TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 22: Jan/Feb 1985



part 2/6



Marlgoyles & Monster Manual II: Gary talks some more about the more powerful gargoyle variant that even he can't spell correctly consistently and their life cycle. They can easily last several centuries if they're decently fed and don't run into misadventure, but many will become dinner to their own siblings at a young age, or pick the wrong target, for D&D is full of bigger, badder monsters than them, and they aren't particularly inclined to using technology and teamwork to enhance their natural abilities.
He also includes another monster entry that was cut from Monster Manual II, stats for amazon warriors. Since they're basically just people, this is no great loss, unlike the Goristro, (which he also can't spell consistently) which he put in the corresponding issue of Dragon, and went onto be quite popular in Planescape many years later. This is all a big reminder that he really needs a good editor, but at this point is too important and busy to properly communicate with them, so ideas are getting published that really don't have enough doublechecking and playtesting. There are definite drawbacks to having a superstar CEO.



Spelling Bee: Another round of short comments on lots of druid spells. They're pretty handy, but have their limitations, especially if you venture into unnatural environments. Call Lightning is usually useless unless you have some other method of creating a storm in the first place. Water breathing can be reversed if you want to help a fish out. Bears are one of the best animals to summon or turn into. Arachnids are not insects, and fungi are not plants, so remember your taxonomy before you fire highly specific spells off. Some spells with the same name are of different power levels and details than when used by other classes. All pretty dry stuff that doesn't give me much to comment on. Don't hesitate to use them cleverly. After all, druids are under no obligation to fight fair like paladins in their eternal job to maintain the balance.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 22: Jan/Feb 1985



part 3/6



The RPGA Network Tournament Ranking System: What level are you in real life? If you played in the RPGA from the mid 80's, you can actually answer that honestly, and might even be a multiclass Player/Judge! Say hello to their new ranking method, intentionally stolen from their games because it works in them. You gain XP per tournament you participated in much the same way as the previous system, only now GM's get it as well. As with D&D levels, the amount of XP needed to gain each one increases exponentially until you hit Name Level, at which point it switches to linear. As it's new, there are no players over level 4, and all judges above that are TSR staff. (and I strongly suspect they were just assigned levels based on prestige, rather than painstakingly going through all the tournaments they've adjudicated in the past and figuring out how many points they should have fairly earned.) I wonder if this system'll last long enough for people to fairly work their way up to it's top levels before they change it again. A very interesting bit of history indeed. Anyone reading this manage to get to any kind of level under this system? How difficult was it to get your experience properly tracked, recorded and added to your membership profile?



In the Black Hours: In most adventures, the PC's go into a dungeon to kill things and take their stuff. In a quite amusing twist, this adventure put's it's thing down, flips it and reverses it, as your characters are hired to protect an exceedingly valuable (and dangerous) magic item from thieves. So it's up to them to secure a location the best they can against several waves of invaders, that'll use all kinds of underhanded methods to get their hands on the prize, including stealth, raw force, negotiation, bribery, lies and inconvenient half-truths. You'll definitely need your wits about you to get through all of them, and loading up on divination magic will be a huge help in dealing with all the plot twists. A very interesting little adventure indeed, that'll make a nice change of pace and maybe even give players a bit more sympathy for the monsters they usually hunt. No hesitation at all about using this one in my own campaigns.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 22: Jan/Feb 1985



part 4/6



Away with Words: Each of the last two Christmases, they included a word puzzle of some kind. Here's another one, albeit a little late. Do you know the meaning of 26 of the obscurest words in the dictionary? They really are very obscure indeed, because even I didn't know most of them this time around. Goes to show, no matter how much info you learn about one ultra-focussed area of study, there are still plenty more out there you're missing. One of the positive aspects of RPG's is that they can expand your vocabulary & mathematical skills and even teach you about history without it being boring. Nice to see they're still putting in the effort to educate as well as entertain us.



Unofficial new Spells for Clerics: Jon Pickens is one of our more organised staff members, doing a lot of the research and editing for their products. So here he asks a quite logical question. What spells were used to create magical items like a potion of heroism or ring of free action? The logical response is to reverse engineer those item effects into spells. Many of these would indeed go onto become official spells (or occasionally class features) in future editions, as they're pretty handy, but a few won't, or at least not in the same form. Still, it's a better hit to miss ratio than most articles, and a very interesting historical footnote. Often, improvements in the rules come from perspiration rather than inspiration, taking things that already exist, refining and building upon them. You need a decent proportion of people like that in a team to get the best out of your writers.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 22: Jan/Feb 1985



part 5/6



Dispel Confusion:

AD&D

How can a god be married to one of opposite alignment? (maybe the sex is just so good that they can overlook the little disagreements.)

Isn't Bigby too dumb to learn and cast his eponymous 9th level spell? (You really expect Gary's characters to be held to the same standards as yours?! Hahahaha, foolish peon!)

Can you merge two items together with a Wish? (Yes, although depending on the items, it may turn out weirdly)

Can you polymorph magic items? (yes, although intelligent ones can save)

Do dual class monks or paladins keep their equipment restrictions? (no, but that's because they lose all their powers. The gods don't like you splitting your focus like that.)

Do ropes of entanglement auto-hit? (no)

Can anti-magic shell cancel prismatic sphere? (only partially) What about a sphere of annihilation? (no. Shel go down de hooooole.)

Do Lycanthropes keep their full monstrous hit points in human form? (yes)

Do blessed crossbow bolts lose their purification as quickly as people? (no)

Do druids get bonus spells for high wisdom? (Yes)

D&D

Why are 25th level thieves worse than 14th level ones? ( We didn't plan ahead, and had to scale your expectations down to fit the full 36 levels)

It sucks that I have to buy the new basic & expert set to use the companion set (no, you don't. The presentation changed between editions but the rules are almost identical.)

How much do the new armor types cost? (Scale mail: 30GP. Banded Mail: 55GP)

Can a wizard use a sword in a pinch? (Yeah. This is why we have nonproficiency penalties in AD&D)

Star Frontiers

Can a Dralisite make 5 attacks per round if they grow enough limbs? (only if they have enough dex to co-ordinate them all)

Why do Yazirians walk more slowly than humans? (They're used to lower gravity and don't have the stamina)

Can you pull an anti-shock implant out? (yes, but it's gonna hurt.)

How do Vrusk drive? (They have special chairs to fold themselves around)

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 22: Jan/Feb 1985



part 6/6



Of Great Ships and Captains: Having given us the idea of running a spaceship based game, Roger delves a little more into the details. Make sure you've designed a proper layout for the ship, and know how big the crew is and what their jobs are. (if they're in the hundreds or thousands you don't have to stat every single one up individually, just general command structure and demographics.) You never know when enemies'll get onto the ship and you have to start tracking casualties and the environmental damage they do in their attacks. Brush up on your military hierarchies and tactics, because you'll need them at some point. This isn't bad advice, but it's obvious that he's working within the paradigm of crunch heavy simulationist gaming, and it hasn't occurred to him that you could step outside that box. Which is fine for Star Trek, but not so great if you want to emulate a fast-paced pulpy adventure like Star Wars. Oh well, you can't have everything in a few pages of article. There's plenty of time for him to have his mind expanded in the future.



The Treasure Chest: This makes a one-off reappearance to advertise their new modules. Frank Mentzer's R series were the star of the tournaments last year, and now you can own them at home. They still have some slipcases, tote bags, and jigsaw puzzles left over. Buy now while stocks last! Yawn. Absence has not made my heart any fonder of this kind of promotional stuff.



Lots of sequel articles in this one, showing they finally seem to be getting over their first big expansion and are no longer pitching everything at newbies. That's definitely a positive step for me. Let's see if they can get any deeper next time around, and if they can manage it without slipping into the other extreme of boring overcomplication.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 23: Mar/Apr 1985



part 1/6



28 pages. Tom Wham gives us a suitably goofy cover for our april fools issue. Looks like they have a substantial surplus from Dragon this year, so they're sharing the levity here. Let's see if the jokes will have any practical applications or lessons mixed in with the wit, or it'll be nothing but groan-inducing puns and filks.



Notes From HQ: The editorial is mostly serious, apart from an exceedingly verbose footnote in intentionally obscure vocabulary that tells us they have no plans to talk about the sex lives of monsters in D&D in the near future. They reassure anyone who got this as their first issue that it isn't normally like this in here. They can be serious about their fun, but all working on play makes Jack a dull boy and it's good to blow off steam once in a while. Normal transmissions will resume next issue.



Ultimists: Gary has certainly been guilty of power creep over the years, with the new classes he introduced, and will soon compile in Unearthed Arcana showing definite signs of escalation over the core ones. But they do have at least some balancing factors, in higher requirements to join and idiosyncratic behavioural restrictions. This is not the case in this parody of the worst twinks out there. Ultimists are indeed better than everyone at everything, able to outfight the fighters, outsneak the thieves, cast 9th level spells right from 1st level, and have really low XP requirements for advancement on top of that. The rules are functional and comprehensible, but obviously completely unbalanced and not intended for use in actual play. If you do try and mix them with regular characters, you deserve everything you get.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 23: Mar/Apr 1985



part 2/6



Why Gargoyles Don't have Wings (but should): The pedantry about whether gargoyles have wings or not, if they can fly even without them, and why all this happened in the first place gets expanded and parodied. Maybe they're detachable. Wait, that rings a bell. That's the plot of WG9, one of the worst modules TSR ever released! And that module was written by the same guy responsible for this article. So this bit of humour seems relatively innocuous in itself, but it's probably responsible for inspiring one of the most irritating and goofy adventures they ever tried to sell to the general public. What is amusing to read as a few pages of magazine becomes insulting as a full adventure you paid money for as a standalone product expecting something you could actually use without ruining the tone of your campaign. Which makes this article interesting from a historical perspective, but also a terrible warning to be careful what you laugh at, for you never know when it may spiral out of control and wind up becoming something you have to take seriously. The Rod of 7 Parts and A Paladin in Hell were cool even before being expanded out to full adventures. This is not nearly so auspicious a piece of inspiration.



The Lighter Side of Encounters: This column get two different mini-adventures this issue, neither connected to the cover. A comical chase scene as a ranger tries to catch up with an irksome Slaad, barreling across the party's path. Or you could run across a wizard that's polymorphed herself into a green slime for scouting purposes. As long as you don't attack on sight, you could make an ally here, but how many players will be that open-minded? While whimsical, both have fully functional statistics and take themselves seriously on a internal level, making them usable in a serious game without completely ruining the tone or breaking the system. That's the kind of humor I prefer. A fantasy game is always going to throw up absurd moments, but as long as the 4th wall remains mostly unbroken and the internal logic remains consistent, you can go with it and keep on building, see where it takes you.



Punnishments to fit the crime: Frank adds another couple of shaggy dog stories that are basically just buildups to terrible puns. Seen them before, likely to see them again. At least they're mercifully short this time. Nothing much to say about these.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 23: Mar/Apr 1985



part 3/6



New Magic Items: New classes and new magic items? When the newszine started, they intentionally said they didn't want to include these kinds of things because they didn't want to step on Dragon's toes. Of course, they also said the same thing about modules, and eventually changed their mind on that front too. So while these are joke articles, I strongly suspect they'll be serving as a gateway drug to serious ones in the future. After all, new classes, spells & magic items are popular submissions, and you can do much more of them without repeating yourself than generic advice about how to run a game properly, so it's only natural that they'd increase in frequency as time goes on. That said, while some of these items are silly, all have practical uses, often quite flexible. The Canister of Condiments is a particularly good melding of silly trappings with substantial usefulness, and both types of sweet tooth are incredibly powerful and have the additional benefit of not filling a standard item slot. Meanwhile the Eye Bead and Stone of Cold immunity are just perfectly straight items, no jokes at all, easily put in any campaign. Only the Hurricane Lamp is more nuisance than benefit. As with the Encounters, this melds humour and usability quite nicely, making this issue not just a bunch of gags you'll read once and discard.



In the Black Hours pt 2: After part 1 put the PC's in the defensive position for a change, part 2 reverts to a regular dungeon crawl, where the PC's have to get through the monsters and save the town from Jubilex and his minions. There's still plenty of nonlinearity, trickery, and the prospect of exploiting factions within the bad guys to keep it from being just a slugfest through, and it'll definitely reward scouting things out and sneaking around over barging in the front door with weapons waving. So the two halves of this adventure are quite different, but compliment each other well. In an extra positive, the second half has bits that play differently depending on whether you succeeded or failed at the first half, instead of using offscreen railroading to enforce a status quo. That's what I call good writing, that also makes good use of the RPG format. Giving an adventure stakes other than succeed or perish allows you to have multiple instalments in a less linear fashion. That makes this by far the best adventure they've done here so far. Let's hope next issue doesn't let us down too badly by comparison.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 23: Mar/Apr 1985



part 4/6



Dungeonsongs: Oh god, here come the filks. I guess there's no escaping them in this timeline either. As it's the first time, they decide to draw on classic folk songs of centuries past rather than try to come up with topical pop culture references. Oh, and My Fair Lady, of all things. The rhyme schemes aren't too tortured, and the references aren't too obscure, so they're not too terrible as these things go. Let's just hope they keep these infrequent enough that diminishing returns don't set in too quickly.



Excerpts from the Book of Mischievous Magic: Frank gives us a second helping of magical items in quick succession. The humor is considerably broader and more lowbrow in this one, and the special powers of the items more likely to be a mixed bag or actively dangerous to their users. Many are pop culture references, including Popeye, Star Wars, Shakespeare, and Santa Claus. The rest are terrible puns with powers based on their names. They're almost all fully usable in a game, (apart from the Saxon Violins, which have powers strictly forbidden by the code of conduct,) but using them in a serious game will rapidly erode said seriousness like candyfloss in a sudden downpour. Like everything else in a joke issue, think carefully before you use it, because they aren't balanced and so may have serious ramifications to your campaign long-term.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 23: Mar/Apr 1985



part 5/6



Dispel Confusion is also in on the joke, so don't expect the answers to be particularly useful this time around. I may improve on them.

D&D

How much does skintight chainmail cost? (no extra, but finding one exactly the right size to accentuate your curves may take a lot of shopping time.)

What are the monsters being hit by spells in the player's section of the companion set? (Given how powerful the characters are, there's not going to be enough of them left to perform detailed taxonomical analysis)

What does an asterix mean (Look for a footnote, it should be somewhere nearby. Or maybe an obelisk. If You're really unlucky Getafix and the rest of the tribe will be around as well. )

Can clerics play Croquet with their mallets? (Yes, and golf, cricket and baseball too. Team-building sports are an excellent way to connect with the community and serve them better, and also secure funding for your temple.)

What do you do with the crayon? (the original purpose was to colour in your dice, but like a decanter of endless water, your imagination is the limit!)

What spell is being illustrated on page 16 of the expert set? (In theory, it could be any one of the 7 spells on the page, but by process of logical elimination, I think we can narrow it down.)

AD&D

Will you publish my 2401 page manuscript? (No. Not even severely cut down. Wait until the d20 era, then you can run a kickstarter for it.)

What's the difference between the former and the latter? (One takes ages to fill in, while the other is unlucky to walk underneath)

Can you encounter a god on the ethereal plane (Gods, like 800 pound gorillas, can be encountered anywhere they want to be encountered.)

Has Ogremoch been moonlighting in movies? (He does bear a remarkable resemblance to Bruce Willis, now you mention it. I think his acting is a bit more energetic though.)

Top Secret

How deadly is a cubic inch of uranium (depends if it's enriched, but either way, not fatal unless ingested.)

How far away can you hear a silenced gunshot (depends how good the silencer is)

Tarantula bites aren't dangerous! (Next you'll be telling me sharks don't have fricken' laser beams! Spoilsport.)

What is drawing and quartering? (Messy. Each quarter has several pints of blood, and they don't half spray when you separate them. )

How deadly are chainsaws? (comically. Say byebye to your extremities)

How hard is it to remove bullets? (Just grit your teeth and pull them out. You'll be operating at full speed again by next scene.)