TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 55: Sep/Oct 1995



part 1/5



72 pages. Don't forget to take your palantir off mute before you speak! Tony Diterlizzi shows us what looks like an adventurer conference call, an image that's a lot more likely to happen now than back in the mid-90's. Well, Planescape always did mix up magic and advanced technology in interesting ways, so it being ahead of it's time isn't that surprising. Let's find out what's so important to these people that it couldn't have been done as a Sending spell and how far away they're telecommuting from.



Editorial: What's all this aboot then? A canadian themed issue? They say it wasn't intentional, but 3 out of 4 of the adventures this issue are from north of the border, and the 4th is pretty close to it as well. Does that mean all the adventures'll be fair on the players and easy to complete? Or would that be pushing stereotypes too far. At least Ed isn't joining in, given the scores his last two adventures got from me. Time to spin up those Bryan Adams & Sarah Mclachlan records and find out what the quality control and sweetness of this selection of adventures is like.



Letters: First letter wants to know their opinion on doing larger scale adventures with less detail on each individual encounter and also if they'll ever make Dungeon adventures downloadable. The first one, they have no problem with, after all, when they started most adventures were like that and not everyone likes the current plot heavy style of adventure writing. As to the second, well, give it a decade & change and they'll be online only anyway.

Second thinks they should do a column on traps to put into your own adventures. Once again, they don't rule it out, but it all depends on reader submissions. Both Dragon and Polyhedron tried it in their earlier years and didn't last long. Could it be different this time around?

Third thinks they should add an annual special to their usual schedule. It's a bit late to put that together this year, but next year …… well, we already covered that in the Dragon review thread, despite it incorporating elements of both magazines.

Fourth is sad that Dragonlance seems to be in decline. Well, they will be trying a big relaunch next year. Whether any 5th age adventures'll appear in here, or the readers will display their usual apathy to everything non D&D we'll see soon enough.

Fifth is mostly complementary, but baffled and irritated by their recent Shakespeare adaptions. Couldn't you have written adventures that use the same stats without riding on the coattails of the Bard? Also, running that many well developed NPC's at once is a real pain to keep straight in your head.

Sixth is Chris Perkins, also mostly complementary, but thinking their mapmaking technology still needs a little improvement. Since Diesel left, there just hasn't been the same consistency. Maybe doing more of it on computer would help with that, as then you can copy and paste symbols, revise things without having to redraw from scratch and make everything neater.

Seventh's group got their asses kicked by the Dark Creepers from issue 47 and wonder what tactics other parties used against them. Sneaky antagonists can punch well above their statistical weight if the PC's aren't too smart.

Eighth is another one who thinks they need to go back to wandering dungeons and killing things a bit more. Many of their younger players just don't have the attention span or idea of how to get into character for the more talky ones the magazine favours now.

9th and finally, we have a long letter full of all sorts of opinions that takes up nearly a whole page. They also want fewer linear plots, fewer dragons, less meeting guys in a bar handing out missions, more high level challenges, and no recycling of old adventures from other publications. There does seem to be a general growing discontentment about the way their published adventures are going at the moment.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 55: Sep/Oct 1995



part 2/5



Savage Beast: Bhaergala! I love those guys! One of the coolest obscure monsters from Dragon magazine finally gets a bit of spotlight time here, and they remember to include all their weird powers and personality traits, unlike the very abridged version in the 2e monster manual. An elven bard has disappeared in the forest en route to a big performance at a bardic college. His patrons quite understandably get worried and send the PC's out to look for him. He's not dead, but is suffering a fate worse than death, as he was wearing a ring of regeneration when captured by a mated pair of Bhaergala and is now serving as an autoreplenishing food source for them and their cubs. (which doesn't make them lose their neutral alignment because they still count as animals despite their intelligence) If you venture into the woods you'll also become their prey, although they won't be stupid enough to just attack a heavily armed & armored party openly. Instead, they have several tricks to lure you into a false sense of security while luring you into further dangers. When you do get sick of their trouble making and kill them or drive them away, you still have to face the moral dilemma of what to do with the kids, who aren't dangerous combatants yet, but will try to get revenge if you leave them alive, no matter how nicely you treat them. Plus there's the real risk of seeing the ring of regeneration on what looks like a dead body, looting it thoughtlessly and killing the person you're meant to rescue. An adventure that isn't hugely challenging in terms of combat, but is packed with puzzles and moral quandaries without obvious solutions, with plenty of ways you can survive but still not really succeed going through it. A very strong and flavourful start indeed to the issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 55: Sep/Oct 1995



part 3/5



Umbra: Chris Perkins has had a hell of a year, getting an adventure published in every single issue so far. Now they're trusting him enough to let him write their longest single-part adventure yet, a full 31 pages long and probably higher word count than some actual 32 page modules. (although Tortles of the Purple Sage still beats it out in both total page count and density of useful info per page, making it considerably longer in actual play.) It's our first Planescape adventure in here, which means it has a lot riding on it, as while I love the setting, they sure did produce some sucky metaplot heavy railroads for it.

Thankfully, while this is pretty plot heavy, which also means it's quite linear at the beginning, it is one where there are lots of potential solutions, some better and more supported than others. (as even in an adventure this size they can't account for every decision the PC's make. ) The PC's are hired by a Yagnoloth to rescue a child who apparently bears the Mark of Zactar, which means it could be the chosen one prophesied to be the most important being in the multiverse. It's being held by a Harmonium high-up who would keep it from ever knowing about this or fulfilling it's destiny. Even if the yugoloth is playing you somehow (which any adventurer worth their salt will know it is, even if what it says to them is proven technically true using lie-detection) a heroic group should want to intervene.

There are indeed many catches he's not telling you about. The guy holding the baby is actually it's father, so despite being distant and mildly abusive to his kid he's in the legal right here when it comes to custody and pursuing this adventure will get you in trouble with Sigil's lawful factions. The second is that the mum is actually a succubus, and wants to get her kid back just to sell it to a Balor as a sex slave. (details mildly bowdlerised by the code of conduct, but it's pretty damn obvious what they're getting at) This then means said kid is actually an alu-fiend, growing way faster than a regular child in an unpredictable way and gradually developing a suite of spell-like powers that make her increasingly hard to discipline the way you could a normal human child. She's not chaotic evil yet, but it would take very little to push her in that direction and a lot of delicate work to do the opposite. In a way that makes this similar to the previous adventure, only on a larger scale, as they're both about what to do with kids of monsters who don't deserve death now, but might in the future, (but it'd be much harder to wait and fight them then) and how wandering adventurers aren't really equipped to handle all the complexities of rearing a child.

So while there are a decent number of combat setpieces and some irritating bits where fiends use their teleportation powers to escape so you can have multiple encounters with the same enemy, this does mostly live up to the potential of Planescape as a place where the battles are less about dungeon delving & treasure hunting, and more about complex moral questions where your choices can have unpredictable long-term ramifications, and you have to unravel a web of manipulation and half-truths to have the information to make an informed decision. It has a default "best" ending, but you could well choose another one and then have to deal with the consequences of that in a future adventure. As the letters page showed, there are more than a few groups that simply wouldn't be sophisticated enough to handle an adventure like this, but if you have the right set of players and DM it could be as memorably debate-provoking as intended. Just keep the clubs part of the philosophising IC no matter how heated the discussion gets.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 55: Sep/Oct 1995



part 4/5



Tulips of the Silver Moon: Ah yes, the tulip mania of the 17th century. A classic example of a financial bubble driven by speculation over exclusive luxuries. Still less dumb than the artificial scarcity of NFT's because at least you were getting a real thing that took effort to breed and raise in particularly unusual color combinations. The shenanigans that grew up around that are rich ground for an adventure. An eeevil hunchback (nice ablism ya got going there :sighs: ) tries to steal the best tulips from a rival in the hope of winning the hand of a fair maiden. (fat chance even if he gets away with it) Caught in the act by the butler, he unleashes some fire spells to set the place ablaze while he flees. The PC's happen to be in the right place at the right time to see the smoke in the distance, and hopefully investigate & assist in the pursuit. Will you hunt for tracks in the fields and follow them if you roll well enough, will you go to the local village and try a more social detectiving approach, will you use some magic to make the whole process easier? A decently nonlinear little detective story with several sidequests and red herrings put in to keep you busy even if you don't take the correct route at first, this all seems pretty solidly put together, mixing social and combat encounters in a way that makes sense, with particular attention paid to the main antagonist's stats, including versions for people who play corebook only and slightly more interesting variants if you have the splatbooks to support them. Hopefully that'll keep both kinds of DM's satisfied. Despite a few problematic social attitudes it still seems good enough overall to use.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 55: Sep/Oct 1995



part 5/5



Sea Wolf: Lisa Smedman has come a long way since her first adventure in here. Her tastes still run quite strongly towards the gothic though, as here's another little Ravenloft adventure to chill your player's hearts with. While on a ship journey, the mists roll in and a mysterious murder starts happening each night. Can you figure out who the killer is and stop them before nearly everyone dies and the monster gives up on subtlety, just attacking the PC's because we've only got so long in a session and need to get to the action eventually if they can't add up the clues? As the title makes fairly obvious, it's a werewolf, although there's some interesting backstory twists that I'm not going to spoil going on that make fingering the correct culprit unlikely at first. Trouble is, if you don't solve it quickly, it's quite likely some of the people attacked who survived will become infected lycanthropes, so even if you do kill the original one, you have to deal with repeated jump scares of other people transforming and attacking without any of the subtlety of a true lycanthrope at the end, in the style of many a horror movie that just doesn't know when to stop. So this is quite interesting because it gradually goes from slow and atmospheric to increasingly obvious and schlocky, while still being short enough to fit in a single session. It feels like one of the video nastys that James would have rented & reviewed a few years ago rather than something more literary. Hopefully that was the intended tone when writing, and whether it was or not you can probably make it fun to play as long as your players aren't completely mindless hack & slashers.



An issue in which all the adventures are high quality, interestingly written and with plenty of opportunities for roleplaying … which is the problem, as the letters page shows many people are getting increasingly fed up of that and want to go back to dungeon crawling like the name of the game says. That makes it one that's particularly demonstrative of the gulf between the TSR writers and their audience. Onward to see if the gulf only grows right up to the point where they go under, or there will be some vain attempts at course correction in this department at least.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 112: October 1995



part 1/5



32 pages. Book, bell & candle is all very well, but a sensible exorcist knows to pack a pistol in case of corporeal entities that don't care or act too fast for ritual magic to have any effect. Horror season is upon us, and this time we're heading back to the 1890's, because it's much easier to be spooky by gaslight than with neon everywhere and mobile phones. Time to see how the big entrance of their 5th Living setting plays out after all this suspenseful buildup.



Notes from HQ: The editorial this month is pretty repetitive, reminding us of a whole bunch of changes they implemented in the past few issues just in case you only skimmed those. They're adding a whole bunch of new restrictions to LC characters and tightening up the certificate system for magic items even further. If you have any legacy stuff that isn't in the database, better register it or use it up fast. They do walk back on one minor point though, opening up a bunch of demihuman detities from Monster Mythology to priests of the appropriate race due to overwhelming protest. See, you can make a difference! In fact, they're depending on you, because they've gone from 1 to 5 settings over the course of the year and need adventures for all of them if they're to survive. If you organise who knows what else you could change? If you want the RPGA to work in a way more to your liking, get involved! On we go then, to see who gets shaken out of being a passive consumer next year.



Forgotten Deities: The deity description this month raises more questions than it answers. Just who is Selvetarm, champion of Lolth? A literal child of Lolth? An aspect? An ascended tanar'ri? Vheraun in disguise playing a long game to weaken Lolth's worship? In any case, he appears to a a patron of male drow fighters, fighting loyally for their city despite their low status and the treacherous nature of their superiors. People who aren't too bright, in other words. (reinforced by the fact that his few priests have very weak sphere selections, like many of these demigods) There's plenty of theories here, but only a few solid facts, leaving it wide open for you to decide which is true in your campaign. Looking at the FR wiki, this won't last, as he becomes increasingly fleshed out in future sourcebooks and novels, so if you did use him in those days you'd probably find your world diverging from the official FR metaplot. Another reminder that the Reams still has many years of dramatic developments ahead of it, even if their days of venturing to other continents is mostly over. Whether those changes are good or not, on the other hand, is a very divided set of opinions.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 112: October 1995



part 2/5



The Raven's Bluff Trumpeter: The news is a little repetitive this month, making it not as interesting as previous instalments. The gang warfare as a result of Anton Paere's death continues to heat up, turning Crow's End into a no-go zone. The winners of the Gen Con adventurer's games get listed in a primarily IC way. The more interesting parts are the short ones. Lord Charles Blacktree is finally getting married! Good to see they haven't forgotten about him with all the other things going on. The deputy mayor (who they've never even mentioned before) returns after 2 years off adventuring. (surprised he wasn't replaced in the interim) How many levels has he gained, and will we find out his story in future issues? This stuff still needs further building on to actually be useful.



How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Our more detailed recap of the conventions this year is as relentlessly positive as the editorial. Gone are the days of complaining about con crud and everything being put together with duct tape in last minute panics behind the scenes. Be it small ones like DarkCon or enormous ones like Gen Con and Origins with a whole bunch of celebrity guests, whether they were wargaming, roleplaying, CCGing or LARPing, it's all good. Check some of them out next year if you can! They may have had fun, but this was very boring to read about. Without any kind of drama, some sense that you preferred one over another, there is no story.



Cast A Cold Eye: They're getting these setting launches down to a formula now, so it's no surprise that the first Living Death article is a system-free one aimed at selling it to people with no knowledge of regular Ravenloft or MotRD. Welcome to the 1890's of an earth very similar to ours - until the sun goes down, and the monsters come out to play, subtly directed by the biggest evil of all, the mysterious Red Death itself. Do you have the courage to oppose monsters wherever in the world they rear their heads? (You'd better, because if you don't, there'll be no game) So they're instantly distinguishing it from the other Living settings by not confining it to a small geographical area. You have carte blanche to write adventures set anywhere in the world, and they're not going to be strictly tracking costs of living and travel the way they are in Virtual Seattle if you want to play lots of them. (Although the real life costs will be deterrent enough for most, and they still encourage you to have a character concept it makes sense is able to go globe-trotting on short notice.) On top of making the playing field bigger, they also want the adventures to be more roleplaying focussed, and most interestingly of all, offer meaningful choices that affect the setting long term. The idea is to have the people put through the adventures record what way certain events went along with the usual post adventure admin of XP & treasure, and then future adventures will assume that the direction the majority of parties chose is the canon one for purpose of future adventures. Which is very interesting, showing how their ambition for making shared worlds feel shared continues to increase, but also puts a lot of extra pressure on the administrators to make the player's choices have coherent and significant results. Let's hope they're up to the task, and sudden changes in management won't make the metaplots veer off or fall apart.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 112: October 1995



part 3/5



On Life, On Death: Still trying to set the right tone, they give us a whole load of recommended reading. William Hope Hodgeson, M.R. James, Bram Stoker, R. W. Chambers, W. B. Yeats, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machan, Ambrose Bierce, Sheridan LeFanu, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Lewis Stevenson, R. A. Gilbert, Robert Arthur, John Bellairs, Barbara Hambly, Jonathan Carrol & Roger Zelazny. Mostly stuff from the end of the 19th century, but also a lot of early 20th century stuff that still has the same feel or intentionally references that era, and some nonfiction stuff that contains relevant info. The writer definitely has distinct preferences beyond just everything remotely supernatural published in the 1890's. What's even more interesting are the things they specifically call out as not influences, so avoid referencing them when writing adventures please. Frankenstein, (too early, not actually victorian era) Stephen King, (too contemporary feeling) and Phantom of the Opera (just bleurgh). (Great, now I want to write a fanfic where the Monster and the Phantom bond over their shared outcast angst and then team up to fight Pennywise. ) Plenty to check out and analyze here then. Who's missing that you would have put in?



Horseman, Pass By!: Having given us lots of reference material, they continue the system free talk about the way they want you to write & judge adventures in this setting. Since they usually wind up with more players than judges for groups, even though they only need a ratio of 6:1 or lower, they're obviously working hard to fight that. While it is a horror game, you need to remember that you can't be just non-stop jump-scares and gory deaths or they'll lose their impact, particularly in an RPG, where the PC's come in fully aware that the supernatural is real and ready to rumble even if they're not prepared for a specific type of monster. Make sure they have room to breathe and roleplay in between the combat encounters. Do your research on basic details of life in the 1890's. Splitting the party works well to build tension and make people feel more vulnerable. Don't be afraid to mix it up and use aliens, cryptids, or even just regular evil humans as villains rather than vampires or werewolves. This continues to reinforce that they want to run a classier type of game in here than their fantasy worlds, giving people room to develop their characters, travel the world and feel like they're actually making a difference rather than just following railroads of encounters from one to the next. A laudable goal, even if I remain skeptical of their ability to pull it off given previous performance.



Gothic Heroes: After all that buildup, the actual character generation info is a little underwhelming, fitting on a single page. MotRD is only a single boxed set, and the classes & kits already come pre-nerfed compared to regular D&D characters, so they can just allow everything from it, forbid everything else and not worry about scouring hundreds of supplements to decide what's allowed or forbidden case by case. 72 points to spread amongst the regular 6 ability scores, fixed HP per level, max starting GP. The only significant restriction is that only Good alignments are allowed, not even N & LN characters like the other settings. If you aren't in this to fight evil just because it's there without regard for profit, you won't be invited to join the secret society opposing the Red Death in the first place and if you become neutral in play, you'll be on thin ice until you make amends. For all their talk of wanting more roleplaying and ability to make choices, the precise nature of those choices is still going to be strictly proscribed to keep things going in the right direction.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 112: October 1995



part 4/5



In A Pinch: On the plus side, they are using both the carrot and the stick in encouraging heroic behaviour, as they port the hero points system from the Living Jungle completely unchanged. You know the drill now. Act above and beyond the call of duty and the judge may award one at their discretion. You can spend them before or after the roll. but they give twice as much benefit before. Someone in the office must really like the idea of them, probably someone who will also work on D20 Modern and Star Wars Saga Edition, but not D&D 3e. (They changed so much in that edition change I'm surprised they didn't put them in, not even as an optional rule in the DMG. ) So this is another reminder that the process of game design in D&D is an incremental one with lots of little forks in the path, and various factions within the company wanting to push it in different directions. Bits like this give us some clues as to who was on which side of those arguments.



Atmosfear: The GM'ing side of the equation is rather longer than the the player one. Nonweapon proficiencies and At Death's Door rules are mandatory, particularly that second one because there's no-one who can bring you back on Gothic Earth. XP is entirely fiat, just give them the awards listed in the adventures rather than calculating from the precise number of monsters they killed and treasure they found. Anything magical you find will have a certificate, so don't try to cheat on your character sheet or you will face swift bannination. Pay attention to the list of event summaries at the end of adventures, because as they stated earlier, if properly filled out those will affect the long term metaplot by making the choice the majority of groups took the canon one. They are offering some choices though. Weapon speed modifiers and spell casting times are recommended but not mandatory, as are critical hit rules. If they're bogging things down at your table they'll trust you enough to make the judgement call on that. And if PC's do something unexpected, don't be afraid to ad-lib in response in general. It does seem like they're trying to put more faith in the individual players & DM's than the other Living settings. They won't be exploring the depths of human depravity and backstabbing White Wolf players would in a horror setting, but we might actually still get some good roleplaying out of these adventures.



Ghost Writing: The writing guidelines also make it clear that they want this to be a more sophisticated kind of campaign. (even though the idea that everyone is part of a secret cabal that assigns half a dozen random agents from around the world to each mission is very 80's cartoon) You still need to fit an entire adventure into 3+1/2 hours, adventures are sorted by level tiers, and they want you to be ultra conservative with handing out magical items, but they are encouraging you to make things less linear and put mystery, romance, and real historical locations & events in. Go easy on the humour though, particularly the goofy stuff they put in the Living City adventures, as that's not the right tone for this setting at all. That is very welcome to hear. Maybe this will turn out good after all. Let's hope they do get enough submissions to run the kind of campaign they intended, and the player driven metaplot doesn't turn into a mess. I look forward to seeing updates in future issues.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 112: October 1995



part 5/5



A World of Your Own: Roger details two more fantasy worlds he came up with at some point but didn't fit into the previous column's format. Neither are completely original, but he details his sources carefully. First takes the basic topology of a world from SJR4: Practical Planetology, small, ringed, short days but looooong years, then mashes up arthurian mythology and dragonlance - it's inhabited by elves who've lost most of their magical knowledge, but are now building a new chivalrous civilisation and are about to see the gods come back in a big way. Will this lead to a new golden age, or be a brief punctuation of glory that leads to disaster and centuries more darkness? Well, I guess that's up to the PC's.

Second expands on one of the worlds casually mentioned in Q1 as being invaded by Lolth. The day length is closer to our own, but everything else is much weirder, dominated by ultra-vertical crystaline mountains and a purple sky filled with small, close, independently moving stars. (making sea navigation much harder, among other things.) Non-drow elves have been hunted to extinction by Lolth's forces, and many other races aren't far behind. You get to be one of the elite high level members of the resistance, striking to sabotage their supply lines and eventually seal the gate to the demonweb pits. Could be played as grim and gritty tactical wargaming in a Sword & Sorcery world, or could turn out very She-Ra, depending on how you handle it. Both of these make it clear that what you intentionally leave out is as important as what you put in if you want to make a world distinctive. The Realms can be a kitchen sink but still have it's own flavour through Ed's decades long obsessive prolificness, but you probably don't have that long to develop a world before letting people play in it.



Virtuosity: After all this Living Death stuff, they still have room left to give you some more advice on how to write and referee Virtual Seattle adventures. A lot of the advice applies to all tournament ones: write something that can be finished in 3+1/2 hours, which they've found in practice works out as about 6 encounters of various types, don't make it too easy or too tough, type everything up neatly with each page of the adventure numbered. The differences obviously come with treasure and XP awards, as you need a lot more nuyen to pay for most things than GP, but fewer karma points than XP to boost your powers. As you'd expect, they want adventure writers to be conservative with both money and karma awards to keep advancement slow. They're also even bigger on your characters keeping a low profile and not using violence as the first solution to every problem - if you try that, you'll rapidly find yourself facing increasingly powerful teams of special forces police with orders to kill on sight. Another strong reminder that twinks and munchkins are not welcome in Living settings, nor are people who don't stick to the railroads provided. For it to be plausible that there's that many shadowrunners jammed into one city and not have a complete breakdown of law & order, their individual adventures have to be kept pretty low-key. Hopefully if they start out strict, they won't have to do too many retcons to keep things from falling apart.



Yet another issue where the continued expansion of the various Living settings continues to be the most interesting part, showing their attempts to increase not only the number of them, but also run each one in a slightly different way. Will they be able to give all 5 decent amounts of screentime going forwards, or will the Living City be bigger than all the others put together in the same way as the Forgotten Realms in general to their wider worlds? Time to see if next issue has any big special theme, or they've finally run out of ideas for this year.