TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 46: March 1989



part 1/5



32 pages. They no longer have an april issue in polyhedron since they moved to labelling them with precise months, but this cover looks pretty goofy anyway. I'm guessing there's going to be at least one low content humour article in there, maybe more. Let's see if they've got what it takes to make me laugh this year.



Notes From HQ: Despite all their efforts, the bystander effect is still irritatingly in force when it comes to recruitment. A pitiful 33 people out of nearly 10,000 participated in the recruitment drive. Some regions didn't even have a single entrant to award a prize too! When asked why, most people said they didn't try because they thought they had no chance of winning. Even though the prizes for winning aren't really the point, it's the making new friends and building a community that'll hopefully last a lifetime. They're more than a little annoyed, and make their feelings clear on this over the course of the editorial. You genuinely can make a difference just by showing up and doing the work every day, because a surprisingly small proportion of humanity actually do. They then realise they have to end on a positive, and spend a short paragraph selling their humour articles this year. It's a bit forced, but at least they tried. Hopefully they'll have some more reasons to be genuinely cheerful soon.



50 Quotes Players Fear Most: The humor articles go straight to full speed with a burst of irreverent DM sadism that does exactly what it says on the tin. There are many many ways you can screw over the players, both IC and OOC. Sometimes, they'll even deserve it. Don't overuse them if you want to continue to have a group to torment. The kind of thing we've seen before, will see again, is mainly useful as a cautionary tale, and I can't think of much to say about.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 46: March 1989



part 2/5



Junk Bonds: The adventure this issue is also pretty goofy, a Top Secret/S.I. one where the PC's get tangled up in a WEB attempt to manipulate hollywood for their nefarious ends. They're putting secret codes in the latest James Bond equivalent that they'll use to co-ordinate with their agents around the world. Orion gets wind of this while it's still in production, and the PC's have to sneak around the set and editing rooms and disrupt the work of the enemy agents, preferably in a subtle enough way that nothing happens to the oblivious cast and crew. The result is a somewhat farcical romp through spy and hollywood tropes, full of meta stuff lampshading just how different espionage is on the screen to real life. Like most comedy modules, it's also irksomely linear, involving very little actual detective work by the PC's. Their superiors find all the clues and just send them from one scene to the next to do the dirty work. It's fairly amusing to read, but not at all the kind of adventure I'd actually want to run or play in. It'd fit right in the more self-aware episodes of an 80's cartoon like Transformers or Tiny Toon Adventures where the writers weren't afraid to poke fun at their own writing room and production processes, but it'd be horribly disruptive to a group that started at Sprechenhaltestelle and had been playing a serious long term campaign up to then.



The Living City pt 1: Any adventurer-heavy city needs a rough and ready dive bar where you can have a good brawl and pick up the latest underworld gossip that might lead to further adventures. Skully's Bar & Bait (so named because it also does a brisk trade in fishing equipment for the hard-drinking dockers) definitely qualifies. If you don't have a decent constitution, you'll definitely regret spending a night on the town here. As usual, this is packed full of flavour and possibilities for adventure, with several well detailed NPC's. Skully himself, the owner, who as usual for this city is an experienced adventurer with a tragic past and a whole load of tricks up his sleeve to deal with troublemakers. Mab Hardbutter the bartender, an experienced thief with a strawng naughty wordree accent :wurzels intensifies: who's (mostly) gone straight. And Erny the Mop, a crippled thief who had a promising career until he took a chariot to the knee, and now serves as the resident spy and rumormonger of the establishment, always keeping his ears open while pretending to be just a grumbling old drunkard. All are described well enough to be instantly playable with distinct voices for the ham actors amongst you. This one wins my seal of approval, being very usable and entertainingly written, as well as being an interesting juxtaposition of things that actually makes sense for a coastal city. I could definitely see myself transplanting it to other settings.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 46: March 1989



part 3/5



The Living City pt 2: The second location this issue is also a multipurpose venue heavily tied in with the city being a coastal one. Embrol Sludge's Eatery and Shell Shoppe uses all the parts of the mollusks they catch to create rather good shell and pearl-centric jewellery. Due to their rather unfortunate surname, they don't get nearly the sales they deserve, but they persist nonetheless and are gradually increasing their loyal repeat clientele through quality of goods and friendly service. Once again, there's plenty of focus on what precautions they've taken if the PC's try to attack or rob them, and what treasure you can score if you do succeed. But there's also even more attention paid to the relationships and histories of the characters, giving them ongoing plotlines that the PC's can get involved in one way or another. Particularly interesting is a secret interracial love triangle that seems likely to blow up dramatically at some point. There's a fair bit of whimsy and humour here to keep in in theme with the issue, but this is still fully usable and properly thought out in terms of design. They're obviously getting plenty of good submissions to choose from at this point.



Birds of a Feather: After a couple of very specific setting-building articles, here's one of those generic ones that shows up every few years. If you don't have a gaming group, and suck at converting people who don't roleplay at all into the hobby, how do you find someone to play with? Obviously if you were reading this back in the day you were a member of the RPGA, so putting in a classified ad here is a good place to start. But you can find people gaming in the strangest places. Check the bulletin boards in shops, universities, social clubs, even ones devoted to other topics. You never know when their interests might cross over and you'll spot someone else who's also looking for the same thing. Definitely an area where it's got a lot quicker and easier over the years as the internet let you search for and communicate with people anywhere in the world without all the tedious and sometimes expensive legwork. This all feels very dated. The steps after you make contact still seem all too relevant though. Before actually making a decision on if you'll become a group, discuss what kind of game you want to play, when, where and how often, and don't forget to discuss the food/drink arrangements, because it's better to back out politely at that stage rather than making commitments you can't keep, and a surprising number of relationships fall apart over such seemingly trivial things. Nothing I haven't heard before, but it's necessary to go over the basics every now and then, especially if you want to attract and retain new readers.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 46: March 1989



part 4/5



The Bureaucrat: :sighs heavily: Why is it that the only time we see new classes in here is when they do joke issues? It's like they're actively mocking not only the subject of the new classes, but those players who persistently desire new crunchy stuff to play with. So here's the bureaucrat, an individually underpowered but collectively terrifying class that are definitely not functional as PC's, but I'm sure you can find a reason to use them as a DM. After all, in any society larger than a monkeysphere, middle managers will inevitably appear, and once they do, they'll take steps to ensure their position remains secure and properly compensated even if they don't actually do that much themselves. Exterminating them might be a pleasant fantasy, but it rarely goes well. This is the kind of parodic riffing on a real world thing that exaggerates for comical effect, but very little of it is actually false. It's decent enough on a writing level. On a mechanical level it could definitely have been a lot better though, as they've done joke classes that are also usable in a serious fashion before. I guess that proves that the writer isn't a part of the thing he's parodying, because otherwise they'd never have let that kind of imprecision get through into the final product.



Playing Illusions: We take a break from the joke articles once again for a revival of this old canard. The adjudication of exactly what you can and can't do with illusions varies enormously from table to table, especially in these older editions where the writing isn't so clear and precise. Here's yet another writer's take on how they should work. Unsurprisingly, the low level spells that only affect a few senses are by far the easiest to spot something's wrong with and make that disbelief roll. Complex things composed of lots of smaller things push the boundaries of what counts as a single object Creating things you haven't experienced personally also makes the illusions considerably weaker and easier to see through. If they don't see through them though, the psychosomatic effects are quite capable of actually killing you, not just knocking you out with nonlethal damage that goes away after the scene is over. Neither the strictest or the most lenient interpretation I've seen, and a pretty boring read, particularly as it contrasts very sharply with the rest of this issue's content. Definitely one of those repeated topics that just gets more tiresome every time it repeats, unlike the more inventive ones like new classes, monsters and spells, which have a much larger amount of room to explore before running out of new combinations of flavour material and crunchy stuff.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 46: March 1989



part 5/5



Caption Contest: One competition has come to an end, so they start up another one to keep engagement up. Your basic one-panel newspaper gag where they give you an image and the best caption submitted for it will get printed in a future issue. Nothing particularly ambitious, but then again, they kinda fell flat on their face with the last one. Hopefully people won't be so intimidated by putting in their two cents on this idea, and repeated little contests will get them better primed for the next time they try a big one like the membership drives.



Some very good Living City work in here, but the humour stuff doesn't really hit the mark for me, and the behind the scenes struggles are a definite downer. They may have improved things from a few years ago, but there's still a lot of work to be done, especially when contrasted to their two larger and higher budget periodicals. So once again let's hop over and see how Dungeon fares, and if they'll be doing any irritatingly goofy april fool adventures hardly anyone will actually ever play this issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 16: Mar/Apr 1989



part 1/5



68 pages. That green dragon needs to go on a bit of a diet. I don't see it gliding through the forest in a surprisingly stealthy way for it's size the way they're supposed too. Let's see if proper attention is paid to monster size vs their surroundings inside, or rigorous mathematics will be going out the window in favour of focus on story this issue.



Editorial: AD&D 2e is finally arriving. However, it'll be a couple of months before all the new corebooks are out, and even longer before they're running mostly 2e adventures. Barbara confirms that Dungeon will have the same kind of slow transition as Dragon due to the quantity of already submitted material they want to publish, and the time it'll take for the new rules to percolate through the playerbase. It's not as if they're that different anyway, so you can mix and match the two as you please. Given that it wasn't until 1993 that Dragon really started taking advantage of the new technology like kits. priest spheres and point-buy thief skills that really increase how much you can customise your characters, I'm pretty sure that we'll be seeing 1eisms linger even longer than she suspected when writing this. Still, better that than losing a big chunk of your readers (and just as importantly, your freelance writers) due to edition wars. Another of those reminders how relatively low-key this edition change was compared to the big lead-ups full of teasers and abrupt dropping of any coverage of the previous ones afterwards all the WotC editions will have. It was a different era and office culture.



Letters: The first letter is one complaining about the 1st level meatgrinder problem. It's so hard to write adventures that get you over the hump that are challenging and interesting but not too lethal. Yeah, this is kinda baked into the system. Either move to another one with drama points and whatnot, or generate multiple characters per player and expect some of them to not make it through the initial session. It's all about managing expectations.

Second wants to know about age restrictions on submitting modules. If you can write well enough, they'll happily accept child labor. In fact, more than half of their submissions are by high-schoolers and uni students. Roleplaying is very much a young hobby at this point and they'd lose a lot by excluding their ideas.

Third is a defence of their shorter and more whimsical adventures. The setting heavy ones but combat light ones are particularly reusable. Don't underestimate their usefulness.

Finally, more praise of their intellectually challenging adventures, plus an inquiry about how much they pay contributors. 4 cents per word, an amount that has barely changed for low-end writers since then despite inflation. and that's when they're not asking you to do it for "exposure", which is increasingly common on the internet. It's a hard life trying to make a living off creativity.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 16: Mar/Apr 1989



part 2/5



Palace in the Sky: A second sky island adventure so soon? Underwater ones I can understand, as there's vast untapped reserves there, but this is a little more surprising. Still, there's plenty of different flying creatures, so they manage to make the specifics different as well. The one in issue 9 spent half it's runtime on a lengthy bit of wilderness exploration beforehand, while this gets you straight up there with just a brief table of wandering monsters on the way, and has a longer pagecount to boot. Some cloud giants have been coming down from their mobile island and raiding the villages near wherever the PC's are. Do you have what it takes to get up there and dissuade them by force, sneakiness or negotiation? Like the Fog Giant adventure in issue 6, this could easily be incorporated into the GDQ series if you're that way inclined. Also like those, trying a frontal assault at the recommended level is very unlikely to be successful, as they have a big edge in both strength and manoeuvrability, (just opening the doors is a challenge for human-sized adventurers!) and plenty of giant sized pets to keep the variety of things you'll face up. You'd better use your brain and prepare appropriate spells if you don't want to be thrown half a mile down to the ground and take that capped out 20d6 damage. It's actually bigger than those modules as well, so if you are combining them, it definitely fits in at the end, after the fire giants and before you head down into the underdark. Now we just need a reason the normally good storm giants would also sign up with the drow to get the full set for our mega-adventure path.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 16: Mar/Apr 1989



part 3/5



The Dwarves of Warka: From an adventure where everything is built on a larger scale than is comfortable for the characters, to the exact opposite. A dwarven town recently lost some of it's members down in the underdark tunnels below. They'd rather adventurers went down and kill whatever it is rather than risking more of their own. You get to stay a few nights in their somewhat low-ceilinged homes before heading down there. The actual challenge turns out to be pretty small and underwhelming, a mere 3 pages of adventure compared to the full 11 devoted to the town. So this is one of those adventures that's mainly here as an excuse for the setting building, which is quite substantial and filled with interesting NPC's that could be friend or foe long-term depending on how you interact with them. It draws heavily on Roger Moore's work expanding dwarven gods and society in Dragon, which is quite pleasing to see, and builds on it further with how the specific details vary from generic in this particular town. Whether you'll get much use out of it or not really depends on how much your players enjoy the part where they pootle around shopping and interacting with the NPC's between dungeon delves. If you really want them to stick around to get more out of it, swap the little cavern complex provided for a much larger one, since there's plenty of them to choose from over D&D's lifespan. There's some good elements here, but they're not put together in the optimal way. The more options you have, the more you'll get out of treating them in a modular manner rather than just using them as-is.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 16: Mar/Apr 1989



part 4/5



Necropolis: Nigel Findley goes back to treading on the darker side of things. The dead have risen and they're roaming the village at night! The people are terrified! The problem is probably rooted in the necropolis, filled with the graves of soldiers who died in a big battle centuries ago. Who would keep a thing like that around in a D&D world where the undead are a well-known problem instead of cremating them? Oh well, no crying over buried corpses now. Better get down there and deal with them. The result turns out to be a little more complex than a basic hack-and-slash dungeon, with interesting prerequisites for laying the dead to rest without fighting them that will challenge the PC's intellectually. (although if they're high enough level the straightforward violent approach will work as well) Short, but with a decent amount of twists and depth for it's size, he's once again proving his worth to the world of roleplaying in spades. It's definitely a shame that he died too soon.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 16: Mar/Apr 1989



part 5/5



Vesicant: The final adventure also takes a simple and iconic premise and makes it distinctly more complex and ambiguous. A dragon is attacking shipping routes and taking their stuff. Normally the heroes would just head to it's lair and return the favour. This is complicated by the fact that no-one knows where it's lair is, plus it has a navy of pirates backing it up for a cut of the loot. So you need to venture to the lawless hive of scum and villainy they hang out in and do some serious detective work before you can even start on the main dungeon, and even if you do win, instead of the usual praise, you have to deal with the pissed off locals now they've lost their big grift/protector. (plus everyone scrambling to nab a slice of the dragon's hoard, so keeping the treasure you picked up becomes a real challenge in itself. ) It's high not just in tricks and traps, but also socioeconomic details and logistical challenges kinder adventures would simply gloss over. This also means the city part is once again designed to be reused as a setting after the adventure is over, as it's an ideal place for both smaller city-based adventures and hearing plot hooks to various nautical expeditions. Better hope the PC's are sneaky enough to fit in and not blow their cover with declarations of heroism like they expect to be rewarded for what they've done. Another pretty interesting adventure that could fill quite a few sessions with all it's sections, plus the ramifications from extending the events in here logically to create further challenges for the PC's.



Even more than previous issues, this really goes all in on adventures as mini settings that you can use in your world even after the main conflict is resolved. That's quite pleasing to see, even if it's obvious that it's not a direction that's sustainable indefinitely. At some point, there will be enough prefab towns to last us a lifetime of adventuring and they'll want to get back to the dungeon. Let's see if next issue manages to find a theme for itself to keep the variety up.