TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 69: March 1992



part 3/5



The Living City: This month's entry will not please the person complaining about too many high level characters in Raven's Bluff, as it's another high level thief who decided they were getting too old for the adventuring life and used their ill-gotten gains to go legit. Shylock Revahl is now the proprietor of Ye Olde Bluff Jeweler, a high-class place in an upscale neighbourhood. He gets up early every morning, takes his work seriously, and is a responsible dad to his adopted daughter. Only the little details in the way he dresses and observes a room hint to a similarly skilled person that he knows all the tricks thieves use to rob people & places and would not be an easy mark. His daughter wants to follow in his footsteps, which he seems rather ambivalent about. It might be dangerous, but what can you do with teenagers? If you forbid it too hard they'll just rebel and do it anyway because you think you're invincible when you're young. This is pretty middle of the road in terms of both writing quality and degree of adventure hooks for this column, with a bit of diminishing returns because they're familiar ones. Just how many old guys who's past catches up with them and forces them to take one more job or kids who want to be adventurers does any particular campaign need? The more similar ones like this they add, the less likely each individual one will actually get used.



The New Rogues Gallery: This column is very weird indeed this time. Willac Tatthryd was originally a male human priest, but was killed and due to random roll on the reincarnation table, wound up as a female ogre. (Is that even rules legal?! :looks up: Both 1e and 2e corebook versions say nothing about the sex of the new body, so I guess it's entirely up to the DM whether it's always the same as the previous life or 50/50 either way.) This could easily have turned into just a string of transphobic jokes, which i wouldn't have been surprised to see given the level of many adventures published in here. But amazingly enough, it does actually treat the topic with some sensitivity, and while she still faces some prejudice, she's adapted to her new life pretty decently, and even got a conjurer husband, who is her biggest defender against both any external threats and her own remaining insecurities. It's still somewhat dubious when it comes to issues of consent, treating randomly stumbling across a love potion and accidentally drinking it as a joke, but since they're both spellcasters who also usually have mind control spells memorised, you can't say they're completely innocent and undeserving parties here. So while this still isn't exactly great by modern standards, it is pretty interesting, and a good reminder why roleplaying attracts trans people in disproportionate amounts. Being able to safely explore lots of very different identities is helpful when you're still uncertain or in the closet about your own real life identity. Of course the process is going to be somewhat clumsy and might make you cringe when you look back decades later. I can't judge this one too harshly.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 69: March 1992



part 4/5



Into The Dark: James decides to go for the theme of a very specific monster this issue. Zombies! They're actually a fairly recent addition to the folkloric roster, less than a century old, but have become very popular both in their own right, and also as mooks for other varieties of undead & spellcasters. There's plenty of both good and bad movies featuring them to choose from.

White Zombie was the very first zombie movie, made back in 1932. Like many old, low-budget movies, it somehow manages to be both too short and too slow paced for people used to the modern style of writing & editing, but still has some genuinely creepy moments that hold up today, particularly where the people are actually being turned into zombies for the first time. It's important to know your history.

Day of the Dead is the third in George Romero's long-running series where the zombies are very obviously metaphors for humanities own cruelty to one another, and the biggest danger is the stupidity and greed of the other people you're sheltering with. Sometimes the monologuing can be a bit heavy-handed, but they're still classics for a reason. Most modern day zombie films show definite influence from him.

Gates of Hell lacks the cleverness of the previous two, and so ups the amount of gore to overcompensate. Lots of largely interchangable characters who's only purpose is to die in various ways, and bad editing is not the way to get people invested enough to care when the bad stuff happens, and that's kinda important for true horror to work.

Horror of the Zombies is also cheap and stupidly written, but this time in spanish. The zombies are so slow and weak that no reasonable person would ever be caught by them, leaving things distinctly unscary. Not really worth all the hassle of subtitles or even worse dubbing to get through.

Return of the Living Dead gets the highest marks here, as it takes the zombie movie cliches, subverts them, and adds plenty of dark humour. Just don't bother with the sequel, as it's a waste of time by comparison.



Gamma World Game Loot: The attempt to give Gamma World 4e a decent amount of promotion continues with a look at their treasure tables. In keeping with the current attempts to make it work more like D&D, they have exactly the same kind of treasure types, with A-O for lairs, and U-Z for stuff carried by individuals. The treasure itself isn't hugely changed though, a motley mix of everyday things from the modern era that might seem wondrous to them, and things that are genuinely fantastical like laser guns and holocubes. (and a few things that were sci-fi in the 80's, but now seem mundane like an electronic map of the world on a tablet. ) So this continues their attempts to get the many readers who only play D&D to diversify by making switching seem as familiar and pain-free as possible. It all feels pretty cynical, and of course is of no use once you actually buy the books. I'm not particularly thrilled by this.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 69: March 1992



part 5/5



Bestiary: Air Fish are pretty similar to regular fish, except they swim through air instead of water with the aid of innate levitation powers. Most of them are low HD and slow moving, as fins are not as effective a method of propulsion in the much thinner air, but air sharks are both swift and capable of taking a nasty clunk out of you, while air mantas have a nasty paralytic stinger. They'll be a good indicator that you're in a high magic zone where the ecology gets weird, but unlikely to be the main challenge.

The Valiant Thirteenth are not a monster, but get an entry formatted like one as a joke. They're actually one of the RPGA's longer-running official clubs, meeting approximately every other week in Boston (with a lot of turnover) since 1978. So we get three pages of info on their history, how they operate, and the games they're currently running, along with lots of in jokes and some caricatured portraits of their core members. There's plenty of interesting facts amongst the humour and endless bickering, and while getting everyone to show up on time and get down to playing seems a sisyphean task, they must be doing something right to have kept going this long. A reasonably entertaining diversion, that could probably be repeated a few more times with different clubs before hitting diminishing returns.



Official Network Clubs are now up to 75 worldwide, and they spend 3 pages doing an A-Z of them. An upward trend, but still much slower than they'd like. Will they ever reach the point where they can no longer fit the list into a single issue, but have to publish them separately, or just list it all online?



The Living Galaxy: it's good to see my opinions being backed up. Roger has found that his series of columns on sentient spaceships has got easily the most praise and general responses of these columns. Being highly specific rather than generic is much more interesting, and gives other people more opportunities to put their own ideas and opinions in. TSR's other staff members have plenty of ideas of their own, plus a ton of references from old stories, several of them published by sister magazine Amazing Stories. Several of the ideas revolve around how a large mechanical intelligence can escape death by having smaller mobile bodies to use as an escape pod, or leaving backups of it's memories in port. Since this topic seems to be popular, he starts a competition to see who can come up with the weirdest (while still being playable) nonstandard PC type. When you're running out of ideas on your own, stop, collaborate and listen to get some new ones to try. It's both easier and more fun than trying to come up with enough to fill a column every month, running out of inspiration and resorting to padding to make up the word count.



Bloodmoose & Company returns quietly after an extended absence. And now they have a time machine! Where and when will it take them?



A pretty interesting issue, with both above average articles and signs of historical progression. As I was finding many recent issues a bit dull, that comes as welcome. Whether those changes will be good for them long term or not, it still keeps every day from merging into one grey expanse of unbroken time. Time to open another door and see see if there's monsters or treasure within.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 34: Mar/Apr 1992



part 1/5



80 pages. A cover where all the participants are looking away from the camera? You don't see that very often, even when it would make sense narratively. They'll more often go to great lengths to have both sides showing both face and ass, particularly when the participants are female. So this little bit of drama comes as welcome, even if it might not end well for the person about to be backstabbed long-term. Let's see if the adventures inside have anything similarly unexpected to offer.



Editorial: There is no truely generic fantasy, merely unexamined conventions that are taken as default. The more Barbara asks people what they want from the magazine, the more obvious it becomes that different people have very different preferences, so you need to publish a wide variety of things if you want to keep them interested. Popular settings, not so popular settings, dungeons that can easily be placed anywhere, and solo missions all have their part to play, so send them all in. Just don't forget your SASE! This all seems pretty much business as usual. Getting all your readers to agree is both a futile task and would be boring if they did. Just keep on publishing the most interesting adventures you get, especially if they don't fit the mould of the average one and you've got a good chance of going on for many years more.



Letters: The debate on the proportion of generic to setting specific adventures also dominates the letters page. First letter is by frequent contributor Randy Maxwell, answering why he designs adventures the way he does, and some other frequent complaints in here. Most of it's all very logical, or at least following the path or least resistance, even if the steps they took to get there might not make sense in hindsight.

Second wants one adventure per issue to be for a specific setting, one for one of their three vanilla settings, and the rest completely generic. Barbara agrees with the general figures, but of course individual issues may still vary, as sizes of adventure also do, and sometimes they'll vary the number to put something particularly epic in.

Future Al Qadim writer Steve Kurtz is unsurprisingly another one in favour of lots of diversity. You never know what you'll need for a campaign, so it's helpful to have a wide toolkit to choose from.

4th things generic sounds boring and pejorative. Call them versatile adventures instead. Urgh. Can we not do the euphemism treadmill thing here. It wastes time and helps no-one.

5th is another one in favor of more specific setting material. Ah, but which one? That's the real tricky decision.

6th prefers adventures entirely created by their writers to ones set in TSR worlds, but accepts that both kinds are useful to figure out how best to create your own.

7th also thinks the mix of generic and specific adventures is about right. As long as they're packed with interesting details to make them feel solid, precisely what those details are can be varied quite a lot and the adventures will remain usable.

8th takes a break from the debate to thank Steve Kurtz for his recent adventure. It's twists and turns were suitably challenging for his PC's when he ran it.

9th also lists the adventures from the magazine that have seen actual play in their campaign. Some of them took a bit of geographical adaption, but plenty of fun was had. May they produce plenty more, particularly a few more high level ones to choose from.

10th is also a particular fan of Steve Kurtz. His future hiring comes as no surprise if his first submission got that many good responses.

11th has been enjoying both the modules from Dungeon, and the ones published in Dragon before it started, and would like to see a best of. Hindsight says that's not happening, but it's good to have a dream.

12th also wants lots of adventures for specific settings. TSR has been publishing so many of them recently, and if they don't have decent rosters of adventures for each of them they'll go to waste. This is why you don't want to have too many active at once. You can't give proper attention to all of them, and their fanbases will suffer accordingly.

13th wants more Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms adventures in particular. Both have tons of cool places only hinted about in the corebooks to expand upon.

14th is particularly interested in Spelljammer and Ravenloft, as they depart more from regular adventures than the Realms or Greyhawk, where you can use generic adventures and ones for them pretty interchangeably. Since spelljammer in particular only has two intro adventures so far, it could really do with the expansion.

15th and final also finds FR & GH adventures no harder to use than completely generic ones. Don't be put off by branding, look at each one regardless of setting and see if you can make it work for your campaign.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 34: Mar/Apr 1992



part 2/5



Euphoria Horrors: Well, that's an interesting title. What's going on here then? :reads, sighs heavily: Well, I guess it had to happen sometime. Dungeon decides to do a Very Special Episode, where they show us in a fairly heavyhanded fashion that doing drugs is bad, mmkay, and will ruin your life, so don't do drugs. The PC's get approached by a distraught little boy crying that his friend has disappeared. Further questioning will at least reveal that his friend is not human and looks a bit like a big butterfly, but not precisely what his friend is, as the kid lacks the vocabulary to be more precise. When his parents see him talking to adventurers, they'll get aggressively protective (don't talk to strangers, kids!) and drive them away, leaving you with a quest and insufficient information to complete it easily. Fortunately, a bit of sniffing around will reveal suspicious tracks that will lead you to the culprits. Turns out the "friend" is a faerie dragon which has been trapped and caged by Tasloi, who have become addicted to his euphoria breath weapon and now force him to breathe on them, so they spend most of their time off their heads apart from brief, increasingly sloppy forays for more food. So this is a pretty short and easy adventure that's made even easier by the fact that most of the monsters are either high or jonesing most of the time, and so are acting in silly ways and suffering mechanical penalties to their actions. It has the combination of linearity, whimsy, and overt moralising that's more commonly found in Polyhedron adventures than Dungeon ones, which is decidedly unwelcome to see. I'm not completely averse to aesops & allegory in my adventures, but they'd need to be a bit more subtle and sophisticated than this after school special crap for me to consider using them.



Side Treks - Rogue: The short scenario this time is an entirely mundane adventure idea that has happened in reality. An elephant was attacked by hunters, injured but survived, and now he has a quite understandable grudge against the whole of humanity. So he's attacking any humans he finds in the jungle with increasing aggression and has already killed several low level parties. This is obviously a problem for both natives and traders, so a hefty reward is posted. (plus what you'll get from selling his ivory on top.) One of those reminders that in a world where there are plenty of bigger, smarter monsters out there, and humanity is stuck at medievalish population densities & tech levels due to their depredations, no-one has the safety or perspective to develop anything resembling modern standards of conservation except maybe the druids. So while it is theoretically possible to talk the elephant down and resolve this peacefully if you have the right spells, that won't stop the locals from wanting vengeance for all the previous deaths, and you'll have to take him with you if you want him to survive long term. The way it's presented, the vast majority of parties will just kill him and take his stuff. Putting the real world politics aside, this is a pretty decent encounter, using the environment and the mobility of the elephant's trample attacks to keep the players on their toes. It shows you don't need spell-like powers to keep a fight from degenerating into a static slugfest until one side runs out of HP. It also reuses background setting details from issue 15's Elephant's Graveyard, making it easy to use in the same campaign. David Howery is definitely proving to be a writer who has topics in his works most of the other authors here don't and returns to them repeatedly.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 34: Mar/Apr 1992



part 3/5



Isle of the Abbey: After all that eco-political complexity, let's get back to basics, with a self-contained dungeon crawl for starting level regular D&D characters. A small abbey on a small island that was recently beset by pirates and ruined. Should be some treasure left for intrepid adventurers to find, right? Well, you're not wrong, but there's a lot of twists along the way. First is that the clerics were Chaotic, and guarded the only dock & path to the abbey with exceedingly large numbers of undead lurking just beneath the sand. Unless you heed the environmental clues and follow a very specific winding path, you'll have to fight dozens of them for every square you advance, turning this into a meatgrinder involving a lot of retreating and healing up between expeditions. Once you do get to the abbey, it turns out there are some survivors, but not many and they're pretty low level, they've holed up and gone into full paranoia mode as a result of the recent attacks, and while the map looks fairly square and interconnected, there's actually only one safe route through it from start to end - the rest of the corridors are filled with traps. So this is essentially an old school dungeon where you should be paranoid all the time and prod everything with 10' poles, the monsters mostly stay static in their room until disturbed, and aren't high enough level to have created all the challenges the players are facing, only the writer has gone to considerable lengths to make this setup make sense in terms of backstory, and make it clear that it's a temporary situation created by recent events, not a stable system that'll remain there for centuries if you leave it. The dumb enemies are best outthought rather than outfought at the recommended character level, while many of the intelligent ones can be negotiated with if your reaction roll goes well. It's the kind of starter that's best used if you want your PC's to use their brains if they want to survive, and don't mind killing a few of them first session to make the point clear. Since I have absolutely no problem with that, I approve of this.



As in Dragon & Polyhedron, trading cards are currently the cool new thing to promote, so the centre 4 pages are a cardstock set of 17 characters from their various settings to cut out. Whether you're wandering the Valley of the Mage or up in Wildspace, there's someone interesting for you to run into. Many of them have Kits, which is good to see incorporated. The artwork isn't as good as the first year's though, as it's mostly specifically commissioned for the cards rather than recycled from the past decade of book & magazine covers. That may contribute to diminishing returns in the sales long-term.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 34: Mar/Apr 1992



part 4/5



The Lady Rose: Fresh from being praised multiple times in the letters pages, Steven Kurtz has a second adventure to offer us. It's another coastal one, as the PC's are asked for help by a village that has recently been raided by pirates and had a load of it's people kidnapped. The baron is a powerful enough wizard to summon a storm and damage their ship, slowing their retreat, but lacks the manpower to finish them off himself. You need to catch up with them before they can fully repair and get home, at which point fighting them would be much harder and getting all the people back near impossible, as they'll all be sold as slaves to different owners. This is effectively two different combat scenarios, depending whether you catch up with them on land or by sea. Neither of them are easy though, as they have both high level spellcasters that will use their spells to control the terrain and help the grunts, and also higher technology than the average PC, including Giff mercenaries with the stereotypical cannons & blunderbusses. This is reasonably interesting as an individual scenario, but what it really seems to be here for is as a primer to some of his own setting material, a very loosely spanish empire inspired country with a particular fetish for brainwashing and enslaving elves, so the nobles can have well-trained house slaves that stay in the family for generations. Since elves tend to be a bit delicate of constitution and don't breed well in captivity, they need to keep on going out and capturing new ones from increasingly distant places. Well, that's more than a little creepy, and would seriously piss people off if the details were changed to real world ethnicities. So this sees him using themes that he would return too repeatedly in his official books for TSR, that of depraved & decadent empires with advanced magic & technology that will eventually collapse due to their unsustainable & exploitative practices, but not without causing centuries of suffering, and leaving behind lots of ruins that are rich grounds for adventurers to explore & find treasure. He's another writer that definitely has a type, and you can get a lot of good adventures out of building on his ideas. Just remember that these countries are meant to be cautionary tales, not aspirational ones to copy in real life, and work towards transitioning to renewable resources, because dying horribly in the collapse of civilisation when we run out of fossil fuels or something is still pretty unpleasant even when you can have the pyrrhic satisfaction of saying I told you so to all the idiots in your life before you go.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 34: Mar/Apr 1992



part 5/5



On Wings of Darkness: We finish up with what initially seems like a simple monster hunting mission, that turns out to be a lot more complicated. The PC's are hired by a Calimshan noble to protect her neighbour's sheep from mysterious nighttime predators, in an attempt to show up how incompetent his own guards are. This does not go as expected. Turns out the sheep ARE the mysterious monsters, being transformed by a wizard into ravening darkenbeasts. Then it turns out that the wizard is not the mastermind of the operation, but a slave of a crystal hypnosis ball owned by a rich merchant. But then it turns out the merchant is actually not that rich, but heavily leveraged with debt, and is planning to get out of it by killing his moneylender, and the person who hired you in the first place was merely incidental collateral damage in that plan. A convoluted scheme with a lot of moving parts, that could easily go wrong. This also applies to the writing of the adventure, which is a fairly linear one that makes a lot of assumptions about the PC's daily habits and transport capabilities, and falls apart if they sleep during the day & travel at night, can fly or teleport and travel between locations significantly faster than expected, etc. So this falls into the category of adventures that make interesting reading, and would be decent if they were a story, but just doesn't stand up against a complex party including things like psionic wild talents and races from the Complete Book of Humanoids, even if they're still of the right average levels. Not one I have any real inclination to actually run.



A pretty interesting issue to read because it brought up a whole load of both real world and fantastical political issues, giving me more to think about than simple assessments of difficulty of challenge and strength of plot. If your campaign becomes more than going into holes in the ground and killing whatever's there, you will need to think about this stuff, so it's helpful to have lots of different perspectives on what your world could be, and how the PC's affect it as they grow more powerful. On we go again to see what perspectives next issue offers us.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992



part 1/5



32 pages. Clyde Caldwell & his girlfriend cosplay for the cover of a magazine for a third time, at the very least. Not quite as many as Larry Elmore & his favourite model, but catching up. So before even starting I'm getting a definite sense of seen it all before. (apart from the bits the outfit just happens to barely cover, due to that pesky code of conduct) Time to see if this issue'll have anything new and interesting to offer, or it's all just a big tease.



Winter Fantasy is the convention that gets a page of photos showing us the interesting outfits the people wore and quite elaborate minis setups they used in their tournaments this time around. The venue must have been well-heated, because whatever the temperature outside, nearly everyone is in t-shirts. Hope that didn't jack up the bills too much.



Notes From HQ: Following straight on from the photos, they have plenty more to say about Winter Fantasy here. The main adventure was suitably icy, and also typically goofy for them, as it was a musical episode involving a singing walrus. The sound of several dozen tables full of nerds of very mixed musical ability trying to improvise their musical responses to the scenario all at once sounds like a very particular nightmare to a pitch-sensitive ear. It also probably contributed to the spread of con flu, which there was also plenty of. Another reason why most conventions are held in the summer months. As if that wasn't enough "comedy" for you, we have yet more reminders that this is the 10th anniversary of Fluffyquest, and Fluffy wants birthday cards! The funnier and more elaborate the better, with the best getting photographed and appearing in future issues. This particular thread of history continues to be deeply irritating and tiresome to read about. Why do they run so much more comedy material than Dragon or Dungeon, and why do I not find it actually funny? What am I missing here?



Letters: The first letter suggests doing a game review column as well as the movie one. They have no particular objection to that, as they've done it before for several years, but can't be bothered to do it in house. If enough people sent them in, they'll print them.

Second is another person complaining about issues damaged in the post. It does seem to be on an upswing lately, so they're going to experiment with the packaging, see if they can get it down again. Curse these sloppy postmen! What's a company got to do to get some respect around here, huh?

Finally, someone wanting to know about the sword from issue 65. It's a big scimitar, what more do you need? Do you want variant stats for every little variant in size and shape? Actually, it looks like lots of people do. Oh well, that just makes for more articles too. Submit away then!

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992



part 2/5



The Everwinking Eye recovers it's definite article. Must have lost it down the back of the sofa or something. Ed decides to take a break from geographical meanderings to tell us about Elminster's pipe. An innocuous enough seeming thing for an old man to have, particularly when you're playing in a system that has no mechanically codified odds for contracting cancer or what it does to your body if you do. But no, it's actually one of his more versatile magical items, with a whole suite of tricks that both make his life more comfortable, and might save it in a pinch. It can automatically light itself on command, it can provide clouds of smoke to obscure an escape, it can shoot mini-fireballs, it can teleport to his hand on command, it can help him breathe underwater, it can even reflect magic missiles. All with considerably less time and obvious signs than casting a spell yourself, as we're also a long way from metamagic feats becoming a thing, so even Elminster can't do that casually yet. This is another interesting demonstration of Ed's all-round inventiveness, showing how Elminster's jovial eccentricity is a cover for all kinds of paranoid tricks that have kept him alive through the centuries. It's also a reminder of how depictions of smoking were common 30 years ago, but have now been banished from both mainstream media and public spaces in general. If you put a pipe smoking wizard in your story these days, it would be a very deliberate choice that would probably be remarked upon by reviewers and internet commenters. It's the little details like that which make the difference between something written decades ago, and a historical pastiche merely set in the past. All in all, a very thought-provoking article indeed.



Sea of Fire pt 2: Having spent a session showing you the effects of prolonged drought on an ecosystem, part two of the adventure ironically does the exact opposite. Now they've reached the source of the river and found it was diverted through a magic portal, the PC's follow it to the other side and find themselves in the middle of Wa, which is now rapidly flooding, and the Wu Jen who created the portal has no interest in shutting it off again, having long since taken his payment and left. You'll need to get to his tower fairly quickly, as every day that passes, both the people with too much and too little water will be having increasingly rough times. As with the first instalment, this is structured as a linear sequence of encounters, but at least gives you a decent mix of combat ones and puzzles and the freedom to solve them in different ways, and isn't filled with obnoxious comedy to undercut the stakes. The final encounter does a particularly interesting example of this, as the Wu Jen's unethical experiments in pursuit of immortality attracts the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, so if you aren't quick and careful, you can wind up being sucked into the mists with him, which will leave you alive and quite possibly able to still defeat him, but completely unable to complete your original mission, and with much bigger problems long term. That's an interesting twist, particularly when used with players who are sufficiently knowledgable OOC to understand the foreshadowing and realise the danger they're in. While I'd still prefer a good sandbox, this is pretty near the top quality I've seen for linear tournament adventures, and very usable in campaign play as well. If only we were seeing more serious challenges and fewer adventures that are basically just 4 hour comedy routines in here.