TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 25: Jul/Aug 1985



part 4/6



Rampage: Our Marvel cover article is quite a fun one, as it involves two different conflicts that just happen to be taking place at the same place at the same time. Abomination breaks free and comes to smash Hulk, and meanwhile Titania gets pissed off at Hercules and sets out to take him down a peg or two. In theory, the good guys should team up to take the bad guys down and restore public order, but y'know, Hulk has anger management issues and doesn't play well with others. A certain amount of trickery may be needed on Herc's part to redirect Hulk's anger in a productive fashion. Or it could just degenerate into a 4-way free-for-all, and let the dice determine who the last person standing is. In other words, this could turn out all sorts of ways, depending on who's playing the characters and the choices they make. Which is exactly what i want to see. Let the crossover be chaotic and the players have plenty of choice to determine the outcome, and it'll lead to interesting consequences down the line.



How to Succeed at Judging an RPGA Network Event: Since last issue had an article on what makes a good player in a tournament game, it's no surprise we have an identical one on the GM's perspective here. This is also pretty different from running your own game because unlike there, you are not a supreme arbiter of the rules, and you can't change anything in the scenario. Plus you're on a strict time limit and it's up to you to enforce that, not keep going 10 minutes longer and winding up doing the assessment paperwork in your own time. So make sure you've learned the module you'll be running, describe everything clearly, and keep things moving, because you want your group to do well so you get good grades too. You're a moderator, not an adversary to them, and don't forget it. Like it's counterpart, this is pretty solid, albeit slightly less entertaining as a read, because being a GM is harder work than being a player, so they have more to get through. That's the kind of thing you've got to do to keep everyone on the same page.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 25: Jul/Aug 1985



part 5/6



Dispel Confusion is nothing but AD&D questions for the first time. Whatever the staff may be doing to keep other games alive, the audience really isn't helping.

What happens when artifacts collide? (perfect defences trump perfect offences.)

Do holy avengers extra damage against chaotic evil stack with their regular bonus? (no)

Can a robe of blending camouflage while moving? (yes)

What level is a magic weapon for the purposes of magic resistance? (it isn't. The enhancement is on the weapon, and therefore only affects them indirectly, so that doesn't apply.)

How does encumbrance interact with races that have faster or slower movement rates than humans? (It can be a pain, I admit)

Can i make objects invisible? (yes, but you need a different spell to people, just like polymorphing)

Does a familiar share senses, or enhance yours? (it enhances yours)

Can a human triple or quadruple class if they have the stats? (I say no, but many other people over the years will say yes)

Can a dual class character switch back to an old one? (no)

Do artfact powers work in an anti-magic shell? (Yes, they're just too awesome to stop.)

Do artifacts block true sight? (only if they specifically say they do. )

What powers do you get when shapechanged? (most things, but not saving throws)

Do you have to make a system shock check every time you use a spell that ages you? (This seems a little harsh, but if you want too.)

How many familiars can a wizard have? (Only one, unless you have lots of issues of Dragon, in which case you can get up to 3 at a time.)

Can you walk through a prismatic sphere? (If you can make all the saving throws)

What level is a reincarnated character? (Same as before, unless above the new race's level limits)

What happens if you save vs time stop? (there is no save vs time stop. It's accelerating the caster, not affecting you.)

How precise is energy control? (by RAW, it's too good. I'm going to nerf it)

What effective level spellcaster is a high level thief (level -9)

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 25: Jul/Aug 1985



part 6/6



Review: Paranoia! That's a turnup for the books. It's a silly game, but one you can have a lot of fun playing. It gets a very positive review here, showing that it became popular pretty much as soon as it was released. Guess it hit at just the right time when people were looking for a bit of light relief from deep dungeon delving and serious dystopias. (it isn't 1984 anymore, after all.) It's fun, easy to learn, and well packaged so the art supports the intended playstyle. Their main complaint is that the lack of index and scattered rules can make it a bit tricky to play strictly by the RAW, but let's be honest, who does that with this of all games? Friend Computer is always correct, and stopping to look up rules mid-play is the kind of thing a commie mutant traitor would do. You're not a commie mutant traitor, are you?



Another issue with lots of articles that are part of a series, this shows them once again tilting towards catering for their expert readers, which makes it a much more interesting read for me. They're still facing the usual day-to-day problems, but they're making progress and becoming a more solid and complex organisation despite that. Let's see if they can continue to do so without getting bogged down by overcomplexity next time around.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 26: Sep/Oct 1985



part 1/6



32 pages. Off to space again, to explore new worlds, meet alien life, and do our best not to get killed by them. Which the stars of this cover seem to be off at a bad start with, by that alien's body language. Will we be able to defuse the situation inside, or is it going to come down to another shootout? Let's see if we can get through the issue without rolling for initiative.



Notes from HQ: Gen Con has come and gone, and once again, the newszine is going to be packed full of war stories from it. They had a more harrowing time than average this year, and don't sugarcoat it, with late mailouts, people not showing up, equipment breaking down, and other such chaos cropping up. Thanks to everyone who stuck around and had fun despite that, you're the people who really keep the hobby alive. Let's hope next year is a little easier.

More positively, the idea of creating a shared world city for the RPGA has taken off straight away with a ton of responses. After seeing a bunch of experiments struggle to gain traction with their audience, this success is made all the sweeter. Expect more bashing out of the details next time around as they search for some kind of consensus. One thing they have already agreed upon is that they do like to be beside the seaside, as it makes it easier for a place to be a trade hub and have adventurers from all around the world visit. Which means adventures involving sea monsters, pirates and hidden coves once it's up and running. That's the kind of planning I like to see. Make sure there's a wide range of terrains nearby, as you're going to need to switch things up if you want this place to keep going for years.



Squeaky Wheels: Oh joy, it's the satanic panic again. Yup, once again Frank has to tell us to keep calm, carry on, and do our best to build healthy relationships with the community at large. The accusations BADD level at us are not just unfounded, but ridiculous, and anyone with any real exposure to roleplaying will soon see that, but the trick is giving them that exposure, especially if they've already formed erroneous opinions, and are desperate to protect their poor innocent babies. (who are actually now teenagers and thoroughly sick of that naughty word) Nothing new here. It's a big world, and we have to go through this problem from so many perspectives. It'll never truly be over, only decline asymptoticly as the people who thought that age out. Let's hope I don't have to deal with it too many more times in here.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 26: Sep/Oct 1985



part 2/6



Con-Fusion: Ed Carmien delivers a somewhat more cheerful view of the Gen Con madness than the editorial. From the front view, it didn't seem so bad, and if anything, the adrenaline panic of the staff just added extra energy to the proceedings. It might have been tough, but it all turned out all right in the end. Short but sweet.



Where Chaos Reigns: Sonny Scott takes quite a different approach to chronicling the Gen Con madness. He was on the phones organising stuff the whole week before, and so had to head off the worst of the twinkery and idiocy before it could ruin the big day. People really were obsessed with playing ninjas back then, and even though they'd just bowed to that and finally included official rules for them in Oriental Adventures, doesn't mean you can play them in tournament adventures. On top of that, they have to keep the DM's who are running the modules and the players playing in them separated so they don't cheat with advance knowledge, make sure everyone registering for the tournaments has tickets for the main event so they can get in in the first place, and all manner of other missing the obvious that anyone who's worked in customer service and tech support will be painfully familiar with. Really not a job I'd want to do, but I'm glad someone was there doing it. The chaos would be a lot worse without people like him doing their best behind the scenes.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 26: Sep/Oct 1985



part 3/6



A View of GEN CON 18: Michael Selinker provides our fourth perspective, expanding on the chaos back at the TSR offices. Part of it was due to the computers and printers breaking down, partly Penny Petticord pushing through pneumonia, and partly the entirely avoidable silliness of many of the writers not doing their homework until the night before, only finishing the tournament modules at the last minute. How old are they now? You'd think they'd learn to plan ahead and buffer properly. Maybe next year. So this whole set of accounts is amusing, but also somewhat exasperating. It's good that they're admitting they had problems, but it would be better if they hadn't made those mistakes in the first place. They've done this 18 times now, they ought to have a formula for it down at this point, even if it does get bigger and more complex to organise every year.



Needle part III: Having got the Needle back home, it turns out one of it's functions is an interdimensional gate! So guess who gets sent through it to find out what's on the other side, and if you can kill it and take it's stuff. It sends you to the moon, where you get railroaded into rescuing the princess of a race of intelligent spiders, and well rewarded with lightsabers and vibranium if you succeed. The trappings of the adventure are profoundly silly, but as with the previous instalments, the danger is very real, and very precisely tuned to the capabilities of the pregen characters, with several plot twists that target specific members of the group. (presuming they survived the previous instalments) As with the previous instalments, it would lose a lot if used in a regular campaign with another group of PC's, (and you'd have to deal with how the treasure changes the world long-term if they win it) so I recommend against it, but it's still an interesting read, and the silly elements make it more memorable. It's well worth reading as a historical artifact.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 26: Sep/Oct 1985



part 4/6



Dispel Confusion:

AD&D

Isn't a phantasmal force too small to imitate most things? (You're confusing real inches with wargaming scale inches)

Is a mind flayer's mind blast the same as a regular one? (resisted differently, but the effects are the same)

What happens if you roll more psionic power than your racial level limit lets you learn? (yeah, that's going to waste)

Can you hear sounds made outside a silence spell while inside? (no)

How do you get to lower levels of outer planes? (there are shortcuts you can find, but first time round, you'll probably have to take the long route.)

Gamma World

How long can you stay underwater in powered armor? (if it was fully charged just before, 72 hours)

Can you take over a Kamodo with psychic powers? (if you can beat their own ones)

How do size modifications affect your movement rate? (linear multiplication)

What military aircraft can I find in ancient bases (GM fiat)

Can characters with dual brain use the same power twice in one turn (no. each brain has a separate set of powers)

How do you protect against high level ID cards? (Dual factor authentication)

Where are Lake Blob and the White Feather tribe? (within travelling distance of your party, if you want to have the adventure)

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 26: Sep/Oct 1985



part 5/6



Gamma Mars: Our cover article takes us into space for the second time this issue. Unusually for Gamma World, it's treatment is actually less silly than the D&D one, giving us a perfectly sensible future history of human colonisation of mars, and the things they found there, including a mostly extinct extraterrestrial race that colonised mars a long time ago, then went into suspended animation after being mostly destroyed in their own apocalyptic conflict. Mutants are somewhat rarer but hardly unknown, and human civilisation is considerably more functional than back on earth, while the aliens are fully statted out and playable as PC's, so you have plenty of chargen options. It's a harsh frontier environment, and there's plenty of wilderness to explore, but at least there's not so many insane racist factions that'll try to kill or enslave outsiders on sight. I can definitely see the upsides of setting a campaign here, so that makes this article a success.



Unofficial New Illusionist Spells: Jon Pickens finishes this series off by stealing some powers from monsters as well as magic items, with mongrelmen, dark creepers, wands of illumination, and robes of blending's tricks getting turned into a form illusionists can memorise and use over and over. Plus a psionic power gets converted for some reason, several higher level variants of existing spells that last longer, cover larger areas, or affect more targets, and two variants of magic-user spells with a more tricksy shadow based flavour. As before, they're iterative rather than inspired, but many will still wind up appearing in Unearthed Arcana and future corebooks. D&D may not standardise it like some systems, but there's still solid demand for variants that are basically X spell, only more powerful in one way or another. Many an article will be filled by them in the future.



Fletcher's Corner: This column takes a somewhat leftfield turn, and spends a couple of pages talking about the demographics of magic items in his campaign. While there are some unique ones, one-shot stuff like potions & scrolls and low power permanent ones like +1 weapons are available for sale. On the other hand, remember that just because an item is in the books, doesn't mean it has to exist in your campaign, and this counts double for ones that aren't in the books that the players made up or were given by another DM. So his tastes are more high magic than nearly any non-D&D campaign, which don't have the same escalation of power and treasure baked into the system, but he's still trying to hold back the worst excesses of monty haulism that ruins games. It's a tough line to draw, as you don't want to drive players away, and you want them to do cool things, but if one player comes in with a ton of items from another game and outshines the others, then you have a big problem. An interesting column, that reminds us that these things are much less of a problem now, with the expectation that you'll create new characters for each new campaign a default, and much better rules in term of expected items & treasure by level. It's good to see we have actually learned and grown since then in some ways.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 26: Sep/Oct 1985



part 6/6



Review: Twilight 2000 is another game that gets a positive review first time around, sells decently, and will be back again with many new editions in the future, despite the setting proving increasingly anachronistic after the fall of the USSR. He particularly singles out the organisation of the rules, which are both more solid and easier to look up in play than the last couple of reviews. They do seem to be picking their targets well so far. I guess with only one every two months, they're in a position to be highly selective and only recommend us the cream of the crop. Doesn't look like we're going to be getting any amusingly ranty slatings here.



Gen Con 18 Tournament Winners: They used Temple of Elemental Evil as a tournament module this year? I don't remember that from the Dragon thread. I guess they did struggle to get everything written on time, so I wouldn't be surprised if they grabbed whatever was available and repurposed it. Anyway, here's all the 1st-3rd places for the various systems. Kelley Foote once again scores highly in multiple categories, and the Bingle family also all appear repeatedly, showing the benefits of knowing each other outside the tournament and co-operating better in scoring highly. They should gain a few levels as a result of this.



Filling so much of the issue with convention talk meant there was less game useful material than the last few issues, but the convention material was sufficiently dramatic and humorous that it still made for interesting reading. They're still maintaining a pretty high standard of articles overall, so once again I can go into the next issue feeling pretty optimistic. Let's see what presents they've prepared for christmas this year.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 27: Nov/Dec 1985



part 1/6



28 pages. That dwarf has shaved! : points in horror : Ostracise her! Or not, given that it's a new enlightened era where demihumans should be free to express themselves however they wish as long as they're not hurting anyone. Let's see where this issue falls on the conservative/experimental spectrum.



Notes from HQ: After dealing with a fair amount of chaos in this year's Gen Con, they're trying very hard to do better next year. They're already open to registration for events, and doing their best to debug their database so every member can have their experience levels and subscription time remaining easily accessible and editable. Slightly less ahead of the curve, they encourage submissions for the april fools issue, which is only 4 months away. I know it seems like a long time, but in publication terms, it's really not, especially when editing and rewrites come into play, so get writing if you don't want to miss the deadline and have to wait another year for the right window. You really do have to learn how to think on a different timescale if you want to make it in this business. Even for people who've done it for years, it's not easy for humans to be constantly planning ahead to this degree.



Dominion: Jon Pickens has finished backconverting magical items into spells, so this article takes a different tack. He asks why Magic Jar doesn't fit into any of the existing spell schools. The vast majority of designers would put it into the least worst option, as they did in the 2e revision where it became a Necromancy spell. Instead, he decides to add a whole new school of Dominion and give us 10 new spells to fill it. Which really still isn't enough for a specialist wizard, but then again, they don't have those yet anyway. Only a couple of these will make it into the next corebook as regular Enchantment/Charm spells, so it does seem like there's a bit of diminishing returns setting in here. Really, this shows that the D&D 8 schools of magic are pretty arbitrary and it's often possible to achieve the same effect under several of them by changing the method and flavour text. There are many magic systems that are both more flexible and more scientifically rigorous, and I think it's a sacred cow that could possibly be slain and replaced by more balanced divisions.