TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 61: July 1991



part 5/5



Into The Dark: This time, James tackles movies very specifically based on or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Popular guy for someone his fans think of as underground. Of course, the fact that his works are public domain, and anyone can build off them means there's no quality control at all on movie adaptions. Since cosmic horror is harder to do well than gore and jump scares in the first place, that means there's a lot of drek out there that misses the point. Let's see what he wants use to check out or avoid.

Die, Monster, Die! gets a fairly mediocre review. Boris Karlof does the best with the material he's given, and the first half builds atmosphere decently, but when it comes to actually resolving it, it goes for the cheap schlocky scares, and then revealing the monsters aren't real at the end. Sounds a bit scooby-doo to be honest, which isn't what you want in your cosmic horror.

The Dunwich Horror sees the unlikely pairing of Dean Stockwell & Sandra Dee try to mix lovecraftian themes with 60's psychedelia. It doesn't go very well, managing to be both shallow and boring, with cheap special effects. This isn't going very well so far, is it.

The Unnamable manages to get an even lower rating. It's more faithful to the original story than the previous two, but that just makes it even worse on a cinematic level, padded out massively to reach film length, and once again with completely unconvincing rubber suit monster effects. Just leave it on the shelf where it belongs.

Re-Animator is where things finally start getting interesting. The tale of Herbert West might be played for laughs, but there's still plenty of spectacular violence, perversion and gore to turn the stomachs of sensitive viewers. An excellent example of the kind of shock horror the home video boom of the 80's really encouraged, tempting people into the store with the prospect of things they'd never show on TV, at least uncut.

From Beyond reunites the same director and lead actor a year later, and follows much the same formula. There's slight diminishing returns, and once again it's not remotely faithful to the source material, but it's entertaining watching, which is much more important. The kind of viscerality you just don't see much these days, due to overreliance on CGI over practical effects.



Wolff & Byrd try to relax and have a party, but their work has an annoying tendency to follow them home.



An issue that wasn't exactly bad, but was harder going to think of things to say about than most of them. They've got to the point where they've got a solid rotation of regular columns going, and the formulaicness got to me this time. It's still a long way to go until I finish this, and I'm not going to get there without a lot more work. Time to roll up my sleeves and chip away at the next issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 30: Jul/Aug 1991



part 1/5



80 pages. An elf once again blindsides the humans with magic. Such are the advantages of a longer lifespan giving you the opportunity to pick up a wider knowledge base. Once again, let's broaden our selection of adventures to use in a campaign, and sort them into the good, bad and mediocre.



Editorial: 5 years they've been going now, so it's time to look back and do some statistics. 148 adventures over 30 issues, an average just under 5 per issue. 89 authors, most of which obviously only did one, but a few approaching a dozen. Best thing, only three of them were TSR staff. (although a few more will be in the future) It's a credit to how many enthusiastic readers they have, that they're submitting far more adventures to the magazine than they need. Keep it up. More solo stuff, ultra low and high level adventures and other such twists on the general adventure formula would still be nice, but at least they have a reasonably solid buffer to keep them going. Here's to the next 5 years.



Letters: The first letter specifically praises regular writers Willie Walsh, Randy Maxwell & Bill Slavicsek for their contributions. Keep it up!

Second is another happy reader who's got plenty of actual play out of the magazine's contents over the years. Good to see the quiet majority speaking up for once.

Third is a misaddressed Sage Advice question wondering where the details are for Bucknard's Everfull Purse. They put the wrong description under the wrong item name in the 2e DMG, and now it's all a bit confusing.

4th is a newbie who wants more underwater adventures. They haven't done one of them in a while but they are this issue. Unusual terrains is another of those things they always want more submissions of.

5th suggests an origami based special feature, cutting out and folding up things in the magazine to create minis for your game. Seems a bit fragile and unlikely to hold up to extended play, but they'll give it a go. Even if they don't repeat it, it'll be an amusing novelty people'll remember.

6th praises them for covering Spelljammer. Another novelty that's struggling to become more than that. Good luck to it.

7th praises the atmospherics of Night of Fear. A low level adventure full of style without resorting to explosions and hordes of monsters. Just what the doctor ordered.

8th is a letter from France, pointing out the village of Elven and it's large draughty dungeon. Make sure you don't get locked up in it.

Finally, another pleased reader looking to become a submitter to the magazine. It's good to give something back. Just don't expect to get rich off of it.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 30: Jul/Aug 1991



part 2/5



…And a Dozen Eggs: Randy Maxwell starts things off with a short adventure where the PC's head into the sewers of Waterdeep to deal with baby (but very fast-growing) dinosaurs. Some idiot imported eggs from Chult, they hatched and escaped, and now the sewers are even more dangerous before. It might be a good idea to do something about this. The fact that their former owner is offering a substantial bounty for ones brought back alive only sweetens the pot. (while complicating the adventuring process, given how hard subduing things without killing them is in D&D. ) While short in page count, this could make for a surprisingly lengthy adventure, as the sewers of waterdeep are large and byzantine, making it easily expandable if you're willing to put a little extra work in. It makes for a good framework for starting level adventurers, ensuring that while they may face a fair variety of challenges, they're never more than a few tunnels away from a ladder & manhole cover that'll get them to safety so they can heal up and buy new equipment between delves. Then once you have a few levels under your belt and cleared out all the dinosaurs in the sewers, plus a fair amount of rats, fungi, slimes and similar unpleasantness in the process, there's the much larger and more intentionally replenished challenges of Undermountain just a few blocks away. With a solid grounding in both geography and timeline of what will happen if you don't clear them out straight away, plus some surprisingly smart scientific bits in the worldbuiding, this makes a pretty interesting read. There are definitely much worse ways to start off your campaign.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 30: Jul/Aug 1991



part 3/5



Elminster's Back Door: Another short adventure from a regular set very explicitly in the Forgotten Realms. As with his previous one, this shows that while Ed may be fun to read when he gives you plot hooks and setting details and gives you the freedom to do with them as you will, when it comes to writing fully fleshed out adventures, he's obnoxiously linear and twee, producing things that you wind up wishing you'd never engaged with at all. As the title indicates, this is what happens if you try to get into Elminster's tower the wrong way. All the sadistic imagination of an archmage with access to 9th level spells and centuries of time on his hands, this'll be a challenge to any characters below epic levels if they try and fight through it with brute force, but if you use caution and divination magics you can just bypass a lot of the tricks harmlessly, plus you could stop any time if you just swallow your pride and ask Elminster nicely, or simply walk away from the dungeon. So unlike most adventures in here, this is one that you're not really supposed to play through and win, but a warning of what will happen to you if you try to go up against the Realm's resident mary-sue in chief. Not only will you fail, but it'll be in a humiliating way that'll probably leave you alive to tell the tale, thus further warning away any other adventurers who think it's a good idea to kill Elminster and take his stuff. It's interesting as contrast to all the normal adventures, but also really not the kind of adventure you'd want other writers to imitate and make a regular feature of the magazine. It further reinforces the idea that while I might get plenty of use out of Ed's material in my own games, I'd hate to have him as a DM. Hopefully he'll stick more to his strengths in Dragon & Polyhedron and it'll be several more years before I have to deal with him in here again.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 30: Jul/Aug 1991



part 4/5



Ghazal: After two strongly Realms-flavored adventures. they quite pleasingly decide to do one that leans heavily on the things that makes Greyhawk distinct. Off to the Bright Desert to deal with slavers, one of the foundational elements of the setting. An unambiguous evil that you can kick the ass of without guilt, with the added benefit that they may well want to take you alive, so even if you lose you get to play out another scenario in your attempts to escape and get your stuff back. The ambassador from a small Amazon country has been kidnapped, and you need to get her back before it really spoils their peace negotiations. Head over harsh terrain, climb steep cliffs to the top of a plateau, storm (or sneak into) the fortress and delve a dungeon that is actually a literal dungeon for a change. It's all very old school, with a few relatively subtle puns and pop culture references, some goofy monsters in small rooms with no clue how they got there, interesting new magical items the bad guys will use intelligently and plenty of freedom in how you approach your mission. It fits perfectly with the established Greyhawk aesthetic, and makes for a good palate cleanser after the linear obnoxiousness of the last adventure. Nothing enormously original here, but that also means I'd have no objection to using it.



A Wrastle With Bertrum: Willie Walsh once again produces something nonstandard and fairly lighthearted that still makes for a good story. An inn with a (fairly) well behaved troll for a bouncer. Anyone trying to start a fight there will rapidly get thrown out with great velocity. However, his presence attracts a certain degree of notoriety, so the innkeeper offers a massive (for nonadventurers) prize to anyone who can beat him in a fair wrestling match. (for a certain value of fair, because he has regeneration and you probably don't, so even if you're strong and skilled enough to win one round, the odds are strongly against you in an extended slugfest) If one of the PC's takes them up on the offer and looks like they actually have a chance of winning, certain other people take advantage of the distracted clientele, and then things get chaotic in ways I won't spoil. A relatively small and nonlethal diversion for your players between dungeon delves, that's elevated by both the level of little details in the NPC's and the production values. The centre pages of the magazine include a full color cardboard map of the inn's interior and counters representing all the NPC's, making the whole thing a much more physical, visual experience than normal. It's the kind of flavour filled bit of worldbuilding that's designed for putting down somewhere in your world that they're likely to make repeat visits too. As long as you take care of the props between uses, it should liven up your game quite nicely. Another interesting example of their current drive to improve production values and provide more things in here that'd be tricky for you to create yourself.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 30: Jul/Aug 1991



part 5/5



Thiondar's Legacy: The final adventure is more than twice the size of any of the others in the issue, a 29 pager that could easily have been a standalone module in the old days. Steve Kurtz, another freelancer who will go on to produce quite a few full books for TSR, sends the PC's to a mysterious tropical valley in the middle of arctic wasteland. What magic sustains it's unnatural presence, and what treasures from ancient civilisations might be found there? Get ready for the kind of expedition that could easily take months of in-game time, and only mildly less in reality if you're only doing weekly sessions. The whole thing is heavily inspired by pulp tales of derring-do and lost continents, with several places that you could stop play on a cliffhanger, and a suitably maniacally insane villain at the end. Deal with some decidedly suspicious stone giants and their similarly oversized sheep. Offer tribute to the mushroom king or face his wrath. Team up with or wind up fighting a rival adventuring party after the same prizes, some of which have wound up in rather dire straits after being split from the others. There's definitely plenty here for you to get stuck into covering the exploration, roleplaying and combat pillars, with quite a few memorable setpieces along the way.

However, this does come at a price, as there's far fewer forking paths in the map than usual for this magazine, and many of the encounters assume a default solution rather than just letting the PC's do whatever they please, so wrong choices may screw the story up further along the line. The final dungeon in particular is very linear indeed, with a default plot where the final boss is too powerful to beat in a straight fight, so you win by destroying the artifact empowering him, which is also responsible for the climate change, thus setting off a load-bearing boss situation where you'll likely have to escape without most of the treasure, and be responsible for mass genocide as the whole valley rapidly cools to normal temperatures for that latitude. But I guess that's also in-genre. No-one cared what happened to the Ewoks when the Death Star exploded, they just cut to the celebrations. So this makes pretty decent reading, but I have a suspicion it'd be one of the more annoying ones for me to actually play through, as it's a very 2e one where the author is telling his specific story rather than giving you a sandbox where you tell your own. Still, it's less annoying than Ed's attempt this issue, and more flexible than most of the polyhedron ones where they're forced into ultra-linearity by the strict 4 hour time limit. It could well work with a party who likes that more scripted approach to their campaigns.



An oddly lopsided issue, as the sheer size of the final adventure meant all the others were smaller than average. Still, all the adventures were interesting reads, even if they definitely weren't all ones that I'd actually like to use. Their choices are still more good than bad overall, and the gradual upgrade in production values is definitely appreciated. Let's see if they can last another full 5 years without going wrong, or things'll go downhill sooner when TSR starts to run into trouble in general.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 62: August 1991



part 1/5



35 pages. Ach, that's a fine kilt ye've got there laddie. Hope it's nice and thick to stand up to all the thistles and nettles you'll have to trample through in the wilderness. Let's see how threatening the challenges are this issue, and whether they'll be physical or more cerebral ones.



Bookwyrms: The promotion this time around is for the Cloakmaster Cycle, Spelljammer's upcoming novel series. Like most of the adventures we've seen so far, an ordinary guy from an ordinary D&D world (Krynn in this case) is suddenly thrown into adventures on a magnitude he never even imagined when a spelljamming ship crashlands on his farm, making him owner by default of a magical cloak who now has to fulfil it's destiny in a very Green Lantern style. From the looks of things, It'll take him the whole of the first book just to get off planet and properly start his quest. They don't say how long they intend the series to last overall, but looking ahead, it'll run for 6 books over the next couple of years before reaching it's climactic conclusion. (not so co-incidentally just as they cancel the line as a whole, which says that if it had sold better, they probably would have spun out the middle parts of the saga some more) I really should get around to reading these so I can judge if they're any good, or just yet more extruded fantasy product for myself. In any case, this shows them once again using pretty much the same formula for all their campaign settings, with the same mix of supplements, adventures, tie-in novels and metaplot changes regardless of how the settings themselves differ. If you like it there's probably something you can get out of these, even this far in the future, as it's not as if they've gone back to space in any depth since then.



Notes From HQ: Time once again for complaints about the satanic panic and general public relations. They'd rather not be seen as either dangerous deviants or pathetic nerds, but both stereotypes of roleplayers are still irritatingly common in general media. So they're making an extra effort to include positive stories about gamers and the things they do for the community. Send your ideas and submissions so we can make a regular column of it! Don't forget to send them to your local newspapers as well, as that's where they'll really make a difference. This is one time where they really don't care about exclusivity in what they publish. Good luck, as this seems like the kind of thing that's particularly susceptible to the bystander effect and might get no responses. As ever, we shall see. At least it gives me something to anticipate.



Letters: The first letter is mostly positive, but wants more contests, and Wolff & Byrd cut, as it doesn't fit the tone of the newszine. This is what you get for not covering more modern day/horror rpgs in here. If you'd kept up the Chill coverage or been a bit quicker about adding White Wolf stuff to the tournament roster maybe the audience would be more receptive.

The second grumbles about the impossibility of keeping up with all the sourcebooks TSR is releasing, and submitting things to the newszine that take all that into account. Some of them are contradictory, so you can't use them all at once anyway. Just stick to core and let the editors worry about whether your submission is redundant given the various other things they've released recently.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 62: August 1991



part 2/5



Past Honors & a New Challenge: No point in doing competitions if they don't announce the winners, so here's half a page wrapping up previous ones and setting a new challenge. Just who is that kilt-wearing man on the cover this issue, and how powerful are his statistics underneath that tartan? You have plenty of scope to decide what his history is, which system to use, and how he's likely to wind up interacting with the PC's. Let's hope they get enough submissions to make the competition meaningful, because it seems they're having that problem again, with the monster submissions dominated by familiar name from Dragon Greg Detwiler to a very high degree, and some categories not getting enough to award all the prizes. Despite their recent growth, it seems they're still not big enough, or with a dedicated enough readership to reliably do these properly and not expend more time and money on the prizes than they make from them.



Club Champions: While the monster and ship competitions just listed the winners, probably because they didn't get enough good submissions, the spell contest gets a whole page printing the winning entries. They're all both interesting and useful in general play as well, which isn't always the case. Good for them.

Malraz's Dramatic Death creates a full sensory illusion of your gruesome demise with very quick and subtle spell components, giving you plenty of opportunity to escape. Very handy if you want a recurring antagonist in your campaign.

Dark Fire makes your barbecue or campfire only generate heat, not light or smoke. This won't be much use if you're in an area full of things with infravision, but when sneaking through hostile human territory, it could be very logistically handy.

Neutralise Components disrupts the sympathetic magical qualities that make spell components work, seriously restricting an opposing wizard's options. Quirky but very effective indeed, and complements casting Silence on them to extra brutal effect. Overuse of this tactic may make the DM start using psionicists and monsters with innate SLA's all the time in response though.

Ivy's Irresistible Scent makes virtually everything with a sense of smell follow you around. Duration is a bit short though. Might be more effective to do this the mundane way. This is even more true of the reverse, where there are plenty of vile smells you could throw on someone to thoroughly ruin their day until they have a chance for a thorough wash without casting a spell.



Showdown At The IQ Corral: Speaking of psionicists, the Complete Psionics Handbook has been out long enough for people to realise that since in this edition the two power sources are completely separate in terms of detection, dispelling, and other countermeasures, a well-built psionic character can run roughshod over a spellcaster of similar level in social situations due to their ability to use powers without any obvious signs. Fortunately there's always researching custom spells to counter them. So here's another 10 in quick succession, albeit slightly less imaginative than the last 4. Your basic low level resistance booster. Setting a psychic trap inside your head. Filling the area with psychic static as if there were tons more thinking creatures in the area than there actually are. Low and high level all-purpose psychic power blockers. A tracer that points out exactly who and where is trying to get inside your head, letting you easily teleport there even if they're doing it from long range. One that lets you reflexively use your own mind-affecting spells on them when they try to get you. The obvious low level detection spell. And on the opposite end, a high level one that'll overload the mental connection and temporarily burn out their psychic powers entirely. Nothing enormously surprising, but a decent amount of variety, evenly spread between wizard and priest spells so neither are helpless. (although the clerics'll probably be quicker off the mark in gaining access to them in response to psionic enemies showing up, since they won't have to spend a load of time and money researching them, just have a god that grants the right spheres.) The kind of thing that's highly situational, but when you need it, you'll really appreciate having access to it.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 62: August 1991



part 3/5



The Jade Monkey: The adventure this issue is short and silly. Macon the Monkey Mage and Serialla the Snake Sage are having a wizard's duel at his mansion when the PC's call around to get hold of some spells. He's currently losing and trapped in the body of his pet monkey. He's not actually in serious danger, (unless the PC's kill him) but he would rather like to not concede the duel, so he'll try and get them to turn him back. Of course, he can't speak, and in the meantime they're probably blundering through his collection of magical defences and intelligent items (each of which has their own goofy personality. ) All but one of these aren't particularly deadly, but the trick is getting your players to realise that, especially if they've had to deal with more diabolical wizard lairs before. Will they heed the monkey's attempts at mime, or treat the whole thing like a serious dungeon and engage in wholesale killing and taking of stuff? This is less annoying than some of their modules, as it isn't a railroad, but it is close to the edge of being a comedy adventure that would only really work in an april fools issue, so it's definitely not for every campaign. The average quality of adventures in here continues to be a fair bit lower than Dungeon then.



The Living City: We've had several pubs before, now they decide to include a more high class wine shop for when the PC's have accumulated a little more wealth, and want to drink in style, or merely convert their cash into a more portable form. As the Vine Twines is a somewhat twee sounding, but very profitable place owned by a Halfling (of course!) cleric of Llira who works hard at being the best winemaker he can be, including custom spells (which they sloppily forget to include levels for so you can't have them) to ensure they can be produced faster and at higher quality. He makes good money but still treats his employees well, gives to charity, and is generally nice and has his life together. There's no dissension in the ranks, no monsters lurking around the edges. It's all very healthy and wholesome. So that puts this pretty low on the rankings of actual in-game usability, particularly with the slipshod editing. Sorry, but you're going to be staying as background detail rather than actually featuring in any interesting plots at this rate.



Truly Tacky Treasure: Another quick diversion into lighthearted silliness here, as they talk about ideas for treasure that isn't exactly cursed, and may be quite valuable, but adventurers would still hesitate to load up on it and bring it home with them after clearing out the monsters. Crocheted crossbow coverings. Tiamat night lights with five little glowing heads. (those blue canaries in the outlet by light switch had better watch out) Bell-bottom armor. Ki-rin bobblehead dolls. Polyester cloaks. They might have some practical use, but they're silly looking and frequently anachronistic. It'd take a particularly tasteless world-hopping wizard to latch onto some of these ideas and decide to decorate their lair and accessories accordingly. Not saying it's unusable, and giving your dungeons wacky themes like this will definitely make them memorable, but this is the kind of thing you should use in moderation if you want to keep your campaign's 4th wall intact. Once again, probably would have been better positioned in an april issue.



The New Rogues Gallery: The characters this time are a pair of hard-bitten half-elven mercenaries with hearts of gold that simply call themselves The Freelancers. If you have large amounts of cash, or a good cause, they might be willing to solve your problems. They used to be more conventionally heroic adventurers, going into dungeons, killing monsters and taking their stuff, but became disillusioned after losing too many companions, and now go for the more directly profitable gigs while keeping their identities mysterious. The brother can blend into nearly any crowd, and has an evil intelligent sword with lots of cool powers that he usually manages to keep control of, while the sister plays the femme fatale and engages in more attention-grabbing infiltration and information-gathering techniques. It all seems very TV show-ish in feel, with influences like The (non-Marvel) Avengers, The A-Team, Charlie's Angels, Sapphire & Steel and MacGuyver springing to mind as I read it. They're powerful but interestingly flawed, and could work as allies, rivals or enemies, possibly all three if encountered repeatedly on different missions. This definitely seems usable, if on the cheesier end of the plot spectrum. But sometimes you're in the mood for a little cheese, and if you are, this could wind up being an excellent side dish for your campaign. Just don't make it the main course, unless you want bloating and indigestion to follow.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 62: August 1991



part 4/5



The Living Galaxy: Roger continues to talk about the opportunities and obstacles to adventures involving sentient spaceships. Is there any systematic legal discrimination or informal prejudice against free-willed machines in the various jurisdictions of your galaxy? Are they employed? If so, can they quit if they want without having enforcers sent after them, or are they trapped by a punitive contract or hardwired behavioural limitations? Are they in debt, and so need to keep earning or risk repossession? Does the ship have a human scale avatar? What cool stuff can they do beyond space travel? (cloaking, scanning, weaponry, etc) Once again this demonstrates why a fairly crunchy but flexible system like GURPS is probably the best choice for defining what they can and can't do without getting into regular arguments with your players about unexpected situations. Once you know these things, figuring out the kind of plots they're likely to get involved in becomes much easier. There's definitely an extensive list of ideas to draw upon, some of which will get repetitive sooner than others. Given the length he's been expositing on this, it's definitely seeming increasingly achievable. Hopefully someone got some use out of it back in the day. Or you could now, as it's not as if it's system specific. Good luck if you do.



Into the Dark: This time, James picks the somewhat quirky theme of fantastical movies with lots of music in. (though not full-on musicals) The kind of thing that's extra challenging because if even one of the aspects isn't good enough, the whole thing winds up subpar. Even Disney can't get it right every time, so what hope something independently produced with a low budget? Will he be able to recommend anything this issue, or will it be all warnings?

Slumber Party Massacre II takes the whole having sex = death thing that's common in slasher movies, and elevates it to parodic levels, with the killer wielding a guitar with a drill on the end to kill a synth-pop based girl group. A metaphor for toxic masculinity that works on multiple levels! There's definitely things here to amuse a watcher, but the characters and dialogue are unrealistic to the point of being ludicrous. If you can't write horror without making the characters complete idiots, you probably shouldn't be working in that genre.

Trick or Treat fails in the other direction. It's apparently supposed to be a parody, but comes off as a sincere tract for moral majority nonsense about how rock n' roll is corrupting are youth! Skarka's law strikes again! Of course, if the music isn't good, it's not going to be convincingly corruptive in any case, and it fails in that area as well. No amount of backmasked subliminal messages can get people to buy things if it's not tempting in the first place, they merely tip the scales a little further.

Hard Rock Zombies is the kind of b-movie that sounds interesting on paper, with a rock band summoning zombies to fight nazis, but the basic technical ineptitude of the filmmaking makes it a much duller watch than it should be. The kind of thing that's immensely improved by having the MST3K guys at the bottom of the screen taking the piss.

Labyrinth gets a decent but not exceptional rating, which still puts it above everything else here. The muppets steal the show from the human actors, with even Bowie much stiffer than in many of his other roles. He's not too keen on the music for this one either, to which I say BLASPHEMY!!1!!!, as it's easily my favourite of Bowie's 80's output. (which admittedly is praising with faint damnation. ) One of the few here that has actually aged well, with better critical reception now than at the time.

Two Thousand Maniacs takes us way back to the mid-60's, for one of the ancestors of modern shock horror. This time with extra banjo music to fit the hillbilly theme, which is more horrific than the gore. The plot is once again not much to shout about, but as long as you go in with the right expectations, it's entertaining enough.