TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 1/10



135 (160) pages. Not often that you see a Mind Flayer get buff and shirtless, as they’re normally the sort to make others do all the physical labor. But it’s often more fun to subvert stereotypes than stick to them rigidly and with the number of adventures they have to publish every year, it’s important to mix things up for their own sakes as much as ours. Time to see how good and varied another harvest of autumnal adventures will be.



Editorial: They thought they could increase their size without raising their price and still keep production costs down. They were wrong! So the editorial is apologising for and justifying the sudden leap from $5.99 to $7.99. Even with the increase, you’re still getting more pages per dollar than a couple of years ago, and at higher production values as well. And compared to the cost of standalone d20 adventures they come out way ahead. Some people may still be annoyed after this, but good luck finding a better deal. (apart from on the high seas, of course, which doesn’t count) A mildly irritating start, particularly knowing that they’ll go monthly in less than a year and I very much doubt the price will go down again when the page count does. Years may come and go, but capitalism never ceases to irritate.



Letters: First letter is a lengthy one in praise of monster tokens, with further ideas on how they could be improved. They do seem like they could run for a while longer before hitting diminishing returns and they have to hunt for the next gimmick.

Second letter is generally complimentary about issue 93, with some caveats. But even if not all the adventures are useful to him now, maybe they will be in the future.

Third criticises The Storm Lord’s Keep for giving the giants treasure way in excess of the recommended guidelines for character level. How did they afford that?! At epic level, those rules increasingly become more rule-of thumb. And besides, it’ll be pretty tricky for the players to use or sell giant-sized magic weapons & armor so it’s not going to be breaking the economy in their homelands.

Fourth criticizes The Storm Lord’s Keep for being much easier to solve if you think to use magical divination on the fugitive adventurer. That’s a feature, not a bug. At that level, the PC’s should have the resources to get the good ending, but it’s surprising how many won’t think to use them in the right time & way.

Fifth is a joke letter anticipating the predictable criticisms of the Polyhedron minigames, particularly ones converted from older editions. Just cut and paste, fill in the blanks to your taste. Thankfully they haven’t actually been getting that many of them. Still, Gamma World definitely has fans with particular and sometimes contradicting ideas about how the game should be, so it’s quite possible there will be next time.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 2/10



Bloodlines: Just because your Mr Johnson is of noble blood and you know exactly who they are & where to find them, doesn’t mean they still won’t change the deal on you. Count Nolis recently bought an old monastery (that used to be his family’s centuries ago, but a lot has happened since then) In the process of renovation, he discovered a false wall leading down into unmapped dungeons. The first people he sent down never came back, which means it’s adventurer hiring time. Unfortunately for him, something has followed him out, picking off his retinue. Fortunately for him, he’ll run across the PC’s, who are high enough level to make short work of what turns out to be a single ghast. Will you stick around and help him, with a particular focus of finding anything that might connect his lineage to that of the royal family? Well, you’ll definitely find that, but not quite in the way he expected. It turns out his ancestor was a fiend-worshipper engaged in a scheme to put his mind-controlled spawn on the throne. Unfortunately, said child turned out to be too demonic to pass as human and was shut away, eventually going on a rampage and killing everyone in the place, then himself. Now they lurk in the abandoned monastery as various kinds of undead, with the prince himself as a Mohrg. As you explore it, you’ll gradually find fragments of documents that spell out all this backstory to you. Unfortunately, the count is watching your progress through scrying. He’ll think the scheme is simply spiffing and maybe he ought to try a variant of it himself. But first, he has to clean up the loose ends. Those PC’s know too much and must die! Well, that’s a pretty amusing setup, if a bit cheesy. So this is firmly on the theatrical end of adventure design, although the dungeon part is still of decent size and not completely linear. Like any adventure where the employer betrays the party, you should exercise a little restraint and not use too many in quick succession, otherwise they stop working, but this is all quite decent in terms of quality if you like 2e style adventures.



The Last Hunt: They’re really enjoying making druids the villains lately, after two whole editions where they couldn’t so easily. This time it’s a goblin druid who’s getting the local animals to be much more hostile to humanity than usual. The PC’s are hired by the local nobleman to deal with a bear that’s been troubling the village. He’ll accompany them, but if they don’t keep a close eye on him he’ll wander off ahead and wind up needing to be rescued. You’ll encounter some goblin scouts who’ll try to ambush you, an ettercap trap and a rival nobleman also hunting there who’ll get grumpy about who’s turf it is. (who you’re expected to talk too rather than fight) Eventually you’ll be attacked by the bear, then the remainder of the goblins immediately afterwards before you have time to recover. Hopefully both noblemen survived otherwise there will be legal consequences later. Your basic set of half a dozen events designed to fit into a single session, mixing roleplaying and combat encounters. Not totally linear, but still short and very formulaic, this gets a meh from me.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 3/10



Side Treks - The Excavation: We’ve already had one excavation end bloodily in a way that needed PC assistance this issue. Now they need to stop another one. Another group of adventurers recently killed a powerful blackguard. Unfortunately, not all of his minions were killed. A dretch and a few undead were out when it happened. Now it wants to get back into the keep and get the remaining treasure hidden in the basement but the adventurers have very sensibly put holy items on the ground floor so it’s trying to dig it’s way into the basement. They’ve made some attempts to hide this but they’re not particularly great ones. The zombies & ghouls doing the grunt work will of course fight to the death, while the dretch will use it’s powers sneakily to support them, fleeing or negotiating if at all possible if they’re beaten, handing over the keys to the keep if the PC’s will spare its hide. All seems quite a logical combination of elements in a world where monsters and adventurers are both common things and the dretch itself is given plenty of personality. Another quite usable little challenge.



Critical Threats: This actually manages to fit on a single page for a change. It still manages to put a bit of interesting flavour in with the stats though, pleasingly. Most Mummies just sit around in their tomb dreaming of their living days unless disturbed. Nakhti is not one of them. Rather than being laid to rest in an elaborate ceremony, he was mummified by accident, probably in a bog by the looks of him. He decided not to let this second chance at “life” go to waste and became a priest of Nerull, wandering the world causing woe & death. Over the centuries he’s built up a decent number of minions and contacts with secret societies. You might encounter him directly, but it’d make more sense if you run across one of his schemes first and only actually fight him a few levels later. So it looks like they’re continuing their policy of encouraging you to plan ahead in your campaign and get more use out of a character by encountering them multiple times before killing them for good. I’m not going to complain about that, particularly as long as they also give decent tactical advice about what spells he prefers to use in combat as well.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 4/10



Worms in the Exchequery: There have been quite a few times where they’ve talked about the dangers of robbing important financial institutions, particularly ones backed by the government and how the PC’s should never be allowed to do it. But at least they can foil attempts by other people. A gang of Shadowdancers called the Rose Worms have just managed to successfully break into the royal (or whatever political system your campaign is using for that country) exchequery and grab some of the most prestigious jewels. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to put anti-teleporting magic on the place so they can’t simply blink out like they expected. But now they’re barricaded in there with many of the defences still active and turned against anyone else trying to get in and arrest them. This looks like a job for the PC’s, and one they have to choose whether to accept or decline right now, because every hour that passes increases the odds the Worms will find a way to slip out. Will you go in using lots of raw force, or try to match sneakiness with sneakiness? They’ve got wards against some of the more obvious methods of divination, but high level PC’s might still be able to pull something off that gets the drop on them. Will they try to rescue the hostage Lord Chancellor, or realise that he was actually the inside man for the job and make sure he gets his just desserts as well? Or will they be charmed by the thieves’ smooth talking and turn coat on the government to help them escape and steal as much bullion as encumbrance limits permit. (plenty to go around, after all) This all looks like a suitably challenging and open-ended scenario for high level characters to tackle as they choose, plus it’s an idea that they haven’t done, so that earns it a few more points. I like this one quite a bit and just wish it wasn’t so short. Oh well, if the thieves escape this time, having them become recurring antagonists will let the fun go on a little longer.



Critical Threats: The second of these is another nonstandard undead with class levels added on. Larnyth is a Svirfneblin Vampire Wizard who’ll seeks to eradicate all life from the underdark. The kind of villain who might appear comical at first glance, but as soon as he busts out those 9th level spells you’ll have to take him very seriously indeed. Another one that fits on a single page, probably to its detriment in this case, as a bit more info on both his personality and usual spell list would be very welcome. Still, what tactics we have for him do seem pretty nasty, and his minions are also quite a distinctive collection. He’s still usable if you like your villains in the maniacally cackling eeeeevil mould.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 5/10



Spiral of Manzessine: Since Chris Perkins became a bit too busy with wrangling the Star Wars licence, it seems that David Noonan has become the new go-to guy for writing tie-ins to new books. This time it’s City of the Spider-Queen that gets a whole new area that is designed to synergise with the material in the book, but can also be used standalone as well. While on an extended journey through the underdark, the PC’s find their route blocked by a recent cave-in. Unfortunately, this has also blocked the supplies to and from a nearby prison where mind flayers & drow send their worst criminals. (at least, the ones they want to keep alive for whatever reason) They’re using some captives to dig out the rubble. (after all, they’ll all starve anyway if they don’t) Unless the PC’s turn around and go back the way they came (and hey, you could easily put another cave-in back there as well) they’re going to have to engage with the prison and it’s inhabitants in one way or another. Of course, the guards won’t be happy about some rando adventurers wandering through their turf, while the prisoners will use any opportunity to revolt and escape. So this is one of the few D&D adventures involving a literal dungeon, and one designed to imprison high level monsters with lots of magical powers at that. In addition to the default scenario where they simply stumble upon it the DM could also create one where the PC’s are given a mission to break a specific creature out or shut the place down altogether by some patron with a more complex agenda. It’s an interesting demonstration of how you create a dungeon full of traps & guards that are primarily designed to keep the occupants in rather than intruders out, but it is very 3e specific in terms of the powers the monsters have and the countermeasures used to keep them from escaping despite that. So it’s definitely quite a decent adventure that’s usable in multiple ways and could possibly be visited several times in a campaign, but it’s one of the hardest to convert to other editions as you’d have to completely redo the math and doublecheck the interactions of all the spells & powers involved to make sure it still worked as intended, some of which might not even have equivalents. But then again, the official writers want you to buy their new stuff, not keep playing old editions so that’s also things working as intended.



Nodwick once again has to deal with Yeagar being horny while in imminent peril.



Maps of Mystery is a double bill this time, although both are underground. First is a ship tethered in an underground river, blocked from going in one direction by a bridge. Getting it out to sail the seas may prove tricky, depending on what’s outside the bounds of the map in your adventure. Second is a traditional gridded dungeon-temple, with lots of little rooms to put monsters in and a few big ones perfect for carrying out dramatic rituals, which hopefully the PC’s will reach just in time to foil. Both seem well up to the usual standards of this series.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Wow.

Based on this thread, I tried to go buy some of the old Dungeon magazines in PDF, since my physical copies are either lost or show decades of wear, and PDFs last as long as you have backups.

Paizo is no longer selling PDFs of Dragon and Dungeon magazine. The license to do so has expired.

Well, crap.

EDIT: To be clear, I tried to do this last year in November, and sent them an email when I couldn't. I just got my email response today.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 6/10



Table Talk: We’ve had one big shakeup after another lately with barely time to get into a routine before it’s all change again. Now here’s another one, as WotC’s periodicals department is cut loose to form Paizo in yet another cost-cutting exercise. No longer can they rely on the big Hasbro dollars to prop them up, they’ve got to swim or sink under their own power. It would be ironic if that one day leads to them creating their own company that sometimes actually outsells it’s parent, and gets a lot more critical acclaim for their worldbuilding. They won’t be changing how the issues look on the front end, but I already know from the Dragon run that no longer being part of the same office results in the WotC and Paizo staff cultures gradually diverging in some quite interesting ways. One of those points where history could have gone very differently if someone else had been in charge or sales went a little differently. Now it’s time to experience it all over again from a slightly different angle.



Bolt & Quiver discover the terrible truth behind the Tomb of Doom. Surprise! It was capitalism all along and everyone has to pay at least a little.



News From the Top: Following straight on from the editorial, the big shakeups in how they organise things continues. They introduced a free tier of memberships a few years ago. Then they tried to take it away last year. That must have backfired badly, because now they’re making ALL the memberships free! There goes any pretence that the RPGA supports itself rather than being a loss leader for WotC, which is very odd considering they’re doing the exact opposite with their treatment of the periodicals department. They are of course trying to avoid alienating people by converting their existing subscription money into Chessex goodies, but they don’t explain their motivations any more than they did in Dragon and I’d be very interested in knowing what was going on behind the scenes that led to these decisions. As with the Paizo business, they do say they’ll try to keep things going smoothly on the front end and continue to develop their GM training program, but I’d trust the word of people who were on the ground at the time more than pronouncements from the top. There’s a lot of drama that gets buried under forced positivity going on at the moment from the looks of things.

 

[(un)reason]

Wow.

Based on this thread, I tried to go buy some of the old Dungeon magazines in PDF, since my physical copies are either lost or show decades of wear, and PDFs last as long as you have backups.

Paizo is no longer selling PDFs of Dragon and Dungeon magazine. The license to do so has expired.

Well, crap.

EDIT: To be clear, I tried to do this last year in November, and sent them an email when I couldn't. I just got my email response today.

WotC just leaving money on the table when it would cost them nothing to keep on selling them as .pdfs, thus making piracy inevitable. There's an irritatingly familiar tale.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 7/10



First Watch: Still plenty of gaming stuff to talk about to distract from all the chaos behind the curtain. The D20 Modern previews get around to covering Agents of Psi, probably the most interesting of the settings that made it into the book. It’s basically the X-Files, only the PC’s are on a somewhat more even footing with the paranormal weirdness that may or may not have an entirely scientific explanation. At least, until the Mind Flayers show up. It’s easy to see why this one was kept but Genetech was dropped, as it incorporates the secret government genetic experiments stuff from that easily and also gives the PC’s more kewl special powers to boot.

Second is promotion for this year’s Gen Con. As usual, they’re planning on making it bigger and better than ever, with multiple improvements in format. (next year, they’ll be moving house, which hopefully will let them make it even bigger without overcrowding) A simpler scoring system where the judge does more of the work, the chance to win heraldic shields for your Living Greyhawk characters or replica blasters & lightsabers for your star wars ones. They’re trying out a new thing, rather than an ongoing Living campaign, a specific adventure series that’s meant to last a year and take the players from mid to high levels over the course of the story. Sounds like another precursor to when they’ll fully formalise the Adventure Path concept and make it a regular thing. There’s still all the familiar stuff though, the Living tournaments, the Classic ones, the benefit ones, the NASCRAG wackiness. I’m sure you can keep yourself occupied the whole weekend if you can afford to make it.

The Release Roundup covers much the same collection of companies as last time. AEG continue to build on Spycraft, with the Soldier/Wheelman class guide and Threat book: The Hand of Glory. Another case where the d20 companies are beating WotC to the punch with similar modern day settings and probably doing it better as well. Avalanche take us to 13th century spain for some serious interracial war in Reconquista: The battle for Medieval Iberia. Hopefully none of your players are still holding any grudges from what happened to their ancestors in that. Bastion Press release the mammoth setting book Oathbound: Domains of the Forge. How will you deal with being summoned to a world that’s a prison for a forgotten god? Fantasy Flight Games release the Monsters Handbook, for those of you who love customising your beasties. Firey Dragon Productions give us an old school style 32 page adventure called Gates of Oblivion. Rescue the king’s son from a weird prison world. (not the same prison world as Oathbound, but then again there are lots of prison worlds out there.) Goodman Games release Broncosaurus Rex, mixing up cowboys & dinosaurs. The complete guide to T-Rex follows the month after, which seems like excellent marketing synergy. Green Ronin and Guardians of Order both release superheroic d20 variants. Will Mutants & Masterminds or Silver Age Sentinels be more to your tastes? Malhavoc experiments with pdf only products, starting with a series of pregen characters by Sean K. Reynolds. Mongoose are going so fast they’ve already burned through the core classes and are now doing a quintessential guide to psychic warriors, plus Judge Dredd & Slaine supplements. Necromancer games, release The Vault of Larin Karr, a big adventure designed to take you from 4th-9th level, which should at least give you a chance in Rappan Athuk afterwards. Paradigm Concept release a guide to giants, which will be extra useful if you also bought Green Ronin’s one on dwarves. No sizeism here.

Necromancer Games get a profile this time. They’re doing very well out of their tagline of “third edition rules, first edition feel”, attracting both a solid fanbase and some of the biggest names from the old days like Gary Gygax & Rob Kuntz. In some ways, you get the feeling they’d rather be playing 1e entirely, but of course that’s not OGL so you can’t publish stuff for it. What they can do is publish adventures that specifically avoid the concept of 13.33 recurring fair fights per level, going both directions in terms of difficulty to keep you on your toes and do encounters where even though the crunch is the same, the cosmetic details may differ. They accept that this may not appeal to everyone, but they wouldn’t want to game with people who don’t like that anyway, so forewarned is forearmed, or possibly sixarmed if marilths get involved.

Finally, they have a particularly silly little follow-up for Thunderball Rally. Stats for PC orangutans? What inspired that? Google’s best guess is Every Which Way But Loose, but I guess there were plenty of silly animal sidekicks on the cartoon end of the 70’s as well. Since they start off as 4HD monsters mixing one with 1st level PC’s would probably have balance issues, but as long as you take a fighty class you can probably keep up after that. I can definitely see the value in this if you want a bit of comic relief in your game.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron 94/153: Sep/Oct 2002



part 8/10



Omega World: A post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with mutants and strange technology from before the nukes? Isn’t that called Gamma World? Well, yes, but Gamma World 6e is already in development, licensed out to White Wolf. Unfortunately, it’ll turn out to be widely slated for being both an overly serious take on the concept, and having terrible editing (terrible editing in a White Wolf book? surely not?!) that means the rules don’t fit the setting very well either, but oh well, we live and learn. In the meantime, Jonathan Tweet is doing this much lighter take on the same concept, which while still not quite as wacky as the old days, at least emphasises the random elements and the fact that it’s designed for short games rather than extended campaigns. If you like the 3e chassis but don’t particularly care about game balance, that definitely has potential.



Characters: Straight up, they emphasise the inversion of the usual character design process. There’s only a single class which is average in skill points and BAB, although you do get to choose which save is good, medium & bad, plus a bonus feat each level and I suppose nothing is stopping you from using classes from other sources. The real choice is in playing a pure strain human, in which case you’re relatively boring but do get the bonus skill points & feat, plus the ability to learn about tech as a class skill, or some kind of mutant, in which case it’s time to roll on those random mutation tables. There is some rough balancing going on here, with each mutation given a point value and the numbers of good mutations and defects roughly balancing out, but it’s still very possible to wind up with good or bad combinations of powers and have one character superior to another. If you get a bad one, you are actively encouraged to suicide them in the first combat encounter and roll up another character. So this continues the attempts to feel like a retro throwback, while having a little more going on under the hood that means it’s not quite as unfair as it seems at first. An interesting tightrope to try and walk. The new skills & feats section is very light indeed, with just one for doing psychic attacks with (presuming you have an appropriate mutation) one for knowledge of ancient tech, proficiency for powered armor or relic weapons, one for upgrading your mutations and the fairly common repeated one Multishot. Equipment is also pretty simplified, with a standard set plus one or two random things per character. The reduced number of decisions should definitely add up to make character creation a much faster process than standard 3e.