TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 59: May/Jun 1996



part 3/5



The Mother's Curse: Another issue, another little village with issues that need solving that you can still keep around as worldbuilding afterwards. That continues to be one of their more popular formulas. This time the naming conventions are vaguely italian and the problem is cursed pregnancies with the mothers dying at the end. This has been going on for decades and the place has become insular and fatalistic as a result, so even getting them to talk directly about their problems may be a challenge. Fortunately, they avoid the problem of missing out on the adventure entirely by having some of the villagers be spies for the big bad, so even if you fail on your gather information rolls, you'll still set the wheels of plot in motion and the trouble will come to you. After a few ogre attacks from the nearby swamp, even the dumbest players will get the hint and head in. If you can penetrate the general wet mazy unpleasantness, it'll eventually lead you to a ruined abbey filled with both undead and plant monsters, led by a pregnant greenhag. She's been swapping babies while still in the womb and selling them to a night hag on the lower planes to be turned into larvae, while her own kids burst out of the surrogate mother, killing her in the process and are left to their own devices. Charming. If you act fast you might be able to save the mother and return her real baby to her, but it's more likely this adventure will have a certain degree of tragedy & body horror and the players will have to clean up the problem afterwards with large amounts of violence. So this is unusually creepy for a horror adventure in here, (although still not at White Wolf levels of explicit nastiness) with the whole evil pregnancy thing potentially triggering for some players. If you can handle that it's a pretty good one, with the various creatures acting in a self-interested way that makes sense in setting and using their powers intelligently. It's also easily set up for a sequel somewhere along the line, when the Night Hag investigates what's disrupted her deliveries and seeks revenge on the PC's. Despite a few silly names, this is well within the level of quality I'd consider usable in a campaign.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 59: May/Jun 1996



part 4/5



Wedding Day: We break things up with a short comedic adventure that would have been better placed last issue. The PC's are invited to a wedding for whatever reason the DM can contrive, probably by having their characters already know the people involved. Unfortunately the ex of the bride is exceedingly jealous and they think he's planning to ruin the big day somehow. He has not just one, but a whole series of plots prepared throughout the day with the help of his friends. Even if you foil the first one, he'll probably escape and be back again in a different flimsy magical disguise for the next phase of the wedding celebrations. The way it's paced makes it feel like a looney tunes cartoon converted to D&D, as you have a series of vignettes you can succeed or fail at, but the main consequence either way is which side winds up looking ridiculous in this particular one, with only an exceptional success preventing the next one from taking place. A fairly entertaining read, and much better than polyhedron's comedic railroads in terms of permitting player agency, but not one I'm ever likely to use, and one that really would be better suited to a different system. Another casualty of D&D being bigger than everything else put together, so people try and shoehorn other genres in regardless of suitability to the rules just so they can find people to play with at all.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 59: May/Jun 1996



part 5/5



Voyage of the Crimpshrine: Gnomes. Why'd it have to be gnomes? Even in the settings where they aren't available as PC's (at least, until Mystara was moved from basic D&D to AD&D) they wind up with the tech guy stereotype. This time their mad inventiveness involves using a juggernaut as a perpetual motion machine and creating a faster, larger, more advanced paddleboat to negotiate the known world riverways with. Not that impressive compared to the Princess Ark, but still anachronistically advanced for the average Karimeikan. Maybe you'd like to take a ride on it? Unfortunately, they didn't reinforce the hull enough, it hits a log, springs a leak and sinks. Typical gnomish craftsmanship. Well, at least you get two different adventure scenarios out of it, either of which could be used separately as well. First, there's surviving the ship sinking and trying to rescue as many other people as possible, then getting them to safety through miles of wilderness with whatever limited equipment you managed to grab. Then there's going back with some water-breathing equipment on a salvage mission for the treasure left behind and finding out some merrow have moved in during the intervening time. Each will probably take a session or less so it's not any kind of epic quest, but it's all quite usefully modular and easily transplanted to other settings. This is aided by them including full descriptions for every area both before and after it sinks, in case you want to use it for multiple successful voyages before everything goes wrong and have the players get more attached to the place. We have enough village adventures that also work as toolkits now and more things like this instead would be a good way to expand our options without being so directly repetitive.



With two setting specific adventures, but also saying they won't be doing that again in the foreseeable future, combined with making submissions less accessible to new writers, this is another issue that's mainly good due to the sheer number of freelance submissions they get, rather than competent management by the editors. Dungeon might have been affected less than the other two magazines so far, but no-one's making good decisions in TSR upper management at the moment. Time to see what trials the next couple of months bring us.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 120: June 1996



part 1/5



32 pages. A nice round number and the proper 15th anniversary of the newszine's beginning. They really should have put the retrospective stuff here, instead of blowing their load in april. But then, they have been getting sloppy lately. Dragon's 20th also passes completely unheralded this month amid all the management turmoil and financial stresses. But never mind the collapsing scenery, chummers. It's time to lock and load for another Shadowrun special! Let's see if we'll get any particularly awesome cyberware or spells, and if we'll be able to use them without attracting ridiculously overpowered SWAT teams determined to keep us on the railroad.



Even the credits page can't resist trying to be cool and edgy, retitling all the staff roles in a cyberpunk stylee. Like many of their changes this year, this makes basic functionality worse.



your initiative: After another year long break, they try to do a letters column again, renamed in a vain attempt to be cool like Dragon's D-mail. Will they be able to keep it to a regular monthly schedule, or will it wind up as sporadic as previous attempts because they simply don't have a large enough audience?

First is from ireland, and complains that by the time issues get over to them and they have time to send anything back, they've already missed the deadline for anything time-sensitive. All the single session tournament adventures are of little use in a regular campaign as well, everything is too focussed on low level characters and the Living City stuff is just juvenile in implementation. Sounds like you may have outgrown the target audience.

The other is similarly unhappy, but mostly at the other players at conventions rather than the management, finding them whiny whenever the dice don't go their way, prone to rules lawyering & fishmalkery and not interested in putting any depth into their roleplaying. Putting any real world costs on having magic items is also a very bad idea, as pay to win drives off many good players leaving only a few whales for whom the system works. It all adds up to make Living City stuff in particular just generally bad, and if he were in charge he'd scrap the whole thing.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 120: June 1996



part 2/5



World Under Construction: The metaplot in Raven's Bluff may be really heating up lately, but it's not alone in that. Shadowrun is also busily moving the timeline forward and having new weird things happen. The 2056 election was blatantly rigged and the machinery of justice actually did their job and hastily impeached the president, leading to a new set of elections in 2057. Once again fiction turns out to be less depressing than reality because people still hold onto concepts like love, justice and fairness no matter how often the real world makes a mockery of them. Anyway, there are 6 candidates. James Booth, the former VP, trying to salvage something from the mess. Kenneth Brackhaven, the archconservative. (ie, racist party, who have a lot more fronts to fight on since the emergence of metahumanity. ) Arthur Vogel the dwarf, a skilled lawyer who turns his debating skills towards protecting the ecosystem. Dr Rozilyn Hernandez, the techno-utopian who'll dramatically increase funding for all kinds of cutting edge research. General Franklin Yeats, the tough republican hawk who wants to smash the embarrassment that is Bug City. And last but most definitely not least, familiar face Dunklezahn the dragon, who has a much longer-term perspective on events than everyone else put together and wants to shape humanity to be able to cope with the upcoming Horrors that'll eventually show up as the magic level rises. A reminder that this kind of thing is happening in most big RPG's with settings at the time, and also that these big plans are susceptible to derailment by real world events such as Earthdawn & Shadowrun going to different companies, forcing them to remove any obvious crossovers, or the rise of wifi in the real world creating a big plot hole as to why that technology doesn't exist in the cyberpunk 2050's. Even if the setting survives (which Shadowrun has over the past 25 years, unlike most of it's 90's competitors) it's going to wind up looking quite different to when it started, in a way it's original designers probably didn't expect. Obviously none of the material here is exclusive to the newszine, but it's still pretty interesting anyway, giving us a look at the wider world Dragon has already stopped covering and showing us TSR's actions over the past few years are part of a wider trend. It's just that it'll work out much better for some companies than others, and TSR were definitely hurt more than helped by the embracing of metaplot for all their settings, due to the specific changes they made.



Forgotten Deities: Most of the deities detailed here would very much like to become more powerful again, presuming they're still alive and aware enough to have desires at all. Jergal, on the other hand, seems weirdly chill about having been deposed as the lord of the dead, letting Myrkul, Cyric and now Kelemvor take on the high-profile role while he serves as scribe and record-keeper. (with the occasional bit of dry sarcasm if he feels they aren't doing the job properly.) I guess if anyone is going to be aware that everything has it's natural end and be philosophically equipped to deal with that, it's him. Despite his LN alignment, he lives on the Gray Waste and bears a strong resemblance to an ultroloth, which may be a hint as to his ancient pre-ascension origins. As befits a deity of the dead who used to be much bigger in the past, most of his remaining clergy are now undead, sleeping the ages away in obscure tombs until disturbed or working endlessly on creating and preserving records of the dead. They still get a good sphere selection and extensive granted powers as they gain levels, showing that despite his loss of prestige, he might still be stronger than he seems. I wouldn't take a long-term bet against him, particularly with his recent renewed popularity amongst the schemers of Thay. Who knows what ultra long term plans might be subtly set in motion even as we speak. Another entry with plenty of interesting plot possibilities you could choose to use in your campaign, particularly if you're not afraid to depart from the canon Realms timeline.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 120: June 1996



part 3/5



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: This issue's town du jour is Felsharoun. Another walled town that stays safe in these dangerous lands due to some powerful patrons. Each of the towers at the corners is home to a powerful wizard, and although they might not appear in public that frequently, just knowing they're there and their apprentices are running scrys ready to fry on the gates keeps most of the trouble outside. Then there's a decent number of rangers keeping the woods & fields nearby well managed and a surprisingly civil and well managed court system which lets anyone bring complaints before the Baron and his Knights of Justice. A fairly safe and pleasant place then, but the interesting part is the system of checks and balances that keep it so in a dangerous world, rather than just say it's a good place because it has a good supreme ruler who keeps it good by fiat. You need a good balance of people with different skillsets to make a functioning society, and they all need to watch out for people who'll mess it up if they get into a position of power. A paladin is only interesting when they're actively fighting evil that's strong enough to be a challenge to them, not just being statically perfectly virtuous in a vacuum. (plus getting the armour on and off again is hard when you're spherical.) Ed must like this place, because he can't even fit everything he has to say about it into one issue. He's already gone from several entries per issue to just one. How much more detailed will he get before the editors have to reign him in and remind him to keep things modular?



The Florida Key: The D&D adventures in here have been somewhat less linear recently, but this Shadowrun one is pure tournament railroad, giving you 6 pregens and sending you through 10 encounters in order with only one minor fork in the path near the end. Your sextet of miami-based shadowrunners are hired to retrieve a magical idol stolen from the New Seminole tribe. A basic lore check while examining the scene of the crime will reveal that they're evil confederates, probably based in Fort Myer. Then hitting up your contacts or going to the local dive bar and asking the right questions will narrow it down even further. Turns out the mooks were hired by a cyber-shaman known as Filth, who casts spells by doing sick air guitar riffs. Find the building on the waterfront he's hiding out in, beat the toxic city spirit he's summoned as protection and him. Then the storm spirit in the idol manifests and demands you free it. You're not supposed to do this (and the adventure doesn't even tell you what will happen if you do, in typical bad railroad fashion) but ignore those demands and return it to the tribe, as it can't attack you anyway as long as you keep hold of the idol. (but how are you supposed to know that?) A fairly typical early 90's tournament railroad with no real worldbuilding to account for if the players make decisions other than the one the writer intended and a dose of irritating whimsy on top of that then, only for a different system. I really haven't missed them and have absolutely no desire to play this. Can't you get any better submissions for your non D&D games?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 120: June 1996



part 4/5



A World Of Your Own: Roger returns to one of the most popular human-free settings in D&D history. Mystara's moon Myoshima where the Rakasta rule supreme. Who doesn't love samurai cats?! (anachronistic invention of pizza optional but highly recommended given the average degree of whimsy in Known World products) Sure it's not the size of a full planet, but even a surface area similar to australia or china is more than enough to have multiple small countries and a wide variety of terrain. Plus, because it's already established as oriental inspired, it's easy to take many of the OA adventures, change any references of humans to rakasta and you have material to keep you going for quite a few adventures. This one is interesting not only because a particularly high proportion of the references are to articles from Dragon & Dungeon, but also because it's a preexisting setting that's been built on by multiple people in the past, and will be built upon further in the future incorporating the ideas from this. It's actually a living setting rather than something invented by one person and then never touched again. A reminder that if you like your cat women from the moon you're in good company and have both a lot of material to draw on for such a specific seeming combination of things, and plenty of leeway to put your own spin on it. Who wants to see if they can purr-fect the formula?



The Raven's Buff Trumpeter: After last month's brief respite, things are heating up again with raids, infiltration and psychological warfare from the enemies. While they don't have the numbers for a completely surrounding siege, which means adventurers are still getting in and out to scout the situation and go on quests, the roads are well watched, most caravans aren't getting through and runaway price spikes on essentials are taking place. A magic shop (not one mentioned in previous issues, despite the one in issue 82 run by a red wizard being a clear setup for something like this) has abruptly shut down, the owners disappeared and apparently given all their remaining supplies to the enemy forces, which further increases the shortages and general paranoia. Even with reinforcements from Procampur arriving and the bards guild officially joining the war effort it's still very uncertain which side has the edge long-term. Are your PC's going to be among those on the front lines making a difference, or will you be laying low or getting out of town until things are a little safer? As usual, the progress of the metaplot is one of the most interesting parts of the magazine, really making the living city feel more alive. i look forward to seeing what next month brings.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 120: June 1996



part 5/5



The Lord Mayor needs You!: Unsurprisingly, it looks like the big climax of the war plotline will be taking place at Gen Con in a few months. Get ready for another mass battle on an enormous scenery-filled table that you couldn't replicate at home unless you live in a mansion. Like the elections, this becomes an excuse to soak up all your PC's cash reserves if they participate, as your ability to field units in the battle requires that you not only buy official units from their Ral Partha Battlesystem™ line OOC, paint it properly yourself, (no gray randos allowed in this establishment, we'd wind up losing track of which belonged to who) but pay realistic costs of tens of thousands of GP for each one you field IC. Only the most ultra hardcore of the hardcore tournament-goers will be able to afford more than a peasant levy or a Cormyr militia. Not sure even Melissa Eldaren has the 200,000gp needed to afford an Imperial General. It all requires a very high buy-in, and I'm sure some people will turn up ready to rock but be disqualified because they forgot one of the prerequisites. It once again reinforces the worries in the letters about the RPGA having pay-to-play elements and accessibility problems. Stuff like this is why they're still hovering around the 10,000 member range after 15 years, while many MMO's will manage orders of magnitude more in a fraction of the time, and enable mass battle scenarios in a much faster and smoother way. Unless you have the money & free time to travel to lots of conventions a year, you've got no hope of getting to participate in the more advanced adventures around here, while nearly anyone can grind a few hours a night instead of watching TV and get to the current level cap soon enough. Then once you have more members, network externalities compound the difference in play experience. It's all very frustrating to read about.



Notes from JQ (sic): Once again, the editing is really going to pot around here. J is right next to H on a QWERTY keyboard, so I can see how someone typing fast could make that mistake, but not spotting it all the way to publication? Dear oh dear. I guess switching editors does make that sort of thing more likely. Anyway, here's new editor Jeff Quick introducing himself. (which means the title change might be a play on words rather than a mistake, but the fact it's spelled the regular way in the contents page leaves that ambiguous) Unlike the previous few changeovers, he's talking straight away about what he plans to do differently. He's already brought back the letters column, and also wants to do more reviews as well, hopefully even more coverage of non D&D systems if they can get the submissions, while making the newszine somewhat less focussed on conventions. Seems like the letters he picked for the front of the issue were ones he agreed with and was already planning to do something about. Hopefully more people disagree with his idea than disagree, and he'll get the submissions to implement his ideas, but you never know with these things, and he could be gone in a few months like his predecessor anyway. Still, his ideas don't seem too terrible, (although they might push this towards being more of a generic gaming magazine competing directly with Dragon) so I'll give him a fair chance to prove himself.



An issue full of good ideas with imperfect implementations, this was another one that was pretty interesting to read, but I wouldn't want to use most of it. It's nice to see them continuing to cover other RPG's after Dragon gave up, but it's also obvious they don't get enough submissions of those to exercise much quality control. On we head, to see if the new faces at the top of the credits can freshen things up a little without making too many rookie mistakes.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996



part 1/5



32 pages. Dinosaur scrum! You can't all eat the same human, he'll slip away while you're fighting! Looks like we're going back to the Living Jungle, which will continue to host it's fair share of goofy comedy material. Worse things happen at sea, but not by much. Time to see how much cheese they'll manage to pack into this issue, and what strange jungle animals the milk will have been derived from.



The Living Jungle Just Got Livelier: The idea of signature characters for splats is definitely on the rise, with White Wolf already doing it for several of their game lines, although D&D won't catch up officially until the release of 3e. This appears to be another early adopter, introducing each of the new races with a short IC talk from a example character. Of course, being the first we see of them, this also means they have to be stereotypical examples of their races with very formulaic backstories; they're from places that are taboo or hard to access for the Nubari, which is why they've never seen them before, and have decided to venture out and see what the rest of the world has to offer. There's little of interest here, particularly consumed all at once. Better move on quickly to the later articles where we actually get the mechanical information then.



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ed does love his wizards. They consistently wind up higher level than any other class in the Realms, living beyond their natural lifespan and accumulating treasure & influence accordingly. They're also responsible for most of the cool new spells and items that appear in his many Dragon articles, further increasing their prominence in the eyes of the readers. They don't rule every country, but even the ones they aren't formally in charge of usually have some in vizier positions. It's just particularly obvious in Felshroun, because you're surrounded by the four towers. Redcloak, who lives in Lakelight tower. Black Flame, lady of Folly tower. Greenshadow, who lives in the Watchwood tower. And breaking with the color theme, The Manyfaced Lady, who lives in the Sentinel tower. Each of them has their own magical themes, although none is actually multiclassed or a specialist wizard. I guess that's another reason they're so popular, you can build them all very differently without needing to add feats and prestige classes, which makes roleplaying them differently easier as well. This turns into another masterclass in how to make a set of NPC's interesting despite them all being of good alignment, as each still has their own quirks, ways of teaching apprentices (which might well be some of your PC's, since they definitely have powers worth learning) and ways they contribute to keeping the town safe & well-run. If only he'd apply the same loving care to a group of paladins. Another entry where Ed feels increasingly less edited than the old days, as he has seniority over the current crop of editors so they're just letting him indulge his quirks and ramble on as long as he wants on a topic before moving to the next one. It still makes for interesting reading, but does reduce the ratio of instantly game useful material to fluffy worldbuilding about food, musical instruments, horse breeding and whatever else grabs his attention at the time.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996



part 2/5



Forgotten Deities: Time to get a little Deish, as we look at Gargauth, the Lord Who Watches. Your stereotypical Lawful Evil deal offerer who delights in sticking to the letter of the deal but twisting the words around to screw you over and trap you in a bad contract. He was kicked out of the nine hells for political reasons and now wanders the planes as a freelance dealbroker. This has actually turned out to be a better position than staying a cog in the bureaucratic infernal machine waiting to be summoned and he's grifted his way up to demigod status. Ultimately he'd like to turn the whole Realms into his personal fiefdom, then drag it across the planes to become the 10th layer of Baator and supplant As as supreme boss, but when you're immortal, you can take your time on the extremely large ambitions. His priests get a reasonable but not overpowered set of spheres & granted powers, focussing mostly on mind-control and mobility effects. Not a huge amount of nuance to his characterisation here, but another solid bad guy for your players to foil the schemes of, with a powerset that makes it easy for his followers to escape when exposed and become recurring antagonists. Have fun ruining their days and be very careful not to sign anything without reading the small print all the way through, because once you're on their radar who knows what kind of disguises and dirty tricks they'll employ to get revenge and bring you down to their level.



Jungle Tales: This is less comical than previous instalments, telling the legend of how the Malatran aarakocra came to be. Once upon a time there was a man who really wanted to be a bird. He learnt all sorts of magic to get into the air, but it always felt fake and temporary. Eventually, he found an artifact called the Blue Heron, which the ancient speaking tree said held the key. He spent the rest of his life trying and failing to unlock it's powers. Eventually, nearing death, he decided to jump off the top of a mountain holding it and trust to fate. This turned out to have been the right move all along and he turned into an aarakocra, but unfortunately his heart was too weak to sustain flight and he died after just one brief soar, but not before telling his grandchildren, who got to make the choice to follow his lead and enjoy their new lives as birdmen. Basically a mashup of Moses & Icarus, showing the tragedy of a pioneer working hard and not getting to enjoy the rewards of their labors, but paving the way for others to enjoy undreamt of advancements. There are definitely plenty of real examples of that such as Marie Curie and Alan Turing. It might or might not actually be true in setting, but it's a decent enough bit of mythmaking that has some pathos in it while not being an obvious aesop, so this gets my approval.