TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996



part 3/5



Races continues straight on from last page in filling in our new PC options with Monster Manual style entries.

Malatran Aarakocra are mechanically pretty much the same as elsewhere, but they make an extra big deal about how large their wingspan is, and how much wide open space they need to get airborne. In the tangles of the jungle they're as stuck on the ground as anyone else, so the tournaments can continue to railroad them.

Butu are kobolds who resemble goats more than dogs or dragons. They have the goatish ability to handle improbably steep slopes with ease, which explains why they live in places humans can't. Fighting them on cliffs is a good way to get headbutted and fall to your doom. They retain the typical kobold cowardliness though, which is now mechanically backed up with a pathetic cowering power that they can use to deflect attention in combat. They're pretty neatly designed, although still pretty prone to being used in a comic relief way.

Ostrich Katanga are pretty self-explanatory, but also absolutely terrifying if you have any experience with real ostriches. All that running speed and ability to disembowel you with a kick, paired with actual intelligence. A regular human would need a fair bit of equipment to handle a fight these guys could do naked.

Malatran Lizardmen are also pretty much identical to normal ones, just including the details in the complete book of humanoids about needing to pay extra attention to proper hydration when out of the swamp. An increasing number of them are growing bored with the traditional lifestyle of basking and raiding, looking to learn more about the world. Will you be one of them?

Malatran Mold Men are probably the hardest to integrate into a group, as they can only communicate by sign language, and share the lizardmen's need for high amounts of hydration. They're good at stealth and immune to electricity & things that specifically affect humanoids, but vulnerable to fire and plant affecting magic. It remains to be seen how much the adventures will make these benefits & drawbacks significant in actual play.



The centrefold is once again the map of the Malatran plateau, only with a bunch of new details added onto it showing where the newly discovered tribes live. There's still plenty of blank space around the edges, so you still have room to add more, but the sum total of knowledge is definitely expanding there. Let's hope all these various races can figure out how to co-exist peacefully.



Heroes of Malatra: This is also pretty much identical to issue 102, only with the new races added on. They're designed in much the same way, with quite conservative level limits of 10 as fighters and 5-9 in whatever else is permitted. The ability score allocations, allowed equipment, rules on hero points, roleplaying advice, etc is mostly identical, to the point of being a direct copy and paste. That's how you know they're doing this on computer now and can just pull up the old files and make minor edits instead of retyping the whole thing. Now hopefully they'll get a new wave of people who want to join up and keep the setting growing further.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996



part 4/5



Contests: When Jean was in charge, they ran a new contest nearly every month, although many of them never got enough submissions to have winners declared and died obscure deaths. With all the quick changes, they've let that slip a bit. But Jeff Quick to the rescue! Unsurprisingly given the issue theme, it's a Living Jungle one, looking for yet more types of Katanga. What tropical animal do you think would make for cool PC's? Winner gets their idea added to the official options for the setting. Don't make them too powerful mechanically, or we'll have to nerf them.



A World of Your Own: Roger goes for a nonhuman option that isn't available in Malatra. (yet) Centaurs! What would a world where the dominant race are four-legged and longer than they are tall look like? Very few buildings more than one storey tall, that's for sure, and much wider design in general so you can't get stuck in a narrow corridor unable to turn around. On the other hand, everyone being able to travel faster overland and carry more stuff while doing so would speed along the development of trade and exploration, particularly if their digestive system can still survive off grass alone for any length of time. (which also implies very flexible torsos.) He isn't willing to be so radical as to ban bipeds altogether though, so there are still some in the world, but mostly giants and purely in an antagonistic role. This also means he can still use at least a few published adventures, although extra care will have to be made double-checking the layouts to see which are now suddenly much harder or impossible to navigate. (anything with ladders in particular) So this is a pretty interesting theme, but he doesn't seem able to fully commit to it, putting in compromises simply because it would be too much effort to work out how everything would function under these constraints from whole cloth. Like campaigns entirely in space or underwater, it might seem like a cool idea, but at some point the writer is going to put in handwaves like artificial gravity just so they don't have to stop and remember the ramifications of just how different things are there all the time and enjoy a few conventional action scenes. You could definitely implement this better than him and good luck to you if you feel inclined to try.



Living City Rulebook: Another of their increasingly frequent attempts to make sure everyone knows exactly what house rules they should be using in their tournament games. Make sure you track your encumbrance, initiative modifiers, weapon speeds and spell component costs. Terrain types, facing, logical effects of heat vision, pay attention to them. Let them hover at death's door instead of dying instantly at 0hp. So far, all standard rules, erring on the crunchy side in most cases. Then there's the bits where it differs from the corebooks. Alignment changes are highly discouraged, and of course if you become evil that's an instaban. Darts have been nerfed so you can't throw tons of them and multiply your full strength bonus out. If you're high enough level to have followers (all the half a dozen people that applies to ) you can't bring them adventuring with you. You can only pick up items if they're listed as treasure at the end of the module and have certificates - even if it makes no sense diagetically, you can't loot the stuff carried by opponents or steal from NPC's unless specifically permitted. Maybe their bodies go poof when killed like video game monsters or something. Similarly, if your PC dies, you can't leave any of your items to your next one and there are strict rules on your ability to donate your items to PC's owned by other players. (and once again no PvP looting allowed) Where they're unrealistic for the sake of keeping unexpected things from happening, they go hard on it. Another reminder why I have no desire to play in a campaign like this, as hitting arbitrary plot walls or suddenly losing your character for impersonally bureaucratic OOC reasons is very irritating.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996



part 5/5



TSR hosts it's first official Living Tournaments over the internet at Conline in July! Anyone worldwide can get some more XP for their characters as long as they have a reliable connection and can pay the phone bill for 4 solid hours logged on. Not a trivial cost in that era but probably cheaper than flying to the USA and back for a weekend so still a nice boost in accessibility for international members.



The Raven's Bluff Trumpeter: The tides of war are gradually shifting back towards the home team, but they're taking serious losses along the way. They've rebuilt Belgard's Stand and protected Mossbridges, revealed that the closed up magic shop (probably) wasn't a betrayal and is willing to donate all it's remaining stock to the war effort, but pirates continue to be a major problem, supply chains grow ever more stretched and now lower planar forces seem to be involved as well. They used their teleporting powers to kidnap the lord mayor, forcing several rapid promotions in the city council and serious evaluation of what magical defences they can put up. Are they summoned minions to earthly big bads, or the masterminds behind this whole conflict? (or some complicated double-cross where they let others think they're in charge and pull strings from the shadows) In any case, it's a worrying development, as once fiends are involved in a situation it can be very hard to get rid of them.

They also continue the niggling about certificates from last article. The Gowns of Protection in Opposites Attract were supposed to only have been given to priests of Sune. If you got one and you don't meet that prerequisite, no you didn't and please return it to the temple (discard the certificate) before next tournament and we'll say no more about it. What, no hunting them down IC? That's no fun. Don't know why we even bother if they're going to rip adventure awards away because of a basic administrative mistake.



Notes From HQ: Jeff continues to establish his brand as return to old school jokeyness in here, spending most of it taking the piss out his superiors while they're off at conventions. There's no new rules changes as a result, but as ever, they want more contributions from their readers, and are planning on starting a new column where clubs can tell the rest of the RPGA what cool things they've done recently. Let's reestablish that community spirit, or create it if you're in a country which doesn't have many RPG events in yet, preventing you from fully participating in the Living Tournament side of things. Keep on sending in those articles and ideas! They do have to shoot down one cool idea hard though. No, you can't do anything significant during downtime with your Living City characters. If you can't do something over the natural course of the tournament adventures or attend one of the few freeform interactives per year they do at big conventions, you can't do it. We don't have the staff to handle it. (although weirdly enough, the Living Earthdawn campaign does involve downtime submissions, but I guess there are far fewer players in that so it's easier to keep it all organised) Maybe if the judge/player ratio was better they could rope in a few volunteers to process all the paperwork downtime would involve, but under the current regime, they're not even going to try. Somewhat of a downer to end things on, but at the same time I can fully understand why they'd feel that way.



A pretty decent set of both Living material here, and things useful for wider Forgotten Realms campaigns as well. Another issue that shows just how much Polyhedron has contributed to the setting, pushing it to being their dominant one over the course of the 90's even more than Dragon did. But it'll still be nice to take a break from that, and see what kind of worlds Dungeon will be visiting this time around. As nice as the Realms are, I can only consume so much of them in one sitting.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 1/5



80 pages. The contrast on these covers continues to get worse. I know you're down in the dungeon, but you need to strike a balance between realistic light levels and depicting things in a useful manner. Particularly if the things being depicted are weird ones like a kuo-toa asking you to paint him like your french fishes. On second thoughts, maybe a well-lit full frontal isn't such a good idea in this case. Let's see if the adventures inside have any spectacularly bad ideas in them.



Letters: First two letters continue on from last issue in praising their art people. Don't take them for granted when they can make such a big difference to how well an adventure is remembered and used.

Third is from someone who wants them to continue to support lots of different settings. Travel broadens the mind, so why wouldn't adventurers want to discover new and interesting cultures? (then kill them & take their stuff)

Fourth is much more conservative, and wants fewer setting specific adventures and fewer titles that are obvious spoilers. Sure good players will still roleplay their characters being surprised by events, but it's not quite the same.

Fifth praises them for publishing something as nasty as A Mother's Curse. TSR doesn't need to be all nice and family friendly all the time. The satanic panic people would complain anyway, at least until they focus on a new target and you become useful in that, like using Harry Potter to attack trans people after decades of hating it for promoting witchcraft.

Finally, one of the many complaints that they don't publish enough high level adventures. Send them in please, as this is one they really would like to fix, given how frequently it recurs.



Editorial: The editorial instability continues. Dave Gross heads up to Dragon, while Anthony Bryant does a swap with him and takes on the lead role here. Not sure why but if it keeps them excited over what they're covering it might turn out for the better. Of course in hindsight we know it's all shuffling deckchairs on a sinking ship, but at least they're trying. And to be fair, at least they've remembered that they made it a full 10 years, although that's easier here because they've never changed the frequency of publication or taken a break so far. As the letters page shows, they're still wrestling with the question of keeping variety up without alienating people, this time trying to thread the needle by encouraging people to submit adventures that aren't set in specific worlds, but still use unusual elements from less commonly referenced sourcebooks like their historical line. Just don't use so many that it's incomprehensible to people who only have the corebooks. Another instance where switching the person at the top isn't going to make a big difference, because they're still both in the offices, discussing things and coming to conclusions on the overall direction of the magazines. There won't be any radical plans to save the day coming from here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 2/5



Shards of the Day: It's entirely recurring writers this issue, reminding us that it has been 10 years and they've built up a whole bunch of habits, for better or worse. First up is Randy Maxwell with his 16th successful submission, a trip down to the underdark that's easily incorporated into their recent Night Below mega adventure. The PC's are hired to get hold of the themed set of magical swords known as the shards of the day, each having powers based upon a different time, plus synergistic ones when used together. Anything else they find down there in the process they can keep themselves. This turns out to be a pretty good deal, as there's a lot to explore in the abandoned dwarven city of Dylvwyllynn. Like Waen Fawr from issue 46, rather than doing it as one big map, they give you a bunch of cutout tiles for city districts, some of which uniquely represent one area, while others appear multiple times in different orientations to show your basic housing and commercial districts, giving you tons to explore as players, and lots of spare room as a DM to put further encounters of your own design in. The current inhabitants are similarly varied, with a good mix of underdark races of different alignments and degrees of hostility, a bunch of specific encounters in certain places and then lots of less defined rooms where you'll be rolling on the random encounter table a lot if you hang around.

So this is an old school dungeon crawling sandbox in the style of I1 that's much too large for a group of PC's to kill everyone and take everything in one delve, forcing them to map things out, choose their fights carefully and sometimes talk to the natives, think regularly about whether to press on or head back to heal and resupply. (although a little knowledge of fungi will go a long way in solving any food supply issues) It doesn't unseat Tortles of the Purple Sage as the largest sandbox they've ever done in here, but it's still comfortably somewhere in the top ten of adventures that are likely to last the most sessions in actual play, particularly if you put the effort in to add a few more details and connect it to other underdark adventures as they suggest. Not groundbreaking, but a pleasingly ambitious and page count efficient example of a type of adventure they've done very few of in recent years.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 3/5



Nemesis: Well there's a title that spoils nothing, being so utterly generic that it's the title of over 50 movies and considerably more specific episodes of TV shows. Even putting (year) after googling will still sometimes get multiple results. Fortunately, the contents are considerably less generic, as it's another Chris Perkins Planescape epic. The PC's are caught up in the machinations of a Marilith collecting a set of powerful magical swords so she can slice & dice her arch-nemesis with overpowered 6-handed death. (which means it could easily be connected with the previous adventure with only minimal alterations) What initially seems like a simple kidnapping case takes you into a particularly unpleasant layer of the Abyss called Vudra, where everything is poisonous, so sticking around will require consuming substantial magical resources and you'd better get a move on and complete your mission. You'll need to make it through the yuan-ti tunnels, a rakshasa temple, and finally the shrine of the marilith, each with their own flavours of unpleasantness, then get back alive. Then when you get back to Sigil all the people she took the swords from in the first place will come out of the woodwork wanting them back, and you'll have to decide whether you want to do that or make some more powerful enemies. (and maybe kill them & take the rest of their stuff, although the text strongly discourages this because it's 2e and you're supposed to be the heroes.)

While longer in page count than Shards of the Day, this is much more linear and less efficient in how it uses that page count, with whole pages being spent on things like Dabus rebuses or how this adventure intersects with the long-term plans of Rule-of-Three, so it doesn't have the same general usefulness or actual play length. Not terrible, but it doesn't have the same kind of philosophical depth Umbra did and a fair amount of the bad kind of 2eish froofery strewn throughout. Not saying I wouldn't use it, since there aren't enough Planescape adventures to go around in general, but if it were a generic one of the same quality level I'd definitely have put this on the discard pile or sent it back for another editorial pass.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 4/5



Side Treks - Centaur of Attention: On the other hand, here's a pun title that completely encapsulates the contents of the adventure. An evil wizard lost his horse, cast feeblemind on a passing centaur and hitched him up to pull his wagon instead. This backfired as soon as he passed through the next village, which has enough elves in that they instantly know no centaur in their right mind would do this willingly so he must need to be rescued. Now he's surrounded by an angry but skittish mob and the PC's happen to be passing by. Will they join in enthusiastically and dispense summary mob justice, seek a slightly more diplomatic solution and trade the centaur for a regular horse so the wizard can be on his way without risking losing all the villagers in an AoE blast, or even side with the evil wizard and his right to magically enslave people and terrorise the villagers into submission. Another decent enough random encounter that's easy to drop into a campaign, doesn't force you into a particular solution and has potential to be expanded into a more lengthy quest, as even once you rescue the centaur you'll also need to find someone to cure him if you're not high enough level to do it yourself. Plus it might encourage you to play a centaur in the future yourself, which they just covered in Polyhedron this month, hint hint. These continue to be as consistently usable as ever, if anything moreso than the big adventures.

 

[el-remmen]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 4/5



Side Treks - Centaur of Attention: On the other hand, here's a pun title that completely encapsulates the contents of the adventure. An evil wizard lost his horse, cast feeblemind on a passing centaur and hitched him up to pull his wagon instead. This backfired as soon as he passed through the next village, which has enough elves in that they instantly know no centaur in their right mind would do this willingly so he must need to be rescued. Now he's surrounded by an angry but skittish mob and the PC's happen to be passing by. Will they join in enthusiastically and dispense summary mob justice, seek a slightly more diplomatic solution and trade the centaur for a regular horse so the wizard can be on his way without risking losing all the villagers in an AoE blast, or even side with the evil wizard and his right to magically enslave people and terrorise the villagers into submission. Another decent enough random encounter that's easy to drop into a campaign, doesn't force you into a particular solution and has potential to be expanded into a more lengthy quest, as even once you rescue the centaur you'll also need to find someone to cure him if you're not high enough level to do it yourself. Plus it might encourage you to play a centaur in the future yourself, which they just covered in Polyhedron this month, hint hint. These continue to be as consistently usable as ever, if anything moreso than the big adventures.

I'm keeping this one in my back pocket as needed. For a higher level group, I have the wizard be part of an unscrupulous adventuring party using the poor centaur to haul the loot from their previous adventure, to provide some more challenge and keep it from being the PCs just simply killing the wizard, if he does not present a enough of a danger.

 

[Ancalagon]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 4/5



Side Treks - Centaur of Attention: On the other hand, here's a pun title that completely encapsulates the contents of the adventure. An evil wizard lost his horse, cast feeblemind on a passing centaur and hitched him up to pull his wagon instead. This backfired as soon as he passed through the next village, which has enough elves in that they instantly know no centaur in their right mind would do this willingly so he must need to be rescued. Now he's surrounded by an angry but skittish mob and the PC's happen to be passing by. Will they join in enthusiastically and dispense summary mob justice, seek a slightly more diplomatic solution and trade the centaur for a regular horse so the wizard can be on his way without risking losing all the villagers in an AoE blast, or even side with the evil wizard and his right to magically enslave people and terrorise the villagers into submission. Another decent enough random encounter that's easy to drop into a campaign, doesn't force you into a particular solution and has potential to be expanded into a more lengthy quest, as even once you rescue the centaur you'll also need to find someone to cure him if you're not high enough level to do it yourself. Plus it might encourage you to play a centaur in the future yourself, which they just covered in Polyhedron this month, hint hint. These continue to be as consistently usable as ever, if anything moreso than the big adventures.

... and just by reading this review, I feel I could run this adventure. Sometimes the core idea is more important than anything else. Fun stuff!

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 60: Jul/Aug 1996



part 5/5



Iasc: Willie Walsh gives us his 22nd and final adventure in here, apparently losing touch with them after the WotC takeover and not contributing to gaming again until 2009 with a couple of Pathfinder products. He is repeating ideas somewhat, as it's another extremely celtic flavoured adventure. The PC's are passing through a culturally appropriate bit of land when they come across a whole heap of slaughtered cattle. Their owners show up just after and think the PC's did it. This means you have to either track down the real culprits to clear your name or become persona non grata in the area and face the full force of the law if caught. (cattle are serious business around here) Unsurprisingly, the majority of the page count assumes you'll take the heroic route. Fortunately, the killers weren't particularly subtle, so it's easy enough to find clues and track them to their lair. Turns out it's a bunch of Kuo-Toa that came up from the underdark. (providing you with another potential way to get down to the city in Shards of the Day, making the adventures in this issue unusually interconnected) Kill them, retrieve the stuff they took from the lands above and take it back to it's owners and all will be forgiven. The dungeoncrawl part of this is pretty small and unexceptional, easily fitting in a single session, while the sociological stuff before and after is more interesting and feels like that's where his real focus lies. Basically, it's more promotion for their Celts sourcebook, which it has to be said does do some interesting things altering the base assumptions from the corebooks. Still entirely usable, but not his greatest work and feels like he's getting tired of the whole dungeoncrawling formula. I can understand his moving on from the magazine after reading this.



One very good adventure in here, then a load of middling quality stuff by regular writers which feels like it was picked for name recognition reasons to make the anniversary a bigger deal, and then wasn't edited as strictly as they have been in the past. All these changes in staff are definitely having an effect on the final product, and unlike polyhedron they aren't doing any large scale metaplot developments that might make up for that. One to push on from and hope they try something different in the next issue.