TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 101: November 1994



part 5/5



War Machines: Time for a few more giant mecha for Gamma World of various levels of badassery. Curious that that idea has appeared more frequently in Polyhedron despite it getting fewer gamma world articles overall than Dragon. The RMV's are 5 metre tall humanoid robots that sit the operator in the chest, a la the ironmonger or hulkbuster suits rather than regular iron man ones or the truly gigantic kaiju fighters of Tokusatsu shows. They come in 4 basic models, but each has a fair number of slots for more advanced customisation, giving them all manner of interesting weaponry, defences and sensory capabilities. Like many a point buy system, you could probably spend hours juggling points around trying to optimise your build, presuming the GM lets you, as it's also quite reasonable to restrict what parts you find and your repair facilities in the postapocalyptic default setting. This is pretty interesting and packs a lot of detail into it's page count, showing how much games where you have full control over your character generation have increased in recent years and how that's filtering slowly back to TSR. A definite improvement over the previous attempts.



Bestiary: Suel Liches are an obviously horror movie inspired variant on the pursuit of eternal life through magic. They burn through bodies at an accelerated rate before swapping into a new one when it gets too decrepit, and the higher level they are, the higher the standards the new body has to meet, so they can't just hole themselves up at the bottom of a dungeon for decades to pursue research. For this reason, they'll usually be found with a villainous network cultivating useful dupes minions. Just reducing their body to 0 HP is a really bad idea, as they'll probably wind up possessing the body of one of the PC's and starting the fight all over again unless you know what you're dealing with and have suitable countermagic prepared to finish them permanently. They seem quite effectively scary even for a high level party, as well as providing us with some rare Greyhawk specific material in here. Careful how you use them if you don't want a TPK.



Mostly back to business as usual this issue, but the individual articles are pretty decent overall, so this was another one that wasn't too much of a struggle to get through. So I guess it's time to see if Dungeon'll manage any size increases or particularly unusual centrepieces for their big round number. Barring any unexpected disaster, see you again shortly.

 

[(un)reason]

Am I allowed to ask questions in here? Now that I've discovered this thread, I definitely will work my way through it, as well as looking up your old Dragon thread. However, I wanted to ask: 1) Are you reading physical copies or digital? 2) Either way, how did you acquire them? I.e., if physical, subscribed back in the day or collecting/purchasing later? If digital, is there a website that sells/hosts them? Thank you.

Mostly digital. Unfortunately they're not available legally at the moment, but it's not too hard to find a complete collection of them if you know where to look.

 

[aileron]

Mostly digital. Unfortunately they're not available legally at the moment, but it's not too hard to find a complete collection of them if you know where to look.

Thanks for replying and for the info.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 50: Nov/Dec 1994



part 1/5



66 pages. Dungeon continues to not do racial diversity even when they have a good opportunity too, as apparently the cover is supposed to be Von Kharkov, but doesn't look even remotely black. It's bad enough when you greywash the Drow. I know it's hard to make darker skin tones work in an image when they're also supposed to be lurking in the darkness, but you could at least have the right type of nose and hair for the ethnicity. I somehow doubt hair relaxers are available anywhere in the demiplane but Dementlieu's snootiest salons. Well, that's a somewhat irritating start to the issue, and also means they'll be including a Ravenloft adventure, which have above average odds of being a railroad. Oh well, on we go to see if I can find some positives in the contents.



Editorial: Unlike Polyhedron's big anniversary, the editorial here winds up pointing out how little Dungeon has changed since it began. The average page count is mildly larger, but it still appears at the same frequency, uses exactly the same format, has much of the same staff, and even the trade dress remains the same as issue 1. The new art director wants to switch things up a little, but Barbara is wary about tinkering too much with what has been a winning formula so far. Looks like they're not going to make any changes until the general crisis in TSR catches up with everyone and they start flailing around trying to fix things. That's not actually too far away now, is it. We shall see if it results in the quality of their layout going downhill for several years the way it did in Dragon. In the meantime, keep sending those adventures in! They're still powered mostly by freelance work, and definitely don't want to change that part.



Letters: First letter complains they don't list both the recommended character levels and total party levels in the contents page. Easy enough to fix. They're still not going to put full stats or references for every spell & monster they include in here though.

Second is in favor of them writing adventures in such a way that they still work when converted to another system. It's the ones with good stories that'll really be remembered, not ones that just throw a series of monsters at you who attack on sight and never communicate.

Third wonders how they go about choosing art for their adventures. This is something they do in house more than the actual adventures, but they still won't say no to submissions, as a good pool to choose from increases the odds of getting artwork that fits with the intended tone of the adventures.

Fourth has lots of nitpicks to make about recent adventures. Why is a Drider referred to as he or she in an adventure? Just because they had their reproductive organs forcibly removed by Lolth, doesn't mean they don't retain their previous gender identity. How they express and cope with that is of course up to them.

Finally, someone complaining about the use of wishes to railroad the players in To Bite the Moon. That's not even how they work under most interpretations of the rules, as well as being game breaking if the players could do the same thing. That's not good for the integrity of your campaign world. Any system or adventure that doesn't work without breaking internal consistency is unfairly designed and not the kind of adventure I'm looking for.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 50: Nov/Dec 1994



part 2/5



The Vaka's Curse: A currently underused aspect of nautical journeys is the possibility of creating a bottle adventure, where the PC's are trapped on board with a monster, or one of the other passengers is a murderer, so you can't escape the plot and it would be a very good idea to solve the problem before the journey finishes. A murdered man was transformed into wood and then used as a ship's figurehead to dispose of the evidence. This left his spirit angry and restless, so he's stuck around to haunt the ship. A random PC will find themselves having terrible dreams and losing stat points each night on the trip. They don't recover naturally, so after a few nights they'll hopefully be suspicious and highly motivated to keep watch for trouble. Even if they catch the spirit in the act and have weapons that can hurt him, he won't be permanently destroyed unless they also destroy the figurehead, which might catch them out, and they'll need solid proof before the ship's crew will let them destroy it. A short one that manages to balance the horror story atmospherics with the need to make the monster mechanically interesting, and just different enough from a stock one in the manuals that players won't be able to easily metagame their way through this. A decent challenge that's easy to use whenever they have a sea voyage from one bigger adventure to another, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm likely to actually pull out and play to string the campaign out.

 

[Davies]

Deleted post; I think I misunderstood what was being asked.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 50: Nov/Dec 1994



part 3/5



Back to the Beach: After a spooky trip at sea, we're off to the seaside for another instalment of Willie Walsh's whimsical tales, featuring monsters that are in the manuals, but have been mostly ignored by module writers so far. Once upon a time, the monks of Mannan mac Lir and the crabmen living on the beach had a treaty to share it without fighting. The monastery was ruined by pirates and new people who don't even know the treaty exists have moved into the area, but the crabmen still remember and are not happy about the humans breaking it. So what'll seem to the PC's like your basic scenario where they're hired to clear out marauding humanoids turns out to be one where the "monsters" are entirely justified and in the right, and it's the humans who need to learn to communicate better and get along with other races. It's possible that they won't spot the hints and you'll be looking for mammoth amounts of butter and garlic to eat all that crab meat with before it goes off, but hopefully the hints will be obvious enough that they put in the effort to use a little communication enhancing magic and get the good ending. There's some silly names here and a comic relief Umbleby that might follow the PC's around and be annoying, but it's an entirely usable adventure with a serious point to make under that, and doesn't forget that these aren't just humans with odd colour skins and pointy ears, but semi-aquatic crustaceans with a genuinely different lifecycle and methods of communications. This seems entirely usable, and shows the benefits of long-term experience, as he's still looking to mix ideas up and use less common ones to keep it interesting for himself as well as us.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 50: Nov/Dec 1994



part 4/5



The Object of Desire: From one seaside stop, we set off on a second voyage where events overtake the PC's. They're hired to protect an arabian themed princess on the way to her marriage. Unsurprisingly, she'll be kidnapped no matter what precautions the PC's take and it's up to you to rescue her. So far, so cliched. But that's where things get weird. It turns out the kidnapper is a beholder (who's actually a human turned into a beholder and forgot he's originally a human) who fell in love with her through his magic mirror and now wants to marry her instead. The PC's aren't nearly powerful enough to fight him head-on, so you're strongly discouraged from doing so, then sent on a macguffin hunt by a friendly ghost to gather the ingredients to turn him back. If you do get the beholder to drink the potion, it turns out to only restore his mind, leaving him still trapped in a beholder body with decidedly unreliable control of it's magical abilities. You're then sent in the direction of the wizard who originally transformed him, who's made himself immortal by storing his heart in the petrified body of the beholder's original love. Hopefully you'll be able to get through this, turn them both back and save the day. The kind of adventure that would be good as a story, but is less so as an adventure due to it's general linearity and multiple bits where they bend the rules or incorporate magical items that only work for the NPC's so you can't keep them afterwards. It is still much more interesting as a story and ambitious as an adventure than any recent Polyhedron one, with each of the three main locations being easily the size of a single-round tournament dungeon, and at least a few different options presented for some of the scenes that won't ruin the overall flow of the plot. Not terrible overall, but I'm still left ambivalent about the idea of actually playing it and the odds of it turning out the way the writer intended if you don't fudge rolls to keep the plot on the rails.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 50: Nov/Dec 1994



part 5/5



Felkovic's Cat: Ah, now this is a name I'm familiar with, as they mentioned it was run as a tournament adventure earlier in the year. The tale of Baron von Kharkov, rapacious panther vampire darklord of Valachan, and the artifact that could be his downfall. Felkovic created it when it looked like his wife was going to be taken as the vampire's bride. This didn't save either of their lives, and now he's a ghost bound to the cat, determined to get revenge. The PC's get sucked into Ravenloft, appearing right next to the figurine so it's near impossible to miss. If they take it, they have 7 nights to figure out what the cat's deal is and get it to Castle Pantara or become it's next dinner. That railroady beginning aside, they're actually given complete freedom in where they wander and how they deal with the challenges of the domain. (for which further details from other books will be very helpful, as more than half of this is info on Castle Pantara itself and the monsters that lurk within) So while this has tournament origins, it's easily expandable so the PC's can take their time, enjoy the scenery and you don't have to rush them into doing it all in one session as a home adventure. Like the original Ravenloft module, the location of some of the elements is determined randomly, so it can still surprise you if played through multiple times, plus the castle defences are quite different depending on if you enter during the day or night and if you use stealth or just charge in the front gate. Not an easy challenge, given the sheer number of vampires you'll have to face, but a fair one, and written with a decent amount of atmosphere. It actually lets you kill the Darklord permanently in your game and make a positive difference. (or wind up as the new one if you accomplished the deed in a particularly ruthless way) Not original, as it's basically a slightly smaller and lower level relative of the original I6, but you don't play Ravenloft for the originality anyway. You're here for the scares and the scheming to overcome seemingly impossible odds and this delivers those quite satisfactorily.



A decent enough issue overall, but nothing special in any way, with no expanded page count, no greater use of colour, no big cut-out centrefold or anything. Just another day at the office. That definitely feels pretty underwhelming when both Dragon and Polyhedron did put the extra effort in for their big round numbers recently. Are they ever going to get less conservative with their content? Let's find out what happens when they hit their 10th anniversary and any other landmarks beyond that.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 102: December 1994



part 1/5



32 pages. Is that bow really going to be enough to take down all those dinosaurs? I guess it depends on if they can climb up the tree, or the wonders of even basic hands and the technology they enable will be enough to separate man from beast. Time to see if there'll be anything festive for us to enjoy this christmas, or overly cheesy stuff that leaves me rolling my eyes again.



Notes From HQ: Well, it turns out straight away that we do have a big present, even if it's not remotely wintery. They're starting up a whole new Living setting! They're going halfway around the world, to Toril's equivalent of southeast asia to give us the Living Jungle. That's a very interesting development indeed. I can be pretty certain in hindsight it's not going to be as big as the Living City, as that already has the network effects from being fully established, as well as being much more generic, but props to them for trying something different. Even they know it's probably going to be an uphill struggle, as unlike the development of Raven's Bluff, and the several years they spent failing to get a Living Gamma World area off the ground, they're not crowdsourcing the basic details. They've spent the last year or so writing them up in house and are unleashing them fully formed here without any kind of teasers or buildup. You're still encouraged to build on them with new locations & NPC's and submit them to the newszine, but the basic parameters you're working under are much stricter than last time. Well, no point sitting around here then. Let's find out what those specifics are and if they've aged badly in the way they handle a very different culture.



Malatra - The Living Jungle: Although we might still be on the same planet, it doesn't look like they'll be doing crossovers between the two Living locations any time soon, as they're putting great pains into making this place isolated from the outside world. Not only is it in a thick jungle hundreds of miles away from the civilised areas of Kara-Tur, it's further isolated by being an improbably high and steep plateau, so you'll need flight or significant mountaineering skill to get on or off, and magical wards around the edges, which just seems like overkill. If this setup looks artificial, that's because it was. It was originally settled by ancient aliens, who raised the plateau so they wouldn't disturb the development of the natives. Their civilisation collapsed mysteriously at some point, a few Toril natives of all kinds of races managed to make it up there anyway, and now there are six different races sharing the place relatively harmoniously, mostly ignorant of both the wider world and the remnants of ancient technology. So it's obvious that real world cultural analogs are not on the agenda here, and while they're referencing both Oriental Adventures and Spelljammer, they're doing their own thing with the parts. Like Athas, you'll have to get used to not having many bits of equipment that you'd take for granted in other campaigns, and wilderness travel being a significant challenge in itself. That's the theory anyway. If it actually gets many adventures and locations submitted I'm sure there'll be some feature creep because all grim & gritty tribal struggles for survival make Jack a bored boy.