TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 19: Sept/Oct 1989



part 1/5



68 pages. The somewhat indeterminate bimonthly schedule makes doing things like Halloween every year a bit tricky, but it looks like they're giving it a solid go this time with a distinctly spooky cover. Let's see if it's a full themed issue of horror, or just one token adventure in an otherwise normal issue.



Editorial: The editorial rebuts complaints that they're using the same few writers over and over again. They're not actually that bad at this. They've included at least one new name every issue so far! And while a few regulars are building up, they still regularly reject submissions from them as well. It's just that unlike first time submitters who get rejected and never try again, they're thick-skinned enough to know that it's not personal and try again with a different idea. It's just like dating. You need to be persistent while also staying calm, as one rejection isn't the end of the world, but getting aggressive and creepy WILL not only not change the mind of the person who rejected you, but also ruin your chances with anyone else in their social group. Another timeless lesson that can be applied to nearly any field where you need to interact with other human beings, or even animals for that matter.



Letters: The first letter points out that the Vecna lore in issue 17 contradicts the info in the DMG. Vecna lies. A lot. It's kinda his thing. Either or both are false, and you can obviously decide which in your own campaign.

Another request for adventure submission guidelines. Seen you before and will again. They haven't changed much.

Third, someone thinking two of the adventure maps must have a mistake. Nope. Tortles of the Purple Sage genuinely is that epic and awesome. You can fit many many other adventures within the framework it provides. Island in the sky, though, they did mess up on. Oopsie.

The next two both want more Greyhawk adventures, and are disappointed so few people feel the same way. You can try, but we know in hindsight you're never remotely going to catch up with the Forgotten Realms.

A suggestion that since they have magazines called Dungeon and Dragon, maybe they ought to have one called & as well. Hmm. That's definitely worth keeping in mind for the future.

Someone who wants all the room descriptions put in neatly boxed text so they don't have to think about it. They respond that some adventures are more open-ended, and you should have to think when using them. They want to offer a good variety of both types.

Some general praise from Wolf Baur. Issue 16 was a bit of a slump, but you turned it right around in issue 17. Keep it up.

Some much more specific praise for their incredible shrinking adventure. That was a good idea that D&D hadn't done before. Keep your eye out for similarly boundary pushing ideas and let them in.

Finally, another grumble that the average adventure in Dungeon is way too generous with treasure for their tastes. There are many ways you can deal with that. Our sister magazine Dragon has done articles on it several times over the years.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 19: Sept/Oct 1989



part 2/5



By the Wayside: Since they've been having multiple complaints about the lack of Greyhawk material, here's one straight away to calm them down. Let's head to the hive of (pond)scum and villainy that is the Hool Marshes. Slavers, demon cultists, weak & corrupt government, oh my, and that's before you even get to the nonhuman dangers. Straight away, it's obvious we're in grim and gritty fantasy naughty word vietnam Greyhawk, not bad puns and liberal crossovers with completely different worlds & genres Greyhawk. Although they have made concessions to 2e watering down by turning what was obviously an Assassin in the original submission into a regular thief who just happens to engage in assassination as his primary source of income. This is one of those adventures that's as much a sourcebook as it is a plot, devoting nearly half the pagecount to fleshing out the village, which is hardly a safe haven in itself, before you face the real threat, an unusual pairing of intelligent monsters that use their unique abilities synergistically to make them more sneaky and dangerous than the sum of their parts. They'll lure travellers through the swamp off the safe paths and have them for dinner. If you spend too long in the village they'll come to you and engage in increasingly reckless schemes to separate the PC's and kill them one by one. So this is basically a slasher movie turned into a D&D module, combining a generally untrustworthy landscape and population that the PC's are quite right to be suspicious of, with an enemy who is actively out to get you that uses the other two factors to their advantage in hit and run attacks, and if you only kill one of them and think you're safe now you'll get a nasty jump scare a little bit later. As usual for horror, it'll take a bit of work by the DM to generate the atmosphere to actually make the players afraid, and you'll need to be willing to actually kill characters rather than pulling your punches, but this is easier here than some others I've seen, and not a railroad like far too many of the Ravenloft modules. I think we're off to a pretty decent start.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 19: Sept/Oct 1989



part 3/5



The Vanishing Village: An ultra-short encounter that's basically an excuse to introduce a new monster to the game. The PC's come across a seemingly empty village. When they try to get in one of the houses, it turns out the houses are alive! They're a particularly large subspecies of Mimics that grow their shells to resemble houses and then swallow anyone who wanders in. Fortunately, like real world mollusks, they're pretty slow moving, so it's pretty easy to get away if you don't fall for the trap. However, they do have a high HD, AC and damage output for the suggested party level here, so if they do stay and fight hand to hand rather than keeping their distance and using spells & missile weapons (or one gets snared and the others are trying to free them) it'll be a pretty tough battle. An amusing spin on haunted house horror that doesn't involve undead in any way, and can be used to make the players paranoid in the future with false alarms, this manages to be both in theme and not at all what you'd expect. There are more mundane forms of slime than ectoplasm, and who ya gonna call then? I thoroughly approve.



The Serpent's Tooth: Nigel Findley once again leans in a dark and cynical direction that would be just as at home in a Shadowrun adventure as a D&D one. The PC's are hired by a person who says they're a member of the Scornubel secret police, to spy on a criminal and gather evidence of their wrongdoing. To do so, they have to case out the eponymous Serpent's Tooth, the worst pub in the worst part of town, for several days, preferably without drawing attention to themselves and getting involved in trouble. This is much easier said than done, and of course there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than there seems. The suspect is nicer than they seem and your employer shadier, and as things go on the PC's may wind up switching sides. In the meantime, there's lots of opportunities for roleplaying with the various ne'er do-wells who regularly drink there, who get full stats and plenty of personality detail. So this is a (hopefully) fairly combat light adventure with lots of flavour and freedom for the PC's to accomplish their objective any way they decide, and change their course based on what they do or don't find out during their investigations. There's no definite right or wrong answer to what they should do, just a setting and timeline of what happens where and when, and it's up to them to be in the right place to see the right things and take advantage of them. The way detective stories ought to be done.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 19: Sept/Oct 1989



part 4/5



Encounter in the Wildwood: In sharp contrast with the last adventure, Willie Walsh once again brings the biggest helping of whimsy to the table. The PC's are wandering through the woods somewhere and have to deal with a couple of semi-connected fae encounters. They don't want to kill the PC's, just scare, confuse, and rob them of some choice shiny things. As they said in the letters page, sometimes you do need to relieve the PC's of their excess cash, or a magical item that's proved unbalancing to the game, and this is one way to do that. They may hate you for it at the time, but if it saves your campaign long-term, what price on that? And hey, they might succeed and get their items back anyway. All depends on how nice you're feeling and how well they roll. It also functions as the Ecology of the Boggle, including a fair amount of exposition on the nature and limitations of their ability to step or reach through one opening and come out of another. Definitely not for every group, but another welcome bit of variety that sees them effectively putting world-building articles and advice into their adventures. Things often make sense more with added context, and larger multipurpose articles are a good way to accomplish that.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 19: Sept/Oct 1989



part 5/5



House of Cards: Oh crap. The cover image wasn't just a regular grim reaper, it was one from a Deck of Many Things. Now there's something that truly inspires terror in knowledgable players, far more than any amount of supposedly spooky undead. As Dragon did a physical version of the Deck just last month in issue 148, that also makes this their first co-ordinated tie-in between the two magazines, which is very interesting to note. As usual for the last and longest adventure of the issue, that's not the only interesting thing going on here. Due to the worshippers of Mask, Westgate is descending into gang warfare as they try to corner the market on all the organised crime in the city. The authorities want to deal with this, but they also want to maintain due process and not become as bad as the criminals they're fighting. In practice, this means you can't use divination magic to find them and prove their guilt or AoE blasty stuff that causes widespread property destruction without forfeiting your reward and being thrown out of town, forcing the PC's to stick to the plot and do things the way the writer wants.

Once you do find their hideout and get inside, that's where things get really weird. All the doors are immune to magic, so you're forced to stick to the paths, and many of the important rooms have cards from the Deck of Many Things (hacked so they function separately) covering their keyholes, so you can't open them without effectively drawing the cards and suffering the consequences. To get through the entire dungeon, they have to deal with the various brands of woe and weal from every single one of the cards, plus the more mundane monsters and traps as well. So this is interesting and different from the average adventure, but in a horrible linear naughty word way combining the worst parts of 1e screwage dungeon and 2e plot-based railroading. It's fascinating to read, but also not one I'd ever EVER want to play in or run in a million years, and I wouldn't judge a group for packing up and going home after getting through one or two doors, and doing the math on what condition the party is going to be in after dealing with all 22 cards. Unless you have a Wild Mage in the party who can hack the cards back, they aren't getting through this one without casualties. (Although given the levels, they'll probably be able to raise/rescue them later) To top it off, having been actively unhelpful in solving the problems with their bureaucratic nonsense, the authorities will then give you an IOU for the majority of the bounty money in slow yield stocks and shares, essentially cheating the PC's out of their money in the majority of campaigns that don't run for years of in-game time. I'm both impressed and horrified at just how annoying this whole adventure manages to be in both mundane and fantastical ways. It has my respect for it's inventiveness, but I sincerely hope I never see anything like it again.



With two Forgotten Realms specific modules and a Greyhawk one, this is easily the most grounded in their established settings of any issue so far. With three adventures that are all scary in very different ways, it also fulfils it's theme pretty decently as well. The main adventure being a sharp lurch towards linearity is a bit worrying though. We're definitely in 2e territory now, and I just hope the amount of adventures that use and expand on specific settings will increase more than the amount of annoying railroads. On we go to see what the next pair of big round numbers holds.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 50: November 1989



part 1/5



44 pages. We do seem to be in an extra festive mood, as a red-clad gnome distributes free presents to an appreciative crowd. This being D&D, there's bound to be a catch somewhere that forces adventurers to get involved. Let's see if the writing inside will be getting a similar bump in production values, and just how useful the various presents in this expanded special issue will be.



Completing the Thief: They might have been offering presents for free on the cover, but in the real world, you'll still have to pay to get your shiny new toys for the shiny new edition. Unless you steal them of course, which is where this bit of promotion comes in. Buy the complete thief's handbook, and you get access to a whole new axis of customisation for your characters! The rest of it is an explanation of what Kits are, the names of all the example ones that'll be appearing in this book and why you might want one. (such as if you're one of the people annoyed about Assassins being removed from the corebook and want them mechanically differentiated from regular thieves again.) A reminder that 2e is going to lean a lot harder on the splatbooks and other player-facing crunchy stuff than 1e, and this is a trend that will only escalate in the next couple of editions as well. As this is the kind of advert that's useless once you buy the book, it's one of the more tedious examples of it's type. Give us something a little more exclusive please, not something I've already seen examined from many different angles already.



Mutant Materials: Kim Eastland still hasn't quite run out of ideas for more Gamma World equipment, but they're getting increasingly weird. Which given that this is gamma world is actually a good thing. A selection of exotic materials that for all practical purposes are indistinguishable from magic, for those players who want enhanced gear like they're used to in D&D. Your basic light but ultra damaging ones, your ones that are extra effective against specific monsters, psychic crystals that enhance your energy manipulation mutations, intelligent blobs that can shapeshift into any item of similar size, and two different kinds of ultra-shiny metal that have special effects when wielded in bright light. Absolutely no basis in scientific plausibility, but they're pretty broadly useful abilities, and that's what counts in actual play, plus the rules are general enough to be easily transferred to other systems. Why should D&D characters hog all the power escalation in here?



Notes From HQ: Since this is an expanded special issue, they've got a lot to talk about in here as well. They started off from humble beginnings nearly 10 years ago, and look at them now, releasing full-sized AD&D sourcebooks packed with exclusive material. It definitely hasn't been a smooth ride though, they were regularly running embarrassingly late, and went through several rapid staff changeovers before the current set came along. They couldn't have done it without their ordinary members, and still can't. This pivots neatly to another reminder that if you want your convention to run official tournaments and be promoted in here, you need to do so a good 6-12 months in advance. If you're moving house, you need to tell us where you're going, etc etc. They're still only human, and not mind-readers. But they're gradually growing again, and look forward to another decade which will hopefully be even bigger and better. Yeah, about that …… Life doesn't go smooth, does it. Let's continue the journey back to the present, one month at a time, and see which ones are good and which ones are bad for them.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 50: November 1989



part 2/5



Letters: The first letter raises questions about how many RPGA tournaments aren't actually exclusive to members. It's your typical loss leader. Let them play the first one without any commitment, THEN sell them on signing up and the benefits from having a persistent presence in the scene & accumulating points for each one you play in. Marketing principles remain pretty similar whatever the field.

The second raises another scoring question. We've had a ton of debate on scoring different types of roleplaying, but what about rewarding people for mastery of the rules? That's something that can be done much more objectively, yet doesn't seem to factor at all in a lot of people's voting. We haven't had a rollplaying vs roleplaying argument in a while, have we. I guess it is about time, especially with new rules that allow more character customisation, and therefore more chances for over and underpowered builds.



Fun In Games: Rick manages to be both festive and wacky with his latest suggestion. Running out of suitably impressive foes to pit your minis against? Use the thanksgiving turkey! With or without the flesh still attached, it's the perfect size to look like a really terrifying dragon by comparison! Ha. Now that's an idea I've seen before, but only once, and it was chronologically a lot later, in Dragon issue 347. It's quite possible that that was inspired by this article in the first place. If you want to give them extra incentive to fight hard, use Gummi Bears as minions, and whoever kills one gets to eat them. These are both highly usable ideas that I might actually try when face-to-face gaming becomes an option again. I won't be using any of the slang suggestions, which continue to just not be very catchy. In a world where the best memes rapidly get shared around the world without any central curation, the old attempts to make new cool words happen seem very quaint and forced.



With Great Power: This column does not live up to it's name this instalment, instead choosing to focus on some completely non-superpowered street level heroes. The Wolfpack are your typical 5 man band of teenagers dragged into an ancient war between good and evil and expected to protect the south bronx from whatever the cabal of 9 remorselessly evil cackling villains throw at them this week with nothing but their wits and whatever gear they can cobble together. If they talked to other superheroes they could at least get a few spare iron man suits or something, but no, they have to do this the hard way. Connected universes can be silly like that sometimes.

Rafael Vega is the hot-headed leader of the group, jumping into trouble head first and bringing the rest of the group with him. He's a lover as well as a fighter, and will stick with them through any challenge to the end. In many other groups he'd be the Lancer to a more moderate leader, but I suppose you can't follow the sentai formula perfectly every time or stories would get really boring and predictable.

Slag (not to be confused with the triceratops dinobot from transformers) is the big tough guy who's also surprisingly erudite and well-read. A subversion that's almost as frequent as the number of times they play it straight. It's easy to get some peace and quiet to read when all the other kids are too intimidated to bully you.

Sharon is the token girl. She was born to run and not belong to anyone. She doesn't need to be loved by you. Wait, no, that's Miley Cyrus. Easy mistake to make when they don't seem to have much personality of their own.

Wheels Wolinski is the token disabled guy, which is still one more than most groups like this manage. He's the gadgeteer of the group, solving problems with wits where brute force fails. Don't underestimate the damage a rocket-propelled wheelchair can do to a monster.

"Slippery Sam" Weltsmerz is (or was, as apparently he's dead at the time of writing) the rogue of the group, doing the stealth, disguise and fast-talking needed to get into places and distract attention from the others. They all seem pretty well suited to a saturday morning cartoon adaption.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 50: November 1989



part 3/5



The Living City pt 1: This is in theme, with a toymaker's shop run by gnomes. Gunder & Relvan Gaewilder are an exceedingly prolific pair who combine thiefly dexterity and clerical magic to make toys that are pretty popular in Raven's Bluff, yet the supply still exceeds the number of paying customers. So whenever the stock room gets a little too cluttered, they'll load them up on a wagon, dress up and put on a show, and throw them to random members of the public. Even though they only do it once or twice a year, it generates them a ton of goodwill and probably drives further sales. Since they have both magical and mechanical tricks up their sleeves, the defences for if anyone tries to rob the place are particularly inventive, but there are quite a few decent magical items as well as all the mundane trinkets if you succeed. It's basically an excuse to give the place a Christmas equivalent, only their Santa Claus is completely real and not so powerful as to be untouchable. But given how popular these guys are, any PC's who do successfully kill them & take their stuff can expect to face serious consequences if discovered. Even with all the dangers and plot hooks out there, the Realms is one of the happiest and most stable fantasy worlds on a day-to-day basis. As adventurers, you should be maintaining that state of affairs, not ruining it.



The Living City pt 2: The second Raven's Bluff location this issue is somewhat more typical. A pawnshop where you can sell things for quick cash or use them as collateral on a loan. Any adventurer who doesn't keep a firm grip on their finances may have reason to use this, and even the ones that are flush with cash might want to stop in and see what bargains are available every now and then. It's run by a set of identical twins. One is a paragon of honesty who'll report any illegal or stolen goods he spots straight away, while the other is a sneaky scammer who'll accept anything, and pull dirty tricks like hiring people to sabotage your attempts to earn enough to pay back your loan, and of course you can't tell which is which by looking at them, or even know that there are two of them unless you actively investigate the comings and goings at the place. This gives you plenty of opportunity for mistaken identity and conversation confusion hijinks, and also the more dramatic plot of what the good brother would do if he found about his counterpart's misdeeds. Another place that works well as both a location to drop by casually for shoppers, and a springboard to further adventures in itself. It is quite pleasing how much they manage to squeeze into these small packages.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 50: November 1989



part 4/5



New Rogues Gallery loses it's The. It also once again lacks any interconnection between the characters, as they're all submitted by different people. Some are familiar names, some aren't, some were PC's in their original campaign, while others were merely creations of the Dungeon Master. It's all very much a grab-bag of whatever they had in stock at the time.

Sam Shock is a high level wizard who unsurprisingly specialises in electric magic. He recognises the potential of electricity to revolutionise the comfort level of the everyday man, and works tirelessly to make it a better world. With seven new spells that emphasise the magic as technology theme and a new magical item, he gets easily the most word count here. Such a shame his ideas'll never catch on in Faerun, due to the tendency of magitech to blow up entire countries when taken too far.

Harlequin is exactly what the name implies, a mysterious acrobatic clown who is a regular sight in Raven's Bluff but keeps his real identity hidden. He's pretty capable in both thievery and spellcasting, and can be a good source of information if you don't mind puzzling out answers in the form of mime and interpretive dance. Another one that's definitely not for the darker and more serious campaign. (in which case, why the hell are you in the Realms in the first place?)

Nuelman the Oracle is an illusionist who's set himself up as a sage, using mind-reading and other divinations along with his extensive library to answer his client's questions before they even ask them. A little showmanship never hurts in building a reputation, as it means you have more clients, and can charge them more as well. As long as they're dumb enough that they don't realise the violations of privacy and personal autonomy, he has a pretty sweet gig going.

Spunk & Grizzard are an elf fighter and his wizard glove puppet, who he will firmly pretend is a real person at all times, using the puppet as his obnoxious id while always being polite and reasonable when speaking as himself, and sometimes having arguments between his two personas. Basically just an excuse for Rick Reid to go full pantomime in his attempts to annoy his players. (oh no it isn't. OH YES IT IS!) I am not amused at all.

Devon Tresk is a street urchin who stumbled across a couple of magical items, and is now gradually moving up in the world. If his luck holds up, he could be a protagonist and gaining levels before he hits 18. The readers do love a rags to riches story.



Season's Greetings: The centre pages also get a little color as a treat, and are filled with photos from the recent convention fun. The usual assortment of players, GM's and Klingon cosplayers. Enjoy the very 80's fashions and hairstyles. Nothing too surprising here.



Counterfeit Dreams: Skip & Jean collaborate on this issue's adventure, which is also set firmly in Raven's Bluff. Thankfully, it's not the most obnoxiously goofy thing either of them has ever done. It is still exceedingly linear though. The PC's are hired for a job that seems a little too simple and well-paying, and then paid in counterfeit money. As the fakes aren't very good, they're caught as soon as they try to spend it and faced with the choice of catching the original forgers or facing an extended spell in prison themselves. Nice legal system you got there. As is usual for tournament adventures in here, any investigation is cursory and heavily telegraphed to make sure the adventure doesn't exceed it's time limit. There's a fair amount of whimsy involving gnomes, the obligatory ratio of silly pun names and pop culture references, and lots of opportunities for hammy roleplaying. It's not the worst thing they've ever done, but it once again throws the limitations of their format compared to similar ones in Dungeon into sharp relief. Roleplaying heavy missions where it's expected most groups will get through the whole thing simply do not play to the strengths of tournament gaming. All it takes is one choice that the scenario doesn't expect and the whole thing falls apart.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 50: November 1989



part 5/5



It Takes One to Play One: Another dose of whimsy, as they engage in a humorous analysis of what kind of personalities are most likely to play particular classes. This is not done with any kind of scientific rigour, and is merely an excuse to wallow in stereotypes. It's all more than a little silly. They may not have illustrated Dragonmirth like Dragon, but they seem to be stepping up including the kind of things that they would put in there in recent issues.



Who? Me?: As usual after convention season, they do written recaps of the fun as well as the photographic documentation we saw earlier. Gary Haynes was the RPGA's point man for Origins this year, trying to corral as many judges as possible to run the tournament events. Also as usual, it seemed like chaos right up to the last minute, at which point people pulled together and things worked out pretty well. Some judges had to pull a lot of shifts, running games in more than half the slots, while others flaked out because there were games they really wanted to be PC's in instead. But unexpected heroes stepped up to take their places at the last minute, just like in the stories we love to tell. This is all becoming pretty familiar. I guess as long as human nature remains the same, it'll be the same problems of a few people doing the vast majority of the work, and everyone else only joining in at the last minute. And I wouldn't even begin to know how you might genetically engineer for such a subtle and complex personality trait as that. We'll almost definitely be seeing something similar next year as well, just different names and faces.



Bloodmoose & Company get to be in full color, just in time for the ooze and slime they find down in the dungeon to be extra gross. Bet they wish they'd gone for a cloud island adventure instead round about now.



A Special Offer: As they promised last issue, they're offering bargain prices on the back issues to help clear them out faster. Apart from the first two, which are dramatically more expensive than the rest to reflect their value as collector's items, and the other single digit ones are a bit higher than they cost originally as well. Always going to be the way of these things. Surprised that only 6 issues have sold out at this point, so you could pick up a fairly complete collection if you'd only just signed up then. Another symptom of their relatively small size compared to Dragon and D&D products actually sold in shops.



A curious celebratory issue, as it involved jacking up the level of whimsy to a level even some april fools issues don't reach. It wasn't boring, but it did definitely get irritating at times. It also increased the amount of focus on Raven's Bluff, making it very clear that it's popular with both the writers and readers, and going to play an even bigger part in their plans next decade. But only having one Living Setting also means it's becoming increasingly generic, accepting seemingly anything submitted even if it's more than a little silly. Will they be able to do anything about that? Let's head into the 90's and see what it has in store.