TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 47: May 1989



part 1/5



32 pages. Tiger-men with chakrams! Do they roar or go ulalalalala when they throw them? Does it really matter, as that's merely flavour material that doesn't affect their statistics. Still, this once again shows how you can make something surprising and interesting by combining two familiar elements that don't obviously go together. Let's see what ingredients they've put into the big melting pot of gaming influences this time around.



On Your Feet: This column returns to the topic of proper timekeeping. This is particularly important in tournaments, where you have to keep things moving if you want to finish the module before your slot is over. Equally important, however, is making sure time in game feels like the time that's actually passing. In a game where combat rounds are a matter of seconds, yet the lethality of the game is such that battles rarely get beyond a few of them, you aren't going to be seeing reinforcements until well after the fight is over even if they're only a few rooms away, let alone a police response that'd take 10-15 minutes to drive there if they scrambled straight away. Yup, this is one I've encountered personally as well. The kind of GM who gives their guards/law enforcement unrealistic powers of perception, enthusiasm and competence whenever the PC's step outside the bounds of the plot, which is more jarring than the obviously fantastical elements. If I can change the world and make a difference to my life's course with my decisions even less in the game than I can in the real world, why the hell am I playing in the first place? It's a common problem even with long-running GM's. You've got to know which rules are important and which are merely guidelines, and if you get them mixed up, both in reality and in game, you'll have to deal with no end of grief. A good lesson to be reminded of.



Notes From HQ: The weather is warming up, and so is the frequency of conventions. So once again its time for them to give some advice about how to best participate in them, and their plans to make this year their biggest and best yet. So send in your adventure ideas now! We need lots of them. Don't get in a huff if they get assigned to a smaller convention rather than Gen Con, there's only space for so many in even the largest, plus they don't want to repeat themes within the same convention if they get multiple good adventures of similar types. If your adventure is well-received enough, it might even get republished in polyhedron, dungeon, or if you're extremely lucky, as an official module. (Although looking at the ones that actually achieved that feat, it's as much about nepotism as writing quality. ) Another reminder of the complicated logistics chain that they have to co-ordinate behind the scenes to keep all this running, and the compromises that need to be made in the process. It's not easy, and only becomes trickier the more they scale up. Do you have what it takes to take a turn on the sausage-making machine and consume the output knowing what goes into it? Let's hope at least a few more people have the stomach to join in and stick with it this year.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 47: May 1989



part 2/5



Letters: The column about playing quieter characters and how that intersects with tournament voting provokes the majority of the letters this time. The first one takes a tangent on DM impartiality. Should the DM let the players know which ones they thought played best and worst, and influence the voting on who goes through to the next round even beyond their own votes having twice the weight of everyone else's? Obviously your opinion can't help but bleed through to some degree, but at least the appearance of fairness is a very good idea to prevent things from getting ugly on the convention floor.

The second asks what should happen to the votes when following your character motivations means one PC comes into conflict with the others? Can players rise above the IC conflicts to still vote for the player behind them? Jean is not amused. RPGA modules should not involve PvP, and if they do devolve into it, that means the writers and/or players have screwed up. They have a code of conduct to think about, donchaknow, so play nice with each other.

The rest have been passed directly to the author rather than published here, but rest assured that there were quite a few of them. This should give him plenty to write about in response in the near future.



The New Rogues Gallery: Orlem "Fletcher" Brumanson is your typical heroic Ranger type. Clothes that are stylish yet comfortable and convenient for wilderness travel, a tragic backstory involving the death of his parents, a willingness to leap in and take on any challenge, particularly if it involves rescuing maidens in distress, and a romantic dream of marrying one of them and settling down some day. Your basic straight white male protagonist, in other words. You've seen many of them, and you will see many more over your lifetime.

Grogg Dimfist is a good hill giant who was thrown out of his tribe for being insufficiently murderous. Fletcher managed to see that he'd make a better friend than trophy and now he's a valued part of the community. It's nice to see a story get a happy ending.

Olvg Pumilo is a dwarf with an equally tragic backstory, losing his entire mine and clan to marauding Duergar. He teamed up with the other two and now they're part of the same adventuring party. You can see why they'd form a strong bond. Hopefully they'll have a much longer life together than they managed with their respective blood families.



The Bell of Zetar: After a string of non-D&D adventures that set Polyhedron apart from Dungeon, they go back to a basic macguffin hunt dungeon crawl that could have shown up anywhere. You get sent to recover the aforementioned historical artifact, only to find it strewn in pieces around the place because the monsters have no respect for tradition. Plus there are a whole load of other lesser bells there, so if you aren't paying attention you might wind up bringing the wrong one home and not getting the full reward. A surprising number of the encounters have noncombat solutions given, with the more intelligent creatures having goals beyond just sitting in their rooms and being willing to negotiate with the PC's. It doesn't have the depth of worldbuilding and modularity recent Dungeon adventures have aimed for, but it's not pure dumb hack and slash either. It seems perfectly usable in a regular campaign despite it's tournament origins.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 47: May 1989



part 3/5



Building Characters: As part of their attempts to encourage more people to write and submit modules, here's some advice on creating pregens for said adventures. They still haven't properly implemented a system to create and track your own in official tournament modules, and an adventure will be enormously improved by having a set of characters that are properly tuned to the challenges they're going to face. Neither too easy, too hard, or with abilities that completely short-circuit the adventure if applied the right way. A proper amount of equipment for their level that's also useful to their class, with maybe one or two curveballs, no more, otherwise they won't think to use them anyway. Similarly, personality has to tread the fine line between too broad a stereotype, and too complex to roleplay easily and consistently. Remember that they're coming in cold and each round has a fixed runtime, so they need to be able to glance at the sheet and get going fast. Like the character sheets it describes, this is clearly and concisely written, gets the job done and doesn't outstay it's welcome. Absolutely no objection to the advice here.



With Great Power: This column decides to give us a couple of more obscure characters from distant corners of marvel earth. Blitzkrieg is from West Germany, and combines wind and electricity powers a la Thor, with a little bit of green lantern energy object creation thrown in as a bonus. Unlike most superheroes, he actually has a solid relationship with his family and day job. Let's hope they don't get abruptly killed for the sake of plot drama in the near future to prove that wrong. The Collective Man is somewhat more stereotypical and cringy. Five Chinese identical quintuplets who can merge into a single being with the strength, speed, intelligence, etc of them all put together, plus draw on the collective unconscious of humanity as a whole for even more knowledge and power temporarily. They almost completely lack individual personalities and happily follow any orders from the government. This seems likely to put them into conflict with heroes who do let their own consciences guide them. Definitely written by someone who's only ever seen the far east from media portrayals. Another thing to put in the file of stuff that hasn't aged well.



The Mutant's Armory: Kim Eastland once again has plenty to contribute to Gamma World with 5 pages of expanded and revised equipment. Virtually every weapon in the D&D equipment list, plus a whole lot more gets statted out with notes on their special qualities. As the cover indicated, there are indeed chakrams, and a whole bunch of other obscure weapons from various cultures around the world, plus the klingon bat'leth with the serial numbers filed off and various things they originally put in the Star Frontiers system. I was a little nonplussed at why he was doing this, before I remembered the Gamma World was originally created by Jim Ward, a definite poster boy for wild enthusiasm over balanced game design with proper editing. Getting someone else to do a big overhaul of the mathy stuff probably does improve the system a fair bit. Hopefully this made it into an official book a little later, otherwise it seems like a lot of effort for the small audience of the newszine. Not a hugely interesting read in itself, but I'm sure the crunch will be useful in actual play, and the context around it is interesting. There are much worse things they could have filled this space with.



Convention Bound: They've had an article full of DM-facing convention advice, now it's one aimed at players, particularly newbies who haven't done this before. This is a return to the kind of general and basic advice that's useful for pretty much anything, and mostly boils down to learning proper time management and logistics. Figure out which games you want to play in beforehand, make sure they don't clash, make sure you have transportation and food sorted, arrive in plenty of time, and don't be surprised when things go wrong or run late, because in a huge place with lots of moving parts, something probably will go wrong, with knock-on effects. Nothing here I haven't heard before. The kind of advice that's necessary to give every now and then, but very boring for me as a long-term reader. Next!

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 47: May 1989



part 4/5



Radiating Magic: Batches of new magical items continue to pick up pace in frequency. This one doesn't appear to have any particular theme, so let's just see if the individual entries are any good.

The Mantle of Mist turns itself into a fog cloud when commanded. Make sure you come back later to collect it if you use it as a diversion to escape.

Flame Blade Swords are one of those things that gets invented independently repeatedly, and will be back in future corebooks because they're pretty handy beyond their combat uses, in protecting you from the cold and cooking meals in the wilderness. Don't head to the Hebra mountains without one.

Rings of Invulnerability are also a pretty generic name that does a pretty generic thing. Constant AC boost and minor globe of invulnerability if you spend a charge. Careful you recharge it before it runs out, because it's a lot cheaper if you don't have to re-enchant it from scratch.

Wands of Animation let you get your Mickey Mouse on on all sorts of things. As ever, careful with the orders, and make sure you recharge it before it runs dry.

Rods of Entrapment give you a whole set of ways to nonlethaly deal with your foes. Very handy for the aspiring bounty hunter.

Daggers of Armor Piercing make your dex and magical bonuses a lot more important. Have fun recalculating things before there are formal slots for each type of plus.

Ice Arrows turn into icicles when shot. This is not actually that useful unless the creature is vulnerable to cold. Hey, at least they can't shoot them back at you either.

Darts of Light blind the enemies temporarily, making them another one that Ninja will love. Clerics will also approve of them, because they also do extra damage to creatures of darkness. Good to see them agree on something.

Daggers of Returning are another ability that many a throwable magic item will have in the future, thanks to the joys of standardisation.

Nilbog Arrows heal the thing they hit, while creating an illusion of inflicting damage. Using them in battle when you don't know what they are will make your life a lot harder. Ah, the joys of a twisted sense of humour.

Mervic's Gaseous Globes see our alliterative april fool manufacturer return with another multitudinous method of confusing and confounding your foes while making your escape. Break one and clear out fast ninja style while all sorts of embarrassing things happen to everyone who breathes it.

A Mummy's Cloak lets you do the Mumm-Ra thing without actually becoming undead. Good creatures touching it will suffer above and beyond the disease inflicting powers.

Flaming Arrows, Acid Arrows and Arrows of Paralyzation are all pretty formulaic and self-explanatory. Considerably more useful than just adding another +1 to hit and damage in terms of creation cost to benefit ratio.

Pouches of Disappearance dump everything in them into the astral plane once per day. Like many a a cursed magical item, this is actually pretty handy if you know about this beforehand and exploit it, but a real nuisance if you think it's a regular bag of holding and lose some of your best magical items forever.

Bows of Fire turn all your shots into flaming arrows, which is even more efficient in terms of damage adding than enchanting individual flaming arrows. Another one that would be efficiently standardised come 3e.

Rings of Infravision Negation are somewhat quirkier, providing selective invisibility that'll really mess up many underdark monsters, but also your own infravision if you have it.

Stone Robes are another pretty straightforward AC booster that spellcasters can wear without impeding their movement and casting.

Caloric Shield is a fancy name for oil of fire resistance. Handy for certain adventures, but definitely not a magic solution to all your problems, especially with it's fairly short duration.

Rings of Disguise are also another one that'll be very common in the future. It's just such a convenient way of storing effects like that when you want even nonspellcasters to be able to use them.

Snake Arrows turn into snakes when fired, attacking everyone nearby. Better not shoot them somewhere you plan to go too later.

Maces of Crushing do decent damage against creatures, but their real benefit is in smashing inanimate objects. Now there's something that'll not only get more specialist items, but a whole feat chain devoted to it as well in future editions. This collection is proving unusually forward-thinking in general.

Woodland Shoes turn you into a centaur, so you can serve as a mount to another member of your party. Not the most dignified of transformations, but still pretty useful in both outdoor combat and overland travel.

Eyes of Infravision are another self-explanatory one. Grant it to those without, or extend your range if you already have it. This doesn't mean you'll be able to use the extra information as intelligently as someone born with it though.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 47: May 1989



part 5/5



The Living City: Unusually for this column, we actually have a full set of NPC's that are just basic 0th level characters, no special training or adventuring backstories at all. Burnharts Outfitting are a somewhat sleazy purveyor of adventuring gear. It's of dubious quality, but he's got a good location, and hey, there's enough turnover (of the lethal kind) in the adventuring population that there's always new people to sell too so who cares about a few bad reviews. Neither of the parents are very nice people, as they're slave-owning appearance obsessed social climbers who want to be a part of high society and are only really tolerated because of their money and influence. Their teenage kids are somewhat nicer, and seem primed to rebel if the PC's give them a little encouragement. So this is decent enough on a writing level in giving you plot hooks to interact with, but distinctly subpar on a mechanical one. There's none of the usual effort put on defences in the shop either, so if these guys piss you off it would be very easy for moderately experienced adventurers to burn them down or clean them out after finding out they've been sold substandard goods. Frankly, they'd deserve it, really.



A pretty solid issue, that shows them once again working on preparing ahead and trying to make our convention experiences more smooth and organised, while also providing an unusually high amount of handy in-game material as well. Guess we'd better head onwards and see what new challenges they met, and if anything unexpected managed to mess things up this year despite all the preparation and planning.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 17: May/Jun 1989



part 1/5



68 pages. That's some serious ice that dragon is packing. If you can beat him, you'll definitely be able to afford to pop bottles in the crib for many years to come. Wait a minute, is that Flame?! How did he survive being killed by the heroes in issue 1? The plot definitely thickens here. (as does the thickness of his beard) Time to get delving and see just how well written this bit of continuity turns out.



Editorial: Straight from teasing us a bit of deep continuity, they stop to help the newbies catch up by dedicating the editorial to a list of common acronyms of stats and books that they reference. This is what they do, and what you need to buy to find out more. Gotta collect 'em all! The release of a new edition is an ideal jumping on point, so don't be scared. Another of those reminders that attracting and retaining fans is a constant jugging act between keeping things accessible enough that new people aren't put off, while also keeping enough depth and variety that long-term fans don't get bored and drift away. They've been doing a decent enough job so far, but as the number of settings proliferates in 2e, it'll get increasingly difficult to please all their very different fanbases. I wonder when it'll really start to become noticeable from this particular perspective.



Letters: The first letter thinks that they ought to narrow their focus even more, and only do AD&D modules, virtually cutting D&D out entirely. This is not what the editors want at all, and they make it clear they'd like to shift the balance a little closer to parity if the people submitting them will co-operate.

The other one continues the debate about module difficulty. A big part of it can be changed by how permissive the DM is towards resting and recharging all your spells mid-adventure. Yup. The 15 minute workday can be a very effective exploit whenever the dungeon is purely reactive and there's no time constraints on your overall objectives. Change the basic resource management assumptions, and some parties will have very different experiences of the same adventures even if they have similar stats overall.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 17: May/Jun 1989



part 2/5



The Pit: We start off with one of your basic dungeon crawls that can easily be used in any campaign. An abandoned underground temple to an evil god that long ago lost all it's worshippers due to poor flock management and pissing off the adjacent community. An excellent example of how evil can be it's own downfall by making the cruelty more important than the competence. Of course, there's still more than enough traps and undead left to challenge PC's that find it, and enough treasure left to make fighting through them worthwhile, including a particularly nasty magical artifact of the kind that'll probably be more trouble than boon if the PC's decide to keep it. The kind of adventure where the PC's can and should take it slow and rest up between challenges, because there's no time constraints until you activate the monsters sitting in their rooms, and the traps are pretty nasty if you do just blunder in everywhere and trigger them instead of using your senses and 10 foot poles to examine things like sensible adventurers. So this is a back to basics palate cleanser after recent issues that have been quite heavy on setting material and timelines. Like the list of acronyms in the editorial, they need to do one of those every now and then to keep it accessible to newbies. Solid middle of the road starter.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 17: May/Jun 1989



part 3/5



The Hunt in Great Allindel: In sharp contrast with the previous adventure, here's a mostly overland one where the enemies are active and intelligent, and time is of the essence if you want to save the day. An Illithid and it's goblinoid minions have taken over an elven forest and their numbers are rapidly dropping as it satisfies it's cranial hungers on the captives. You need to find your way through the forest ASAP if you want to save them. Unfortunately, it's magical defences are still partially active, and do their best to confuse and misdirect both anyone trying to get in, and the goblinoids trying to patrol their new holdings. Plus the new owner uses his own magical and psionic powers to do more than a little misdirecting and mindfucking of his own. This is one you definitely won't be able to do a little at a time, leave to recharge and then come back. Once they know you're there, they'll pursue you through the shifting forest and alert the others, and if it looks like you're winning too badly, they'll retreat if you don't press the attack, leaving you with an empty forest and only a small fraction of the XP and treasure you could have netted. So there's stakes other than complete failure, and you're very unlikely to get a perfect score even if you do win unless you figure out the trick to bypassing the forest's misdirection straight away. This all seems like a pretty intriguing challenge that you could run multiple groups through and get very different results each time. It definitely wins my approval, and that's not the mind-control talking, honest!

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 17: May/Jun 1989



part 4/5



The Waiting Room of Yen-Wang-Yeh: As you've probably already guessed from the name, this is our oriental adventure for the issue. The PC's are ordered by their Samurai's Daimyo to find the grave of a holy hermit (and the fate of the previous people he also sent unsuccessfully to find it). As is often the case, there's a whole load of political stuff going on in the background that they're not aware of. As is also frequently the case in the OA adventures, there's some annoying railroady bits where it's obvious that the PC's are getting played, but they can't do anything about it without breaking the bounds of propriety and losing honor. The more of these adventures I see, the more using that system as a stick to punish the players with if they deviate from the plot beats grates on me. So while there's some interesting encounters here, the artificial constraints you're working within are of a kind I'm not fond of at all. Given the number of good adventures I've seen in here by now, I'm definitely passing on this one. It's not the worst ever, but there's no way I'm managing to work through all the ones I'd rather play instead in my lifetime and we're still less than a 10th of the way through this.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 17: May/Jun 1989



part 5/5



Out of the Ashes: As usual, they save the big cover story until last to build the anticipation. Through a convoluted series of events, Flame is returned to life after his untimely demise in issue 1. He'd rather like to build a new fortune and get revenge on the heroes responsible, maybe even killing two birds with one stone. So he disguises himself as a mysterious wizard to send the PC's on another macguffin hunt. If they lose, well, they're dead, and if they succeed, he can swoop in, take the treasure and finish them off while they're worn down from the adventure. It's a win-win situation. So they get sent over a distinctly dangerous bit of wilderness to find a valley who's soil is ridiculously plentiful in diamonds, and a dungeon which is a single colossal floating semi-hollow jewel. That's a setpiece that'll have the players drooling over the potential GP haul until they find out it's pretty much indestructible, and messing with it's power mechanism will drop it in the lava. This will likely happen anyway during the final confrontation, limiting the amount of treasure they can gain from the place by preventing repeated trips once it's cleared out. As this is a sequel, they have to escalate both the scale and the drama, putting clues as to the big secret in there before the final confrontation, and giving Flame plenty of tricks that make it quite likely he'll escape again, leaving things open for further sequels. It's a definite step towards more 2e style narratively driven modules, but still gives the PC's multiple routes to explore and at least a chance to win fair and square if they're smart and roll well. If you've reached the kind of level suited to playing it it's pretty usable even if you haven't already run the previous adventure. Let's hope it's popular enough to inspire a few more sequels and multi-parters.



This issue engages in a sharp abandoning of the setting building recent issues have featured, to go back to fewer, more lengthy challenging adventures instead. Since I was just starting to wonder when that would get tired, I'd say the change came at just the right time to keep things fresh. The increase in continuity is also very welcome, although I suspect that won't be catching on quite so much. Still, it's managed to keep this issue interesting overall. Let's see if next issue can manage a similar feat.