TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 31: Jul/Aug 1986



part 1/5



31 pages. Flying saucers and giant mecha? That's a turnup for the books. Are they together, or fighting, and if so which side will the players be on? Let's see if it'll be high-flying interstellar awesomeness, or anal probingly awful (honey, with this code of conduct? I don't think so) in here.



Notes From HQ: Convention season seems to have gone considerably more smoothly this year, as there's no tales of disaster and equipment malfunction. Instead, there's a lengthy list of thanks which shows that success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan. Gen Con as a whole was once again bigger than ever, and they managed to run more tournament games than ever. It's good to see them learning from their mistakes and being better organised this time around. In other signs of progress, they now have a dedicated computer programmer on the team, so hopefully their woes in that area are finally over, and they've closed submissions on the competition to name their new city. Now, which of the more than 150 options will they choose to be the winner? One plotline is resolved, but another is still being teased out slowly to keep readers interested. That's the kind of planning I like to see in a long-running series.



Letters: Our first letter is from someone thoroughly peeved at how incompetent and TSR-centric the RPGA is. They're a lot more patient and civil with him than I would be. They need to cover their asses in a legal sense. (and also a literal one), so those ®'s and ™'s aren't going anywhere. If you want the RPGA to run tournament games by other companies, you need to be the change you want to see. They'd love to be able to cover the entire hobby, but network externalities mean big games tend to crowd out the smaller ones, particularly when it comes to creating tournament adventures and finding people to participate in them.

Our second letter is from the writer of Fletcher's Corner, turning the gun on the laziness of the average RPGA member. There's over 10,000 of us now. Surely we should be able to create, edit and moderate our own tournament adventures without being dependent on cheesy rush-job crap by official TSR writers who aren't held to the same quality control standards as regular members. It would be nice, agree the staff. Get off your asses and stop expecting people to spoon-feed you passive entertainment. This is roleplaying, goddamnnit, take on a role and we'll all have more fun!

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 31: Jul/Aug 1986



part 2/5



The Plebe Zone: They've been relying on the generosity of volunteers for the past few months to try and catch up with all their work. The work, and getting to meet their heroes, could have been reward enough for them, but they get to have their experiences immortalised in here as well. Just like everyone else, they had nightmares with the computer, which really needs to implement autosaves and external backups, for losing huge chunks of your work of your work the night before the con starts and having to hastily recreate it from memory is no-one's idea of a good time. But they managed to pull things together in the end, and even introduce some ideas that might help things go smoother next year (presuming staff turnover doesn't wind up with them getting forgotten by then anyway) Nothing too unusual here. The amount of work to do seems to expand with the number of hands available, so it always comes down to a scramble at the end. That's just the way human groups normally work, no matter how big they are and how high their budget is.



The Big Con (and me): Skip Williams once again gives his perspective on the convention madness. Despite having gone through this before, he still manages to get himself in a pickle, getting roped into doing as much work as he can physically handle, if not more. He also falls prey to their seemingly cursed computer system, losing big chunks of work and having to recreate it from an old backup. A lot of wordcount is devoted to his interactions with Penny Petticord, which isn't surprising at all as we know in hindsight they'll get married in the future, and it seems they have a relationship based heavily on tormenting one-another in small amusing ways. Ah, the sweet flowers of romance. This is far more entertaining a read than it has any right to be and gives us another amusing behind the scenes of how things are(n't) organised in the TSR offices. In their efforts to create things that are fun for us, it's important that they create an office environment where they can still have fun in their personal interactions as well.



Ravager part 2: Our second instalment of this adventure actually covers both rounds 2 & 3 of the original tournament, which shows how long even 5-6 pages of material can take when it's largely comprised of tough combat encounters. There's still plenty of variety in them though, with straight battles, ones you can talk your way through if you think to try, and puzzle encounters that are much quicker and easier if you were paying attention earlier on and picked up the corresponding clues. (while still not being completely impossible as a straight fight.) There's still the feeling that you could fill in a lot of the connective tissue and make this a full length adventure instead of jumping straight from one mini dungeon crawl to the next, but it's well designed for what it is, being neither too dependent on puzzle traps that require you to think exactly like the designer, or a mindless hack-and-slash fest. I'd have no problem using this one in a campaign.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 31: Jul/Aug 1986



part 3/5



Aliens and the Cryptic alliances: Aliens? In Gamma World? I thought the whole point of the game was that we got ourselves into this radioactive postapocalyptic mess. Ancient aliens on Gamma Mars I could accept, as it's a different sandbox from the main one, but this feels like definite dilution of theme. Oh well, I guess it's Jim Ward's game, and if he's getting bored and wants to spice things up after a decade of developing the same game, that's his prerogative. So the twist here is that instead of an overt invasion, which they're woefully outnumbered to accomplish even with their technological advantage, they're abducting and replacing one or two individuals in each cryptic alliance with crystalline clones, then trying to work their way to the top of these organisations. This is not going well for them, as they're not very good at the fine details of human social dynamics. So there are strong elements of comedy of errors in this, that give the PC's plenty of opportunity to stumble across the infiltrators and destroy them without ever even knowing what they were up against in the first place. It's not the typical cliche alien encounter I was expecting. Once again it looks like he has inventiveness to spare, which is a very good thing to see, especially after all this time.



New Druid Spells: Jon Pickens continues converting magical items into spells, giving existing spells stronger or weaker variants, and occasionally even coming up with new ideas of his own. Unearthed Arcana is already out now, so obviously none of these will make it into there, but some will make it into the AD&D 2e corebook in a few years time. He decides Affect Normal Fires, Burning Hands, Flesh to Stone & Stone Tell make perfect sense on the druid spell list as well as the Wizard or Cleric one, lets you share your stealth in natural environment abilities with others, and fills out the top spell level with two very different save or die effects for when a Hierophant is well and truly sick of your naughty word. Since a fair number of these are not even new spells, but he still prints the full descriptions, this article feels particularly padded and hit-and-miss. I think he may be hitting diminishing returns on this idea. Let someone else submit actually inventive new spells instead.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 31: Jul/Aug 1986



part 4/5



Dispel Confusion covers more than one system again.

Star Frontiers

Why can't level 1 pilots fly starships if they aren't using the interstellar features? (the controls remain more complicated even if you're only using a fraction of them.)

Does a Toolbox come with a Techkit? (yes)

How much does a sickbay cost? (at least 8,000 creds per bed, probably a lot more. Better hope your planet has a socialised health system.)

How much extra pay can you get if you have multiple skills relevant to the job? (full for the highest one, then a reduced extra for subsequent ones. If you can find a good jack of all trades you can save a lot compared to hiring multiple specialists.)

AD&D

How do surprise and backstabbing interact? (Surprise is one way of getting the benefit, but you can also get it mid-combat if you hide and someone else distracts their attention. I guess we'll have to clarify that in future editions.)

Why would a half-orc become a thief when they can get better effective thiefly abilities as an assassin? (alignment restrictions. If you want to be a hero, you sometimes need to make hard choices)

Why are magic-users better at summoning elementals than druids? (druids are more focussed on the prime material plane. Raw elements take more effort to incorporate into Nature.)

If the violet part of a prismatic sphere is a solid wall, what's the point of the rest? (it isn't. If you make your save you can get through. Going back the other way will still involve another 7 saves.)

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 31: Jul/Aug 1986



part 5/5



The Critical Hit: For the first time, this column reviews a supplement rather than a corebook, choosing to focus upon the Klingon sourcebook for the Star Trek RPG. Whether you want to focus on them more as antagonists, or your players are sick of being all nice and neat as part of the federation, and want the chance to duel and backstab their way to captainhood, this gives you lots of new stats and setting details for ships, weapons, and the Klingon homeworld, as well as two actual adventures to get your Klingon PC's going once you've made them. It once again gets a positive review, although like most supplements, you shouldn't try it until you're thoroughly comfortable with the core rules. Try and dump a ton of them on the players all at once and you'll probably kill your game. Introduce them one at a time and you can keep it interesting for many years longer than you could manage on your own.



A pretty decent balance of conventioneering and providing game useful material here. It shows another round of iterative improvements in their workflow as they continue to expand year on year. Will that continue to apply next year, or will they get overconfident and find some way to mess it up? Time to head once again into the rich colours of autumn, and see if they've stored up for the winter to come.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 32: Sep/Oct 1986



part 1/5



32 pages. The Worf effect is in full force on this cover. Once again Klingons are used as chumps to demonstrate when a new alien race is bigger and badder than them. Of course, in an RPG, you have to be a little more careful about this than a TV show, especially if you plan to make them available as a PC race at some point. Let's see if the contents of this issue are well-balanced or potentially game-breaking.



Notes From HQ: Penny Petticord quits abruptly, leaving Barbara Young in the lead editor's seat. Yikes. This upsets their schedule even more than it was already, and they'll be using a bunch of guest editors to get the next few issues done simultaneously, until they finally have things back on track and get a permanent replacement. This means they need your help more than ever, especially if you ever want the RPGA to become independent from TSR. Send in articles! Write tournament adventures! Take on admin duties! We can get through this together! Certainly no shortage of drama in the offices back then. Let's hope their quality control doesn't go to pieces as they try to co-ordinate all the guest star staff.



Letters to HQ: Following directly on from the editorial, our first letter is Penny saying goodbye. She's one of the few TSR staff who decided to side with Gary over Lorraine :wolves howl, rumble of thunder: when he was forced out of TSR, and joined him in forming New Infinities Productions along with Kim Mohan & Frank Mentzer. A laudable but ultimately doomed demonstration of loyalty, that would only last a few years before the company died and Kim & Penny were forced to come crawling back to their old company, while Frank quit the industry entirely. So this is a pretty dramatic turning point not only for the newszine, but the company as a whole. In the long run it'll affect every aspect of their operations. Welcome to one of the big forks in RPG history, where things could have gone very differently if it hadn't happened.

Slightly less dramatic, but also somewhat significant long-term, is a letter from regular forumite David Carl Argall responding very positively to the concept of specialist wizards, but not at all to the specifics in the article, and giving his own suggestions in response. This is one area where getting lots of people to contribute ideas will definitely help the final product come out better.

Finally, we have a very lengthy letter on the Living City, why a coastal location is optimal for it in terms of terrain types, and how it might logically be named and constructed in a way that's both realistic and allows for lots of adventure possibilities. Good to see there are people who are very passionate about these things contributing. Hopefully they won't get too competitive or annoyed about only having small fractions of each of their ideas used.



Following directly on from the last letter, they update us on their deliberations about the name of the Living City, giving us 19 of their favourite submissions and asking us to vote on them. None of them are the actual final result, which reminds us that this isn't really a democracy, and there's still going to be more developments before they come to a final decision. Just what political and legal nonsense will be involved behind the scenes here?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 32: Sep/Oct 1986



part 2/5



Arcane Academe: Reader apathy has put the author of Fletcher's Corner off this whole column writing business, so we have another shakeup here. Now Jeff Martin'll be giving you your compact doses of GM advice until further notice. Unsurprisingly, his mind is still on convention experiences, so we get some advice to hold on until next year. But while the last few bits of advice have been on getting the most out of your games, this is about surviving the actual convention process. Choose your party carefully, for the wrong roommate makes the whole time there a lot more odious and sleep-deprived. Don't overspend on the first day and wind up having to lug a ton of stuff around while looking regretfully at things you wish you'd got instead. And if your constitution is remotely delicate, don't forget your antacid tablets. Now that's something games don't give enough attention too. I guess getting the squits from dirty water while out adventuring and having to deal with wandering monsters while also dealing with crippling bowel pains, and figuring out how to clean your trousers afterwards without hot water is a bit too gritty and realistic for even the most hardcore of historical nerds. A reasonably amusing start. Let's see what kind of depth he can build too in future instalments.



Operation: Butter-Up: Our module this issue is a Top Secret one, another of the tournament adventures they ran at this year's Gen Con. Even without external submissions, they could easily fill most of the year with a collection of these for their various systems. It's one that actually features some proper espionage too, talking to the various people at a hotel and figuring out who the bad guys are, rather than just sneaking in, killing people and blowing stuff up. That's a real positive. On the negative side, it's filled with silly names and bad puns that make taking the plot seriously a bit of a challenge. But if you can get past that, there's a lot of information packed in here, giving us stats for over 50 characters, and a timeline for what'll happen if the players do nothing, while giving them plenty of freedom to change it. Definitely don't recommend running this one without reading it properly first, but if you do, there's a lot more depth in here than your regular site-based dungeon crawl. So this isn't perfect, but it's much closer to fulfilling the full potential of the system than the early adventures and making them properly distinct from D&D ones.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 32: Sep/Oct 1986



part 3/5



Pain and Pleasure: Another Gen Con story they didn't have room for last issue. John Cereso was one of the tournament co-ordinators, which meant he had to herd 16 GM's and 70 players into groups, then make sure those who got through to the second and third rounds were organised into new groups that shared no members with the previous round to ensure fairness. The kind of thing that needs either a very good memory or a spreadsheet. Like most of these accounts, it involved getting up very early, staying very late, and any weakness in your immune system (in this case a sore throat) will be a lot worse by the time you finish. Once again shows how critical constitution is for characters of any build in the real world, for there's a lot of stuff even the grittiest of game streamlines, and even a small illness or injury can turn something that's normally fun into a torturous endurance test. I hope you rolled well on it.



The Kellar: Our cover article this issue is completely different from most of them, even beyond it being for a different system that isn't even a TSR one. Even more curiously, the Kellar aren't even a race from any Star Trek episode, so this is purely homebrew. Given the hassle they have to go through to get approvals for every single Marvel Superheroes article, the licensing conditions for the Star Trek RPG must be considerably less strict for this to get published. The Kellar turn out to be your typical rubber-head aliens, this time with an inflatable crest that pops up when they want to threaten you. In terms of personality and powers, they're very much vulcans+, in both upsides and downsides, with a strong, if somewhat random selection of psionic powers and superior strength and senses (which can be easily dazzled), but mild social difficulties and terrible luck. I get the impression that the writer created a lot more detail on them in his own campaign, and it's been heavily cut down to fit into the article format. It's all a bit cheesy, and i'm really not sure what to make of it. Will the powers and disadvantages balance out in actual play, or will the social penalties turn out to be mainly cosmetic, like many of the worst AD&D 2e kits? Not a question I can answer, but if you ever played this system, I hope one of you can.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 32: Sep/Oct 1986



part 4/5



Dispel Confusion comes to an end. Not due to a lack of rules questions, but because they're moving them back to Sage Advice in Dragon where a larger proportion of their customers will actually see the answers. Such are the rewards of popularity.

AD&D

Can you tell a weapon's plus from the material it's made from? (no. Awesome material has some correlation with plus, but some ultra-powerful weapons don't feel the need to show off.)

Can anti-magic shell protect monsters immune to non-magical weapons? (yes)

How do you make cold iron weapons (without heat, like it says in the description. This isn't easy.)

How does Prince Thrommel use Fragarach when he's of the wrong alignment? (He doesn't. He just keeps them from using it. Y'know. Treasure. What you're there to get.)

Do demihumans get new multiclass options in Unearthed Arcana? (oh yes)

What are ninja & yakuza chances to pick pockets (same as regular rogues)

What are monk & yakuza nonweapon proficiency slots? (here you go)

D&D

Which is a lycanthrope's natural form? (Usually the human one. If the were is after their name, it's the animal one. )

How do you turn undead with more than 12 HD? (the joys of rounding up)

Can clerics ever learn edged weapons? (no)

Can clerics used spiked shields? (no)

Can humans fight unarmed? (if you've got the Companion Set)

Can you raise a black dragon to be Lawful? (It won't be easy)

Do low charisma characters have to be rude? (no, they'll be unlikable whether they're polite or not)

Why do characters have to become NPC's when they get lycanthropy? (so White Wolf have a chance to get going by satisfying a niche we don't)

Can centaurs or half-orcs become PC's? (Centaurs, sure. Half-orcs don't exist in Basic D&D. We have to be extra strict on the whole family friendly thing in this line. )

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 32: Sep/Oct 1986



part 5/5



The Critical Hit: Our review this month is somewhat odd. 2/3rds of it is an almost direct word for word rehash of the Pendragon corebook review in issue 27. The remainder is a brief review of The Pendragon Campaign supplement, which is positive about the material, but grumbles that they made it a separate book when it's pretty much necessary for play. If the biggest RPG in the world requires not just two, but three corebooks, only one of which is player-facing, it's perfectly reasonable for others to sell the player and GM material in two, especially in games where the players shouldn't know all the details of what they're going to be up against, for the exploration is much of the fun. So this is a bit half-assed as a review. I strongly suspect he was busy at the conventions and whipped it up last-minute then recycled old material to pad it out.



RPGA Tournament Winners list: Once again the Bingle family win multiple 1st and 2nd places in various tournaments around the country. I don't see any other familiar names here though, which shows how much the field has expanded in the past 5 years. No longer do TSR staff and hangers-on dominate the scene at every convention. So the winners probably are winning due to skill rather than just who they know, which is a good thing overall.



A lot of interesting developments in this one, as they continue to make progress on the living city despite massive behind the scenes turmoil. If Dragon is anything to go by, that means there's another good year or so of chaos before things settle down again. Will Polyhedron come out of it better or even worse? Either way, it should be interesting finding out. Time to start a new chapter and see just how different things become.