TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 95/194: Nov/Dec 2002



part 6/10



Bolt & Quiver steal the eyes of the 1e Player’s Handbook statue. Fortunately, the kobolds who run the place have a plentiful supply of cheap replacements, because this happens a lot.



First Watch: They’ve released the D20 Modern corebook, but that doesn’t mean the previews will stop. They want to release a whole load of supplements that’ll rival their D&D ones in popularity. (unlikely, but a developer can dream) First up, a full length book on Urban Arcana, giving you lots of new prestige classes, spells, magic items, monsters and other stuff, most of which is also useful for a Shadow Chasers game as well. Thankfully, they do seem to be putting genuine effort into making the powers and flavour a bit more modern, with items like the floating umbrella, (I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!) tattoo of bullet deflection and chainsaw of the psycho. Whether you want to give your modern day characters more options or put a few more anachronisms in your D&D games I’m sure you can find at least a few good items in here.

News from the Top is all about previewing next year’s Winter Fantasy. Whether you want Living Greyhawk, City, Force or Virtual Seattle we’ve got plenty of adventures for you. No mention of Living Jungle, Death or any of the others though, the number of settings is finally slimming down again after the late 90’s explosion. Hopefully the increased ease of scheduling the ones they do offer will make up for that.

The Release Roundup is relatively short this time. AEG release Gentleman’s Agreement for Spycraft, for those who like their super-spies on the classier end of the spectrum. Bastion Press have Guildcraft, if you want to get into a little more detail about what joining one entails. (and how they keep non-members out of the profession. ) Green Ronin release Denizens of Freeport for their fantasy fans, and Freedom City for their superhero ones. Seeing a definite pattern in their naming conventions here. Mongoose have too many to keep up with as usual, including a compilation of feats from other OGL books and a look at the British side of the Judge Dredd universe. Mystic Eye Games release Foul Locales, another self-explanatory little supplement. Necromancer Games release the mammoth Tome of Horrors, as previewed a couple of issues ago. White Wolf give us d20 Everquest, as also mentioned a few pages ago. Then they do the trend tracker thing again. The various Complete class/race/basic historical thing series are already hitting saturation, so supplements have to be a little more sophisticated to stand out from the crowd. Nyambe, Oathbound and Midnight are all settings that fit that bill, doing something no previous D&D setting has. Let’s hope they sell enough to get decent amounts of supplements and explore their premises to the point where they feel fully developed.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 95/194: Nov/Dec 2002



part 7/10



Improved Initiative: The 3e revision formalised quite a few things some DM’s had been doing as house rules for many years. Mike Mearls tries to do it again with the Alert Factor. How does a place change when the PC’s screw up their first attack on a dungeon and now everything is on edge? You just make a simple chart, use this list of modifiers and move it up or down based on the PC’s actions & the amount of time passed. (another good reason to hide in an extradimensional space and recharge all your spells on a regular basis if the mission isn’t time sensitive. ) It may take a bit more effort, particularly when the place is big and you’ve got to do it individually for each of the rooms, but it’ll really add depth to a place, helping you flesh out the personalities of the occupants by making you think about how often they face imminent peril and how they react to it. Definitely the kind of thing I approve of, helping you add more depth to your adventure design in a well organised, if somewhat formulaic way.



Mecha Crusade: The giant mecha genre is slightly less niche than battle racing, but is still a very specific one mostly found in Japanese media. As usual, we start off with a system-free intro talking us through the primary influences. Gundam, Robotech, Heavy Gear, certain parts of Power Rangers, these give you a good introduction to the genre and the kind of epic battle scenes you can expect in it. Iron Man shows what happens when you throw a mecha-using character into the melting pot that is superhero comics. You can also use it to play Transformers, which are basically mecha without the human pilots, although balancing human and giant robot characters may be a little tricky. So this reminds us that you can use these rules in more ways than you might initially think. It also makes it clear that unlike the first few minigames, this isn’t a complete game, but skips the basics so they can pack more mecha goodness into their limited page count, so you’ll need the D&D or (preferably) the D20 Modern corebooks to make sense of it. I strongly suspect that will be the default going forward. Some gradual progression in design efficiency as these minigames go on, but the formula remains familiar. Time to see if the specifics are more refined than the previous ones.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 95/194: Nov/Dec 2002



part 8/10



Characters: Since they’re using a D20 modern base, they can skip the core classes, spend half a page on how existing advanced classes from the corebook integrate into a mecha campaign, and get to the new advanced classes fairly quickly. We get six of them. Mecha Shock Trooper, for people who rely on the raw force of their mech to solve problems in a violent way. Mecha Ace, for people piloting a flying mech that prefer to use speed and agility to win. Cyborgs, which obviously gain a new implant with most levels, at the cost of their ability to relate to normal humans. Weapon designers, which aren’t glamorous but make everyone on the team more awesome with a bit of prep time. Sleeper Agents, a particularly specific and complex class that you should use with caution, for switching loyalties due to post-hypnotic suggestions can be disruptive to a group, but they do have some cool powers even they don’t consciously know about. And Wing Captain, the man with a plan (and a mecha, stars and spangles painted on it optional) who can give the rest of the team buffs with their sound tactical advice. So it definitely seems like they’re encouraging a campaign model where not all the PC’s are pilots and there’s more going on with the worldbuilding outside the giant monster battles, with not everyone getting to contribute every scene. Good thing you have free multiclassing so you can mix and match these if you want ones that can do both piloting and human scale stuff decently. The release of D20 Modern has definitely improved their benchmarks for things like action points and progressions of saves, defence, reputation, etc, which integrate much better with the ones from the books, but if you don’t like the high crunch simulationist design it still won’t be fun for you. The new feats similarly have quite a few tax ones - you’ll beed to purchase both Mecha Operation and Mecha Weapon Proficiency before you’re fully competent inside a cockpit and can think about focussing on more specific ones to do cool things. Starting characters off at 1st level will mean it’ll take quite a few sessions before you can really do the mecha part of the game justice. Probably best to start at 4th if you want to get going straight away.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 95/194: Nov/Dec 2002



part 9/10



Building a Mecha: They completely separate the mecha building system from the wealth one, both for fairness sake so a team can be built using the same point totals without random rolls, and because mecha are usually so expensive that you need the backing of the government or some secret society to afford them at all. (although the concept of a cyberpunk game with jury-rigged mecha fighting against The Man does have a certain appeal, but that would need some DM work.) Despite citing Iron Man as an influence earlier, they don’t include rules for human sized power suits, with mechs ranging from Large to Colossal size categories, each increasing the number of body slots you have available to add more gadgets, but also the cost of each thing you add. The number of points gets very large, with some individual options costing tens of thousands of build points, but that’s ok because you’re expected to have hundreds of thousands to spend by the time you hit 20th level. So i’m not sure how balanced everything is without playtesting, but there’s definitely more than enough granularity to do a lot of fine-tuning of the numbers if you were to play it and then tweak it based on how things tuned out. This continues the general design decision of going for a fairly high crunch approach, as far as is possible within their limited page count. It might actually be a mercy that they didn’t have more room then.



Running Mecha Crusade: After all that extra time in character creation figuring out what kind of mech you’re going to have, the extra rules for action scenes are surprisingly light, at a mere 6 pages. Combat works pretty much as normal, only with bigger numbers. Usually, damage will only affect the mecha until it’s destroyed, but on a critical hit the pilot might take some as well. Flying works differently in an atmosphere or space, so watch out for the tweaks to the manoeuvrability rules. If you have fast reactions you can shoot enemy missiles out of the air before they hit you, which is pleasingly dramatic. If more than one person is piloting the same mecha, you can get extra attack options as long as they’re each operating different weapons systems, or you can use the aid another action as usual to give +2 bonuses to movement and defence. If you want to go full Transformers, you might have a set of mechs designed to combine into a bigger, more awesome one. All of these rules are pretty simple and shouldn’t slow down the action any more than regular 3e, maybe even less because all the numbers are precalculated and you don’t need to worry about stacking buffs going on and off mid combat the way you would with high level D&D spellcasters. If you can have fun battles with regular 3e, you can almost definitely manage it with these extras.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 95/194: Nov/Dec 2002



part 10/10



The Mecha Crusade Campaign: The campaign advice is also quite short, but in a way that makes it feel quite sketchy and in need of further expansion. First up, a rough default setting. The year is 2053, humanity has been colonising the rest of the solar system for a few decades now and is just getting to the point where the colonies are fed up of the increasingly tyrannical earth government and thinking about declaring independence. They’re still massively outnumbered, but they have the advantage of a well-educated population with far better raw materials and economy compared to the tapped out, heavily polluted earth. Will they be able to renegotiate the deal and forge a bright new future for themselves, or will it turn into a lengthy asymmetrical war that winds up devastating both sides, possibly leading into some iteration of Gamma World after civilisation is destroyed? There’s definitely a lot of different ways you could take that and the PC’s could easily play significant parts in it, either following the orders of whatever military they’re with or striking out on their own. Then there’s a bunch of even less fleshed out alternate ideas, exploring the stars a la Vehicle Force Voltron, mixing your mechas with your cthulhu, which will get its own full setting a few years later as Cthulhutech, Mecha Gladiators, which makes perfect sense as a pickup game, and Servomotors & Sorcery, where you throw the full D&D kitchen sink in with the mechas and see just how broken you can make the combinations of magic and tech. All could definitely support a full book or more of expansion by the right writer. Finally, XP guidelines for encounters. Since the mecha makes such a huge difference to the power of your opponents, CR is determined 50/50 by the level of the person in the mech, and the number of points the mech has compared to the default amount for a character of that level. Squashing people like bugs when you’re in a suit and they’re not will not gain you XP, even if they’re actually higher level than you, because it’s still not a fair fight. (but it can still be satisfying, especially if they’ve been throwing obstacles in your way the whole campaign but you’ve only now got to meet them face to face) Once again I’m left wanting more, which is probably a positive sign overall in terms of quality, but still a little frustrating.



Godlike tells the tale of Aesgir, a little kid wielding a toy spear who fought back against the nazis in Norway. Somehow in his hands it was a weapon capable of being thrown through tanks and returning to his hands. Unsurprisingly, the statue commemorating the place where he fell makes both him and the spear look a lot more impressive than they did in reality.



Monster Tokens: A lot of repeated tokens this time, showing that this series may be starting to hit diminishing returns. In the regular size category we have a magma paraelemental, a grick, a satyr, a narzugon, a goblin, a fire beetle, two githyanki, two gnolls, two harpies, two mezzoloths, four yuan-ti with two each of pureblood and half-blood. In the big leagues we have a 10x5 ankheg, a 10x10 gulguhydra and a 20x20 dragon turtle that smaller characters can probably climb onto the back of. That could make for a very interesting fight as long as you have decent tumble scores for when it tries to roll over and crush you.



A slow start, but there’s still plenty of interesting bits in this issue that do things they haven’t before, and the only big dead spot is the ultra-generic adventures at the start that are obviously aimed at far less experienced readers than me. Then again, every issue might be someone’s first so they have to keep on doing at least a few of those. Let’s see what mix of novelty and formula the next year brings. (hopefully a better ratio than Dragon did)

 

[(un)reason]

Mecha Crusade recruitment thread is up.

 

[(un)reason]

Well, I finally managed to run a session. I decided to go for the Servomotors & Sorcery option so I could advertise as both 3.5 and D20 Modern, which seemed to work. There were several people who posted once and never engaged again, or dropped into the chat and then dropped out after a bit of conversation, but there were also two fully engaged players who had read the rules and come up with characters before the session started. I do have to admit that the repeated failures of the previous minigames were somewhat demotivating, so I hadn't done as much prep as I would prefer, but still managed to whip up something using floor plans of an airbase I found online and a bunch of kobolds in deliberately underpowered scrap mecha that kept everyone busy for three hours. Now I just need to create some more CR appropriate enemies and do a bit of worldbuilding for next week to hopefully make things a little less pure hack & slash. Let's see how long I can make this work and if the system will scale up decently, as all the extra HP & hardness does already make combats longer than regular ones at the same level.

 

[(un)reason]

And once again it all falls apart. Two players called off early in the day for different reasons, while the final remaining one berated me for not communicating enough between sessions. It's becoming obvious that I'm not fully equipped to deal with the expectations of people who are always online and expect you to be so as well. Oh well. It's all a learning experience and at least I'm definitely improving at the technical aspects of operating the roll20 interface. Time to move on again and try to do better next time.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 96/155: Jan/Feb 2003



part 1/10



150 pages. Dragon may have skipped the backdrop for their gladiator special, but Dungeon hasn’t. Curious. Once again we’re heavily in co-ordinated tie-in territory and it’s just possible that the offerings in here might be the superior ones. Let’s find out if it’s possible to win glory here, or the glitzy exterior will turn out to be a feint and all we’ll be left with is sand in our eyes.



Editorial:Even in WotC headquarters, finding a reliable gaming group and keeping them together can be a challenge, in part because you simply have so many options to choose from, so it’s easy to be lured away by the newest shiniest releases. Chris spends the editorial recounting his woes. Curiously, only running fortnightly rather than weekly seems to make people even less reliable at showing up on time. It also means you get less done in the time you have because people’s memories have had more time to fade since last session, so you waste more doing recaps and doing exposition to people who missed last session entirely. It’s got to the point that he needs an NPC created just to deliver exposition and keep them from wandering around or bickering like idiots. Consistency is tricky no matter what you do, but it’s easier when you do things more frequently. Make what you want to do part of your everyday routine, then the things adjacent to it will naturally remind you to do the thing.



Letters: First letter is a repeat writer re-iterating their desire for combat mats. After a year of tokens, it makes sense to have somewhere to put them. Makes sense. Here you go.

Second is annoyed that they stopped making Star Wars content in its own magazine and sent them Dungeon instead. They said they’d still do some SW material, but we’ve got bupkiss. It’s not for lack of trying, but approvals really slow everything down. How are you supposed to run a periodical under those conditions?

Third is one of the persistent Polyhedron haters. If it doesn’t leave the magazine, they will. Erik does his best to persuade them they you’re still getting plenty of value for your money even if you don’t like that part.

Fourth is very pleased by their excursion into vile darkness, and would like more of it, plus adventures involving Drow if possible. Two concepts that fit together perfectly if they can just find someone to write it. What’s that Robin Laws fellow doing at the moment?

Fifth agrees with Erik that the works of China Mieville make an excellent inspiration for the darker and more self-aware kind of adventurer. If you haven’t already read them, do so now!

Sixth is from a dad disappointed that he can’t share issue 95 with his kid like usual. Don’t do it again. No promises, but it’ll be a long time before another one got published even if they received a really good submission right now with their lead-in times.

Seventh is once again in favour of a little more darkness in their gaming. Even the worst fictional villain is easier to vanquish than real life ones and it’s nice to get that satisfaction after a long day of dealing with the denizens of a decaying apartment complex.

Finally, another person complaining about not about the vile contents of last issue, but the irritation of the sealed section. It’s a bad idea to do that too often simply for reasons of extra manufacturing costs.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 96/155: Jan/Feb 2003



part 2/10



Critical Threats: The staff keep on trying to make this column happen despite the lack of external submissions, with this one just credited to them as a whole rather than any one person. This time it’s a single dungeon room that you could put anywhere in a larger complex. A magically chilled cavern which means you suddenly have to deal with the dangers of slippery footing on top of whatever monsters might be found there? Fairly basic idea, but you’d be surprised how many groups forget their crampons, particularly if they still have to worry about encumbrance. The ideas on who could be living there are quite advanced and varied though, with three different suggestions for different levels, all using nonstandard monsters with class levels or templates. Not one you can use without a little further work to come up with the full stats yourself then, but still both interesting and flexible, as well as actually managing to fit within a single page like they were supposed to in the first place.



Side Treks - Hollow Threats: Sometimes a DM will put low level characters up against a challenge way above their pay grade as a lesson, this ain’t going to be a nice campaign and sometimes you’ll need to run away or hide if you want to survive long-term. Other times, it’ll be a fakeout, and the problem looks big, but is entirely within their power if they just show a little courage and use their brains. So it proves here, where 1st level characters hear rumours that there’s a dragon turtle raiding the local coasts. It’s actually just a gang of orcs who found the corpse of one and made it into a boat. Since they’d rather everyone just flee than have to fight, they use a halfling quisling to spread exaggerated rumours about the danger and then sound the alarm before they raid so hopefully the villages will be empty. Will the PC’s make themselves scarce along with the rest of the villagers or stay to be heroic? If they do it won’t be too hard an encounter. (although you can always add extra class levels if you want to scale the enemies up) Another decent but unexceptional bit of writing that has a decent amount of potential for follow-ups depending on how it goes, if any of the enemies survive and whether the PC’s realise the halfling they encountered earlier was actually an accomplice. Follow that formula and you’ll soon get to 2nd level and beyond.