TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 41: May 1988



part 1/5



32 pages. The trouble with meeting and picking up your adventure hooks in taverns is that there's not much privacy and you never know who's listening. There might be spies actively looking out for trouble to get involved in, or other adventurers who decide to either foil you or beat you to the prize. Either way, it's definitely added complications that'll make your path much rockier. Let's see if this issue manages to avoid the obvious pitfalls, or winds up leading us into a trap or betrayal.



Notes From HQ: It's been a good 5 years since they established an XP system for RPGA members, so you could honestly call yourself an Xth level player or DM. In that time, a number of cracks and loopholes have come up in the scoring, so they've decided it's time for an overhaul. They're adding some new ways to earn points, fiddling with the weighting on existing methods, and making the overall number of points needed to earn each level higher, especially at the top levels so there's no risk of people maxing them out anytime soon. It's all about making everyone feel valued, while preventing a few people from running away with all the best stuff because they concentrate on what earns points over what makes for a good play experience. The usual problem in any large multiplayer interactive experience. If you don't keep on tweaking the rules, someone will eventually find a way to exploit them, and if you don't patch them, it will eventually ruin things for everyone else. It's an eternal struggle that I'm sure we'll see more of in the future.



Letters: Our first letter in another exceedingly long one from a Sunday School teacher trying to thread the needle between the fun parts of roleplaying, and the people in his community who are deeply suspicious of the concept. It's not the kind of problem you can solve with a grand gesture.To remove the stigma, you need to tackle them one-by-one, with regular exposure that shows how ridiculous their ignorant prejudices are. No substitute for actual feet on the ground doing the work, as any evangelist should know.

The second one is from frequent tournament winner Linda Bingle, complaining that if they mess with their scoring system too much, people like her will quit because it's no fun anymore. If you do change it, it should be to make the system more clear and consistent, not less. No surprise that the people the system currently favours would be the most worried about it's revision.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 41: May 1988



part 2/5



Fun in Games: Rick takes the piss out of Jeff's attempt to give fighters more to do a couple of issues ago. You know what they need? Spells! He then lists a selection of entirely mundane actions like attack and defence in spell format. A standard April fools style article, that introduces an idea as a joke, to show their scorn for it. The real irony here is that hindsight has shown it's actually a pretty good idea when taken seriously - giving a fighty class a selection of special maneuvers that are selected and tracked in a similar way to spells worked excellently in Arcana Evolved, was adapted officially to 3e in the Book of 9 Swords, and then all the classes got basically the same AEDU power system in 4e regardless of power source. So it turns out the joke is on Rick in the long run. His other ideas are more intentionally useful beneath the humour. A secret society of female spellcasters disguised as a sewing group? Perfectly reasonable in a patriarchal society where they're not taken seriously. Using items of food as improvised minis? Also quite effective, if also somewhat messy. Once again it looks like there are solid ideas under the veneer of ridiculousness he seems to coat everything with. I might be able to grow to tolerate him yet.



Arcane Academe: In an interesting co-incidence, Jeff also gives us a bunch of potential new powers. There are plenty of things thieves really ought to be able to do that aren't currently covered by the rules, but unlike spellcasters, no mechanism for them learning them other than outright giving them new powers. So I guess that's what he's got to do. Say hello to Appraise, Streetwise, Ransack and Infiltrate. All are pretty self-explanatory, and most will folded into the nonweapon proficiency/skill systems in subsequent editions. So this is an idea that they'd return to again in Dark Sun, adding a selection of extra thief skills, then slightly improved in balance by the discretionary skill point system, before realising the distinction between what was a thief-specific skill and what was a general nonweapon proficiency was pretty arbitrary anyway, and improving on the whole system again in 3e. A mildly historically significant article that's also a good reminder of the things that have gradually improved over the years in game design. It takes a lot of effort, and the process of experimentation often seems like 10 steps forward, 9 back, but some things do definitely work better than others and stick. I guess that's evolution for you.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 41: May 1988



part 3/5



Special Intelligence: Of course, sometimes the ways games change are not evolutionary at all, instead tearing the whole system down and starting from scratch in the hope of improving things by removing all the accumulated cruft. This was definitely the case when they went from Top Secret to Top Secret/ S.I. The designers decided to go for a very different playstyle to the original, dialling back the degree of realism to speed up play, making everything quicker, more clearly written, and more focussed on high action. Instead of players being employed by real world espionage agencies, and risk TSR attracting the attention of said real world agencies (which of course actually happened to Steve Jackson Games over GURPS Cyberpunk, and caused them considerably more real hassle than the satanic panic ever did) they also added Orion & The Web, fictional global ones that are unambiguously heroic & villainous, for that full-on 80's cartoon vibe. A fairly standard promotional article that reminds us TSR could be experimental with their design when they felt like it. D&D's editions got changed relatively little because they didn't want to kill the big cash cow, but Top Secret, Gamma World, Marvel Superheroes and Buck Rogers all got new editions that were essentially entirely different games. None of them hit the magic combination of factors to make them as big as D&D, but in having several very different versions of the game that cater to different audiences, it strengthens roleplaying as a whole by giving you more resources to draw from and combine in your own way. So overall, I approve of this. After all, the old game is still right there if you prefer that playstyle instead.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 41: May 1988



part 4/5



Wedding Party: The adventure this issue is an OA one, yet another tournament one given wider release after being used in Gen Con. The PC's are recruited by the emperor himself to protect one of his daughters on the way to her wedding. There are many people who would rather not see that happen, both in and outside the empire. The PC's have to balance protecting her while remaining within the bounds of propriety in the company of powerful people and creatures that haven't done anything obviously treacherous …… yet. This results in a set of scenes which while not quite as railroady as some adventures in here, are still pretty linear. Unless the PC's are cunning enough to short-circuit things, it culminates in the princess being kidnapped by Yuan-ti to be sacrificed to their god, and the PC's having to sneak into their city to rescue her. So it's better than many of their adventures, because it successfully combines it's roleplaying and combat elements, and gives the PC's proper room to succeed and fail. It still has horrible cringe-inducing pregens though, with grossly inflated stats and vaguely asian sounding pun names rather than anything remotely culturally accurate. I suppose the western ones we've seen recently are just as bad, but obviously it feels worse when there's the race factor added in. You'll definitely want to cut them out and use your own PC's if you use this one these days.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 41: May 1988



part 5/5



The Living City: The Raven's Bluff column goes uptown, to detail Volodar's Stardust Inn, a decidedly swanky place where currently rich adventurers can enjoy fine food and beds, plus a glitzy casino that tempts them to gamble away their hard-won treasures and leave them poor again for the next adventure. Gee, that's not a direct rip-off of a specific real world place at all, is it? It even has technomagically powered anachronisms like elevators and security cameras just to make it extra obvious. It's more than a little silly. But I guess that means it fits into the Forgotten Realms perfectly, with it's sense of whimsy and somewhat porous 4th wall. It also fits perfectly into the Realms in it's attention to detail, with plenty of interesting NPC's, who are of course high level enough that you can't roll through this one with violence or rob them easily. Once again, this has enough depth put into it that you can come back to it repeatedly and put it to multiple uses. It's good to see people taking the right lessons from Ed Greenwood's writing and managing to imitate it successfully.



New Rogues Gallery: This column also starts including Raven's Bluff references in the character histories. Still a bit early for them to have actually played their history out and gained all these levels in actual play though. So I strongly suspect some fudging has taken place in their backstories, as this does still have the feel of a player telling you about his characters, rather than NPC's specifically written to be useful in other people's games. They're just too darn nice for you to have any real reason to come into conflict with them. So once again it isn't nearly as interesting or useful as the preceding one. It's all a bit baffling as an editorial decision. Couldn't you give your readers a bit more guidance in this area.



With some useful crunch, and interesting changes to both their game & administrative systems, this is a well above average issue in both usability and historical significance. It definitely feels like they've got over their post-Gygax slump and are heading full steam for 2e with all that entails. Let's see what progression next issue offers, and how soon they'll hit another roadblock to their plans.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 11: May/Jun 1988



part 1/5



68 pages. Once again wizards fail to adhere to proper health and safety protocols, and face the consequences. Just how large will the explosion be this time, and how will the fallout affect the PC's when they come to explore the area? Will there be untold treasures, or only mutated monsters to deal with? Let's turn the pages and hope they aren't booby-trapped with explosive runes that'll just create more ruins.



Editorial: The editorial once again has to deal with the fact that most people aren't as original or unique as they think they are. A book, a song, some technological development, a bit of news, and a few months later, a whole bunch of variants on the same idea crop up like mushrooms. In this case, it's shapeshifters which have received an unusual number of submissions in quick succession. I wonder what inspired that? Oh to have the vast awareness of the universe that would enable you to track back to the butterfly flapping that set all these stories in motion. Oh well, until such omniscience is within our reach, I'll just have to keep on assimilating data and analysing it to form connections the hard way.



Letters: The writer of the adventure that David Carl Argall criticised for being too tough bites back. It was the right level of challenge for his players at that level, yours must suck at tactics by comparison. This is why an adventure can't be said to be properly playtested unless it's been run by multiple groups with no direct contact with the original writer, so you can get a statistical analysis of average performance.

Some errata for The Wounded Worm. Being crippled should be y'know, genuinely crippling.

More errata, this time for the Shrine of Ilsidahur. There's always more the writers think to add after sending in the "final" version. Naming your versioned save file for a project whatever_final is just tempting fate.

Someone asking if you need an agent to submit to TSR. Nope, and they'd be more surprised if you did go through one. Despite their rapid growth, RPG's are still a cottage industry, and no-one in it remotely approaches that level of bureaucratic gatekeeping. Just get your hustle on, the bar for entry isn't actually that high.

Some more details on WWII coded radio broadcasts. The intricacies of espionage and counter-espionage is something that has filled whole books. They can't really do it justice here.

And finally, suggestions on how to improve the solo module idea. Maybe next time. Hopefully prospective writers are indeed paying attention to the letters page.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 11: May/Jun 1988



part 2/5



The Dark Conventicle: In a reversal of the last few issues, we start with the highest level module they're offering. It does seem certain ideas are in the air at the moment, as just like last Polyhedron, it's a good old rescue the kidnapped maiden who's going to be sacrificed plot. Only instead of Yuan-ti, it's Yugoloths. (yeah, I know, they're not called that yet, but alliteration is fun) Which means you need to venture into a sewer-dungeon and fight disease-infested cultists of Anthraxus, all on a time limit. Hope your cleric picked an appropriate selection of anti poison & disease spells, because you're going to need them. Just as Threshold of Evil seemed designed to showcase the Chaotic Neutral attitude towards the rest of the world, this puts the spotlight on Neutral Evil enemies, with their conflicting tendencies towards fanatical nihilism and chronic backstabbing. (with a side order of incel bitterness, as all the disease cultists are male, and keen to despoil and destroy what they can't have.) Thoroughly destroying them will be a dirty business, but satisfying once it's over. So basically, this whole module is a subtle joke at the expense of the section of the geek world known for it's poor hygiene and sense of entitlement toward's women's bodies. I wonder if they'll get angry letters from readers who fit that category and realise it's aimed at them in the next issue. Hopefully they'll get treated with the polite condescension they richly deserve.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 11: May/Jun 1988



part 3/5



The Wooden Mouse: ANOTHER all-thief adventure?! How many of these must they be getting if they're publishing them this often? In another variation on existing formulae, it's a one-on-one adventure, designed for one player and a DM rather than being entirely playable solo. That does make it more usable in a regular campaign as a side-quest than either the all-thief party ones or the Fighting Fantasy style solo ones where you really need to use the pregen to prevent choices that aren't covered by the paths, so I guess that's a certain degree of iterative improvement. In their travels, your character is spotted engaging in thievery somewhere they're not signed up to the local guild. They then get "hired" to engage in a somewhat rigged robbery. Either they die, and that's one fewer freelancer operating on guild turf, or they pass, in which case they're strongly encouraged to join up and pay their dues like a good thief does. It's basically a reminder of how ubiquitous and entrenched the 1e guild system is, and how badly it needs to be broken up. When the lawbreaking is as formalised and regulated as the supposedly legal avenues of employment, what does legal and illegal even mean anymore? This is definitely a part of the 1e implied setting that I don't miss, and this adventure shoving it in your face is somewhat tiresome. Roll on the many variegated settings of 2e to show players and writers it doesn't have to be this way, and they can create their own worlds that also depart dramatically from the assumptions in the corebooks.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 11: May/Jun 1988



part 4/5



The Black Heart of Ulom: It's not just wizards that wind up unleashing abominations on the world with their experimentation, although admittedly they're the most likely to do it intentionally. This time it's a druid that experienced unexpected complications in their attempt to make nature more resilient, turning a whole forest into a malevolent hive mind. Their magic isn't so great at dealing with problems like that, so they do the traditional thing and ask the first bunch of adventurers to pass by to go to the centre of the forest and purge the corruption. The result is an interesting combination of horror story and stealth mission, as like the Entish stereotypes, the forest is slow to rouse, but terrifyingly powerful if you do get it's full attention. Trying to slash and burn your way through the trees will rapidly set you up for overwhelming waves of monsters, while a more subtle approach will be both quicker and easier. They account for people who try to fly over the whole thing as well, which is good design. Even once you win, the problem doesn't just disappear overnight, and you have to get out, which presents it's own challenges. Overall, this is a pretty good one, scary without being a railroad, and putting natural animals to good use in it's encounters. No problems with using it here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 11: May/Jun 1988



part 5/5



Wards of Witching Ways: The last and longest adventure is also the lowest level one, continuing the inversion from their usual habits. While sailing, the PC's are caught in a savage storm and shipwrecked. They need to explore the island they wound up on, and face the various dangers if they're ever going to get off it. Even more unfortunately, the island is inhabited by a pair of wizards who use the PC's as pawns in a bet between them. Originally designed as a tournament adventure, this avoids the worst parts of tournament adventures in several interesting ways. First, since the wizards are actively watching over the game, it keeps the dungeon events reactive rather than having all the monsters stay in their room until disturbed. Second, the writer actively gives notes on how to alter it for campaign play where you're not limited to a 4 hour slot, letting you dial the amount of railroadyness up or down to your tastes without having to invent more material wholecloth. And as it's only a single-round adventure they aren't forcing you towards a particular plot resolution so the next one can be played at all anyway. It's all very considerate of the writer, and once again much better than most of the tournament adventures in Polyhedron, where they haven't even tried to make accommodations to campaign play. So this is a resounding success in how to make an adventure a lot more adaptable with just a few extra sentences. That's something a lot of writers could learn from.



Another solid 3/4 decent adventures this issue with a few amusing touches thrown in. I'm definitely starting to see some regular patterns in the types of adventures, but they remain sufficiently varied in terms of combinations and twists that they haven't become redundant yet. Let's see what twists next time will offer, and if the freelancers will once again have sent in a whole bunch of variants on the same old idea.