TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 20: Nov/Dec 1989



part 1/5



73 pages. Dungeon is also ending the decade on a nice round number, albeit a somewhat smaller one. They've also increased their page count in response, albeit by a smaller percentage. Will they have any kind of big celebration this christmas? It certainly looks like there'll be some big monsters at least. Let's see how threatening they are, and if their treasure hoard is worth the hassle to collect.



Editorial: Not only is it a nice round number of issues, it's a nice round number of adventures too, as they've now published exactly 100 of them. Bet they specifically chose the ones in this issue to make sure they hit that figure. They've made this issue seasonal by having not just one, but two adventures featuring Frost Giants. Hope you've wrapped up nice and warm in response. It's not all good news, they're losing their art director, barely a year after the last changeover. But the show will go on, and hopefully get a little more ambitious and interconnected over the next decade. Have fun actually taking these adventures and weaving them together into a larger campaign.



Letters: There's an unusually large number of letters published this issue. Many are follow-ups on topics from previous issues. Well, since they don't have a forum in here they have to use the main letters page for debate stuff as well.

First wants more high level adventures. The editors would too. They keep on asking for them, yet hardly anyone writes them. It's most irritating.

Second wants everything described in neat little boxes, including the people who write into the magazine. The editors don't care about your A/S/L, as long as you can create adventures and roleplay properly without being a dick, everyone's welcome.

Third also wants boxed text for everything, and more weird adventures like House of Cards. Your tastes are very different to mine.

4th wants boxes used in moderation. Anything in excess gets tiresome, and this definitely counts.

5th actively dislikes boxing things in. Let DM's run things their own way. And give us some more challenging adventures. None of this basic naughty word! Things can be basic or advanced on several different axes. It's not a straight continuum.

6th wants a mix of boxed and unboxed, as well as a good mix of settings. Better to please everyone some of the time than a few people all of the time.

7th also wants boxes used in moderation. Too much of that turns a GM into merely a script regurgitator and destroys their creativity. If you want nothing but linear prefab adventures where you can't think outside the box, you might as well play a computer game. That's one thing they can do better than tabletop RPG's.

8th also wants more big and high level adventures, and fewer solo ones that give the player few tightly proscribed choices. Do they even really count as role-playing?

After all this, we finally get onto some other topics. The 9th letter suggests more ways to deal with magical item overload. Many have limited uses, so just scale back on giving them out. Plus even a careless fireball can clean you out of a lot of your more fragile possessions. It's not rocket science.

10th we have a subscriber grumbling that the magazine gets delivered to stores first. Not a lot they can do about that when they send them all out at the same time. Battles with the post office are another perennial that never goes out of fashion.

11th, someone asking about back issue availability. Polyhedron just did a special offer on that. Maybe they should make an effort to plug their back stock as well.

12th, some general praise of the many things they do right. Always important to remember that the majority of customers are satisfied, they just don't write in to say so.

13th, someone who wants them to be more cultural in general. More OA stuff is particularly good, but there's also a whole world of other stuff out there to draw upon, plus many fantastical ones. Hit those encyclopaedias and head down a road less travelled.

14th praises the sneakiness of the goblins in Tallow's Deep. It turned out well in actual play, and that's what really counts.

15th is someone confused about paladin's protection from evil aura and how it differs from the spell. Buy the new edition, everything is explained much more clearly there.

16th and finally, (whew!) is someone who want more all-thief adventures, and maybe something with PvP in. The first, they'll happily do this issue. The second, they'll politely ignore, as is current code of conduct. Some experiments, they'll never do for political reasons.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 20: Nov/Dec 1989



part 2/5



The Ship of Night: Wolf Baur continues to build up his credits, taking us off to the Forgotten Realms for some deep dwarven fun. The PC's are hired to find and reclaim Hammerkeep, an abandoned stronghold with quite an interesting history. Why was it built in a place without natural caves and fault lines to expand upon, making all the work several times as expensive, and what is the eponymous Ship of Night? Is it an actual ship, and why would they build it where it can't be used? This isn't Mystara, where magical ships that sail through rock are a fairly common type of magical item and most decent-sized dwarf clans own one. After a (probably) fairly substantial bit of wilderness trekking, depending on where you were when you got the assignment, you get there and find out it's been taken over by Derro. From then on in it's a fairly typical humanoid-killing dungeon crawl, with some interesting quirks from Derro being smarter, but also more insane than the more common goblinoids most parties start with. There's plenty of other monster types sharing the area, some of which can be turned against the dominant ones and allied with, at least temporarily. A fairly standard bit of old schoolish action where you're a fair distance away from civilisation, which means you can't just pop back and heal whenever you feel like it, so you have to think about what condition your party is in, which fights you want to commit yourself too, which challenges you compromise on or use sneakiness to solve instead and what treasure will fit in your encumbrance limit. Decent, but not particularly surprising or original in any way. It'll get you some more experience between more world-shaking or character-developing scenarios.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 20: Nov/Dec 1989



part 3/5



White Fang: Nigel Findley appears a second issue in a row, with an adventure for a high level solo thief. Climb the forbidding mountain of White Fang, sneak into the home of some frost giants, and steal their stuff. Unsurprisingly given who's writing it, the protagonist is more than a little cynical and dickish, treating his hirelings and associates fairly poorly even when you take the "good" dialogue options. Of course, if you don't like him, you'll have plenty of opportunities to see him die horribly over the course of the adventure, both through dice rolls and your own poor choices. As usual for solo modules, it's somewhat more brutal than regular ones because you can just rewind and start again in a way that you can't in a full campaign. You do get a decent number of choices, and it's written so your thief skills are actually useful, so it works pretty well as a solo adventure, while also being not too hard to covert to a regular one with a larger, lower level party. It gets my approval. They can do a few more of these, preferably for the classes they haven't tried yet.

 

[(un)reason]

Well, we've made it through a year of posting, and nearly finished the 80's. Still a long way to go, so I hope you'll keep tuning in for the 90's and beyond, which will take considerably longer if the last go around was any indicator.


Dungeon Issue 20: Nov/Dec 1989



part 4/5



Pride of the Sky: Along with a double dose of frost giants, it looks like we have a double dose of ship-related adventure this issue, as this one involves a Mystaran skyship a la the Princess Ark. Said airship was attacked by a dragon and crashed in the middle of the Broken Lands. As it was carrying a whole heap of treasure at the time, people would rather like to find and retrieve some of it. The PC's come across a map that will supposedly lead them to it. This is a fairly substantial trek through rough terrain, which explains why no-one's done it yet, and when they get there, they find out the crash site has been turned into a manscorpion temple. Better have some anti-poison spells or items if you want to get out alive. Most of the valuables are melted and fused into the floors and walls, which certainly looks impressive, but also adds serious logistical challenges to getting them home and getting a good market value for them. So this manages to strike a good balance between Basic Set dungeon crawling, Expert Set wilderness challenges, and Companion Set level monsters which raises the possibility of bringing along a load of hirelings and using the mass combat rules if it turns out the PC's don't have what it takes to do the job on their own. (Although that still means the magazine hasn't ever done anything remotely approaching Master or Immortal level, to my irritation) It reminds us that by this point, D&D and AD&D have diverged quite a bit in setting flavour and playstyle, with the supposedly basic one actually being more sophisticated and focused in some areas. So this manages to be both fairly distinctive, and gives you lots of freedom in how to go about solving it, while not being easy at all, as that many save or die attacks in quick succession is a threat to even a very high level party. That's the kind of high level challenge I like to see. Hopefully it'll inspire someone to push things a little further and submit a challenge for the whole BECMI.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 20: Nov/Dec 1989



part 5/5



Ancient Blood: After a relatively short solo trip to icy terrain, here's the main course, a very large (although with fewer rooms than usual for it's size) keep haunted by undead frost giants. They're actually less scary in combat than living ones, but there's a good reason for this, so they can keep the intended character level low enough that the characters can't just bypass all the mundane dangers of arctic travel with magic. This gives them room to play up the atmosphere of the forbidding wilderness, enormous ice wall and vast icy halls, and create an adventure where there's more tension between the combats than during them. Yup, horror season is spilling over from last issue and they're going full gothic with the writing style. Starting off with flavour encounters with superstitious natives and a relatively simple seeming assignment, they then get roped into trying to deal with an ancient ghost that will apparently devastate the town in a month's time if not laid to rest. To do do so, you have to deal with the mundane challenges of arctic travel as well as the supernatural ones. So running this one well is all about pacing and building up the drama. It's not as deadly as the last couple, but still has plenty of good qualities to it, as it does gothic without overdoing the spooky to the point where it becomes mundane or being a railroad like far too many Ravenloft modules. We're definitely accumulating enough decent far-north adventures to justify an extended stay up there.


With 3 out of 4 adventures involving far north or icy terrains, this issue manages to be reasonably seasonal even without any formal mentions of christmas or it's otherworldly equivalents, and also manages a decent variety of tones within the same terrain. A good example of the kind of thing we don't get when they're trying to sell us individual modules. Let's find out if next issue is similarly wintery, or they'll already be looking forward to the whimsy of spring.

 

[Mannahnin]

Hopefully it'll inspire someone to push things a little further and submit a challenge for the whole BECMI.

TBF, Immortals was such its own thing that it kind of supplants what precedes it. I could definitely see Masters level adventures using bits from every set, but Immortals is practically its own game.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990



part 1/5



36 pages. A new decade, a bright new future! Well, they're definitely in a futuristic mood at least, if not a bright one, as the rather murky spacebound cover indicates. Let's see just how far from earth they're willing to go, and how dystopian they'll get this time around.



Conventions continue to come up with terrible pun names. Genghis Con? Total ConFusion? ConnCon? Have yourself a solid round of groans and slow claps.



Notes from HQ: Once again, they're very keen on the idea of increasing size, so most of the editorial is devoted to the membership drive, it's regulations, and the prizes you can win. Unsurprisingly, the prizes are fewer and smaller than last year's flop attempt, but don't let that put you off. Even if you only recruit one or two people, you're making a genuine difference to the long-term strength of roleplaying in your community. This all seems pretty stressful for them. They need to figure out how to get people more engaged without seeming like they're nagging, which will just be irritating and counterproductive in the long run. In anticipation of their hopeful success, they've moved Skip from long-term freelancer to full-time staff, given the sheer quantity of stuff he was doing for them for free anyway. It's safe to say he won't be going anywhere anytime soon, given how big a part he played in both Dragon and many full D&D books over the next decade. On the negative side, that also means we'll probably be seeing some more obnoxiously whimsical modules from him in here as well, but oh well, no-one's perfect. His positive contributions to gaming definitely outweigh the negative ones overall.



Letters: In connection with the membership drive, many of the letters are about the struggle in finding people to join and play with. The first points out that while there's plenty of gamers and games in the plains of Spain, there's virtually no RPGA presence there. You're absolutely right. This means you're a prime growth area with a little more promotional effort, preferably from someone who actually knows the local culture and it's quirks. Hey kid, wanna be a regional director? :winks: We can sort you out with some real good gear if you do. If no-one steps up, it'll never get done.

The second one addresses another problem with international growth, that it costs more than for USA residents. If a regional office gets big enough to do it's own printing that might be improved upon. Until then, you're stuck with the air mail costs. it's not as if they're seeing the extra money from it, especially if you paid for membership several years in advance and they rise in the meantime.

The third complains that not only are there not enough gamers in Hawaii, the ones that there are are nearly all military, who don't have any incentive to sign up to the RPGA because they already get service members discounts. Yeah, that is a problem. Might want to rejig your discount structure to help with that.

The 4th is another one complaining that they offer too many tournaments open to non-members. If they were bigger, they could be a bit stricter with the exclusives. Once again, fixing this is up to you guys really.

Finally, Multi-tournament champion Donald Bingle writes in to reveal that he's decided to try and actually make his own RPG's, and bought the rights to several other out of print ones. As he's a nice kinda guy, he's also offering a discount to RPGA members. That's the sort of community spirit we want to see. Hopefully this co-operation'll be profitable to all involved.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990



part 2/5



For a Few Gunfights More: Boot Hill material has always done relatively well in here. So it's no surprise that when publishing a new edition, they decide to promote it extra hard in Polyhedron rather than Dragon. So here's another of their full page pieces where they tell us what's changed in the new edition (much of it inspired by articles in this very publication), and why these changes are a good thing so hopefully you'll go out and spend some money on it. They've thoroughly rejigged the stats and added a skill system to make the game more than just a gunfighting simulator. (although the gunfights still get priority over everything else) They've got a whole chapter on customising and advancing your horses, so they can feel important and keep up with the humans over a campaign. And the back of the book is filled with both general campaign advice, a sample town and several specific adventures. (although some of those may well be reprints of old modules. ) It all reflects the general trends in roleplaying towards longer campaigns and more detailed settings these days. Hopefully it'll do well enough to inspire a few more articles in here before it fades away again, this time for good. Unless someone gets hold of the rights and publishes a new edition. But how well would that sell? Westerns were already a genre in decline in the 90's, they feel thoroughly anachronistic now, where you really can't use cut-out stereotypes of other human ethnicities or nationalities as the villain without serious complaints. How could they go about squaring the circle of making a Western set game fun but non-flamewar causing?



On a Roll: A second promotional article in quick succession, although this one is a little more interesting and useful than just a straight advert. Lou Zocchi has spent many years trying to improve the science of dice, creating new forms of increasingly complex polyhedron that are still symmetrical and so have equal chances to roll any side. His current goal is a 24-sided one, which seems relatively simple, you just get a 6-sided one and expand each side into a pyramid. But calculating the precise angles to make it roll smoothly while keeping each side well-defined, that's the tricky part. Anyway, to celebrate this, they want you to send in random generation tables with 24 entries on RPG related topics. The winners will get 24 sided dice to use the tables with, and the top three will get a deluxe jeweled hundred-sided die as well. This is one article that's particularly appropriate to the newszine's name, making people aware that there are more kinds of polyhedrons out there than the familiar 6 used in D&D, and it wouldn't hurt to add a few of the rarer ones to your collection. They may not ever be as popular, even 30 years on, but they sure do add a lot more speed and granularity to generating various probability spreads. Get your Dungeon Crawl Classics out and give them a roll.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990



part 3/5



With Great Power: This column is in a slightly silly mood, as it's covering the Great Lakes Avengers, the off-brand team of misfits and rejects (oh, and Squirrel Girl, but that's still in the future) from more serious superhero groups that protects Wisconsin and the surrounding region. The founder, Mr Immortal, who can come back to life from apparently anything, and dies a lot because that's his only superpower. His anthromorphic pterodactyl lover, Dinah Soar. G-rated Chuck Tingle before he got started Big Bertha, the supermodel that transforms into an enormous super-strong fat woman. No chance of anyone connecting her civilian identity with her superheroic life. And filling out the ranks are Flatman & Doorway, who's powers are entirely self-explanatory, plus established superheroes Hawkeye ("The city is flying, we’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.") & Mockingbird, currently on the outs with the regular Avengers. What wacky adventures will they get up to this week before their comic gets cancelled due to lack of sales or they get sacrificed to show how serious a big crossover event is? Will anyone care enough about them to include them in their own campaign as PC's or NPC's? Did you? No, really, if you did, I'd like to know.



The Caves of Confection: Last article was mildly silly, but this one really goes the whole hog. Rick Reid takes a break from forcing us to rescue small but well-coiffeured canines, and sends us into the sugar mines instead to clear out the monsters that have moved in and restore the proper supply of confectionaries to the surrounding country. As with the previous stuff I've seen from him, this is both very linear and extremely silly. A river of chocolate, a marshmallow-addicted harpy, an annoying grandpa in the middle of the dungeon who has somehow miraculously avoided the monsters, jinsu orcs, and the final boss is a snack dragon who's breath weapon encases you in a delicious (but immobilising) candy coating. It's pretty short and not particularly challenging, so it probably won't even last you a single session. Really, this fails on all levels, challenge, funniness, and most importantly meaningful choice. Would it have killed him to write a few more jokes so we could at least have had branching paths, secret doors, variability in the order you do things and amount of treasure you get, so players could feel some degree of choice and achievement for exploring and discovering things or not. Instead of treating them like people to roleplay with, it treats them like a passive audience for him to tell his comedy routine too, going straight from the start of the script to the end with their only contribution being rolling the dice at the appropriate points. It misses the whole point of a roleplaying game, and I'm both annoyed at him for writing it, and insulted that the editors think it's remotely what we want from our gaming and let it through. I mean, really?! Ugh!!! Minus E406 stars for you.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990



part 4/5



The Living City: The Raven's Bluff material is also culinary themed, although considerably less sickly sweet than the adventure. The Downunda Patisserie provides fresh bread and cakes for a significant proportion of the populace, and is so popular that the shelves are nearly always cleared out by the end of each day, ready for a new set hot and fresh out the kitchen the next morning. As with many of the more popular establishments, they have magical protections against robbery, plus anyone who succeeds despite that will find themselves with a lot of enemies if word gets around, so only the dumbest PC's will try violence in here. As usual, it's the relationships between the family that run it that provide the real opportunities for conflict, with two of the kids wanting to become adventurers while the mum and oldest son try to keep them from going off and getting killed. Will your party be the bad influence that leads to them actually gaining class levels? Or will it be one of the kids from previous articles that have similar ambitions? It's getting to the point where you could make a whole team just out of the kids in these articles. I guess it's indicative of how cool and frequent adventurers are as a career in the Realms. At least it's consistent, even if it is losing impact somewhat with repetition.



Do You Speak Togo?: Um, No? Why would I speak a made-up language I've never heard of before? Especially as it isn't actually made-up, but a simplified mishmash of chinese and japanese words. Actually, given the quantity of anime I've watched, that means I probably could speak it if I wanted, complete with atrocious grammar and near-incomprehensibility to native speakers due to not doing the tonal inflections properly. Basically, this is a primer in weeaboo speak for Oriental Adventures fans, for the people who think that ninjas are kewl but are too lazy to buy an actual book on the basics of another language. (or these days, just do a bit of googling) The kind of thing that's shallow, stereotypical and hasn't aged well. Doing "me so solly" jokes, even ironically, will not go down well in most company these days. I think I'll pass.



The New Rogues Gallery: Just one character here this issue. Sandor the Smasher, King of Shalimar (You'll definitely have a night to remember with him with those Con and Cha scores) and his intelligent magical warhammer Havoc. A dwarven fighter with near maximum in all his stats, he lost his original family to orc marauders and became a wandering adventurer. After a few years of this he was recruited and put through a series of tests by a mysterious mentor, and eventually rewarded with the aforementioned hammer and transparent super tough (yet still nonmagical) plate armor. It definitely has the scent of extruded fantasy product, being absolutely packed full of cliches. Best to mine it for the interesting new items and discard the somewhat tiresome story parts, which are not to my taste at all. Diminishing returns is definitely setting in for this column after several years.