TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 17: Mar/Apr 1984



part 2/6


Encounters: Along with adding a full adventure, the mini adventure expands to 3 pages as well this issue, although a significant fraction of that is made up of artwork. Explore an abandoned temple and discover it's secrets. There are a fair number of snakes involved, so unprepared characters may die abruptly, but some of the challenges have rotted away, so it's not as dangerous as it could be. A nice diversion on the way between bigger quests that could pay off nicely, or be a dead-end, depending on the skill and caution of the players. That's a good little bit of dungeon-crawling which I could happily use several times.



Cryptic Alliance of the Bi-Month: Our second alliance are written pretty strongly as villains. Pureblood racial supremacists who use knightly symbolism and want to exterminate all mutants? They know exactly what they're doing here, and only an idiot would nazi it even if they don't explicitly spell it out. You can't help having politics in your gaming if the setting building goes beyond white room one-on-one fights, it's just a question of what kind, and how directly they parallel our struggles in real life. And it's obvious that issues of racism are still all too relevant in the postapocalyptic radioactive wasteland, with creatures judging each other on their appearance rather than their behaviour. If they could all learn to get along and use their various mutant powers in harmony civilisation would rapidly be rebuilt bigger and better than ever and then it'd be an entirely different game.



Variants, House Rules & Hybrids: Sigh. Time for another lengthy bit of largely negative DM advice exhorting players to tone it down, play it by the book, and look very carefully before introducing new stuff into your game. Too many poorly thought out creatures, classes and house rules will rapidly make the game less fun, not more. They really are having to repeat the same basic idea a lot, in different wordings, from different angles, over and over again, as the nature of gamers means they'll lawyer every ruling and push at every limit you impose upon them. It's very tiresome to read, and I'm sure even more tiresome for them to write, as people keep sending in ideas that they think are awesome, but are mostly both poorly written, and poorly designed on a mathematical level. (and also surprisingly repetitive, somehow the same "cool" class ideas pop up over and over again, showing their imaginations aren't actually all that imaginative either.) This shows no signs of resolving itself any time soon, and is another waste of space from my perspective.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 17: Mar/Apr 1984



part 3/6



The Incants of Ishcabeble: Part 6 of the prophecy of Brie delivers another round of alliteration, riddles, puns and puzzles, as the PC's try to get to the top of a wizard's tower. Even more than last time, you'll need both your puzzle brain and your tolerance for bad jokes fully functional if you're going to get anywhere beyond the ground floor. Whoopee cushions, extremely specialised magical items, a combination of long & deadly fights and surprisingly easy fakeouts, this is pretty irritating, and definitely not one I'd want to be involved in as a DM or a player. I'm definitely starting to see why they cancelled them as standalone modules. Just …… no.



The Fighter: Having spent a whole load of time telling you what your characters shouldn't look like, they decide positive reinforcement is as important as negative, and set out to give us an example of what a medium-high level character SHOULD look like. Or at least, what their trappings should look like, as they go into great detail about his personality, equipment, history, likes and dislikes, but not his actual statistics (although given that he has followers and a keep, and counting up the amount of money he'e earned in his adventures, he's probably in the 12-14th level range.) It's quite interesting, and shows that friendships and favours won over the course of your adventures can be just as important rewards as riches and magic items, especially if you make them unique and fleshed out in their own right. That's how you set a good example. They could do a lot more of this without it getting repetitive than nagging columns about game balance, so I definitely prefer it.



Two New NPC's: Having spent two pages describing a single character, they then decide to switch up the approach and give both the stats and personalities of two more in a single page. This obviously means somewhat less depth, but also more immediate usability in your own game. They're the same class, level and alignment, but differ a fair amount in their other stats and items, serving as a good example of how even in this edition, characters can wind up being customised in play. Put together, this shows a definite agenda, to demonstrate that even the most vanilla class in the game can be interesting if properly played, and you don't need to constantly add new ones to be cool. Nice effort, but that's a battle you're going to lose in the long run, with subsequent editions racking up the customisability of every class. The average player wants a little more mechanical choice and less randomness than the designers are giving them at the moment, and it'll take the company dying and being taken over before they properly cater to it.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 17: Mar/Apr 1984



part 4/6



Disguised Weapons: Unsurprisingly, there's always a market for new gadgets in Top Secret. Here's another 6 of them. Multipurpose tools that can also be used as weapons are great for a spy, as you can take them places you couldn't take an obvious weapon, or use them for their other purpose in your everyday undercover life and keep them around just in case. I have a definite fondness for these sort of things, and have bought several of them (the cheap joke shop versions, not the expensive serious ones) over the years. So a collection like this is pretty cool. As an extra plus, all of these look like they're within the bounds of physics and could actually exist in reality. (<<) (>>) Muahahaha, how very tempting. I shall have to investigate this further.



Wishes have their limits: Time for another chunky helping of swatting the players on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and telling them NO! BAD PLAYERS! NO BREAKING THE GAME WITH PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER! The problem is so pervasive they couldn't even keep it to one article per month. So yeah, a detailed explanation of precisely how non-omnipotent wishes are in AD&D. What they can't do full stop, what is more powerful than them, and what can partially resist them. It all illustrates pretty effectively how limited even 9th level spells are compared to the spells of legend and literature, and that they could have designed many levels further up, giving them even more leeway to create effects both orders of magnitude larger in scope and somewhat greater flexibility. There's no reason the game should hit diminishing returns after 18th level other than failure of mathematical rigour. Hell, Birthright showed that you can introduce magic of much vaster scope even at low level as long as you multiply the costs to cast it accordingly as well. Another strong illustration of just how much better designed the system could be, and how often people had fun in spite of it, rather than because of it. There's still a long way to go, and a lot of stuff to add between then and now that'll show just how awesome characters can be and still have interesting and significant challenges.



DM Talk: While disciplining the player's excesses is important, learning to be a good DM is just as important, for otherwise your games will fall apart over and over again, and you'll soon wind up with no-one to play with. This is less about knowing the rules than it is about knowing your players, and their skill level, likes and dislikes. Even if you're a skilled GM, if there's a mismatch, there'll still be problems. Aside from the definite playstyle snobbery putting Real Roleplaying over system mastery, this is a pretty standard bit of advice, neither particularly innovative or particularly annoying. Meh.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 17: Mar/Apr 1984



part 5/6



Dispel Confusion:

D&D

How does Zargon grant spells if he's not a god? (Franchising. If you beat him, there's a greater evil still to vanquish in the future. )

How does a ring of weakness interact with strength-boosting magical items? (It overrides them)

Are magen affected by Charm Person? (no)

Can you save magic missiles for later after casting? (yes) Does detect invisibility count for targeting them? (yes)

Is a ship's crew figured into their weight capacity? (yes)

Are there female dwarves? (Yes, and their beards are just as thick and lustrous as the men's)

Can you put wights to sleep? (no)

What happens when a Held Door is opened? (if it's closed again, it relocks. The spell don't give up that easy.)

Can you resist a Helm of Telepathy (if you save successfully)

AD&D

Does turning undead have verbal components? (no) How long does it take? (0 segments on your turn)

Can clerics have familiars? (no)

Can a banshee be turned? (not in this system)

Can Neutral clerics Turn or Control undead? (Depends which way they lean)

Are Monks a subclass? (no. Their own thing.)

Can you dual class within the same type of class (No)

Which levels are drained first when dual class characters get hit by undead? (the current one)

Boot Hill

Shouldn't a repeating rifle do more than a derringer? (Nope)

How do the penalties work when dual drawing guns? (-3 to each of their individual stats)

What does reload rate mean? (x per turn, not 1/x)

Isn't Morgan Earp a bit too good with that gun? (Yes, we goofed our math)

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 17: Mar/Apr 1984



part 6/6



Dispel confusion continued:

Gamma World

Where is the turbine car? (We forgot to put it in 2nd ed, but didn't erase all the references. Here's the details)

When does a Portent's damage absorption refresh? (every round)

How do I play plants under the new edition? (the old edition's rules still work fine)

How do Terl Feathers protect against radiation (Changing color as a warning.)

Can you use Jet Spray Drugs as weapons? (Yes, but watch out for wind blowing it back in your face)

Can you skate using the antigrav sled? (Oh yes)

How can poison turn things to stone?! (Gamma World is soft sci-fi. Don't stress your little head about it too much.)

Star Frontiers

How many skills can you know? (as many as you have the XP for. Room for many years of adventuring!)

Do Dralasites have two-weapon penalties? (yes)

Can hand weapons hurt starships? (a few of the strongest ones)

Can astrogators precalculate all their jumps on planet? (no. space is ever shifting.)

Can launchers fire more than once? (Yes, but not more than once per turn)

Can ion drives take off from a planet (no)

Can ion drives do interstellar flight (yes) How much fuel does it take? (7200 credits worth)

Top Secret

How can a weapon have negative damage? (When you're trying to use a missile weapon in hand to hand combat. )

What and where is situation 3? (in the 1st ed corebook, but not the 2nd)

What are air guns for? (Nonlethal fighting. Sometimes you really do want to keep your enemies alive.

How much does speargun ammo cost? ($2. You can halve that by retrieving and reusing the spears.)

Is Sneak Attack damage aded to regular damage? (no, it replaces it)

What other items can you use for lockpicking (All sorts of stuff. Too many to list, so it's up to GM rule of thumb. )



With a fair share of good articles, but also more than it's fair share of interestingly bad articles, this veered between entertaining and irritating quite a few times. So some stuff you might want to use, and some which should deservedly stay in the dustbin of history where it belongs. At least they were low on blandly boring stuff this time. Let's see if that'll continue next time.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 18: May/Jun 1984



part 1/6



32 pages. Spider-man vs the Scorpion fighting across the New York train lines. That is a turnup for the books. The Marvel Superhero RPG had a long and healthy run of articles in Dragon lasting nearly 10 years. It'll definitely be interesting to see if that's matched in here, and what else they can add to it. Which characters and scenarios will they decide to focus on in polyhedron and will they be any good? Let's get web swinging, because the city isn't going to save itself.



From the editor: Unsurprisingly, the editorial is also very enthusiastic about the arrival of Marvel material. They've included multiple articles on it, making it a themed issue. May they have a long and fruitful collaboration. They're also happy that their request for more reader-submitted articles is paying off. Hopefully that'll also continue without constantly needing to be asked for over and over again. Finally, and most significantly, they've brought Penny Petticord on as an official member of staff. She's been doing a lot of the behind the scenes organisational stuff in their convention tournaments right from the start, and her hard work has been recognised and rewarded. Get used to her, because she'll be sticking around for a long time in one role or another. The money might be nice, but she's the kind of person who would keep on doing this stuff without it. Without people like her, a hobby would eventually grind to a halt. Long may this silly little game of let's pretend continue to draw us into it.



Encounters: The Scorpion has captured J. Jonah Jameson! Spider-Man had better rescue him quickly, otherwise he'll probably wind up with a new, more pleasant boss at his day job! It's a hard job, being a hero, living with those kind of moral dilemmas, torn between the greater good and maybe, just once, getting ahead in life. So this is a pretty good introductory scenario for the game, written from the perspective that many of the readers won't know the rules yet, and need reminding that this is not D&D, so killing all your opponents without regard for collateral damage is not the way to go. In fact, even one intentional killing will make you lose all your Karma, which could be weeks or months of saved up advancement lost. If you aren't willing to get into the spirit of things and subdue, trick, imprison or banish your enemies instead, (and accept that they'll probably be back at some point) using this system won't go well for you. Very interesting indeed. It's definitely good that they're thinking about genre emulation, and not just recycling the same system for every game with a few cosmetic changes. A very pleasing start to the articles indeed.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 18: May/Jun 1984



part 2/6



Cryptic Alliance of the Bi-month: We've had a group of human supremacists in here. Now they show that mutant supremacists also exist, and are no more pleasant to outsiders if you don't meet their fairly stringent standards. Unless radiation resistance is part of your powerset, there's no way you'll survive living with them long enough to be accepted, for they make their homes in only the hottest of hot spots. This makes them difficult to root out, but also limits their expansion, and ensures they'll never be able to conquer the world in general, as the mutations creatures manifest will always be unpredictable no matter how selectively you breed for them, and a big chunk of your babies will wind up dying horribly in their early years. Once again you're more likely to be using these guys as antagonists than as a group the players want to join, as they don't play well with others and unless the whole group is strongly mutated, there'll be definite split loyalties if just one or two PC's join. That'd cause problems in game. Use with caution.



Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing!: We had a Marvel Superheroes adventure. Now, unsurprisingly, we have the straight promotional article that works hard to make the game seem cool, but is of no use once you've actually bought it. Your stats don't have numbers, they have cool adjectives so you can describe how awesome your are mid-action in a snappy fashion (but they still run on numbers behind the scenes) They have a universal resolution mechanic with degrees of success rather than a straight binary pass/fail, although you'll need to keep the reference table on hand. There's lots of emphasis on genre emulation, with stuff on balancing your everyday life and your superheroic activities, measuring wealth, connections and popularity on top of your more intrinsic stats. There are a few bits that seem dated by modern standards, (secret identities in particular have mostly died with the rise of the camera phone, and the random generation of characters & relatively small selection of powers won't be to many player's tastes ) but overall, it's a much more elegant and focussed system than AD&D that you can still have fun with today. Now can we get past the promotion and see some new material for it?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 18: May/Jun 1984



part 3/6



Kobolds and robots and mutants with wings: We've had a fair few crossover articles over the years where they take something from one system/world, then put it in another one. This one puts a more unusual spin on that, asking what happens if they go there and come back. Take a group of kobolds, the smallest and weediest of the common humanoid races, put them in gamma world where their fast breeding means they pick up a lot of mutations while weeding out the bad ones, and then if they find their way back to a standard fantasy world, they'll be in a much better position to expand and thrive, as they're both more powerful individually, and have picked up a bunch of technological tricks. So this is pretty cool material for two systems, that could be used in either, or as a bridging scenario between the two, setting things up for further crossover adventures. That's both inventive and a good use of their page count. Two thumbs up.



Llywelyn's Tomb: Part 7 of the Prophecy of Brie is thankfully a little more serious than the previous instalments. Instead of whimsical wizardly puzzles and riddles, it's the somewhat more prosaic irritation of facing lots of undead, in a place with turn resistance, so your clerics don't get to completely dominate the proceedings. There's still a fair bit of trickery involved, and an interesting mechanism where the big bad draws power from it's minions, so it's best to take some of those out before going for it. Overall, it's a definite step upwards from the last two. Let's see if the final is suitable climactic, or if it'll go out with a splutter.



The Magic-User: Looks like they're trying to make a series out of these articles showcasing several characters of the same class and showing how to differentiate them. as with the last one, their precise stats aren't given, but given the degree of history, spell selection, and magic items they have, they're well into name level and pretty dangerous in both the personal and political arena. There's also a bunch of variant spells casually tossed into the text, stronger or weaker versions of existing ones with the levels changed accordingly. It's all a lot more fantastical than the fighter one, but I guess that's not surprising. the important thing though, is that it's full of specific quirky details that are good hooks for actual play, rather than making the character an all-powerful unbeatable mary-sue that might be the DM's wet dream, but would be no fun when players encounter them. Let's hope they can keep the editorial control on that going and give us good examples for all the classes.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 18: May/Jun 1984



part 4/6



Two New NPC's: Following on from last article, two other wizards get fully statted out. As with last issue, they're quite different in both personality and the way they use their powers. One is cautious and likes to use his divinations to help out from behind the scenes, while the other likes to blast things to naughty word with liberal use of charged magic items. Both have disgustingly high ability scores that definitely weren't rolled up randomly, which is a bit tiresome, but oh well. They still have enough quirks and backstory plot hooks to be interesting and easy to use in your own campaign, which is what we need out of articles like this.



Two Cents: Instead of a forum where lots of different people give their opinions on all sorts of topics, this column is turned into soapbox for one reader to expound on their likes, dislikes and playstyle. Joseph Wichman is very much against PvP and evil characters, somewhat disapproves of railroading, and is in favour of keeping IC and OOC knowledge properly separated. Nothing too unusual there. We all want freedom to do what we want with our characters, but have to learn to get along with others so we don't step on their freedom's too much and ruin other people's enjoyment of the game. If you want to play a game where competition against the other players is the intended purpose, there are a lot of rulesets better suited to it than D&D.



Layover at Lossend: Our Star Frontiers material has a deeply cringy attack of old school racism, as the PC's have to deal with intelligent apemen while en route from planet Gollywog. That's either very unfortunate, or an entirely intentional and nasty bit of dogwhistle association, especially as said apemen fill all the superstitious primitive stereotypes. I think it's safe to say I won't be touching this one with a 10 foot pole. Whether it was intended maliciously or not, it can stay buried in the past where it belongs.



Money makes the World go Round: We conclude with another fairly basic bit of advice. Make sure the PC's have plenty to spend the treasure they found during their adventures on. Between training, currency conversion fees, taxes, restocking food and supplies, hunting out new plot hooks and outright robbery, there's a lot of ways you can eat into their savings and force them to get back on the road again. If they want to invest in the stock market or buy up property and become a landlord to make their wealth self-sustaining they'll have to make a conscious effort to do so. That's both realistic and sensible, although you might still want to be a little kinder on them than reality is to us. After all, it is supposed to be a game. Nothing particularly surprising about this. Another middle of the road little article.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 18: May/Jun 1984



part 5/6



Dispel Confusion:

D&D

Can Gold dragons use breath weapons while polymorphed? (no)

Can you use blunt weapons to subdue? (yes)

What does a rust monster have to roll to hit a weapon? (your regular AC)

How do you decide what weapons humanoids use? (However you choose)

What weapons can't halflings use? (ones that would be two-handed for humans)

Can Trolls use a crossbow? (If they feel like it. Are you going to tell them they can't?)

Can you cast spells on Gaseous creatures (if they don't require touch. )

AD&D

Can you cast prismatic wall on a creature (yes, but it's only affected if it comes out then goes back in again, not if it stays still inside it.)

Which spells does an energy drained spellcaster lose (a random one from the spell levels affected)

How does parrying work? (not very well in this edition)

Is Belial more handsome than Asmodeus. (Possibly, but never say so to asmodeus's face.)

Does dual-classing give you all the proficiencies of both? (yes)

Can a spellcaster choose to do less damage with a fireball (no)

Does a pyrolisk really have 43 HD? (No, only 4+3, thankfully)

What happen if passwall is dispelled while someone is in it. (unless they can break out fairly soon, they suffocate)

What happens if shadow monsters use save or suck effects (they have a flat chance of failing equal to their unrealness on top of the regular save)

Boot Hill

How much do civilian scouts really earn? (Depends how good your negotiating skills are)

How can brawling get a 5% bonus if scores aren't percentile? (5% = +1. We'll fix that next edition, baby.)

How does soldier experience work with regular experience (the same, until you hit the cap, then you need to go out and do it solo to get any further.)