TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 88: October 1993



part 3/5



The Everwinking Eye: Ed is obviously tired of looking at cities and towns, because this time he does something completely different. A whistlestop tour of seven places in The Vast which you might find dangers and treasures worth your while as an adventurer. The spiders of Adhe Wood, which many believe are cultivated by Drow to guard an underdark entrance. The lost treasure of the highwayman Ijack, somewhere near the village of Bambryn. The stag-headed lich beneath Beluar's Hunt. The lynchings of Blanaer, resulting in more hastily hidden treasures scattered around the village. The fae and shapeshifters of the Brynwood, some more lethal than others to meet. The very wizard-heavy village of Dark Hollow, many of them pranksters. A good place to learn, but keep your wits about you. And the similarly named but exact opposite, Dead Tree Hollow, a village in a dead magic zone with it's own legends about how all the magic got catastrophically used up and the hidden treasure left behind. (but good luck finding it without divination spells to help you.) All system free, because who knows what level you'll be at when you pass by these locations, so you're free to customise them for your own campaign. Which having seen what happens when he does prefab adventures is probably for the best. Plenty of variety here, albeit at the expense of depth. Since the places listed go in alphabetical order from A-D, I'll wager there's a good few months of this format still to come before he moves onto something else. Let's see if it stays interesting for that long, or I'll be sick of it by the time we get to Z.



The Living City: Another magic mart? That is making things easy for the players. Fortunately, this is considerably less gonzo than Chemcheaux, as the Raven's Bluff Diviners Guild restricts themselves to selling spells & one-shot items from their specialty school even if many of the individual wizards have accumulated extensive selections of other stuff with their information gathering powers. As diviners have a high WIS prerequisite to specialise (which two of the sample NPC's violate, in another example of their sloppy mechanical editing, plus one is a gnome, which further breaks 2e rules.) the place is quite sensibly guarded & run and none of them is a secret traitor, because frankly, can you think of a worse place to try and infiltrate as a Red Wizard? While you might be able to employ them to bust more puzzle-based plots open if you've got the cash to spend, it doesn't look like their internal politics will be inspiring any adventures in itself. That, along with the mechanical weakness puts this in the distinctly subpar end of Living City articles. Bet they wish they'd seen that one coming.



The preregistration form for Winter Fantasy fills the middle pages again, letting you know what tournaments will be running and when, as well as some of the guests of honour & seminars. As usual, getting it in quickly will both save money and increase your odds of getting to play the games you want. The Amazing Engine, Timemaster and Paranoia are the other games alongside the 6 different AD&D scenarios this time. Nothing metaplot critical like last year's living city election, but still plenty to choose from.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 88: October 1993



part 4/5



The Living Galaxy: What do you do with a module after running it once? Are you already sick of it and can't wait to move onto something else, or do you find yourself longing for a second go to see how differently it could go? (depending heavily on quality and degree of linearity of course) What happens when you convert an old adventure to a different system, chop it up for parts and create a frankenstein's monster of several different ones, or restock it with new, higher level adversaries to challenge the current party level? It saves money and time compared with coming up with something completely new each session, and can make a world feel more like a living, progressing place. Basically this column is a lesson in recycling. It's good for the planet and it's good for you. It also illustrates why you'll get more use out of sandbox adventures long term than railroads, as you can play them multiple times and get a wider variety of results, plus they often include details on the surrounding world, NPC's in the local villages, ecology, religion and all that stuff that hints at a larger picture, giving you inspiration to build off of. Tabletop RPG's should focus on the things they can do better than any computer game, no matter how sophisticated, and this is one of them. A pleasingly above entry for this column.



The Heart of Evil: We saw our first Amazing Engine tournament advertised a few pages ago. No great surprise that they've got an article promoting it as well. Fortunately, they take a more interesting tack than straight selling, going for fiction with stats at the end like the first Ars Magica article instead. Dr Watson is home alone when a client calls for Sherlock, goes to investigate on his own and is confronted with a particularly perplexing mystery. A murder using a bronze knife? Who uses bronze rather than iron in this day and age? While he can deduce some things by looking at the evidence and recalling Holmes's lectures on previous cases, he can't make the intuitive leap that the killer was one of the Fair Folk, and it's left on a cliffhanger to be resolved next issue. This is obviously intended to be a lead-in to For Faerie, Queen & Country, easing us into the supernatural weirdness in the same way that your first characters presumably will be. It also eases us into the system, which is lighter than D&D on the mechanics, but puts more attention to things like social class and connections to other people. This falls into the good kind of teaser, showing rather than telling, and leaving plenty of details open for speculation, so hopefully people will actually spend money to get the full answers. Another of those case where it's a real shame the system didn't do better, and was cancelled after a couple of years in favour of yet more D&D material, because they were trying some pretty interesting things.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 88: October 1993



part 5/5



Into The Dark: James takes a look at Hong Kong cinema this time. The greater degree of freedom there means the film industry has turned out more interestingly than mainland china, although who knows what will happen after the 1997 handover. In the meantime, there's a particular set of tropes that mark them as distinct from hollywood and other moviemaking hubs around the world, particularly the fantasy/horror films. James seems quite excited to talk about these, which bodes well for the quality of the individual films he's picked for us.

A Chinese Ghost Story 2 gets just as much praise as the first one, mixing romance, comedy and inventive supernatural elements with aplomb. James's only little gripe is that the main character gets sidelined in the final battle by the more powerful new characters. Perils of being a PoV everyman thrown into events above their pay grade.

Mr. Vampire also does really well, taking the chinese myths of hopping vampires and building some excellently choreographed fight scenes around them. If you like this, there's a whole load of sequels and spin-offs of various quality to investigate. Seems like a fun thing to binge if you've got a free weekend.

Saviour of the Soul gets a second 5 star result in quick succession. It whiplashes from comedic to dramatic at a speed that means you never know what's coming next, but does it with enough style that the overall product holds up excellently. James is definitely enjoying this topic more than the past few.

Wolf Devil Woman is still interesting, but not nearly as good as the last three. Being Writer/Director/Lead actor all at once is a bad idea whatever country you're from, prone to results that are incredibly self-indulgent, limited only by budget and technical ineptitude. Still, at least it's not formulaic like a big studio production. Sometimes it's worth going off the beaten path just for the variety.



Get Ready For Winter: As if the 4 pages in the middle weren't enough info on Winter Fantasy, we have a 5th one at the end with photos of the guests of honor doing their best sinister smiles. Bruce Nesmith puts in vampire fangs to top off the look, while Bill Slavicsek manages just fine without. Only James Lowder looks a little too wholesome for the gothic material he writes. Don't be scared to talk to them at the convention and tell them how much you love their work. More evidence that this is one of their favourite conventions, almost as important as Gen Con. Does it get a number of attendees commensurate with the critical aclaim?



With a high ratio of stuff that's both good and non D&D focussed, as well as more signs of change in how the RPGA enforces it's rules, this is a pretty interesting issue. Not remotely seasonally themed, but It's not a problem if they don't do that every year, particularly with multiple other departments that can take up the slack. Let's head into another winter and see if it's pleasantly cool or obnoxiously frigid.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 89: November 1993



part 1/5



32 pages. This month's cover goes full romance novel on us, with a mysterious veiled figure, scenes of passion, and scantily clad adventurers of both sexes ready for action of one kind or another. Will we finally get a non-monetary reward for all our dungeon delving and world saving, or will we be foiled by the code of conduct again and see everything fade to black at the crucial moment? Time to see if this is a pageturner, or something to leave at the charity shop as soon as I finish.



The Everwinking Eye: Another 6 locations filled with adventure seeds take us from D-H. Dragon Falls, which had caves of just the right size to make a decent lair until a recent group of adventurers unsportingly collapsed it, preventing replacements from moving in. Elvenblood Pass, a twisty canyon filled with nooks and crannies for bandits and monsters to lair in. Fallentree, which was also an ideal location for bandits until it accumulated too many of them, driving away the legitimate traders thieves depend upon and everyone backstabbing everyone else over the scraps, resulting in a lot of small treasure caches hidden around the area. The Fire River, so named because lots of wizards make their homes near it's banks, and the results of multiple spellcasters disposing the remnants of experiments in the river can be unpredictable when they combine. Glorming Pass, which is ironically somewhat less densely inhabited because it's haunted, putting off the living brigands. And Highbank Forest, with a particularly interesting dungeon beneath an abandoned wizard's tower that you could explore. Once again he shows that these places aren't static, precisely what dangers lurk within get changed regularly, but there's always something new to move into a vacated lair, the monsters are as much a threat to each other as to any passing adventurers, and even when they get cleared out some of the treasure regularly gets missed. It's a big, messy world that can't be squeezed into one big narrative. Good luck making your fortune from gathering all these bits and pieces together.



Notes From HQ: The editorial does not have any complaints about how Gen Con was run this year. More attendees than ever, including famous guests of honor from gaming & TV, more tournament games run than ever, and the benefit ones in particular were both well attended and had people donate generously, letting them give thousands to train guide dogs and help sick children. It's nice to have things go smoothly for a change. Will next year keep it up, or will con crud or judge flakiness make resurgences?

A relatively small footnote, but probably more historically significant than all these congratulations is that Skip is being promoted out of working here, and being replaced by Dave Gross, who will also be promoted out of here to running Dragon in a few years. Whether that will bring any improvement to their taste in adventures remains to be seen, particularly with Jean still in charge, but it's still worth mentioning. At least only replacing one staff member at a time means it should be a smooth transition.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 89: November 1993



part 2/5



The Game Fair in Pictures: Unsurprisingly, this follows straight on from the editorial, showing that several people cosplayed as klingons, which George Takei seems quite amused about, and there are plenty of knights, wizards and cardboard castles for the fantasy fans as well. People really bring their A-game here, some of those outfits must take a lot of time and money to buy or create. Well, it only comes around once a year, and people drive or fly from all over the world to attend, so it's important to make an impression. Just make sure you don't wear the same outfit all three days, because that latex would be pretty stinky by the end of the weekend.



The Ugly Stick: For the past four years, the Living City has kept Comeliness for their characters long after the rest of the AD&D ecosystem has dropped it. For the first time, that actually becomes significant, as they give us an adventure revolving around it's gain and loss. The wand of ugliness drains your comeliness when you hit people with it, making the metaphor of the title literal. Then hitting people with the wand of beauty transfers the drained beauty over, albeit with a lot of inefficiency and diminishing returns as your score gets higher. Like most artifacts, these are nearly indestructible and require special countermeasures to neutralise. What a surprise that now they've turned up in a health resort and one of the staff is draining the clients to make herself ever prettier regardless of the consequences. Can you search the area and find the pieces of the counter macguffin before going for the final confrontation? While moderately silly, this is the least linear adventure they've done in here for many years, giving you complete freedom in the order which you do the various challenges, and a fair amount in whether you go for straightforward violence, talking or sneakiness as well. The various encounters are of quite varied difficulty levels, and the main villain will knock you out and drain your comeliness before fleeing rather than killing you outright if possible, creating the possibility of losing the adventure as a whole and suffering real consequences for doing so without dying. I'm surprised to say it, but this is actually good, although it's still not suitable for every campaign. Despite being an AD&D one, it'd fit particularly well into Gazetteer era Mystara with it's tourist economy and sense of humour. Nice to be able to say that after so many tiresome railroads recently.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 89: November 1993



part 3/5



The Enigma Revealed: In issue 77, we were given an image of a woman with a half-corrupted face and told to come up with stats & backstory. It's taken a full year, but at least they have got enough submissions to give us results, unlike, say, their attempt at a Living Gamma World location. Unsurprisingly, first place does go to a Gamma World entry though. She has empathic mutations and hides the deformed side of her face with a veil made of living vines, which is intelligent and has some pretty powerful mutations of it's own. She's the local leader of The Free Ones, trying to keep her town from being subjugated by the Miacholin empire. While still a good guy overall, she's becoming increasingly bitter and suspicious of outsiders as more and more people are lost to the fight. She could end up as an ally or enemy, depending on how your first impressions go.

Second place is more interesting, as it's for Vampire the Masquerade, and extra surprisingly, doesn't make her a Nosferatu, but a Malkavian instead. Since Dragon never did any White Wolf articles at all, that is nice to see. She's an opera singer who was scarred and then embraced by a jealous Malkavian who was also an ex-opera singer, because if there's one thing vampires do, it's pass on their traumas down through the centuries. Now she's essentially a genderflipped phantom of the opera, lurking in the building she used to sing centrestage, doing the odd bit of mysterious mentoring and making sure the place doesn't go out of business and get demolished. Once again, she's relatively nice, but also prone to delusions, which means it's not definite that she'll be on the side of the PC's, and something seemingly innocuous could set her off even if she starts off friendly. Fortunately, she hasn't spent any XP on combat skills at all, so even a starting level group could beat her in a fight. That is unusual, and reminds us how much more of a socially focussed game Masquerade is compared to D&D. Will this be enough of a foothold for them to do any more White Wolf articles, or just a one-off? Either way, it's a very welcome bit of diversity here.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 89: November 1993



part 4/5



The Living Galaxy: Roger's theme this time is EPICNESS!!!!! How do you make your campaigns more epic? It's not just a matter of how long it runs with the same characters or how high level you reach while doing so, though neither hurt. It's also a matter of giving your story themes and big stakes rather than just a series of dungeoncrawls and random wandering monsters. Save the world, overthrow the tyrannical regime, save the princess, find the macguffins. The examples are unusually mainstream for him, going straight for the obvious blockbusters like LotR, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. This isn't exactly boring, but it is one of the most generic articles he's done using this column yet, aimed at fantasy and sci-fi games equally rather than maintaining any pretence at being sci-fi focussed. Plus he uses it to promote their brand new Bughunters setting for the Amazing Engine, which feels edited in as a reminder from the marketing department rather than organically written. Another month, another go on the sausage making machine. I can't work up any strong feeling about this at all, positive or negative.



The Heart of Evil: Another 4 pages of Amazing Engine fiction show that they're taking promoting this seriously, and not just jumping straight into revealing the supernatural side of things. Watson and Holmes meet up and compare notes on their latest cases. Holmes quickly deduces that they're connected and part of a bigger picture, and corrects Watson on details he missed or interpreted wrongly. They go back to investigate the next day, and things get even stranger, and Watson stumbles across a man killed by a great black dog. Holmes notices that the details of it's claws and teeth are not those of any mundane dog, and it's obviously controlled by someone else using the murders as opportunity for robberies, but still isn't jumping to supernatural conclusions. Just how much weirder will things get before he's forced to admit there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. This is one of the slowest burns they've published in here, pushing at the limits of how much they can pad things out in their small page count in a way that only a few of the multi-part adventures have surpassed. It's that weird mix of interesting because it's different, and dull because it's taking ages to get to the point, and I can only imagine how interminable it must have seemed when you had to wait a month between each instalment. Let's keep going and see if it can stick the landing or not.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 89: November 1993



part 5/5



Into The Dark: Another round of Hong Kong movies this month, along with some advice on how to get hold of them yourself. It can be tricky to do so, requiring either mail-ordering or having a sympathetic local video store that takes requests. (which big chain stores are less likely to do) Even once you do, there are a number of ways they can be messed up by the supply chain. Poor subtitling, particularly if it was hardcoded on the cinematic print before the aspect ratio was cropped for video, can make things nearly incomprehensible. Another of those cases where things have definitely improved in the intervening decades, with switchable language tracks & closed captions on DVD's & streaming being one of the big structural improvements over VHS, plus even fansubbers usually take more care over the accuracy and screen position of their translations. The internet does a lot to bring people together and give instant feedback so the good translations can be sorted from the bad and it's important not to take it for granted.

Peacock King gets a middling review. Lots of cool setpieces, but a cliched plot relying on extremely improbable co-incidences. This theme is already hitting diminishing returns compared to the overwhelming positivity of last month.

Zu: Warriors from Magic Mountain gets the highest score this issue. Lots of fun setpieces, building into a convoluted plot that'll probably take a few rewatchings to unpick, particularly with subtitles. There's some cheesy cameos and cliche characters in there, but they're done well enough that they don't break the mood. A solid 4 overdramatic beard swishes out of 5.

Swordsman also has some cool action scenes, but the story building up to it is ponderous and a bit of a mess, as it went through six directors during it's production. There's still some entertainment to be had here, but you might want to keep the fast forward button ready on the remote control.

Witch from Nepal is another one that's on the middling end of the quality spectrum. Chow Yun-Fat is a better action hero than romantic lead, so the slow love triangle bits get in the way of what most people really came here for. You don't want to be typecast as an actor, but it'll probably happen anyway if you do the job long enough.


They had Gen Con photos earlier, now they finish up with a few more from Andcon, Ohio.



An issue with fairly interesting articles, but extra dull and formulaic regular columns, recycling themes they've used before, with the promise of yet more to come on the same topics. At least they're trying to boost the amount of non D&D coverage again, mirroring the same push with The Dragon Project in their sister magazine. Let's see if it'll last the same amount of time before they give up and become all D&D, all the time in the same way as Dragon.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 44: Nov/Dec 1993



part 1/5



66 pages. Choo choo, muthafuckas! I've been complaining about the increase in railroadiness recently, now they've put a literal steam engine powered railroad on the cover. That stands out amid more generic fantasy scenes. Let's see how well justified and amusing this anachronism will be, and if there'll be any murder mysteries while you're trapped onboard.



Editorial: We have a particularly amusing guest editorial from regular writer Ted James Thomas Zuvich that talks about how much persistence and revision it took to get his latest adventure published. It's been bouncing back and forth since 1987, with maybe a couple of rewrites per year and multiple playtests until Barbara finally caved in and put it in this issue. Never give up on the dream kids! Even if it takes years of graft and multiple detours before you gain the skills & budget to really do your idea justice! Hope it was worth all the effort. I've definitely had times where finally finishing things after years of trying just feels anticlimactic and empty. I suppose we'll find out in a few pages anyway so there's no point hanging around here speculating.



Letters: First letter is yet another example adventure path from a young DM from Denmark. They're having plenty of fun wandering around the Realms taking odd jobs.

Second is a rather longer one who started out their campaign with Old Man Katan, and now the Campestri are a permanent fixture of their party. They sound very twee and roleplaying heavy indeed in playstyle. As long as the comedy bits are fun rather than grating, good for them.

Third is from the Netherlands, and all the adventures they used in their campaign are from the past couple of years, so they're obviously a relatively new reader. Once again, their adventure choices are distinctly more whimsical than I would favor.

Fourth is from Oregon, and their adventure selections go all the way back to issue 1. They didn't always succeed at the scenarios they faced, but they've managed to survive so far. Next time they may not be so lucky……

Fifth is from someone who's strongly in favor of the more modern style of plot heavy adventures. They give you more to think about and are more memorable as a result. Why would you want to go back to more basic fare after tasting nuance and complexity?

Sixth also wants more plot-heavy modules, because they're not as young as they were, and don't have as much free time to make things up. They want something with a good story that they can just pick up and use straight away. When the players do something unexpected you may wind up having to make it up anyway. That's why a grounding in improv acting is handy even if you prefer more plot heavy adventures.

Seventh is not suffering from players who do the unexpected. In fact, they're barely doing anything at all, just passively expecting adventures to fall into their laps. What does a DM have to do to get them thinking like proper heroes?! The answer may involve killing them a few times in inventively horrible ways to make it clear that this ain't no country club or disco.

Finally, the opposite problem, a DM who freezes up when trying to run adventures more complex than dungeoncrawls. The players want to know more about the landscapes and cities of the world and he just can't come up with those details on the spot. Well, at least you've identified the problem. Now you need to fill your brain with enough prefab bits to throw at your players that you don't get caught out. There are many examples both in here and TSR's other two gaming magazines.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 44: Nov/Dec 1993



part 2/5



A hot day in L'trel: Following straight on from the editorial, we have a 4th trip to Volkrad, T. J. T. Zuvich's germanic influenced, fairly low magic home campaign setting. During a hot dry summer, a large concentration of a certain highly flammable substance explodes and now the whole city is on fire. How much of a difference will the PC's be able to make? After a bunch of vignettes of firefighting in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, they find out that any equipment & money they left in the inn (with encumbrance & fatigue penalties enhanced due to the stifling heat to make sure that happens) has been destroyed. This puts them in a precarious financial position, and they're "strongly encouraged" to volunteer in the army until things are decently fixed up. (Which explains why this should only be used in a low magic setting, if you have plenty of bags of holding, sleep in a Rope Trick and spells to alleviate environmental penalties it'll fall at the first hurdle) This leads into a full month's timeline of things that will happen as they clear debris, maintain order, try to keep supply chains working, deal with various opportunistic monsters and generally prevent complete societal breakdown and the massive amounts of death that would follow. It's all pretty gritty and open ended, but there are a few moments of humour to lighten things up and provide contrast. You won't be able to save everyone unless you're way higher level and more magically adept than intended, but your choices can still make a real difference, and you can succeed or fail in individual encounters without it being the end of the campaign. All the layers of revision makes it feel like an odd duck tonally, not sure if it's intended as a one-shot tournament adventure or an epic exploration of the long-term ramifications of a catastrophe that can easily be further expanded to a full year of further events. It leaves me ambivalent overall, as it's interesting to read, but also wouldn't fit in many campaigns due to it's specificity and the way it destroys the PC's possessions to push them into the plot. Given the sheer volume of submissions they get, I can see why Barbara rejected it at first.