TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 65: November 1991



part 4/5



With Great Power: Here we get reminded that the Marvel superheroic rpg was not just built around emulating around superheroes in general, but a very specific model of superhero, the guy in a costume with a secret identity who juggles a day job and their double life, with mixed degrees of success. This is (hashtag) not all superheroes! In fact, since the rise of ubiquitous cameraphones, they're a distinct minority, mainly legacy heroes who have reality-warping or social influence that can put the genie back in the bottle even if their identity does get leaked. But even 30 years ago, there were plenty of examples to choose from of heroes who were full time public good-doers or spent most of their time in other worlds/dimensions and didn't engage with the costumed crime-fighting scene at all. Government-sponsored agents who draw a legitimate wage for their activities and get the best in cutting-edge equipment. Eternals, who are more than powerful and long-lived enough that a day job is something only adopted temporarily for reasons other than needing the money. Inhumans, who's primary concern is their own society on the moon. Asgardians, who might travel the universe, but once again, their own society will usually be more significant than any earthly ties. Nothing ground-breaking but a good reminder for your own campaigns, which are less limited to sticking to a status quo than the comics, so you can take them all sorts of weird places without worrying about alienating people or what all the other superheroes and villains would do in the crossovers if you do something worldshaking. Even if you start off that way, at some point, you will get found out, and it's good to have a plan to continue without relying on the old gameplay loop before it happens if you want a long-running campaign.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 65: November 1991



part 5/5



Wolff & Byrd find out the martian visitor is hermaphroditic, bisexual, or simply beyond earthly concepts of gender and sexuality, and entirely willing to swing both ways when it comes to humans. This makes legal proceedings even more complicated than they already were. It also turns out to be too progressive for either the TSR code of conduct and/or the readers, as this is the last we see of them for now. They still have a long future of convoluted cases ahead of them, but you'll have to pay money for other publications if you want to see it. I suspect whatever comic replaces it will be a little closer to standard D&D style fantasy.



Bookwyrms: We only have one promotional piece this time, and at the end rather than the beginning. Zeb Cook reminds us of the merits of playing Gotta Collect 'em All! when it comes to their novels and adventures. Many of their novels are tied into adventures or sourcebooks and give further info about the place or events. Sometimes they change what's in those places from the previous sourcebook and supersede that information. If you want to know all the most up to date setting details and keep your campaign accurate, you need to keep that wallet open. Another reminder that they really really loved metaplot in the TSR offices at that point, and would apply it to all their settings until it was completely obvious it was alienating more people than it was attracting, which took the company collapsing and being bought out to properly sink into their thick skulls. In the meantime we have a good few years of them repeatedly switching things up, often in ways that reduce the overall adventurability of the setting due to their need to defeat villains and have happy endings in the novels. This is both irritating in itself and a harbinger of more irritation to come. Not a very good note to end things on.



An issue of two halves, as the game material is more interesting and useful than the last few issues, but the generic stuff is pretty boring and basic, and they seem to be slipping when it comes to their convention organisation abilities again. After several years of reliable growth, they once again need to fight complacency. Tune in again after a short break to see what plans they come up with next time.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 32: Nov/Dec 1991



part 1/5



72 pages. Hmm. A clearly native american coded shaman engaging in some kind of summoning on the cover. Looks like at least one of the adventures inside will be getting tribal. Guess we'd better head in and see if this is handled with any sensitivity, or stereotyping, slaughter and colonialist subjugation will be the order of the day.



Editorial: Once again, we deal with the question of generic adventures vs ones in specific settings. They'd like to do more of them, but they're not getting the submissions. With the brand new settings that's particularly understandable, as people simply haven't had time to digest them and come up with ideas building upon them, but it's still a problem. There's also the question of if the readers actually want them, because if they don't, all this effort to get more variety is just a waste of time. It's not as if the readers are unhappy, as not only do they regularly send positive letters in, but they also won best professional gaming magazine this year. If they published adventures in specific settings disproportionate to the number of submissions, they might lower overall quality and spoil that. It's a question of if you follow your muse or stick to safe crowd-pleasers. It really is an eternal battle in any creative field.



Letters: The first letter wonders what happens to bound abishai when they're killed? They're simply dead. Only greater fiends get to go back home and reform, maybe with a demotion, to come back later and wreak their revenge. The rest simply proceed on their way to oblivion.

Second has a whole load of errata for Ghazal, and wonders how you become an RPG editor. (since the current ones don't seem to be doing their job properly) Hardly anyone sets out to become an editor, so the job generally falls to the person in the company who fails to take a step backwards when they ask for volunteers. If you're good at nitpicking little details and actively want to do the job, you're probably overqualified even if you have no formal certificates saying so on paper.

Finally, another army guy who's found Dungeon very nice both for reading and getting games going with their irregular schedule. Building your own world is hard work, and when you have a more than full time job as well, there's no shame in taking shortcuts to get to the fun part.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 32: Nov/Dec 1991



part 2/5



The Wayward Wood: What happens when the trees get pissed off, and decide to go walkabout? If you're Saruman, this is an out of context problem that will ultimately be your downfall, but it's certainly no picnic for many other characters either. Now you can see how your PC's will cope with this somewhat unusual adventure. While in a inn in a small town (try saying that 5 times quickly), they're asked for help by some exceedingly flustered druids. They've lost control of their forest, it's heading this way at a rate of several miles per day, and very unlikely to politely go around the houses when it arrives. Unless you want a fastforwarded demonstration of what nature can do to even the strongest building, you need to do something about this and only have a few days to prepare. Will you go to the forest, try and talk to the trees & animals to discover the cause and see if there's a reasonable compromise you can arrive at without violence, or use the time to fortify & train the village and then use lots of fire and axes when they arrive, in which case you'll get to break out the mass combat rules. Either way, this is an interesting open-ended challenge that should stick out in the memory and has several twists that I won't spoil. It mixes the fantastical elements with the logical down-to-earth ramifications of them well and could have a fair bit of long-term effect on your campaign, depending on where you set it and if you can manage to move the forest back to it's original location intact, or simply wind up destroying it entirely. This definitely gets my seal of approval both to run myself and to recommend to other people to run.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 32: Nov/Dec 1991



part 3/5



Hermes' Bridge: After a fairly original start, we go back to the old cliche of a bridge with a troll on it. But then thankfully they build upon the idea so this particular example has a decent amount of distinctiveness and depth. The bridge is a massive one created by a fallen civilisation that current technology can't recreate, spanning a river that would be very difficult to cross otherwise, with micro-dungeons in the arches holding it up. There's some dwarves poking around to try and understand how it was built, a troll trying to steal money from the donation urn, a stone golem that's doing it's best to defend the place with it's nonexistent intelligence. The kind of flavour encounter that you could just gloss over and have them cross easily, but they could also spend several hours poking around, finding all the secrets and clearing out all the monsters and treasure. It's easy to put into any world (apart from Athas, where there's a distinct lack of rivers to build bridges over) and helps make your world feel bigger and more nonlinear, not just a backdrop to a single story. Not spectacular, but conveniently usable. Another one I have no problem with, and probably showed up in more games than the epic quests.



Side Treks: Changeling: The side trek actually manages to fit entirely into two pages this time, without even having to shift a paragraph to elsewhere in the magazine to round things out. It's a pretty basic gimmick encounter. The PC's think they're going up against a white dragon that's been marauding the local farmers. It turns out to be an albino dragon of a different colour, so all those cold resistance spells will have been a waste of time. Gotcha! It does actually suffer from some of the real world problems albinism causes in people & animals, so it's not the most deadly fight as long as you didn't overspecialise your builds for the day, but even a fairly weak dragon fight is still pretty scary for regular characters, especially when it uses the terrain and it's spells intelligently. This is much shorter than the previous adventure in terms of page count, but could wind up being a longer and more deadly one in actual play if the tactics work and the players can't figure out how to pin it down for a fair fight. The kind of playing with expectations that you definitely shouldn't overdo as a DM unless you want your players to be perpetually grumpy and paranoid about every encounter, but makes a nice spice when added sparingly.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 32: Nov/Dec 1991



part 4/5



Pearlman's Curiosity: Oh tihs it's a nilbog get out of the van! Willie Walsh indulges in some of the worst whimsy AD&D 1e had to offer and sets a nilbog loose on a town, courtesy of an amoral wizard who's studying all the havoc it's causing (from a safe distance) as a mere scientific experiment. Everything is going haywire as people find themselves doing the opposite of what they would normally do in a situation. Can the PC's manage to double-check all their actions long enough to figure out where the effect is coming from and do something about it? Anyone who's read the rulebook will know that despite their low stats, nilbogs are near impossible to hurt at all, as what would normally harm them heals them & vice versa, and since healing spells are spontaneously reversible, it's very likely your cleric will screw up and use the wrong version even if they know the trick to killing them. It's all an almighty headache, and it's quite likely that it'll escape entirely, or they'll have to capture it and seal it away while being unable to actually kill it permanently. This seems like the marmite of adventure scenarios, they'll either love it or absolutely hate it. If I were only reviewing Dungeon I'd probably slate it, but seeing at the same time just how much worse most jokey Polyhedron adventures are, I actually don't mind this. It has good worldbuilding, like most of Mr Walsh's work, and gives you complete freedom in how you try to solve the problem (within the confines of often winding up doing the opposite of what you stated). Once the adventure's over, this is another town that you can reuse easily, as the various NPC's and buildings in the vicinity get plenty of useful details. That puts it way above adventures that expect you to go from one joke encounter to the next in order with no deviation. It's important to keep a sense of perspective about these things.



Is there an Elf in the House: Murder mysteries continue to be a reasonably popular niche genre here. The PC's get hired to make a delivery to a country manor. Bad weather hits at a suspiciously convenient time, and they're trapped there for several days, when one of the serving maids gets murdered. Everyone's a suspect, including you, so all your weapons, armour, spellbooks, etc get confiscated until the culprit is figured out, giving psionic characters, monks, and other classes that don't rely on external trappings for their powers a big advantage. As is typical for these things, there's more than one secret going on at once, between the owners of the manor and the other guests, so you might solve one and think you've won while missing the others entirely, finger a guilty person for the wrong crime, get most of it but miss some of the secret rooms and bonus treasure, or of course, lose entirely and die horribly one by one over the course of several days. As usual for the genre, it requires both decent acting skills from the DM, and a decent degree of buy-in from the players (who's going to willingly give up their weapons knowing it's almost definitely going to become an issue?) or the whole thing just won't work at all. As long as those requirements are met, this looks like it could be a decent amount of fun, and the twists are indeed pretty twisty, so I'm not going to spoil them here. It's one that could probably be improved by running it in a different system, but since the readers rejected that idea, I suppose they're doing the best with the remit they have.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 32: Nov/Dec 1991



part 5/5



Ghost Dance: A second adventure that uses the BATTLESYSTEM mass combat rules in the same issue? Now that is interesting to see. I wonder if those bits were originally in the submissions, or they're adding them in in editing as part of their promotional efforts. Iuz is being diabolically evil as usual and wants to expand his territory, but the Rovers currently living there are proving considerably harder to exterminate or subjugate than the native american cultures they're heavily inspired by. Tiring of taking considerably heavier losses than their opponents in the face of asymmetric warfare, one of his priests hits upon the plan of infiltrating a tribe with an artifact that turns everyone exposed to it lawful evil, and then using them to fight the other tribes, while disguised as yet other tribes in the hope of turning everyone against everyone else, leaving them all weakened and easy pickings when the conventional armies finally come in again to mop things up. And he would have got away with it if it weren't for those pesky PC's and their little god too! Since en masse magical alignment conversions are one of the biggest threats to godly power structures, that's a huge faux pas on Iuz's part (not that he gives a naughty word), and the PC's will have powerful, if subtle forces helping them on their way if they take this mission.

If they pay attention to the clues, they'll realise this isn't a mission where they should be killing everyone and taking their stuff, and go for the magical artifact responsible for all the mindfucking. Destroying that will free them, and then you get a nicely climactic final battle where all the Rover tribes unite against the Horned Society forces. If you don't, the adventure will be much longer and messier, probably turning once again into an extended guerilla campaign. So there is a definite intended story here where the PC's act like proper heroes and get suitably rewarded for it, but there's also enough worldbuilding that you can go off the rails and play a very different kind of adventure if you like. It's all pretty interesting philosophically, as it shows how chaotic evil gods can value lawful evil followers, but also that lawful evil does not have to mean you respect anyone else's rules. (Iuz doing things that are just completely out of bounds for other gods, yet not being directly stopped because they can't bring themselves to break the bounds of civility no matter how blatant his rule breaking and how much normal people suffer as a consequence has new resonance after 4 years of Trump presidency.) Like the other mass combat adventure this issue, pursuing it could have long term effects on the geopolitics of your campaign, and lead into more Greyhawk Wars adventures where things go quite differently to the canon metaplot. Like most of the other adventures this issue, this won't be for everyone, but for those it is, it could add a fair bit to your campaign long-term.



A lot of adventures in here with relatively short page count, that are also quite heavy on the worldbuilding and potential for long-term campaign consequences. If you're a DM that's good at extrapolating and extending existing adventures to make them more significant, this could be one of the most useful issues they've ever done. So it's with with vague trepidation that I head back to Polyhedron, where they worldbuilding isn't nearly as prioritised or well though out. Let's see what presents we get for christmas this year.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 66: December 1991



part 1/5



35 pages. The big tragedy of interracial relationships in D&D is lifespan differences, as this cover illustrates all too well. 50 years for a human, and you body is completely falling apart, while your elf partner has barely changed and is now more your carer than your lover. Meanwhile, you've gone through a good 4-5 generations of pet cats, and might get through one or two more before finally kicking the bucket. Let's see how well this whole topic is handled inside.



Notes From HQ: Time once again to look back on last year, while planning ahead to the next. They're increasing in size again, albeit slowly, which is a good sign for the organisation as a whole, and have added yet another regional co-ordinator, this time one in Norway for the scandinavian countries as a whole. The number of submitted adventures is up too. On the negative side, this means the number of phone calls is getting to the point where it seriously impacts their productivity, so they're restricting lines to afternoon hours only. Ha. Wait until the internet gets a bit bigger and faster, then you'll truly know productivity drain in your office work. So growth brings new opportunities, such as being able to do more competitions targeted at clubs as well as individuals, but also new problems as well. If you use the same techniques you used at lower level, eventually you'll fail. Let's hope the ways they decide to change are the right ones for the situation.



Letters: The first letter is from future 3e designer (and many other RPG products) Mike Selinker, talking about all the charity work the RPGA does. Gamers are as susceptible to cancer, heart attacks, (possibly even moreso due to the sedentary lifestyle) and degenerative illnesses as anyone, so raising awareness and devoting money to medical research is helping yourself in the long run. Give a little extra for a good cause next time you're at a convention with a charity event.

The second is somewhat less positive. Regular correspondent Aaron Goldblatt gives his perspective on getting through Gen Con with not enough judges to go around. He had to GM 8 slots, which left him virtually no time to wander around and enjoy the convention as a spectator. He'd very much appreciate it if more people step up so he doesn't have to work to the point of exhaustion again next year. This is what happens when you're one of the hardcore few who stick with something through good times and bad. Reliability might be a virtue, but it's not a path to personal happiness.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 66: December 1991



part 2/5



The Living City: Turns out the family tree of the people on the cover is a little more complex than I thought. The woman is the half-elven granddaughter of the man, left with him when her adventurer parents set out on a particularly dangerous mission and never came back. Together with an adopted pair of ex-conjoined twins, they run Oljagg's Rag & Bottle Shop, the kind of place where people leave their worn out odds and ends, which then get cleaned up, stitched together in new ways and then sold on to other people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Because they're generally nice people, they know when to cut someone experiencing hard times a break to keep them coming back, and when to charge rich people more, so the business is decently profitable overall. So the commercial aspect of this is pretty ordinary, if somewhat archaic, and the interesting part is their personalities, and the representation of several unusual disabilities in both the writing and artwork. Even though they aren't represented mechanically in D&D, they still happen in D&D worlds, and magic isn't commonplace enough for ordinary people to be able to afford to cure themselves. They still have to make their way in the world and make a living, especially since there's no social security net there, and some of them will become adventurers. This shouldn't be controversial, but as we saw this the combat wheelchair stuff a few months ago, somehow it still is. Not every character is an all 18's mary-sue with no flaws apart from generalised angst, and having ones like these in your setting definitely makes it more interesting.



Monstrous Mayhem: They continue to do contests pretty much every month. This time, it's giving you artwork of a monster and asking you to come up with the stats. It looks like a Dark Sun monster to me, with all those muscles and asymmetrical body parts, but you've got plenty of freedom to stat it up in whatever system you please. Winners get a copy of the 2e Fiend Folio, which this time is being largely done from RPGA submissions, rather than the British fanbase the 1e one drew from, but retains it's remit of being somewhat quirkier than the core monstrous compendia. I look forward to seeing what mechanical effect those weird tendril like left fingers will have.



Martial Arts In Paranoia: Badass action heroes, karate kids and ninja turtles are all over the media in the early 90's. It's no surprise that Paranoia would get in on the action of parodying that as well. Interestingly, this is one form of knowledge that's not restricted to commie mutant traitors, with the computer seeing the value in training certain troubleshooters in unarmed combat to better deal with whatever they may be sent up against. So here's several martial arts styles, including their founders and the various types of moves each teaches. Underneath the pun names and pop culture references, this actually looks pretty mechanically functional, and similar to the unarmed combat stuff in the complete fighters handbook, so you could use it in a both the wacky zap style games and the more serious dystopian ones. This one definitely gets my approval, both as variety to contrast with the D&D stuff, and actual quality material. Now let's hope that'll be reflected in the tournaments. I guess Paranoia is more suited to one-shots than lengthy campaigns, so it would be pretty easy for it to get a foothold here.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 66: December 1991



part 3/5



Caravan: In 1987, while they were still busy creating it, they had a whole series of articles devoted to things that might happen on the journey to Raven's Bluff. The city is well developed now, but they still want to bring in new blood, so here's another adventure aimed at starting level characters as an introduction to a Living City campaign. They've obviously been drawn to the city in pursuit of adventure for whatever reason, and all wound up travelling with the same caravan for safety. Turns out they'll need that protection, as there's a horde of tanar'ri and undead on the loose. They'll get ominous dreams for several days beforehand, which none of the NPC's will believe despite this being a magic heavy D&D setting. They have to deal with someone stealing their stuff without any chance to save and spot the culprit, a bandit attack, various small scale interactions with the NPC's, and then the main battle, where the higher level characters do all the work and the PC's only participation is mopping up a few mooks. So this adventure is not only bad in the now familiar for Polyhedron way of being completely linear and railroady, giving you virtually no meaningful choices or character agency, but also an all new one of making you not even the central part of the story, but spectators who's main purpose is to watch other people be awesome, which we'll also see again in some of the more metaplot heavy official adventures, particularly ones that are tie-ins to novels. This leaves me thoroughly pissed off after reading it and is not one I'd ever remotely consider using. It'd set completely the wrong tone for the kind of game I like to run or play in. About the only saving grace is that it's not filled with terrible puns. That puts it just barely above the Fluffyquest series overall in terms of sheer awfulness.



With Great Power: Dale continues directly on from last month, venturing even further from the traditional superheroic experience to outright crossovers with other genres. Does all that mad science that normally appears in comics as a one-shot get into mass production, and the setting rapidly become a cyberpunk one? Do Terminators come back to try and change the past, and find it's a much more even fight than in the original movies? How do your heroes deal with Godzilla or Dracula - wait, they've already both appeared officially in Marvel comics anyway. This illustrates how well superheroes combine with nearly every other genre, which is definitely a lesson the Marvel Cinematic Universe has consciously heeded and used to keep itself from getting stale. Individual characters feel like they're existing in their own genre, yet can still interact with other people's stories and the universe is big & flexible enough to accommodate them. Can you pull off the same trick in your campaign without the massive writer's budget? Another fairly competent bit of advice that's aimed at Marvel characters, but generic enough to apply to other games as well. No problems with this, particularly as it mentions lots of other RPG's you can use as inspiration, including ones they've never covered here like Vampire: the Masquerade. Try some new games out. Even if you don't stick with them, you can bring the best ideas back to your main system and combine them into the big stew of genres. Doesn't that sound like more fun than arbitrarily limiting yourself into a category that's purely a human construct anyway?