TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 53: May/Jun 1995



part 2/5



Spellbook Masquerade: For many years, I've been irritated that their solo adventures are all for nonspellcasters. Eventually, they did one for clerics as well, but it's taken them nearly a decade to finally do one aimed at a wizard. Whether the wait will have been worth it depends on your opinion of adventures with lots of social interaction and relatively little combat. An aging wizard carelessly sent his tome of Lich creation into the possession of a younger evil wizard who will likely actually use it if she reads it and realises what she has. Your mission is obviously to find it in her mansion and replace it with a similar looking but harmless cookbook before it's too late. This is further complicated by the fact that she's throwing a masked ball there, which means you can get in more easily, but have to wear the jester outfit provided unless you already have something better in your backpack. Can you get away from the crowds unnoticed to search the other rooms of the mansion, avoid setting off any traps or other weirdness, replace the book and be gone before midnight when everyone has to unmask? While the challenge is real, the tone is pretty whimsical even before you get to the actual adventure, and it continues from there, as if you explore the right areas you'll find out your hostess isn't just regular scheming evil, but full-on Norman Bates insane, with the corpses of her family in the upstairs rooms, that she still talks too and pretends are alive. (despite being the one who killed them in the first place. ) She also has a pet bandarlog in a tutu, just to add to the unsettling silliness. Depending on you you handle it as a DM, it could stay as light-hearted comedy or slip into evil toys & clowns style horror where the whimsical parts make the creepy ones even more uncanny valley. Definitely not one for hack and slash players or anyone who relies on their character's stats over their own role-playing ability, as it's a very socially oriented scenario and most wizards have spent their nonweapon proficiency slots elsewhere. People who memorise utility spells over blasty ones and use them cleverly will probably enjoy it though, and using a bard instead of wizard of equivalent level will easy mode it. We could still do with a more serious wizard focussed solo adventure, but it does at least fill a niche they haven't before, so it's not worthless.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 53: May/Jun 1995



part 3/5



Clarshh's Sepulchre: Willie Walsh may have been doing this a long time now, but he's still not averse to going back to basics, with an adventure designed to introduce new players to a microcosm of the D&D experience. Get hired by dubious employer, wilderness adventure section, dungeon adventure section, beat monsters, get treasure, voila! The only twist here is that said employer is of blue-skinned hive-mind spelljammer favourites the Arcane, which also explains why he won't be joining you for the dungeon part, as human scale structures are pretty inaccessible when you're 12' tall, and gives you an easy starting point for future more ambitious adventures if this one is a success and they don't betray him to keep all the loot at the end. Other than that there's no real surprises, the dangers are mostly mundane animals in the wilderness bit and mostly undead in the dungeon, no particularly diabolical or unfair tricks. It's all solidly designed, but also pretty basic, not doing anything they haven't done before in many other adventures, and also holds the hand of the players quite a bit. Not bad, but also a bit boring when you've seen as many other adventures like it as I have. I'd only break it out when playing with newbies and want to play the low-level D&D experience completely straight, save the weird and sadistic stuff for later.



A Serenade Before Supper: As usual when they mention food in the title, there's a good chance that the PC's will be the ones being served up. A group of Jackalweres killed the staff of a remote roadside inn in the middle of a forest, decided it's a more comfortable place to stay than sleeping out in the cold and damp, and now pretend to be the staff to lure people into a false sense of security before attacking. Any adventuring party that isn't obviously too high level to fight will be lured into taking their protections off and then devoured at leisure. If you decide to skip the inn due to suspicion or miserliness, they'll use ominous howling in the distance to persuade you to reconsider, then attack during the night supplemented by a pack of real jackals & wolves if that fails, making for a tougher but more obvious fight. The kind of thing paranoid players won't fall for for an instant, particularly when the attempted seduction starts, and if they weren't paranoid before, they will be next time. The kind of encounter you use to fill up travel time between larger missions, as it's very unlikely to last you a full session, this has a decent amount of worldbuilding & atmosphere and doesn't railroad you in how you approach it, so I have no objection to it. As ever, just be careful you don't overuse scenarios like this, for they hit diminishing returns fast when used repeatedly without at least a few honest NPC's in between.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 53: May/Jun 1995



part 4/5



Elxea's Endeavour: Willie Walsh may be their most prolific writer overall, but Chris Perkins is nipping hard at his heels, and I think he's catching up. But not without a little help from his friends, as he freely admits, taking a map designed by someone else and then writing the adventure around it. Said castle was attacked and taken over by evil adventurers, who then erected a magical barrier around it. The niece of it's legitimate owner realises the only thing that can stop a bad adventuring party is a good adventuring party and asks you for help rescuing her uncle and liberating the place. Unlike usual in these scenarios, she'll then stick around and help you in the adventure, being neither so weak as to be a liability or so strong that she didn't need to ask for help in the first place, which is nice to see. You then have plenty of freedom in how you handle this. You can try to get past the magical barrier on your own by flying over or digging underneath it. You can go on a side-quest to find a spellcaster capable of dispelling it or teleporting you past it. Or you could simply lay siege to the place and wait for them to run out of food, which kinda works, but more enemies arrive after a week so you'll have to fight them as well. As with his adventures in the last two issues, he goes for quality rather than quantity with the antagonists, making most of them fully customised NPC's with class levels and roleplaying notes. The non PC style monsters are an unusual selection as well, mostly basic D&D ones from supplements that don't have AD&D counterparts, showing that he's really been delving deep into the sourcebooks and wants to give obscure creatures some more spotlight time. This mixes old school open-endedness and new school focus on character development in a very pleasing way, making an adventure that can hold up to all sorts of approaches and be an interesting challenge whichever way your PC's choose. This is pretty top tier overall, and precisely the kind of adventure I like to play in and encourage. Designing the adventure the "wrong" way around has paid dividends this time.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 53: May/Jun 1995



part 5/5



Steelheart: Paul Culotta is another regular writer who's really racking up the number of adventures accepted. This is our highly setting specific adventure for the issue, a Forgotten Realms one revolving around steel dragons (hence the title) and the Cult of the Dragon in general. A young steel dragon lost her parents to the cult, and wants them rescued, or failing that, revenge. Like many steel dragons, she's more comfortable in human form than dragon one anyway, so she pretends to be a little girl and asks adventurers for help. She'll then accompany them while trying to keep her & her parent's true nature a secret, but not doing a great job of it, so it's very unlikely that you won't find out at some point. This'll take you on a tricky journey through Vassa's frigid swamps until you eventually find the Cult's lair, where you'll find out that they're trying to negotiate an alliance with the Zhentarim. These two villainous organisations pooling their forces would be bad for pretty much everyone else in the moonsea region, so you'd better do something about it. Fortunately, they're as backstabby and paranoid as ever, so it won't take much to trick them into thinking the other one is welching on the deal and devolve the meeting into a general scrum, then mop up the survivors. The kind of scene based adventure that's pretty linear in the order of what you encounter, but does at least offer you a decent amount of freedom in how you react to them. (although some options are obviously more favoured than others) It also has the ambition to go big with it's premise, giving you not just one, but a whole bunch of dragon encounters of various toughness and the possibility of your actions making a long-term difference to the political balance of the area. Since the dragon part of D&D is underused in general that makes this a particularly refreshing one for a high level party used to seeing dragons as a singular big bad or not at all in adventures. Solidly above average for a plot-driven adventure.



An issue in which I found myself preferring the longer adventures over the shorter ones, as they had more room to develop distinct identities and not be repetitions of things I've seen already. It once again leaves me hoping that the editors will feel the same way and try their luck with a few more multi-parters, and the repeated change in editors won't result in more things that are repetitions of ideas already done in issues getting through. In the meantime, let's see how another summer full of conventions is progressing on the Polyhedron side.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 108: June 1995



part 1/5



32 pages. Back to the jungle again on the cover, showing that they are getting enough responses to their new setting that it's not a complete flop. Will they expand upon it in an interesting way themselves, print some submissions from regular members, or just clear up another round of rules questions, which seem to be on the up in general. Let's see how this stretches out as we hit the longest days of the year again.



Notes from HQ: New editor, time for the story of how they got into gaming again. Duane picked it up from his older brother in 1982, went to his first convention and joined the RPGA there soon after, and has been playing ever since, usually GM'ing because there's never enough judges for the number of people wanting to play at these things. He's spent the last decade building up organised gaming in his native Oklahoma, letting himself be roped into helping out at bigger conventions, and getting to meet all the previous heads of the RPGA personally. Another case where he might have seemed like an overnight appearance to outsiders like me, but that overnight success was actually years of hard work in the making. Now hopefully he can make things even more fun for everyone else. Nothing hugely surprising here, including the statement that he intends to keep up doing the comedy adventures that I've often found grating, and dropped a bit during Dave's brief time at the top. At least we're already past april this year, so I probably won't see the worst of it for a while.



Forgotten Deities: The deity this month is one of the several shared with earth. Sebek, egyptian/untherian god of crocodiles. Another of those gods who deliberately limited his own power by overselectiveness, only allowing werecrocodiles to be his priests, this left his faith small and geographically limited, so he was easy meat for Malar, who's now killed him and taken his stuff. Ironically, this has led to the cult enjoying a resurgence in aggressiveness and temporal power, with werecrocodiles dominating the Bay of Chessenta and causing trouble for the surrounding cities. Sometimes, new management is just what an organisation needs to shake them out of lethargy. Another one that's very era specific, adding more metaplot of what gods are rising and falling that will be further changed in future supplements, but since it creates more adventure hooks than it closes off in this case, I'm not objecting too much.



The Raven's Bluff Trumpeter: :sighs: I guess it had to happen eventually. Raven's Bluff gets a little more MMORPG like by creating a place specifically designed for adventurers to grind low level monsters and gain XP quickly. Discount Merlin's House O' Critters will be coming to a convention near you soon! Beat monsters in one of three carefully graded sections to gain XP with healers and Giff guards just a call for help away! Very goofy and meta of them. Whether it'll become a regular fixture or they'll decide it was a bad idea and destroy it spectacularly like Chemcheaux in a future metaplot event remains to be seen. In the meantime, that should make the pyramid of character levels a little less bottom-heavy.

Having made gaining levels a little easier, they do remind us of some restrictions that are still fully in force. Evil characters are strictly forbidden! If your character becomes evil in play we'll take them away from you and turn them into an NPC! If they're particularly high level they might show up as a villain in future adventures like the gnome Mohammed! ( :heavy sigh: ) Looks like despite the changes in management, they're still going to be having some wacky in-jokes and casual racism. If said plot involves trying to blow up the tallest building in Raven's Bluff I'm calling shenanigans.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 108: June 1995



part 2/5



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Precisely a year after starting, Ed decides we have enough material on Turmish to satisfy most readers, and rounds out the tour with treasures from S-V. The small, tall houses of Sambryntyn, with the usual small stashes in the attics & basements, plus a magic key that supposedly leads to a dragon hoard if touched to the right place. Swordslake Creek, once conquered by an Illithid who used his full cephalopod intellect to embezzle lots of treasure before being defeated by overwhelming force. Tarnring, a mostly tapped out mining town that once also contained a magic school, and still has a whole bunch of statues of wizards past. Is there some secret order to the way they're positioned? Ulver's Lance, home to a thief that only takes a few coins from each house a night and leaves no traces otherwise. What's their deal and just how much have they accumulated slowly over the years. And finally, Velorn's Valor, named after a powerful warrior who's shield still hangs on the council wall, and has a portable hole on it's inside surface. Someone recently rummaging around inside it found a treasure map. Will you be the adventurers they send to follow it up and see if the treasure is still there? As usual, lots of whimsical ideas that are easily scaled up or down in challenge rating to fit your group. Now let's hope his next destination has a decent amount of contrast with this one, because these ideas have been getting a little samey lately.



Races of Cerilia: Another new setting, another promotional excerpt. :sighs: Not that it's bad in itself, but when the forgotten realms has this big a lead and is getting further ahead with multiple articles of new material every issue, it makes it seem like the writers of the other settings just don't have the same passion for their creations. But anyway, time for Birthright. After Athas and Planescape drastically changed the aesthetics of the setting and what types of characters you can play in them, this might seem a little underwhelming and generic by comparison. But there is actually quite a bit going on under the hood to make them distinct. They're going extra celtic with the feel, making all the demihumans more alien and less likely to be treated like humans with funny hats, all living together happily in the same integrated settlements. Dwarves are more stonelike, which means they weigh around 200-300 pounds despite their small size, and are able to handle much more encumbrance than a human of the same strength stat, but this may also become a nuisance in places the floor isn't designed for them. Elves are literally immortal unless killed violently, and spending time in their courts is pretty mind-bending for shorter-lived races, in mythical faerie style. Half-elves are usually accepted by their elven parents, but face quite a lot of bigotry in human settlements. Halflings aren't just naturally good at stealth, they can see into and travel through the shadow realm, letting them sneak into seemingly impossible places and travel overland faster than any horse. They keep the source and limits of their capabilities pretty secret from other races. So after the likes of Al-Qadim and Planescape went for racially integrated settings where drastically different creatures have learned how to get along with each other more than usual, and even literal embodiments of ideologies are capable of being polite about it to their opposition in Sigil, this seems to be intentionally aiming at a more … essentialist crowd, making a world where it's objective truth that some people are genuinely better than others because of the purity of their bloodlines and deserve to rule because of it, other races are weird and incomprehensible, segregation is the natural order of things and none of them really trust each other. In a post-Trump world that reads like a whole string of unpleasant dogwhistles. A mixed adventuring party of wandering adventurers is very much the exception, as most people with class levels are nobles more concerned with the governing of their lands. You can see why they've never even tried to bring it back for 4 or 5e, as it'd take so many changes to fit modern standards of political correctness, starting with the name itself as to be unrecognisable.

Whew. On top of that, there's also the more subtle mechanical changes to examines. Ability modifiers are more extreme in general, both positive and negative. Class limits are also rejigged both up and down, with everyone apart from dwarves having unlimited advancement in at least one class. Some multiclass options are available that aren't to core ones, particularly involving multiclass priests, but there are no triple class options, which i think is because that reacts badly with the domain management system. Lots of little alterations who's full effect will only really be seen when they're all put together in actual play. It's obvious that lots of effort has been put into making it an interesting setting and making the domain mechanics work, the question is whether it's still worth engaging with given the inherently problematic core premise of blood purity and everything that comes with it. People who take that seriously are much more of an issue than in the 90's and do you really want to engage with the premise ironically as escapism then find you've attracted people who sincerely believe in it into your friend group?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 108: June 1995



part 3/5



Living Jungle Q&A: Man, the rules lawyers are really out in force for this setting. Here's another two pages of errata and clarifications to keep everything straight between all the groups playing here. No paladins or witch doctors, wizards start off knowing 5 spells not 4, Tam'hi can be priests, but only up to 5th level. No seamanship as no-one's ever seen the sea, no specialising in rock throwing as rocks themselves are too unstandardised, no spells from supplements, no Dex bonus in animal form, no using weapons forbidden by your class even if your tribe gets them for free. In pretty much every case the rulings are on the conservative end, showing that they really want to keep this setting locked down, keep the 4th wall solid, be very stingy about doling out treasure and not let them have a lot of things that would be routine in other ones. How they're going to keep adventuring here fun despite all that seems a good question that no-one's asked yet.



Jungle Lore: After the general rules questions, here's three more pages focussing on new, altered and forbidden nonweapon proficiencies. Any characters already created using the old rules are strongly encouraged to swap slots around to fit the new ones. About half of these are spelling out more strictly how the limited technology of the region prevents you from using all their functions, while the others are new or drawn from other supplements. Bartering is extra important in the absence of money, sending smoke/drum signals is a valuable way to speed messages along, vine swinging like Tarzan is awesome but particularly costly, learning to hide somatic components as a spellcaster can be a lifesaver and creating improvised weapons in a pinch even moreso. Some interesting choices here, but it's also pretty heavy on if you don't have a proficiency in it, you can't even try it, further hemming player options in. It's increasingly looking like it'll be even harder to avoid being railroaded in their adventures here than the Living City.



What's So Bad About the Dark Side: After a good year of talking about the weaseliest things he's done, who better than Lester to talk about the temptations of using the Dark Side in Star Wars. Why should killing people directly with telekinesis be more evil than just slicing them in half with a lightsaber or zapping them with a blaster? They're just as dead in the end? Turns out he can't justify it in terms of real world moral philosophy, so he has to go for the in setting justification of the force itself being alive and responding to the way people engage with it. Han Solo can shoot first and be as morally ambiguous as he likes, but as soon as you start using magic, you're dealing with objective morality here and even one use for dark purposes starts a slippery slope. A reminder that Star Wars is a fantasy setting IIINNNN SPAAAACEEEE!!!! and doesn't try to pretend to be anything else, and doesn't even try to work out any particularly rigorous theories of how it's FTL or force powers work, with future products contradicting it even when they do. (stupid midichlorians) People who play RPG's for the worldbuilding and logical exploits of different laws of physics should go elsewhere. No particularly deep insights here then. A bit disappointing really.



Video Drone: This column appears for only a second time before disappearing for good, although whether that's because the writers couldn't find the time or the new editor decided they wanted to cut out the non RPG related material remains unknown. In the meantime, they've decided to go for some comic book adaptions, see how they hold up on the big screen, as that should have plenty of crossover with the newszine's audience.

The Crow is of course particularly notable because the lead actor died near the end of filming, so they had to use stunt doubles and digital trickery to "bring him back" to finish it, ironically paralleling the plot of the film where the character also comes back from the dead to get vengeance on his killers. Donna is a huge fan of the sexy goth boys and loves everything about the film, but Brian also has pretty solid overall praise for both the premise and implementation. It fully deserves being remembered, even if the direct to video sequels do not.

Dick Tracy doesn't get quite as high praise, but both of them are entertained by it's willingness to go full comic book with the plot and aesthetics, and make big name actors near unrecognisable under exaggerated makeup and prosthetics. Donna isn't so keen on the attempt to promote it with tons of toyetic tie-ins, and the real life Warren Beatty/Madonna relationship dominates the whole thing, but it still has some merit behind the whole annoying media circus.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 108: June 1995



part 4/5



Dispel Confusion: Have any dragons or elves ever died old age? (Absolutely yes. It's been a plot point in a fairly recent Dungeon adventure, and several different novels we could mention.)

Are your rulings official? (In tournament games, yes. In home games, your DM always has the final say and can change the rules as they please. )



Author, Author!: Another repetition of the rules and guidelines for people wanting to submit material to them. Query letter first, don't write the whole thing out until you know we're interested. Put your name on every page and make sure they're numbered so it's easy to tell if we've lost anything. Stick strictly to the code of conduct: PC's always act like heroes, no swearing, cops are good, drugs are bad, mkaay. Use proper spelling, punctuation & grammar, don't plagiarise. Once sold, all rights belong to TSR. Things have changed little here over the past 10 years apart from the fact that they do pay you at least a little bit, and I very much doubt they'll change until the WotC takeover. Meh.



Weasel Games: Lester is a second columnist who sends his last missive in this month, despite talking about future plans for it, which makes it look increasingly likely that they were cancelled by the new editor rather than the writers. He's still in the middle of uncovering dirty tricks for both White Wolf's Jyhad and TSR's Blood Wars CCG's, then telling you how to make the best of them by stacking psychological warfare on top. Exploding Famous Caitiffs with magic chainsaws? Man, the Sabbat just don't care how much they violate the masquerade as long as it gets the job done. Blood Wars is similarly gonzo, relying on spies in the walls to know when you've exhausted the enemies defences and can unleash divine intervention without being countered. A reminder that these CCG's routinely feature things happening that you'd have to be very high in XP to try even once in the corresponding RPG's, and even then both the system and the roleplaying advice in the books fights you if you do. Which makes a lot of players ask why can't we have games where you start off awesome instead of grinding your way up from 1st level every time? So it's not the lesson he's trying to teach, but this still reveals some interesting things about the gaming trends of the next few years and how they're influenced by external factors. It also shows that despite Lorraine ( :rumble of thunder: ) discouraging playtesting, they are still managing to play the games they created at lunchtime and after hours. He's still managing to be both a useful and interesting read, so I can safely end this by saying this column was cut short before it's natural conclusion, and I would have liked to see more of it, unlike the Living Galaxy, which feels very moribund by this point.



The Living Galaxy: Speaking of which, Roger is directly repeating topics again. More alternate histories? Well, I guess there are a lot of ways even a minor change could spiral into a very different world over the course of a few years. Thinking up some more after having published the first set and wanting to share them as well isn't that surprising. A world where the Spanish empire conquered the world instead of the british one. One where the USA is still a colony and Benedict Arnold is on the £10 note as a great hero. Bush winning a second term because Clinton's sex scandals came out earlier. The many ones where the nazis won WWII. Any of the near-misses for nuclear war in our timeline going the wrong way. The references tend to be much more recent than last time, and there's fewer of them, but much of the general advice about how to set tone and make each alternate timeline distinctive is repeated. There's also more emphasis on traveling between multiple timelines rather than sticking to one for the whole campaign. This feels like a reaction to the Sliders TV show, which started just a few months ago, and obviously has plenty of good ideas to steal for your games. So I'm not learning anything new here, but it does at least remind me that the 90's did have some pretty cool genre media, relatively little of which has been lost in the intervening time, unlike previous decades. That can still be valuable inspiration today.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 108: June 1995



part 5/5



Weeds of Wonder: Looks like we are actually getting some new Living Jungle material, not just errata and clarifications. When you live close to nature, it's important to know what all the plants around you can do, which are safe to eat as is, which can be cooked, which are just going to be poisonous whatever you do to them, and which have other useful effects beyond the culinary. That's the kind of thing that could easily be the difference between life and death on an adventure.

Stickriki bushes are extremely thorny, and can be broken up and turned into quite effective caltrops. When no-one wears shoes, that's even more likely than a standard campaign to slow down pursuers.

Tiki root slows the effects of poison when you boil it up and drink it. You're probably not going to be able to find it and cook it fast enough to save your life after combat, so if you see it in an adventure, that's probably a chekov's gun hinting at future adversaries.

Gualla juice glows green in the dark, letting you apply spooky makeup patterns to you and your equipment. Not really bright enough to be useful as illumination, so the only real benefit is the intimidation factor. I guess dancing glowing skeletons are pretty iconic, so they'd wind up being independently recreated by all sorts of cultures.

Magasorium leaves are an excellent insect repellent. Crushing them up and rubbing the juice on you can be a lifesaver if venturing into the swamps. Fairly standard real world stuff.

Billitri leaves have a more pleasant scent that masks your own, which is handy when hunting things with strong senses of smell. They might be smart enough to know that humans are bad news, but a different plant smell suddenly appearing in the area? Not suspicious at all.

Biseechee Bush berries let you heal up to an extra 4hp per day by eating them. They don't store well, so you'll need to keep on going back and look after the bushes if you want to keep time you spend between adventures short. That gives the players string incentive to stay in harmony with nature.

Manriki Bushes look almost identical, but their berries are toxic and wind up blinding you temporarily. You really don't want to fail your herbalism check to distinguish between the two.

Manshooki Tree vines make excellent ropes until they dry out. Handy for navigating terrain in an adventure, but not something you can use to build with long term, keeping the basic state of technology on the plateau primitive. This collection sticks pretty strictly to low-key practical stuff then, not escalating the power levels and keeping it in the hands of the DM as to if you can even access these in a particular adventure or not.



DM Invitational: As with last year, they want more adventures, albeit of a very specific type with precisely 6 encounters, no more, no less, 5 of which must be of particular types of encounter. Many of the other requirements are repetitions from just a few pages ago, making this very boring to read. If you think you can come up with something cool that fits these constraints more power to you, but I once again have absolutely no desire to attempt it, particularly with the prizes long since won and gone.



As usual, they're listing all the tournaments that will be played at Gen Con (if they can get enough judges, hint hint) and when so you can preregister and plan your schedule out in advance. 17 different AD&D ones of various length, and one each for the Amazing Engine, Shadowrun, Timemaster, Star Wars, Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu. Not quite beating their previous record, and the lack of basic D&D material is notable, but still a pretty healthy selection.



A serious slog of an issue, with lots of repetition, dull niggling articles and general irritation. Looks like the new editor might not be an improvement after all, and the RPGA as a whole continues to get more tightly regulated, making playing in it a very different experience to a home campaign. Still, I guess some people do enjoy that standardisation and linearity, otherwise the organisation wouldn't keep on growing. Let's see if next issue will let us get to the fun bits or put more obstacles in the way.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 109: July 1995



part 1/5



36 pages. Once again it's time for vikings stalking through rugged misty landscapes, keeping an eye out for trouble. Will the trouble come to them, or will they attack first and successfully pull off a raid. Let's see if there's any treasure worth accumulating in here, or just coppers and cursed items to add to our encumbrance rating.



Notes from HQ: They haven't just changed editors recently, but also Network Co-ordinators. Scott Douglas is the new guy in charge of that. While Duane does most of the work creating the newszine, he's busy trying to sanction tournaments, get enough people to sign up as Judges to run all of them, adjudicate rules disputes over what is and isn't allowed in their Living campaigns, and other general cat-herding duties. It looks like it's going to be another fairly conservative changeover, as he's not immediately going to start switching things around, but does want feedback from regular members about what could be done better. So until he does start throwing his weight around, I have nothing much to say. Hopefully he will last long enough that we get a chance to find out more about him.



Forgotten Deities: More godly shenanigans here as we look at Sharess. She may or may not at one time have been a real god, but now she's just an alter-ego for Shar to hedge her bets with. Supposedly Chaotic Good, her priests who become evil will not lose their powers, and in fact are more likely to be promoted up the hierarchy, such as it is in a small cult comprised entirely of hedonists. A textbook example of using temptation as a honey trap to gradually lure people into darker deeds, although of course they can't go into any particularly salacious details due to the code of conduct. Particularly notable is that among their unique spells is the ability to grant permanent sex changes, which is a particularly powerful bit of bait to dangle before any trans characters who are fed up of using short term spells or magic items to maintain their gender identity and worrying about what happens if they get hit by a dispel in combat or wander into a dead magic zone. A reminder that there was a lot more sex and support of alternate sexualities in the Realms in Ed's original writing, and even after the code of conduct censored a lot of it in the books, there was still more than any other official D&D setting, which only increased after WotC took over and liberalised the editorial regime. So reading between the lines of the bowdlerised text, there's a lot of strong, but also potentially emotionally triggering plot ideas in here revolving around trying to pay the price to get your character's gender identity affirmed, (which will probably involve a quest rather than just paying money, which probably advances Shar's secret agenda in some dubious way) or thinking that these are good guys, then finding out that some of the members are engaging in sex slavery or pedophilia, trying to clean that out and finding out just how far up the rot goes. The kind of thing that's not for everyone, but for those it resonates with, you can really get stuck into the roleplaying opportunities here.