as we don’t have to see how they were made onscreen. ( :sighs: hello again, Rose Estes)

Fifth is someone who’s heard about the RPGA content being merged into their other magazines, and is decidedly disgruntled by it, particularly if they use that as an excuse to put up the price. They don’t plan on doing that, but you never know when inflation is going to put the pinch on you.

Sixth wishes they’d make their stat blocks easier. Look, as long as you aren’t putting class levels or templates on a thing, just give the hp and everyone can look up the rest. Not every adventure has to be customised out the wazoo.

Seventh suggests the idea of adventure paths, pretty much exactly the way they’ll implement them in a few years. Of course, the magazine has yet to go monthly yet, so they’re a little concerned with how much pagecount they’d take up to provide you with enough adventure to play them in real time as they come out. If more than half the issue was 8 sessions worth of adventure path, that would make it a lot less accessible to casual readers. This is probably why they haven’t done it yet. Tortles of the Purple Sage might have been able to fit months of play into a few dozen pages, but that was designed very differently from the average adventure. Making an adventure path that takes you from 1st to 20th level under 3e rules without it being a complete railroad will take a bit more thought.

Eighth found the bonus CD from issue 87 didn’t work on their computer, and is obviously disgruntled. Hey, at least you got it at all.

Ninth, on the other hand found it worked just fine. They'd also like to see more short adventures, as those are easier to use in their game. The pull between modularity and continuity is another eternal one as long as the magazine exists.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 89: Nov/Dec 2001



part 2/6



Honor and Eta: As soon as Oriental Adventures was published in 1985, they got a flood of articles and adventures for it, enough to publish one most months until we hit the early 90s, when it gradually petered out. It doesn’t look like the zeitgeist is with them this time, as this is the only 3.0 OA adventure we’re getting. We’re off to Rokugan for a :sighs heavily: adventure for 1st level characters that assumes they’re complete n00bs who need walking through the concepts of honor and caste. Surely we’ve consumed enough anime and wuxia in the past decade to skip that this time? Anyway, the untouchables have been losing an unusually high number of people to monster attacks lately, so they’ve gone on strike. Someone had better fix it before the higher castes have to learn how to clean their own toilets and do their own executions. In case you try to fob the job off on someone else, several pages are spent establishing how hidebound the people are around here and the various ways they’ll absolutely refuse to take on another caste’s role for love nor money. Once you do set out from town, it turns out the monster is not very subtle so you don’t need any real detective or tracking skills to follow the trail. Cross a bridge guarded by Tengu. Reach a particularly scenic bit of nature with some hidden treasure that you’ll only know how to find if you talked to the right person in town the right way. Get attacked by a small gang of Bakemono. Finally, you reach the main culprit, a not particularly smart weretiger which is confident in it’s invulnerability to normal weapons. (so you’d better have something that can penetrate that DR despite being 1st level or you have pretty decent odds of a TPK.) So this is a tale of two halves, the first a roleplaying heavy bit designed to play up the most irritating parts of an alien culture and the second a linear sequence of combat encounters that introduces you to common monsters of the area. It’s all very basic and handholdy right up to the abrupt spike in difficulty level at the end. Not impressed by this at all. The kind of thing that only gets published because they really want something to tie into a new release and don’t have many submissions so they can’t be as picky as usual.