TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 37: Jul/Aug/Sept 1987



part 1/5



36 pages. It's been obvious all year that they're running late, and the dates I've put on these issues have been nominal ones, but here the disjunct becomes particularly obvious, as they go straight from volume 7, no 3 to no 6 without giving any indication to what 4 & 5 were. Maybe they were the official tournament adventures this year, as this is definitely post Gen Con. There's only 1 more issue this year, so it looks like they gave up on trying to get caught up the hard way and just did 5 issues this year instead. Will that be enough to get them back on schedule for good? Let's see what new developments the rest of this issue has to offer.



Notes from HQ: After much wrangling, they've finally settled on a name for their Living City. Say hello to Raven's Bluff. With Ravenloft their best selling module, they couldn't resist going back to that well, despite the trademark issues prohibiting their first choice. And given how long it'll be an active setting, I think it's safe to say there's room for more than one group of corvids in the roleplaying multiverse. Now all they need is a motto, preferably one that looks good when translated into Latin to put over their gates. What they really do not need, on the other hand, is people who try to manipulate their tournament scoring system by downvoting rivals rather than ranking people honestly on how well they played. It's usually pretty obvious when one person in a group does it, especially if they consistently vote in a different pattern to the rest of their groups over multiple rounds, so cut it out, or we may have to disqualify you! There's always a few arseholes, and if they're left unchecked they'll just naughty word everywhere. They may solve their scheduling and logistic problems, but the human interaction challenges will never go away. What ways will the obnoxious few find to spoil things for the majority next time?



Letters: The Satanic Panic continues to weigh heavily on their minds in here. Our first letter thinks the violence in D&D is no worse than the colonialist genocide of Risk or capitalist exploitation of Monopoly, and they don't have people saying they should be banned. Oh how naive. We're not trying to convince them, we're trying to make them look absurd to casual observers. That's the way to win the war long-term.

The second one points out the hypocrisy of the bible-bashers, when it's full of violence, sexism, incest, pedophilia, mass circumcision as trophy-taking, failure to show guests proper hospitality - and that's just the humans! What right do they have to say WE'RE a bad influence?! Yes, but they're embedded in virtually every community in the country. If you want to beat them, you've got to engage in community outreach too, show them that gamers are everywhere, they're not a danger, and they're not going away. Don't hide in your basement, be a hero in the real world.

The third one is also about community outreach. If you want tournaments in your area, get out there and make your own mini-convention. We've given you the tools, but ultimately, it's up to you to use them.

Next, we have someone agreeing with our review columnist that he deserves more feedback. Send it in, let him know how to improve! You first. Don't try to pass the buck onto everyone else without giving your own.

Finally, we have someone reminding them that followers are as crucial to an organisation as leaders. You can't expect everyone to actively contribute, and their money's as good as anyone else's. Another thing where you need to find the right balance, because too far in either extreme will lead to their own set of problems.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 37: Jul/Aug/Sept 1987



part 2/5



Cornucopia: Rather than one big review, Errol does a ton of little potted ones this time. CM8: The Endless Stair, DA2: Temple of the Frog, DA3: City of the Gods, GAZ1: The Grand Duchy of Karamekos, IM2: The Wrath of Olympus, H2: Mines of Bloodstone. C6: The RPGA Tournament Handbook (particularly important that they mention that in here, if they want more people to submit adventures and run tournaments.) NA2: Treasure Hunt, OA3: Ochimo the Spirit Warrior, I10: Ravenloft II, and REF4: the Book of Lairs II. All get blandly positive reviews with scores ranging from 5-9/10, which is the kind of thing I hate, because it gives me nothing to riff off of. Little more than self-promotion for TSR products, and at least the actual adverts usually put some effort into looking good. Could you kindly not.



Clerical Errors: Advice on how to play clerics is like busses. You go years without any of it, and suddenly two articles turn up at once. Where Jeff's concentrated on gear & spells, this mixes up roleplaying advice and once again, optimal spell selection, but with a different format. Aside from a mildly amusing reminder that your games needn't be as family friendly as TSR's official products and settings, there's not a lot going on here, and his optimal spell selections are pretty conservative. Roll on 2e, and genuinely differentiated speciality clerics with idiosyncratic sphere selections that you have to put in real work to make the best of because they have unique granted powers.



Arcane Academe: Meanwhile, Jeff moves onto Thieves, and their close relatives Assassins & Monks. As before, we get equipment advice, and some not so obvious uses for their powers, but with less choice of powers, there's less difference between an optimised one and a regular one. He's particularly baffled by Monks, and their grab-bag of powers from various literary sources that are cool individually, but don't give them an obvious combat role. Well that's the problem of thinking of characters primarily as parts of a combat unit to be optimised, isn't it. Still, well done on him for spotting a problem that'll continue to be an issue in 3e. If only the designers had been paying attention back in 1999.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 37: Jul/Aug/Sept 1987



part 3/5



The Living City: After 2 years of buildup, we finally get our first peek inside the walls of Raven's Bluff, with the highly specific contents of Building 275, section E4. That tells us that when they do release the actual sourcebook, it's going to have a massive map which is zoomed in enough to show every street and building, even if most of them will be blank at first so people can detail what's in them over the years, and hopefully even have their characters officially own property themselves. Keeping the Living City alive and tracking things like this requires an extensive and well-organised database, and it's very good to see they've thought about how to implement that before throwing the doors open and letting people flood in. It also serves as a reminder that it's going to be packed with adventurers, ex-adventurers, and other people with class levels. If you think you can kill the shopkeepers and guards and get away with it you're in for a rude awakening, for they're likely tougher than you. The specific information is less interesting than the things I'm inferring though. A married pair of ex-pirates, who now sell fish. If you get them talking you might pick up a plot hook or two about buried treasure, but don't trust them, for their larcenous urges are still close to the surface. Perfectly standard fare for a port town. As one of the first bits of material, they'll definitely have appeared in a fair few campaigns since then.



Film Noir: Our adventure this time is a bit of a curveball, as they decide to do one for the Chill system. Dragon never did any articles for that, and it's not even a TSR game, so this is a very welcome surprise. The ghost of a hack filmmaker who committed suicide because his films were both critical and commercial flops is haunting an abandoned movie theater. Unfortunately, his phantasmal manifestations of cheesy pop culture references are quite capable of scaring people to death. The PC's need to survive long enough to figure out what the hell his deal is and then lay him to rest, which cannot be accomplished by force alone, as is gothic ghost story tradition. This has some silly elements, but it could still be genuinely scary, as Chill PC's don't appear to be particularly powerful, so they can't fight the supernatural on it's own terms with exorcisms and fireballs like D&D or WoD ones can with a little XP. Seems a pretty decent way to fill 3-4 hours, and I'm quite pleased to see them covering a completely new system. Will this inspire other people to send in more adventures and articles for other RPG's? Here's hoping.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 37: Jul/Aug/Sept 1987



part 4/5



Multi-class characters: AD&D's multi and dual class systems were always … idiosyncratic, to put it politely. Knowing precisely who could be what, in combination with what else, and what level they could reach in each class required an extensive table, and effectively prohibited you from using new classes from supplements with new races from other supplements. This aims to clear things up a little by turning each potential progression into it's own table, with it's own XP, hit point and proficiency progression. Since you won't gain a level this way until you've accumulated XP equal to the sum of all your classes requirements rather than spreading it evenly, plus your proficiencies are averaged instead of added together, and you're rolling 1 hit die vs several and halving them, which usually gives you a slightly higher average due to rounding effects, this is actually a step downwards in terms of overall power. This is a noob trap, and a tedious one at that, as it eats up a full 7 pages with it's iterated formulae. Anyone with the ability to do mathematical analysis themselves will avoid it easily, and the rest should follow their lead.



With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Dragon has had The Marvel-Phile trucking along reliably since the RPG was first released. Polyhedron's superheroic articles have been considerably thinner on the ground. No more! This brave freelancer has taken up the mantle of producing a regular column for the newszine, come rain, shine, or alien invasion! Let's hope his submissions are a little more punctual than a certain web-slinger who shares this motto.

The first article, not too surprisingly, is on the quirks of running tournament adventures for superhero RPG's in particular. Even more than D&D, you really need to rely on pregen characters, as the power levels and flexibility can vary so widely, and letting people bring their own would all too likely make the scenario effortless or impossible. Don't hesitate to use existing heroes and villains from the comics, as this actually makes roleplaying easier. Choosing two or three villains to team up will often strongly suggest a plotline, based on their personalities, histories and goals. You also really need to keep things moving if you want that comic book style. Multiple routes are cool, but you can only plan so many, and you should make sure you have a failsafe to nudge them back on the plot if they grind to a halt or do something completely unexpected. It all seems pretty reasonable. You'll never be able to explore the logical ramifications of super-science on the world's long-term development in a 4 hour tournament slot, so you might as well lean into creating the best high-speed rollercoaster you can manage instead, and hope it stays fun enough that they don't start poking the backdrop and finding out how thin it is.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 37: Jul/Aug/Sept 1987



part 5/5



Where Have All The Scenarios Gone?: Now that is a good question. Quite possibly to Dungeon, as they've made it clear that they're getting more than they need (although not always the kind they want. Alexa, play the Rolling Stones song on this subject ), plus they actually pay if they publish them. The RPGA, on the other hand, is still struggling to get enough member submissions to fill all their upcoming tournaments. If you don't submit some more they might be forced to do reruns, and no-one wants that. Act now and save us from the horrors of syndication! Another mildly irritating sign that they're still not really on top of things after the past couple of tumultuous years. Just what will it take to shake enough members out of their passivity that the few that do volunteer aren't overstretched?



RPGA Network Tournament Winners List: The Bingle family continue to dominate the listings here, but hot young newcomer Dewey Frech is making big inroads, with three 1st prizes, plus one each of 2nd and 3rd places. Like any competitive sport, triumph one year is no guarantee you'll be on form the next, and D&D has enough random elements that it's impossible to complete a module perfectly every time even if you did know it by heart, which you wouldn't anyway, as they're trying to come up with fresh ones each year. Competitive speedrunners should stick to video games, because trying to get everything to line up perfectly when trying to co-ordinate with half a dozen other PC's just seems like an exercise in masochism to me.



Another round of stuff that's fairly historically significant, but highly variable in quality here. Their struggles to progress with their plans, and improve despite the decline in members and controversy with the general public continue to be highly visible in their output. Still, at least some of them are coming to fruition. Let's see what next issue brings for the Living City and if people will be able to move in yet.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 7: Sep/Oct 1987



part 1/5



68 pages. The circus is in town! The circus is in town! Oh god, those are some of the most horrifying scenarios in any TV show. Sinister clowns, evil puppets, hallucinogenic candy, impromptu gladiatordom, vampire feeding grounds, being kidnapped and renamed Dave, the possibilities are multitudinous. Let's see what darkness lurks behind the bright lights and music of this troupe of troubadours and harlequins.



Editorial: They've had a full year to work out the kinks by using their hardcore fanbase from Dragon & Polyhedron as test subjects. This is the issue that Dungeon goes on sale on the newsstands. How very exciting for them. Of course, that also increases the risk of overprinting and losing money on the unsold returns compared to being subscription only, but that's life. You've got to speculate to accumulate, or go digital only, and see if anyone'll pay for what you have to offer when they could probably wait a bit then pirate it instead. Hopefully their sales will increase rapidly at this point. To hedge their bets a bit more, they're offering special deals if you sign up your friends. Get recruiting! Adventure is better with a good set of stalwart companions! The atmosphere in here is definitely much less stressed out than the Polyhedron newsroom. It's good to be able to jump between the two and get a breath of fresh air.



Letters: Once again, letters are a bit thin on the ground here. The first one says it's about time they started selling the magazine in stores, which gives them another opportunity to smugly say they already have. Now if only they could get up the demand to do non-D&D adventures as well, which would stave off repetitiveness in the topics they cover by a good few years.

The other one asks once again why they don't do adventures for evil characters. They're not bending on this one, no matter how many complaining letters you send, because no matter how strident your complaints are, trust me the Satanic Panic ones are louder and shriller. It'll take a complete change in circumstances and management before we even consider changing that.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 7: Sep/Oct 1987



part 2/5



Nightshade: Nigel Findley returns with another short adventure for low level characters. The PC's are hired by a noble to collect a potion from a wizard. Why he doesn't just do it himself, and is willing to pay quite a bit to get a bunch of random adventurers to do such a seemingly trivial task for him is a very interesting question indeed, and the answer would be a big spoiler. Depending on how it goes, and how suspicious your players are, they might find out the dark (and somewhat skeevy) backstory and decide to do something different, making themselves a long-term enemy in the process, or they might complete it with only minor hitches, setting things up for more morally ambiguous quests in the future. Not one for the Paladins & Princesses playstyle, but if you like your missions more on the Lankhmar/Shadowrun side of things, and half the fun is seeing precisely what way the PC's go off the rails when they find out what they've got themselves into this'll fit right in.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 7: Sep/Oct 1987



part 3/5



Tortles of the Purple Sage pt 2: Having finished the escort mission part of the plot, there's still a ton of things for the players to do out here, with another 18 pages of worldbuilding and plot hooks. Half of this is a detailed description of the Richland Trading Post, a frontier town that seems intended as a base of operations for the PC's to come back too between expeditions, restock and sell any treasure they've found. The other half is a somewhat sketchier description of three ruined cities with some weird stuff going on that'll be very valuable indeed if they can get there and deal with the quirks and dangers of what they find. It's even more open-ended than the first part, and once again operates on a scale of both space and time many orders of magnitude larger than any other adventure here. With a bit of work to fill in the map, it could well give your characters years of exploration fun. Well worth the price of entry even on it's own.



The Matchmakers: P. N. Elrod returns to give us another quirky change of pace, with a very Romeo & Juliet style romance story of lovers from wealthy houses who's families are feuding, and want to marry them off to other people. Can you resolve things so they end somewhat less tragically than the source material? You'll have to anticipate several potential plot twists and head them off at the pass, or come up with a plan that bypasses them altogether and get lucky. Fortunately, this is the kind of adventure that also gives plenty of information on the surrounding town and NPC's, so it's easy to improvise in response to the players. A good example of how to do a plot-heavy, combat-light story without turning it into a railroad.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 7: Sep/Oct 1987



part 4/5



Samurai Steel: Our Oriental Adventure this issue is a political one that seems all too relevant to modern events. The PC's are accosted by a large number of Samurai, who will respond to the slightest disrespect by apprehending them with considerable brutality. If they're smart enough to kowtow, they'll find themselves roped into a political intrigue, as the ruler of the town is growing increasingly paranoid and despotic, jumping at shadows, and engaging in the kind of repression which ensures that if there weren't plots against his rule before, there sure as hell are now. If they want to be able to leave town alive, they need to figure out what's caused his change of heart and fix the problem. But Y'know, by working within the system rather than smashing it and rebuilding it, otherwise you'll lose honor points. So this is a story of the stresses of trying to be the good guys within a corrupt system, facing enemies who use the rules against you without being bound by them themselves. Not saying it's bad, but it's definitely way too close to home for me to run as escapism in the current political climate. If you can, or you're reading this in a better future and want to run it to remind yourself how easily authoritarian injustice can start up again, more power to you.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 7: Sep/Oct 1987



part 5/5



The Jingling Mordo Circus: Yup, it's evil circus time. Far scarier than even energy draining undead due to it's capacity to make the PC's look ridiculous, while quite possibly also killing them as well. And in this respect, the adventure really does not mess around, as it's run by an exceedingly powerful wizard who will use scry/time stop/teleport combos to naughty word with the PC's without them having a chance to see who's responsible or strike back. The rest of the troupe are no slouches either, with an interesting mix of classes, races, and weird creatures, which are quite capable of using their powers intelligently and co-operatively. This is an adventure that will remain challenging no matter how much raw power the PC's have, unless they also have dirty tricks to anticipate and short-circuit encounters, and even then that'll just make this a level playing field. Don't use it unless you're prepared to play the characters as smartly as they're written, and if you do, it might be a good idea to plan ahead and have your PC's pass through the circus a few times at lower levels before triggering the main plot, so they get to know the flavourful NPC's and aren't immediately on edge and bringing their armour and weapons everywhere as soon as you mention the very concept of going. It'll all take a lot more work than just killing them in the Tomb of Horrors.



Issues 3&4 are already out of print on the back-orders list. That bodes well as an indicator of how quickly they're ramping up operations.



A pretty strong selection of adventures overall, spanning a wide range of levels and sizes, but all give you a fair degree of freedom in how you solve the problems in them, have room for roleplaying and long term consequences depending on how you complete them, and don't force you into a string of meaningless combat encounters. For all that they say they don't want evil PC's, they're giving you plenty of chances to play more morally ambiguous characters here. Let's hope they'll keep that spirit and sneakiness in the face of the moral majority for many issues to come.