TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Magazine 2: Nov/Dec 1986



part 1/5



68 pages. Arr, that city be in a little bit of a pickle. Shall we try and rescue them, me hearties, or wait until the lava's cooled down and see what we can loot? Or are ye scurvy swabs too distracted by me rather revealing outfit to care? Looks like Dungeon will be no stranger to using sex to grab the attention of casual newsstand browsers. Let's see if the contents reflect that in any way, and we'll get some romance and high fantasy amid the dungeon crawls, or it's all false advertising.



Editorial: This magazine has caught up with Polyhedron in that the big exodus of TSR staff who sided with Gary has happened, and now everyone who's left has to work extra hard to keep all their planned projects going. In Roger's case, that means being lead editor of two magazines at once. This means he'd appreciate all the more people sending in a decent variety of modules. In particular, ultra high level BECMI D&D adventures, and small adventures they can use to fit pagecount, as they have a shortage of both of those. There's always going to be a struggle between what the audience wants, the writers deliver, and the editors need to make everything fit together, and if you have submissions to spare, and can only pick good ones instead of wasting a load of time and energy making mediocre ones publishable it's all a lot easier to make everything work.



Letters: Our first letter has a couple of pun name suggestions for the letters page, and wants lots of Oriental Adventures modules in here. As ever, that'll depend on what you, loyal readers, send in.

Our next three are all about the minutiae of how much they pay for various things. How many letters count as a word for purposes of wordcount, and what size various kinds of artwork need to be. Roger warns that they'll probably redo any artwork you send in with their in-house artists, so don't get too enthusiastic about earning extra cash from that side of creating them.

The 5th one asks about the price of international subscriptions. They weren't offering them before as they're deliberately staggering the rollout while they find their feet, but they are now. Get to it! Maybe you should say that in Dragon, as they can't see it here unless they're already subscribed, which is kinda a catch-22.

Then they get asked what happens to modules created on computer, and ones set in Krynn. Both are entirely permissible, but once again, they reserve the right to change anything they don't like in editing.

Finally someone asks if they're allowed to use Cthulhu stuff. No, but you can submit Lankhmar ideas if you like. They do have enough freedom in the licence for that to make publishing adventures in here possible.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Magazine 2: Nov/Dec 1986



part 2/5



Despite only being 2 issues in, they have a statement of ownership showing their circulation already. As they weren't sure how many people would buy this, they went for a conservative print run of precisely 10,000, of which slightly under half have been instantly snapped up by subscribers who saw it advertised in Dragon, with the rest still unsold, as they have yet to roll things out to the newsstands. So at the moment, they've actually got fewer readers than Polyhedron. Given who got top billing when they merged, we know that won't last. It'll be interesting to see how quickly they both grow, and when the transition takes place.



The Titan's Dream: Oh god. Like many a long-running TV show, they're doing a dream episode. As the name indicates, when the PC's go near a sleeping Titan, they get sucked into the warped refections of his memories, and have to resolve his subconscious issues to get him to wake up, or be trapped forever in an irritating loop of the same scenes over and over. There are three different plots going, each with scenes showing in a random order, so just getting any sense of the narrative as players will probably involve several repetitions before they can even start to put the pieces together. So this has not only the annoying elements of dream episodes, but also groundhog day ones on top of that, and plenty of whimsy in the specifics heaped on top of THAT! In other words, it's really irritating just to read, and I wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. Not subjecting myself or my players to that under any circumstances. Nope nope naughty word nope!!! :insert image of godzilla walking into the sea while flipping the bird:

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Magazine 2: Nov/Dec 1986



part 3/5



In The Dwarven King's Court: Our next adventure is also a lot more whimsical and talky than the dungeon crawls of last issue. Someone has been stealing from the Dwarven king, and you have to play detective amongst a motley court of advisors and hangers-on to hunt down the culprit. The Answer Will Shock You!!!! So this is the good kind of combat light sandbox, giving you plenty of freedom in your detective methods as the thefts continue to happen and the paranoia ratchets up. Was it the butler what did it? Is it the mysterious masked executioner? The slimy royal advisor? The stalwart armourer? Does the halfing Jester have some more serious plots behind his whimsical exterior? Players and DM's used to pure hack and slash will find running this one challenging, but there's definitely something in here worth making the effort for. I heard good things about Willie Walsh before starting this, and so far, he seems to be delivering.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Magazine 2: Nov/Dec 1986



part 4/5



Caermor: Oooh. Nigel Findley. Now there's a name I know from first hand experience has delivered more than his fair share of classic books and articles. Good to see him contributing in here as well. This is another adventure largely based around puzzle solving rather than outright combat. A small town is facing a mysterious marauder in the night, that started by killing animals, and has now progressed to kidnapping a teenage girl. But instead of asking for help, they've become extra suspicious of everyone and everything, and won't take kindly to outsiders poking around. That makes this a tough one to get into, because without an obvious quest-setter, some groups will simply pass straight through without noticing the potential plot hooks, or get discouraged by the general ingratitude of the villagers, who may well wind up driving them out of town even if they successfully solve the problem, but go about it in the wrong way. So as a portrait of a dysfunctional small town that's being made all the more so by the manipulation of dark forces, it's excellent. As an adventure, it'll take a fair bit of work by the DM to get the ball rolling unless the players are very proactive and heroic, and might wind up making them bitter and cynical from the experience. You can see why he'd do his best work in games like Shadowrun which naturally incline towards subverting the traditional heroic expectations. I like this, but I'd have to think carefully about the group before actually using it.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Magazine 2: Nov/Dec 1986



part 5/5



The Keep at Koragesh: After three adventures where you really need to use your OOC brains and social skills to get through them successfully, they finish off with a long, but relatively straightforward Basic D&D dungeon crawl. You hear a rumor about an abandoned shrine, go investigate it, find plenty of monsters living there, and a moderate amount of treasure. Apart from 2 quirky new monsters, everything here is from the basic set, which gives it a very different and much more mundane flavor than the AD&D ones which have three chunky dedicated monster books to draw upon. It's back to basics in more ways than one. So this isn't bad, and is a refreshing palate cleanser after the previous adventures this issue, but it is pretty vanilla. Sometimes that's what you need, as non-stop spicy food will play hell with your digestion.



With a selection of adventures very different from the first issue, this shows them recognising that they need to keep the variety up to keep the adventures both interesting to read and useful in actual play. The actual adventures are somewhat more challenging to use, so on average, it's not quite as good as the first one, but they're both valid and haven't directly repeated themselves yet. Hopefully they'll pick themes like Dragon to give individual issues more flavour and keep diminishing returns from setting in too soon.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 34: Jan/Feb 1987



part 1/5



44 pages. The road to the living city is long, but we're definitely making progress. Still, it might be a good idea to stop on the way, get some rest, smell the flowers. These two definitely look like they're not getting enough sleep, with those hollow eyes and grim expressions. Is there a good reason they're in a rush? Let's find out inside.



Notes From HQ: Jean Rabe introduces herself, and once again confirms that the theoretical dates I'm putting on these issues are deeply inaccurate. They've been running consistently late for long enough that they've actually dropped in membership over the past year. To be fair, Dragon's circulation peaked in 1984, and never reached those heights again, so it might not be entirely their own fault, but they're definitely responsible for a decent fraction of the falloff. The casuals would have drifted away anyway when D&D stopped being a fad, but the kind of people who join a fan club need to be actively alienated to give up on you. Still, maybe it'll help with their structural problem, where they have too many passive consumers, and not enough people making modules, running them in tournaments, submitting articles, etc. Got to get that ratio up if they want to survive and get on top of their targets. Well, this all sounds exhausting. They really are not having a fun time in the offices at the moment. I really do hope they can get this sorted sooner rather than later.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 34: Jan/Feb 1987



part 2/5



Letters: Our first three letters are all from people who want to submit stuff, but aren't quite sure how to go about it. It's not as daunting as it seems! Just make sure you adhere to the tedious legalese and style guidelines and you've got a pretty good shot.

The 4th letter is longer than the rest put together, and complains how the decision to move from keeping the same group with each person playing the same character between rounds of a tournament to individual advancement that randomly assembled new groups each time ruined the roleplaying of their series. I think you may be getting a bit too precious about your worldbuilding and lore. That kind of thing is cool in a long-running campaign, but rather a crapshoot in even an extensive multi-round tournament.

And finally, we have another demonstration of how their bureaucratic incompetence and delays is losing them members. If you don't give people timely responses, you lose people who are on the fence, and then they'll be long gone by the time you do get your act together.



On the Road to the Living City: Well, that definitely explains why our cover stars are so sleep deprived. They've had to deal with not just one, but two different trickster encounters in their recent travels. Definitely the kind of thing to make you decide "We can't stop here, this is Sprite country" and spur the horse 'til it drops in hope of reaching civilisation. So here we introduce another regular feature for the next year or so, a combination of OOC updates on how the construction of the Living City is progressing, and IC short roadside encounters to drop into your games. A curious combination, but one that synergizes well, and makes this still usable today, rather than just a dry historical piece. Not that keen on the two specific encounters in this one, cause, y'know, irritating whimsical trickery, but I like the overall idea, and look forward to seeing some more.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 34: Jan/Feb 1987



part 3/5



Revolution: Part Two of our Finnish saga continues to not properly exploit the terrain. Calling a place that barely qualifies as a town even in the modern day a city? Fair weather AND a normal day-night cycle when your adventure is supposed to be set in the arctic circle? That happens maybe for the month or two around the autumn equinox. Why the hell would you bother writing an adventure set somewhere if you're not going to use the unique challenges the real world terrain offers even before you add in the fantastical ones. As this instalment has more wilderness journeying than the first one, it's all the more obvious that the writers have never actually been to Finland and experienced the terrain for themselves, and research was just stealing a few names from books. It's not terrible as a D&D adventure, offering a decent set of challenges that aren't all combat, includes opportunities for roleplaying, and gives you multiple choices of routes. But on a cultural level, this is just horribly dated and cringy. It would be so much easier to do better now, given how much easier the internet makes researching things, and actually talking to people from the place you want to find out about. I really wanted to like this, but reading it just makes me angry as I nitpick all the obvious mistakes. It's very frustrating indeed.



Fun in Games: Another person throws their hat into the ring and tries to start a new regular column for GM advice. What makes a monster scary. What makes a good convention game. The importance of snacks in making a session good. The joys and dangers of homebrew and third party stuff in your game. The weird jargon long-running groups wind up developing. It's all a bit scattershot, and looking forward, it turns out he doesn't have the attention span or consistency to make this a regular column, so this is a false start. Being a columnist is a lot harder than it looks, especially year in, year out. Don't take them for granted.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 34: Jan/Feb 1987



part 4/5



Arcane Academe: This column is once again only half a page long and really basic as a result, reminding you that when you're short of inspiration, you can steal ideas from anywhere. Books, TV shows, real life, your own personal experiences, recycling stuff from other GM's and previous campaigns if you still can't come up with anything. There, I said in two lines what he took half a page to say. Truly yawnsome.



Submission Guidelines: They get this a lot, so they're repeating all the submissions guidelines on a page of their own instead of answering them ad hoc as they appear in letters. Unsurprisingly, their standards have definitely become stricter over the past 6 years - they really don't want you using em dashes or excessive exclamation marks, emphasising your words with format changes or even employing the humble semicolon. (We only provide employment to pureblooded colons around here, thank you very much!) They're also really stepping up the insistence that everything has to be all family friendly, all the time. No sex, drugs, racism, (speciesism against humanoids will still be just fine in practice though) or anything else that might make evil look cool. As with last issue, it's obvious in hindsight how they're leaving huge areas of storytelling space untapped, open for other companies to take advantage of. It made the history of roleplaying as a whole more interesting, but it means the next 10+ years of these magazines are even more bowdlerised than they would have been otherwise, which is a nuisance for me.



RPGA Tournament winners list: This is much the same as 2 issues ago, only with a few more additions and corrections. They really are struggling with getting all the forms filled in and collected. Will they ever get on top of it, or will this plague us the entire run of the newszine? Guess I'll have to keep going and see.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 34: Jan/Feb 1987



part 5/5



The Critical Hit: Errol finally reviews a deep cut, turning his eye on Orcbusters, the Paranoia adventure satirising D&D cliches. Now you can die in the service of Friend Computer in even more fantastical ways, and chances are you'll be doing that a lot, as this is particularly drawn from the old school meatgrinders like the Tomb of Horrors. Good thing you've got all those clones to replace you when you fall then, which is a lot cheaper and quicker than resurrection spells. He likes it, but recognises that some of the jokes are pretty obscure, and many of them are purely between the writer and GM, and may not translate over to the players in actual play. Using it with newbies will simply baffle them. It'd probably have even more resonance these days if converted to the current edition of Paranoia, and had jokes targeted at 3e & 4e tropes added in as well as the old school ones, given how much more roleplaying history there is to take the piss out of now.



AD&D 2nd Edition Questionnaire: You may have noticed at the start that this issue is somewhat larger than usual. Most of that is this 8 page questionnaire about the direction you want the next edition to take. Rate several hundred things on a level of 1-5 to say what you like, and what you would rather be dropped, plus some demographic questions about you and your group, and a few more complex ones. Since they didn't change that much between editions, I suspect the answers mostly averaged out to a bunch of 3's, or they didn't really attach much weight to the survey anyway. Oh well, at least you tried.



Well, this issue is interesting, but in a deeply frustrating way, as all their struggles and mistakes as a company are on full display, so quality control is all over the place, and they're packed this with scattershot experiments to try and find something new that works. Definitely hoping this particular era is over sooner rather than later. On we press again to see what next time brings.