TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 48: July 1989



part 1/5



32 pages. The focus on building up shops and other commercial establishments in Raven's Bluff continues, with a cover that looks surprisingly everyday, only with somewhat different fashion to the modern world. They obviously get a lot of these submissions, so let's hope they can continue to give us places that are useful not just between adventures, but as springboards to adventures in themselves for quite a while more before they start repeating themselves and diminishing returns set in.



Notes From HQ: This follows directly on from the cover in encouraging people to create Living City locations, and the format they ought to use. It's not that hard. You just need to juggle an interesting premise, functional mechanics, and making sure your submission isn't too similar to an already existing one. The rest of it is pretty familiar. Another of the regular reminders to tell them if you move address, and keep track of when your membership expires, because otherwise you won't keep getting your newszine's delivered regularly. An equally regular reminder that they are not made of money, and so cannot give you free stuff to serve as prizes for tournaments. And a little promotion of their new comic at the back. Let them know if you like it or not so they can tell if they should keep it going. No real surprises here.



Letters: The worries about roleplaying a character properly even when if might hurt your tournament scoring continue. Both of the two letters published put different perspectives on it. The first want to see key personality traits pointed out on the sheet and maybe even mechanically incentivised. There's plenty of games that will do that in the future, but D&D is not one of them. You may want to switch.

The second reminds us that people should know the mechanics and be playing to win as a team. Roleplaying should always be secondary to achieving the goal of the adventure, particularly in a pregenerated party playing a tournament module. Vote for people who know what they're doing and get on with it, not ones that stand around yakking. (an inherent flaw in the democratic electoral system, where no matter what you want to do, you also need to master the art of getting people to notice you on top of that, which means the system favors amoral self-publicists who's primary goal is getting into and staying in power over people with actual goals and principles who would actually improve the world for people in general if elected.)

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 48: July 1989



part 2/5



On Your Feet: Having recently inspired a whole load of kerfuffle in the letters pages, Peter goes for a less controversial topic this time. How he got involved with the RPGA in the first place. Like these things often are, discovering it existed was a happy accident, and signing up was a spur of the moment decision to get access to new tournament options at a convention. But once he did, he definitely hasn't regretted the choice. He's made good friends, and got to play in adventures that are better written and more consistently adjudicated than the independently run ones. Seems like preaching to the choir to me. Perhaps this would have been better placed in Dragon, where a big chunk of the readers aren't RPGA members. In any case, it's another reminder of how much of our life events like relationships and social groups are based on luck, and a difference of a few minutes going somewhere or choosing a different table to sit on at an event can throw your life onto a completely different track long-term. Don't overestimate the degree of control you actually have in your life.



Cataclysm part 1: Fresh from doing a sequel in Dungeon, they decide to stretch their limits for the first time in a couple of years with a multi-part adventure in here as well. The title is a pun. There's a plague of cats in Claxton. Cats, cats, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. People are both perplexed and peeved. The high priest is allergic and wants them all exterminated. This is a bad idea! They're the only thing protecting the city from an even worse plague of literal plague carrying rats. Hopefully your PC's will decide they couldn't possibly slaughter that many adorable felines and look for another solution. The pregens are pretty free of the wackiness many old adventures were suffused with, but the adventure itself is still quite lighthearted in general, with lots of encounters where you should really ham up the roleplaying element. It's pretty interesting, but would have been even better if it was done in Dungeon, with their greater focus on setting building that allows players to make their own choices in a nonlinear fashion. The need to wrap things up in 4 hours once again makes them rush things along at the expense of fine detail, leaving it in the middle of the road in terms of overall quality. Let's see if it gets better or worse as it goes on.



By The Book: Another bit of convention season advice to remind both DM's and players how they should be handling things in their tournament sessions. House ruling is strictly forbidden, as the title says, and you should lean conservatively in any interpretation of grey areas. Work together, figure out what actions you're going to take before your turn comes in combat so you don't bog things down, don't forget to map the dungeon if you want to get out alive, make sure all the players get approximately equal spotlight, ensure the voting forms are filled in legibly afterwards. All pretty familiar really, with a few twists that don't apply to regular groups. We've seen this stuff before, and I'm sure we'll see it again in a year or two to catch the newbies once again.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 48: July 1989



part 3/5



The Mutant's Armory: The second half of this extensive list is considerably shorter, but covers things which need longer individual descriptions. Various high explosives, including grenades, dynamite, bombs and missiles. Many ways to cause overkill amongst players and their adversaries, and a few less lethal options like foam and smoke bombs. Seems decent enough, but I can't think of anything much to say about it that I didn't last time.



Spelljammer: Dragon first started teasing this setting back in december '88, but it looks like they're going to give it some promotion in here as well. Jeff Grubb gives us an efficient single page campaign pitch that's pretty clear both on what it is, and what it is not. It's not any kind of remotely realistic treatment of space - they're intentionally making it weird and fantastical, inspired by 18th century ideas of crystal spheres and phlogiston, filled with solar systems which vary widely in composition and arrangement. All sorts of races can venture into space, including mind flayers & beholders, which play particularly important roles in the setting. Since this is D&D, they're not forgetting the dragons, and the ones up there can be many orders of magnitude larger than terrestrial ones. And then there's the Spelljammer itself, the ultimate macguffin of the setting that gives people a big legend to seek out instead of just wandering the vast expanses aimlessly, or doing crossovers between the previously established AD&D worlds. It's all gloriously ambitious, and it does seem a shame that it wouldn't get much traction with the wider gaming public and be cancelled after a few years, never to even get a proper conversion to future editions like the extraplanar material. Such are the dangers of being too different and nongeneric. Oh well, we'll always have Bral. Let's hope there's a little more interesting material for this setting to be found in the newszine along the way, to make it that little bit bigger and more versatile.



Wand of Wondrousness: Muahaha. Ah yes, the Wand of Wonder. An item to instil terror into every DM and player except maybe the one with a Wild Mage PC. But the number of options given in the DMG is somewhat limited. Before you know it, they'll start to become predictable. Here's another hundred options to amuse, annoy, and occasionally terrify. This is one that's familiar to me from the Encyclopedia Magica, which collected a good half-a-dozen of these lists from various sources over the years. It's definitely on the less lethal end of the spectrum compared to some of the alternatives. You'll probably be able to survive burning through all the charges. The big question then becomes if you'd want too, and if your DM would stick with one list or arbitrarily switch between them when you're getting a bit too comfortable. Do you trust them to not screw you over with this of all things?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 48: July 1989



part 4/5



The Critical Hit pt 1: The review column decides they can't avoid the elephant in the room in the RPG world, and publishes a review of the AD&D 2e Player's Handbook. Future Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens gives it a fairly critical appraisal, pointing out both the areas she thinks it improves on it's predecessor, and the ones it's actually worse. It's definitely more clearly written and better organised, but it's also double the size and moves a lot of the info that was in the 1e DMG into here, so you have to wade through a lot of material that isn't strictly necessary if you're only planning to be a player before you can actually get down to gaming. Some of the class design decisions and divisions still seem pretty arbitrary, and if she were in charge she'd have made different choices. Well, if that isn't some substantial foreshadowing for the things Pathfinder changes from 3e. Overall, her conclusion is positive. (Not that they'd have published it if it wasn't, as this is still a TSR subsidiary) After all, if they'd screwed this up they could wind up tanking a whole edition, and letting someone else temporarily claim the top spot in the RPG world. Massive amounts of foreshadowing aside, this is also a pretty decent review, breaking things down analytically and saying precisely which bits are good and bad. That's the kind of attitude you need to iteratively improve things.



The Critical Hit pt 2: Following on from the Player's Handbook, they quite logically do the Dungeon Master's guide next. (but not the first monstrous compendium, which would still be at the printers when this was being written) Since the new PHB has taken a lot of the material that was in the old DMG, that begs the question of what they'll replace it with. The answer - lots of optional stuff! So this review instantly spots the big difference in overall philosophy between the two edition's designs. 1e was intended to tighten up the rules and standardise everyone's playstyle so tournament games could be run consistently. 2e is intended as a framework for lots of different campaign worlds, some which are indeed very different from the default dungeoncrawling fantasy the core rules assume. Speaking of dungeoncrawling, they also spot that XP for treasure is no longer the default, and you just need to defeat enemies, not kill them to get experience, so killing everything and taking their stuff is not rewarded as strongly as it used to be. This encourages roleplaying & finding noncombat solutions to challenges, and also means campaigns will last longer before you hit the kind of power levels where the rules start to break down. A pretty good assessment of which way the wind is blowing in the TSR offices. Despite the title still being AD&D, the writers grow tired of dungeon delving and dragon killing, and want to set their horizons higher. Now they just have to bring enough of their fanbase along for the ride without splitting it too much.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 48: July 1989



part 5/5



The Living City: Unless your party is comprised entirely of demihumans with infravision, you're going to need to think about lighting when dungeon delving if you don't want your adventuring career to be short and nasty. Fortunately, in Raven's Bluff, there's a shop dedicated to light creating items of all kinds. From mundane candles for the regular people of the city to light their houses, to a highly limited supply of continual light enchanted items for the wealthy. (which obviously saves them money in the long run, in another excellent example of Terry Pratchett's Boots theory) Many of these items are also flammable, and can be used as weapons or explosives in a pinch. As usual, the NPC's take up the bulk of the description and are pretty interesting, with a built in conflict the adventurers can easily wind up engaging with which could be spun out over several visits in a long-term campaign. After all, even after they can cast their own continual light spells, they'll still need explosives. Why wouldn't they go back to a place that has good prices and friendly service for repeat stock-ups?



Bloodmoose & Company: It's been a while since they tried a comic in here, so they're giving it another go. An adventuring party composed of anthromorphic animals in a world where that seems completely normal, a la Ducktales and many other Disney properties. The aforementioned Bloodmoose (first name Eric), who looks like a fighty sort. The rather pompous Shadowhog and a still unnamed owlboy accompany him on an adventure for a lost city. Much comedic bickering ensues. Will they be able to pull together enough to avoid some kind of horrible death, while also remaining interesting enough to avoid an equally ignominious cancelation with the plot still unresolved? Let's keep reading and find out.



An issue that's very of it's time indeed, in that it focusses both on things that are newly released just then, and things that are handy for that time of year in general. It was a bit of a slog, to be honest, and relatively low on things that are still useful now. Oh well. Plenty still to go. Let's see if the next one is any better.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 18: Jul/Aug 1989



part 1/5



68 pages. They just can't resist escalating, can they? That gargoylish statue looks rather familiar from the 1e PHB, only a lot bigger. Will the challenges and treasures be scaled up commensurately, and if so, how will the adventurers get it all home? We've had several adventures where the logistics of treasure retrieval before it's taken by competitors or destroyed was a big limiting factor in how much you can actually profit in the end. Will this issue repeat that idea?



Editorial: They can't snap their fingers and instantly convert all the adventures submitted to 2e ones, but they can change some things. Ability scores are being switched in order from Str Int Wis Dex Con Cha to Str Dex Con Int Wis Cha. A subtle change, but important, as it categorises them into physical and mental instead of putting the ones most likely to be prime requisites first. Slightly less subtle is the outright ditching of Comeliness, which was only added in Unearthed Arcana and ignored by most groups, as it's both essentialist and extremely subjective from race to race. As it hasn't returned many editions later, we can safely say that was a good decision. THAC0 is being added to every statblock so now all you need to do is a bit of maths rather than looking up a table every time you have a fight. Once again, not a thing I see anyone complaining about in hindsight. It goes to show, most of the little refinements from edition to edition are good, it's just the big ideological shifts people complain about.



Letters: The first letter complains that they put too much treasure in their modules. That's so even if you don't find it all, the average group will still get their hands on a decent amount. And they usually edit the numbers down compared to the original submissions as well! I think it may be your party that's unusually conservative rather than the official writers being a bunch of monty haul twinks.

Second points out a particularly significant typo. Unless time travel gets invented, that advert is ridiculously late. You might want to fix it next issue.

Third reminds them that you can't double specialise in two-handed weapons. What sense does that make? Another fiddly little restriction that can easily be houseruled away anyway.

Fourth, we have the usual panicking from someone who can't afford to convert to 2e, and doesn't want too anyway. You'll get off pretty lightly this time around, nearly everything is still compatible. They won't be nearly so merciful next time though.

Fifth, a satisfied customer baffled by the petty things some people find to complain about. I know not every adventure will be to your tastes, but it's still pretty much the best value for money if you want scenarios of all kinds.

Sixth, another request for longer adventures. It's easier to make a long adventure short than the other way around. Go on, push the envelope a little more.

Finally, a similar one encouraging them to include more adventures that require using your brain, as those are harder to write than basic hack and slash dungeoncrawls. Give us what we can't do ourselves, or what's the point of continuing to buy this magazine?

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 18: Jul/Aug 1989



part 2/5



Irongard: Ed Greenwood's prolificness in Dragon is long established by now, but this is his first contribution to Dungeon. Unsurprisingly, it's a Forgotten Realms one, but easily adapted to other worlds as well. A mad wizard curses one of the PC's to gradually forget all their spells one by one for the pettiest of imagined slights. The players need to go to the tomb of the original inventor to find out how to remove it. The result instantly reminds me that while he's good at coming up with cool ideas, he's also capable of being deeply irritating and railroady, filling a story with whimsy and NPC's that can do things that are impossible for the PC's, while cheating on or ignoring the dice rolls to make sure things go the way he wants. This definitely qualifies in both respects, and while it has some cool encounters, the only reason it's not more annoying is that it's mercifully short, so the linearity doesn't have a chance to get too implausible and tedious. It also references multiple other products (gotta collect 'em all!), including an issue of Dragon magazine, making it distinctly newbie unfriendly despite being a starting level adventure. As much as I love his articles, this is well below the usual standard of adventure writing in here and can go straight in the naughty word bin. Hopefully we won't be seeing him around here too often, as this format does not play to his strengths.



Whitelake Mine: Another regular purveyor of whimsy follows straight on. Willie Walsh takes us to tinker gnome territory, to go fishing for a giant pike with an experimental submarine so they can mine the lake bottom for jewels. There are several twists in the tale to keep it from being too short and simple. Definitely one for the more technically minded player, as they're still too low level to just bypass all the hassles of underwater adventuring with magic, and have to actually think about how to handle the underwater adventure with the equipment they're given, plus whatever clever uses they come up with for regular tools from the PHB. So while this is still a little silly, it's still a vast improvement on the previous adventure because it sets a problem and gives you free reign to solve it, expecting the players to use their brains, while not tying you down to a single solution. Plus it's the kind of adventure which is well suited to being built upon and having long-term consequences later in the campaign, if they encounter a similar problem and can go back to their gnome allies for further technological aid. The pleasure of solving adventures via using out of context abilities is definitely something I like to encourage, and this'll set you on the right track.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 18: Jul/Aug 1989



part 3/5



Tallow's Deep: We've had stories of Tucker's Kobolds quite a few times over the years. Now it's goblin's turn. Bill Slavicsek builds up his freelancing portfolio with this bit of trick-heavy sadism where the PC's are facing creatures considerably weaker than them in a fair fight, but they'll do their best to avoid it becoming one of those. It's the kind of dungeon you can put down anywhere there are caves, and a community to be hassled by goblin raids. They may be relatively easy to drive back in wide open spaces, but rooting them out of a place once they've made it their own is not easy, and even if you do, there'll be a new set along to occupy the area unless you move in and thoroughly remodel, which most adventurers lack the patience for. There's plenty of traps with detailed diagrams, that would have fit right in with the old and sadly undersubmitted column on the topic, plus some interesting writing on goblin psychology to justify why they make suboptimal choices in environments not of their creation. Both are extractable and reusable as general setting details, and the map itself is practically begging you to restock and reuse it if the players aren't thorough enough. It's certainly not as big or brutally inventive as the Kobolds in Dragon Mountain, but it'd make a good step along the way if you're planning to include that later in the campaign. I can definitely see myself getting a fair bit of use out of this one.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 18: Jul/Aug 1989



part 4/5



Crocodile Tears: Unusually, the oriental adventure this issue is not the most linear one here. The PC's hear a rumour that a whole town was completely emptied out recently, and as adventurers should, go investigate. As is often the case, the title is a spoiler so there's no point hiding it - It was giant crocodiles. Even the babies are pushing at the limits of real world croc size and the parents are approaching kaiju territory. (although with no skyscrapers around they don't need to be quite so vertically large to look suitably terrifying against the urban backdrop. ) Like any good Kaiju story, fighting them head-on would be rather foolish, and you'll need to use missile weapons, traps, poison, or some other form of cleverness to make the area safe again. Fortunately there are some unlikely allies you can make along the way if you're smart and compassionate that'll make it a lot easier. There's some definite morality play elements here where they reward or punish you for taking the good route over the evil one in a somewhat heavy-handed way, but they do at least make allowances for you to make the wrong choices and carry on. So overall, it's mildly irritating but still entirely usable. They've done far worse.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 18: Jul/Aug 1989



part 5/5



Chadranther's Bane: Aka Honey, I Shrunk the Adventurers. The inspiration for the final adventure is very obvious indeed. The PC's come across a magical artifact that shrinks anyone near it to lilliputian size. (And thankfully their equipment as well, as surviving at that size is tricky enough without having to do it naked. ) Just leaving the area won't reverse the effects, so you'll need to explore the world from your new perspective, facing regular sized animals that are now terrifying giants, and deal with several feuding communities of tiny people who managed to survive, and have been living in the rafters, floorboards and garden for years, adapting to their new situation the best they can in different ways. To get out of this, they'll need to figure out what exactly caused their transformation, and then destroy it, which will probably involve conquering or forming an alliance with one of the humanoid groups so you can assemble the equipment and manpower to get the leverage to move it at all. It's a pretty neat sandbox, (although it misses a trick by not including a literal sandbox in the garden) giving you a setting that could last quite a few sessions along with general rules for being tiny that can be reused for other scenarios. (Although as usual, they underplay just how much the square-cube law makes things work differently at different sizes when it comes to things like carrying capacity and falling) It's like going to a different plane of existence without ever leaving the house. I thoroughly approve of this kind of envelope pushing. Let's hope they can come up with another big twist adventure next issue.



An increase in the number of recognisable name authors ironically brings about a mild reduction in the average quality, with Ed in particular dragging the batting average way down for everyone else. A demonstration of the problem with not holding people you know to the same standards as strangers and just waving their submissions through the door. That's almost definitely going to become a bigger problem over the years. Let's see if next issue continues in the same direction, or they'll intentionally mix it up for variety's sake again.