TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 42: July 1988



part 1/5



32 pages. Secret agents must maintain their immaculate suits and hairstyles, come high society soiree, mountain skiing, or tied to a villain's deathtrap! No surprise that Top Secret/S.I. is getting more than one token promotional article given how long the first edition lasted. Let's see if there's any cool new stuff exclusive to here to discover, or we should have left off after exhausting the main database.



Notes From HQ: Back in 1982, they did a membership drive to get things going, offering a bunch of prizes for the top recruiters, including the opportunity to meet the biggest names in the game industry. After a couple of years in which their growth not only stalled out, but actually slowly declined, they decide it's high time for another one. But since they've learned a lot since then, it's going to be bigger and better organised than the first. Rather than just putting all their eggs in the same basket, they're dividing the world up into regions (although 4 of them are for the USA, 1 for Canada, and the rest of the world is covered by the remaining 3, which shows how USA-centric their membership still is) each of which has their own prizes to be won. So don't feel intimidated because you live in a country where roleplaying hasn't really caught on yet, get recruiting! You still have a fair chance at winning something. Hopefully with all these new members, we'll then be able to run more officially sponsored tournaments, and therefore individual members will be able to level up faster. Good to see they understand the virtuous cycle of increasing network externalities. I wonder if they'll actually give concrete numbers of how many people the winners recruited this time around. Here's hoping.



Letters: The XP system continues to weigh heavily in people's minds. The first letter is another person who's unhappy with the system as it is, and thinks it needs to be scrapped or heavily overhauled to reward things other than just frequent con attendance. They're already working on it as they write.

Fresh from having one Bingle contribute last issue, highest ranked player in the system Don Bingle also writes in in favour of keeping things going. He'd enjoy going to conventions anyway, but the extra reward is nice. Healthy competition keeps people motivated. Just don't expect to be able to stay on top without keeping up the effort.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 42: July 1988



part 2/5



The Critical Hit: Errol decides to give a little extra publicity to Skyrealms of Jorune, one of the most interesting, but also complex new settings recently unleashed upon the world. Like many settings where a ton of worldbuilding was done before it was ever introduced to the public, the in-setting language and game jargon can be somewhat intimidating to newbies. But once you've got past that, the system isn't any heavier than D&D, and there's a rich world full of adventure hooks to explore. It still has a small but devoted fanbase to this day. But it never did get any articles in Dragon. I wonder if they'll manage one or two in here before it becomes all D&D all the time.



The Living City: :Sighs heavily: This column decides to revel in dated stereotypes again, and do the gypsy fortuneteller thing. Let's tick off the list of tropes, shall we. Withered old crone who conceals herself in a cloak. Check. Scammer primarily interested in maximising profits by playing on the expectations and fears of the customer rather than giving any accurate prediction of the future. Check. Does actually possess some genuine magical ability despite that. Check. Sexy granddaughter who\s learning the family trade that she uses to attract more customers. Check. Thieving grandson who'll make note of any particularly wealthy customers and follow them home to engage in further larceny. Check. You've seen it in innumerable examples of all kinds of media, and this puts no interesting spins on it, or shows any kind of self-awareness. Even if it weren't racist and sexist it would still be lazy writing, especially as a Roma analogue is ironically one of the few real world things the Realms doesn't throw into it's kitchen sink. Another one that's definitely best left in the past.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 42: July 1988



part 3/5



The Charleston Academy: :sighs again: Who let Skip Williams get away from his piles of Sage Advice questions long enough to do another adventure? Don't they know by now that it always turns out goofy and irritating. Your characters (Which may or may not be the typically punnishly named pregens) get roped into a posh boarding school drama, and have to bring back a kid playing hooky, hopefully uncovering the reasons he was so distressed by his school experience in the first place. There turns out to be something very sinister behind it all, in a very Harry Potter stylee. This is definitely interesting, but it's really not very well suited to the D&D system and default setting where a bunch of murderhobos get involved in problems they have no personal connection too, as non-students tromping around on an active school ground will disrupt things and make finding the culprits much harder. So this gets some points for being different and experimental, but doesn't get above middling due to the aforementioned general goofiness and being a poor fit to the D&D module format. You really need to change the surrounding framework a fair bit before ideas like this can reach their full potential.



Sneak Preview: Ah yes, here comes Jon Pickens again with his constant adding and tweaking of spells. The upcoming release of 2e gives him a chance to make all those little changes they've thought up over the past 10 years official. So here's four pages of notes covering slightly over 100 cleric spells. A few spells are cut, a few more are rolled into other spells or relegated to background details, and there's lots of little changes for game balance or clarity of writing. As is usual for this kind of revision, most will be accepted as unambiguous improvements, or not even noticed due to their subtlety, but a few will probably provoke nerdrage that their favourite twinky trick no longer works. It's quite interesting if you're into that kind of fine detail, and I'm sure there'll be a counterpart one for magic-user spells along in the near future.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 42: July 1988



part 4/5



New Rogues Gallery: This column is the one tied into the cover image, with stats for four Top Secret agents and the agency they've created. This gives them the chance to show off the new edition's system, which while simplified in some ways, has a surprisingly complex 6-axis "alignment" system for their personalities, plus a decent selection of GURPS style advantages and disadvantages to customise your character with. As with the D&D ones, there is a certain amount of "let me tell you about my character", with the four of them playing off each other like a retired adventuring party who settled down, and are now your bosses. It's a reminder that while the new edition may have introduced obvious international good & bad guy agencies, there's still plenty of smaller operations of various degrees of corruption that you could join or play off one-another, and supplements will probably introduce more. You don't have to stick to the defaults, especially if you've been playing for a while. The main problem here, just as with the D&D ones, is that the characters are just too nice, not giving you enough reasons to come into conflict with them in an interesting way. But this is still more interesting than the last few simply due to the novelty. Keep on exposing people to new systems, it's good for them in the long run.



Remembrances of Cons Past: Donald Bingle doesn't just contribute a letter this issue, but a whole article as well. He tells the story of how he caught the conventioneering bug, a good decade ago now, and how things have changed since then. While he does have a certain amount of nostalgia for his first time, he has to admit that things have got both bigger and better organised since then, adventures have more room for actual roleplaying, and if the game you really wanted to play in still goes wrong or is overbooked, you have plenty of other choices instead. We get to find out more about him, and his almost as high-scoring wife and brother, and the way they interact with one-another. An entertainingly written fluff piece, this doesn't give us anything particularly useful for our own gaming, but it's still nice to know more about these names I've seen repeatedly in the newszine. May they have many more years of good gaming ahead of them.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 42: July 1988



part 5/5



With Great Power: The Marvel article this issue is tie-in material to their recent MX series modules, where the PC's had to deal with Sentinels taking over the USA. This is a pretty open-ended premise, and obviously there was a load of potential participants who weren't covered. So here's a couple of pages on the reactions of the Inhumans, Atlanteans, Deviants, Eternals and alien species, followed by detailed stats and information on this timeline's version of Rick Jones, who wound up taking on the mantle of Captain America after the original was killed by a Sentinel, and like every successor to Steve Rogers, struggles with feelings of unworthiness while doing his best to honour the uniform, before eventually accepting that they have to do it in their own way and can't be angsty forever. Life goes on, even if we don't get to see what happens afterwards in all these alternate timelines that only appear for one story. Still, I guess that gives us more freedom to continue it in our own way without worrying about the latest metaplot events in the 616 Marvel timeline. This is both thought-provoking and reasonably entertaining, so no problems here. Alternate universes offer infinite possibilities for adventure, you just need to avoid throwing too many possibilities simultaneously and confusing things. That way, you don't need to be afraid to use familiar names in different contexts or worry about players killing them off.



Another issue in which both the good and bad articles are quite interesting in their own ways, showing the progress towards 2e going full steam, but not without it's fair share of holdouts and mistakes along the way. Looks like there will indeed be some cool new information on their process that didn't get into Dragon, and I will have a more complete view of D&D history after getting through this. Quite a satisfying note to end on and head into the next issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 12: Jul/Aug 1988



part 1/5



68 pages. It seems they're in a whimsical mood again, as the cover shows a leprechaun painting cows green for some reason. Well, that's definitely an adventure hook worth following, to see where it leads us. Of course, given that it's fae-related, it might well lead into a string of well-prepared pranks, and the pot of gold at the end turning into leaves the next morning. Let's see if there's any way to get the better of them in this particular scenario, or the railroad inevitably leads to them getting the last laugh.



Editorial: Straight away, they cement that they are indeed in a whimsical mood this issue with a quote from the big name parody book Bored of the Rings. Well, you've got to balance out the boring stuff, like making indexes, that also comes with the job. Yup, only two years in, and they're already doing an index to make it easier to track down adventures of a particular level. They grow up so fast these days. Very interestingly, what they're most pleased about in this accomplishment is that they did it all with freelance submissions, not adventures written by the staff. Yet despite that, or actually perhaps because of it, they've maintained a considerably higher average standard of adventures than the ones in Polyhedron. It makes sense when you remember that the staff writers are working on tighter schedules than the freelancers, and they don't have the same luxury to just reject their creations outright or tell them to start again from scratch if something isn't working. Plus there's the whole on spec element. Just how many submissions do they get for each one they actually publish? I guess what it illustrates is that gatekeeping can be a good thing as long as it uses the right criteria, and the gatekeepers aren't getting so many submissions themselves that they can't properly evaluate each of them & wind up making decisions based on superficial looks/listens to the start before dropping most, or letting bad submissions through just because they're by familiar names. Well, it seems to be working for them at the moment, so let's hope it continues.



Letters: The big topic this issue is module length. David Howery is part of the mild majority that would prefer to see the average length go up a bit. But not so much that you have to split them between multiple issues, as it's tricky to spin even the longest adventure in here out a full 8 weeks while you wait for the next instalment, so you wind up having to wait until the whole thing is out before you start it at all anyway. There's a good reason why 32 pages became the standard module length in the early days of the hobby.

The second letter covers a related topic, wanting more high level modules. They do seem to be positively correlated, don't they. Where are the short but tough high level encounters to pad out a session? Could really do with even a few of those.

The third one also wants more high level modules, and more Oriental Adventures ones in general. Turtlemania is really boosting the profile of ninjas and anthromorphic animals, so it's not surprising D&D players would also want more adventures that involve those things.

The fourth one wants them to try an epic multi-parter. The one two-parter they tried didn't get much response, (What?!) so unfortunately they won't be trying that again for quite a while.

They have to include a contrary opinion though. A young Wolfgang Baur (who ironically will be involved in creating some of the more epic adventures in Dungeon's future) pipes up in favour of short but flexible encounters that you can drop more easily into any campaign. Those are the ones more likely to actually get used rather than just read.

Our next six letters all concern the merits of solo adventures, with four for and two against. Enough to keep on doing them, but be careful of overdoing it and wearing out their welcome.

The next one asks about the feasibility of Forgotten Realms adventures. Technically all the OA adventures are already FR ones anyway, but yes, as long as you don't contradict canon or their metaplot plans. This may get increasingly difficult as the sheer quantity of details racks up.

A slightly more leftfield letter asks if they plan to reprint the adventure from Dragon 131 in here. Nope. What would be the point when nearly all Dungeon buyers also get Dragon anyway?

Finally, we have someone complaining about the use of Unearthed Arcana material in adventures. Did you not the memo that everything in it is Official AD&D™ material that you're expected to incorporate into your game to keep it tournament-correct? Gary was very clear about this, and even though he's gone, it will remain TSR policy until the new edition is released.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 12: Jul/Aug 1988



part 2/5



Light of Lost Souls: Nigel Findley returns with another small location-based adventure that'll last you a single session at the most, probably less. A lighthouse keeper died with unfinished business. One of the PC's gets possessed by his ghost, and one would hope they have the sense to try and figure out what his deal is and how to lay him to rest instead of just killing their companion. (and having him jump into another body anyway.) So this is very much a horror story rather than a hack-and-slash adventure, designed to build tension and make the players worry. You can definitely see why he'll do some of his best work on the Ravenloft line in a few years time. It's no world-changing epic, but still another solid way to fill in a campaign as your group wanders from one place to the next, as it's easily dropped in anywhere coastal. As they said in the letters, they've got to keep including some of these, despite the greater demand for long adventures, as they're the most likely to actually get played.



Scepter of the Underworld: Another name that would go onto much bigger things and is still working in the gaming industry today gets their start here. James Jacobs gives us our second fully solo adventure. Take the role of Jan Daystar, (no relation to Jander Sunstar) a fairly high level fighter teleported straight into the adventure by a mysterious archmage to retrieve the eponymous scepter. As with the last one, it's your basic choose your own adventure branching path system that'll take you maybe an hour or two to complete if you roll through all the encounters properly, and considerably less if you just read it and pick which option to go too next. Comparing the two, this definitely shows iterative improvements from the first in both degrees of meaningful choice and clarity of writing, while still offering plenty of those opportunities to screw up and die horribly the format is known for. Having lots of hit points in particular definitely makes a difference to the way the adventure runs, allowing for more attrition between encounters before failing outright. Another handy change of pace from their usual group adventures that more than justifies it's place in here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 12: Jul/Aug 1988



part 3/5



Dungeon Adventures Index: 2 years, 12 issues and 62 adventures later, we get our first index. It seems a bit soon, as it barely fills a page, and is padded out to two with recycled artwork. It's also not particularly useful as it's sorted primarily by alphabetical order of adventure names, rather than system and character level, which is what you really need when you have a session in a few hours and didn't have time to prepare, so you need to find something appropriate and fast. They'll definitely make substantial improvements in the formatting in the future. So this is mainly notable to show what they haven't figured out yet when it comes to good editing and organisation. Let's carry on and see how soon another one crops up, and if it'll be any better designed.



At The Spottle Parlor: Solo adventures, both one-on-one and DM-free, have proved themselves to be successful experiments. Our most experimental one this issue is even more quirky. Rick Swan invites us to join in with a game of fantastical gambling, which includes complete rules for the game along with the scenario. Of course, as this is an adventure, things aren't nearly so simple. You have a whole load of interesting characters at the table, each with their own agendas and foibles. Even the dealer is not to be trusted. It's an entertaining read, but both too wacky and too heavily scripted & linear for my tastes, being very much an 80's cartoon representation of gambling. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since he's just coming off the equally wacky and parodic WG7, but I can't see myself using this one in a serious campaign without it ruining the suspension of disbelief. The game rules seem perfectly usable even without the scenario though, and easily incorporated into a more gritty game, so it's not completely without value for me, but overall, I think this particular experiment doesn't quite work. It could easily have been a Dragon article without all the wacky cruft added on and better off for it.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 12: Jul/Aug 1988



part 4/5



Intrigue in the Depths: Underwater adventures continue to be quite decently represented in here, as here's a 4th one to fill out your repertoire. A mage guild has had their supply of important magical components from undersea sources disrupted. As they're far too important and busy to get their robes wet, it falls to the PC's to go down there and find out what happened. Turns out the merfolk have declared war on the aquatic elves. Will the PC's encourage all-out war, or use a more diplomatic approach? As the title indicates, it definitely pushes you towards trying to find out why the merfolk have suddenly turned hostile and finding a non-genocidal solution to the conflict, although there will inevitably be a fair bit of combat in there as well to keep the bloodthirsty from getting too bored. This is another tournament adventure that shows it's origins, but has taken steps to expand beyond them for campaign play where you don't have to finish up in a single sitting, and might want to visit there again and have long term relationships and consequences from your time under the sea. It's once again higher than the average standard of it's Polyhedron counterparts.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 12: Jul/Aug 1988



part 5/5



Huddle Farm: Begorrah! Willie Walsh goes full Oirish on us in this lighthearted tale of feuding halflings beset by mischievous leprechauns. The PC's are hired by the aforementioned Huddle family, who disturbed a leprechaun living on their land, and are now regularly waking up to all sorts of silliness done to their property. They suspect their neighbours, which is of course causing further problems with their accusations and retaliations against the wrong target. Will the PC's be smart enough to catch the real culprit, and will they be able to convince their employers to believe them and make amends? You know, if you're going to do a mystery-based adventure, you really shouldn't spoil the solution on the cover. I guess that like the index, that's an editorial error rather than one on the writer's part, but it still makes this one a lot easier than it would be otherwise, as there's not many adventures where the PC's are employed by halflings, so it's more likely to trip the memory of any well-read players. You may want to reskin the details a little if you actually use it to throw your players off the scent. Basic organisational problems aside, it's still an entertaining read packed with little details, another of those adventures that's useful as a bit of worldbuiding to come back too between dungeon delves, not just passed through once and cleared out. Until you can live entirely on conjured food and sleep in extradimensional mansions, you're always going to want to maintain a good relationship with the people who keep you fed and supplied. Giving them fleshed out personalities and histories definitely doesn't hurt your game.



With a definite spike in wackiness as well as some weak editorial choices, this is one the issues I've found least usable so far. It still makes for interesting reading, but it's definitely aimed at a younger, more lighthearted audience rather than long-term players. I guess that's one of the drawbacks of the 2e code of conduct and general editorial policy. Oh well, they still managed to produce plenty of cool stuff in the 90's despite it. Let's see what direction next issue will go in, and if there'll be anything pushing the envelope in there.