TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992



part 3/5



The Living City 1: Another month, another business run by an ex-adventurer with a dark past that might come back to haunt them. Kavan Brenzan is a low level Illusionist who uses his spells to liven up the signs of many of the other businesses around here. Because the sea air is rough on wood and paintwork, he has plenty of repeat customers who need things touched up every few years. He's quiet and keeps odd hours, but as long as he does the job well no-one really minds. The twist is one more commonly found in superhero stories than fantasy ones, as he was captured by the Zhentarim and experimented upon, giving him regeneration by splicing him with troll blood. He was rescued by a mysterious heroic Drow (now who could that be? ) and is quite understandably somewhat traumatised and paranoid they're going to catch up with him some day. Not everyone who gains superpowers from secret government experiments is of the right mindset to dress in a spandex costume and fight crime with them, plus a singular power like that is less of an edge in a world full of weirdness and monsters like Toril. This is another pretty decent entry with a very obvious adventure hook embedded, as you don't even need to have a sign painted yourself to be in the vicinity when the Zhents catch up with him, giving you an easy opportunity to be a hero and get entangled in further conflicts involving them. The easier you make it, the more likely DM's are to use it in their home campaign, and this is particularly strong on that front.



Pod Mutation Increases: Hmm. another of those rare instances where Polyhedron covers something Dragon never did. In 1987 TSR released Gammamarauders, a wargame system that tied into Gamma World 3e. It got one supplement and a tie-in comic book series, but wargaming was well in decline in general by then so apparently it never got that much of a fanbase. But one person cares enough to submit a trio of new scenarios for the game (which are also fairly easy to expand into RPG ones as well.) As usual for Gamma World, the premises are wacky, but the stakes are very real indeed, as you're playing with much higher-powered creatures than you usually see on the RPG side. It reminds me of the differences between Warhammer Fantasy as a wargame & an RPG, where you casually get to pull out monsters & powers that are depicted as rare & terrifying in setting, requiring years of XP if you ever get to use them as a PC at all. It's pretty interesting, and shows that this obscure game was at least more loved by the readers than Buck Rogers or Indiana Jones, which still have a big fat total of 0 reader submitted articles. Whether that difference is enough to get a game going online in the present day is another matter, but hey, it's worth a shot.



With Great Power: Having just seen an intrusion of superheroics into Toril, the superhero column does the opposite, and asks what people with superpowers would do in a more realistic world where they don't naturally form into clean lines of heroes and villains and fight each other for the fate of humanity. There's a lot of jobs they could earn more than enough money at legitimately using their powers, with much less stress than being constantly in and out of superjail or worrying about holding down a normal job and preserving their secret identity while moonlighting as a costumed crimefighter. As with the recent one on grim & gritty heroes, this shows them tiring of the superhero comic formula while still being interested in the idea of people with superpowers and getting increasingly deconstructive. That's also going to get increasingly common in the next few years, with games like White Wolf's Aberrant exploring the ramifications of superpowered beings forming societies and having real long term impacts on the setting & technological development of the world that aren't reset at the end of the story. More signs of wider historical progress here that would be a whole other interesting field of study in themselves. Just watch out for the multiple collectible hologram covers, those things can be real budget drainers.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992



part 4/5



The Living Galaxy: Roger gives us another article that is basically just a series of references. He looks at pretty much all the sci-fi RPG's on the market at the moment, and tells us his favourite parts from them. Each offers different ideas on how to build characters, and what kinds of personalities they might have, and some have more sophisticated stuff as well, such as Twilight 2000's extensive set of building plans or Traveller's guide to Startowns and how living in a port affects the economy & lifestyle. If you take all the best bits and put them together they become stronger than any one individually. Another reminder that the universe is a mind-bogglingly massive place, and if you want to represent it accurately, you need to do a lot of research, get perspectives from all kinds of viewpoints. He can point you in the right direction, but ultimately, you have to put the work in yourself if you're not running prefab adventures. (and even then, knowing more about a setting is handy if they stray from the expected route & plot choices.) Not straying that far from formula then, leaving this pretty middle of the road in terms of usefulness.



The Living City 2: The second Raven's bluff article this issue is also filled with opportunities for adventure. 5 years doing this, you'd think they'd have thought about what kind of emergency services they have here sooner. The fire services turn out to be one of those areas where they use magic to simulate earthly technology, with a decanter of endless water to keep the pressure up on their water supplies. They're called the Red Ravens, which isn't just a figure of speech, as they have a wereraven member who's trained a whole flock of regular ravens to act as their lookouts and early response team, spotting fires and making it obvious from far away where they are so their wagons can get there quickly and actually save some of the property instead of just mopping up and preventing it from spreading throughout the whole city. Their fire-resistant work clothes also look somewhat like ravens, with large beaked helmets filled with stuff to filter out smoke. (the fact that it looks similar to real world plague doctor masks is an added bonus, and not a co-incidence at all) Because firefighting is not a full-time occupation, and also because the Forgotten Realms has it's share of dickishly evil people who will start fires and then attack anyone trying to put them out, this outfit also serves to conceal their identities so it's harder to attack them when they're off duty in retaliation. So this is an interesting mix of stuff that approximates modern technology, and fantastical elements that show an alternate path to accomplishing the same goals in a world full of adventurers and monsters that make those adventurers a necessity. It also has more than a little superhero genre influence, and would be very easy for heroic PC's to join to give them new adventure opportunities and the gear to have a decent shot at accomplishing them. If this were 3e, they'd almost definitely have their own prestige class. Definitely feels like you could get a lot of use out of this one as a campaign framework if you wanted too, so this gets my approval.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992



part 5/5



Into the Dark: James chooses another exceedingly specific topic this time that I'm surprised has enough to fill a column. Movies about Sinbad?! I guess he is a reasonably popular literary figure, and like King Arthur or Robin Hood, he is public domain, so anyone can make movies about him without worrying about licensing. But like Westerns, the number of movies about him has dropped in recent decades, as you can no longer cast any random white guy as a middle-eastern character without complaints. Looking at the cast lists of these 5, they are indeed not only all starring white guys, but all different ones even when they're by the same company and intended to be an actual sequel, which tells you exactly how much Hollywood cared about both cultural accuracy and internal continuity back then, with no army of internet nerds making wikis for every successful franchise and mercilessly picking over any inconsistencies. So yeah, this is all stuff that hasn't aged well, and the fact they're using it to cross-promote Al Qadim reminds us that setting was also more based on western pop-cultural depictions of Arabia than primary sources, and also probably hasn't aged well 30 years later. This is probably going to involve large quantities of cringe.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is the oldest of these, but also curiously one of the best, as it was the one that started the trend in the first place. Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion special effects were groundbreaking at the time, and still hold up better than many later films using the same techniques. The human element isn't quite as great, and there's some cheaply recycled stock footage to cut corners, but at least it's still watchable today.

Captain Sinbad has a more convincingly dashing swashbuckling lead than the previous film, but pretty much everything else is worse. It's still watchable in a B-movie way, but nothing worth tracking down if you're already on the fence about the whole premise.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is the other one that James thinks is actually good. Future Dr Who Tom Baker makes for a suitably melodramatic villain, the script is on point, and the rest of the cast do their jobs pretty well too. If you watch just one of these, it should probably be this one.

Sinbad & the Eye of the Tiger :guitar riff intensifies: fails to live up to it's awesome name, with distinctly wooden acting, and effects that are worse than 20 years ago despite being done by the same people. Stop motion takes time and precision, so a rushed shooting schedule is just the worst idea with it.

Sinbad of the 7 Seas is by far both the most recent of these and the worst. Lou Ferrigno as Sinbad is a miscasting for the ages and the rest of the production values are on the same level. Only remotely tolerable with a little help from the MST3K puppets.



GEnie And The Network: The RPGA continues to be rather more online savvy than the rest of TSR. They've had a message board for several years, and now they've made it possible for you to sign up and renew subscriptions entirely online. No more postage fees just to communicate at all or not getting your first issue until several months after you sent off the application. I suspect it'll probably still be several years before online applications overtake physical ones and email communications about submissions put the no SASE ogre out of a job, but it's good to see them thinking ahead. The price per hour to use their network & message boards has dropped again, and is actually free to regional directors and club heads, so they can set up regular meetings where they debate RPGA policy with members across the globe in real time. All stuff that would be routine now (although setting a good meeting time with members from lots of timezones never ceases to be a pain) and another reminder of how much our everyday lives have changed in a few decades. One of those bits of progress I can be unreservedly positive about.




Bloodmoose & Company can't resist making Doctor Who jokes, even at the expense of continuity. Well, they just got a time machine, so it comes with the territory. Just don't paradox yourself out of existence and things'll all work out in the end.



A second issue that's well above average for both usability and historical progress in a row, which is quite nice to see. Every little change brings us closer to the present, and this time, the changes are the ones that I'd like to see. Of course there are also plenty of ways things have got worse since then. Let's see if next issue has anything to do with those.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 71: May 1992



part 1/5



34 pages. Another demonstration of caster supremacy over fighters. Once you get a few levels under your belt, you can buff all your physical stats and effortlessly outlift & outrun the people who spent years training the hard way, and also be able to control minds, change shapes, fly & all that jazz they can't even begin to replicate. A common complaint in most editions of D&D, particularly as the number of supplements builds up. Let's see if what's inside further increases that disparity.



The consistent cavalcade of contests continues. This month's is for game designers. It's very specific. Design an adventure with precisely 6 encounters, 5 of which must fit specific categories & final one a wild card. This pretty much forces the adventures to be short and linear, which is the way they seem to like them, and I'm really not very fond of. I know you have to fit them into 4 hour slots, but even that format doesn't necessitate this degree of formulaicness. This seems likely to encourage people to submit more linear and predictable adventures that fall apart if the players exercise too much creativity in the future, which is a bad sign.



Notes From HQ: Another year, another editorial talking about the good the RPGA does on top of their gaming. Once again they're running charity benefit tournaments to raise money for for guide dogs. You can choose between a Spelljammer one, or, very fittingly, a Fluffyquest one. This suggests that both of these adventure incline even more towards the comedic than usual for the RPGA, and are primarily a way to blow off steam and feel like you're supporting a good cause than any serious tactical challenge for your characters. If they ever get reprinted here I doubt I'll be giving them very high ratings. Oh well, I can't do anything about it, and thinking about it more will just irritate, so let's move on and deal with that if it happens.



Letters: The first two letters both complain that GM's don't get prizes for being highly rated by their players in the same way as the other way around. They do more work than the players, so surely they should get some reward. They tried it recently, but found it actually created perverse incentives that reduced the total number of games they could run, as GM's only wanted the groups that are likely to get them the best scores, and would simply drop out of the less prestigious single-round games or go easy on the players in hopes of getting better votes instead of running the enemies smartly. They're forced to conclude it's a bad idea.

The final one tackles a similarly divisive topic. The RPGA as a whole has no problem with kids joining, but many individual clubs do. Be it an issue of playstyles when a group has people of vastly different ages, or wanting to avoid even the appearance of recruiting for the purposes of pederasty, there are good reasons why you might enforce an age limit, but at the same time, if you reject them from gaming altogether, you hurt the long-term health of the hobby. Maybe they should create a separate young gamer's tournament division? This definitely feels like it needs a few more opinions before they make a firm decision.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 71: May 1992



part 2/5



Highlander: In issue 62 they put a dashing bekilted adventurer on the cover and asked the readers to come up with stats & adventure ideas involving him. Now they tell us the winners, and publish the top two here. The first one has him cast as a robin hood-esque space pirate in Spelljammer. He only robs from the rich and gives to the poor, (although if the PC's can afford their own ship, that definitely puts them in the rich category) and is quick to help if any genuine villains cause trouble while he's around. He could easily wind up as ally or enemy, depending on how forgiving the PC's are feeling after the first encounter. A nice reminder that it's quite possible for Good parties to come into conflict in D&D, particularly once you get to higher levels and the question of what action would be the greater good arises.

Second place is somewhat more unusual. In this one, he's a centuries old scottish mutant with the power to temporarily warp the environment around him and everything in it into a facsimile of the scottish highlands. This has a lot of range and flexibility, making him a threat on a similar level to Wandavision, only everything turns into it's scottish equivalent instead of a sitcom. (which will still probably put a serious crimp in any tech based PC's style in particular) Once again, he's technically a good guy, but in the great Marvel tradition is terrible at explaining his motives (not helped by the thick accent of course) and so the PC's will probably wind up fighting him before realising he's not the true enemy and teaming up to take down the big bad. This all seems like it has a lot of potential for hamming up the roleplaying aspect and coming up with inventive power stunts. If I was doing the judging, this would be first place and the other one bumped down a notch.



Fluffynoia: They've been threatening it since the start of the year. Now it's time for the first of our 10th anniversary fluffyquest presents. The small white adorable dog mysteriously turns up in Alpha Complex, which causes quite the kerfuffle, because they thought most animals were extinct. A search of the computer's archives reveals that this is one of the few things that is not actually a traitorous commie mutant, but a loyal friend to mankind. Before you know it everyone is trying to get their hands on Fluff-Y, so their secret society can be the one that clones it and has all the best friends. The PC's get called to troubleshoot the situation and restore proper order, making absolutely certain the dog survives, and all commie mutant traitors involved get what they deserve. They pick up a fairly typical set of experimental dog-catching items and weapons of dubious reliability, picking up treason points along the way if they don't use exactly the right procedures, and set off. This leads them on a wild chase through several locations filled with typically zany options for roleplaying or fighting, which culminates in a giant food fight between all the factions trying to dognap Fluff-Y in an infrared cafeteria where the pies are heavily laced with drugs. Hopefully the PC's will be the last ones standing, but if not, higher clearance troubleshooters will show up and ensure there's something resembling a happy ending, for the dog at least. It's both zany and short, and seems unlikely to last a full 4 hour tournament slot unless the PC's spend more time betraying each other than following the plot. (gee, what are the odds?) It's less grating and railroaded than it's D&D siblings, probably because it's not written by original creator Rick Reid, but still only tolerable if you go into it knowing it's going to be all terrible puns and real world references and calibrate your own playing accordingly. I'd give it a miss if it was the only gaming on offer.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 71: May 1992



part 3/5



Fluffy Trivia: Following straight on, we see that Rick Reid is still personally involved with his creation, not just a licensor, with a quiz on the things that happened in all the previous adventures over the years. Who were the villains, what magical items have you got to wield, what monsters did you fight, what gods do the clerics worship, etc. Send in your answers and you could win a chance to play with Rick in Fluffy's next adventure at Gen Con! Just looking at the possible answers makes me roll my eyes. I know the answers to none of these questions, and I'm quite happy for that state of affairs to continue. I doubt the fate of the world will ever hinge on my knowledge of comedy RPG module trivia and I shudder to imagine the kind of truly despicable villain who would engineer that situation. Unless we are thrown into that crisis I shall continue to fill my mind with other areas of knowledge instead.



The Everwinking Eye: Instead of geographical meanderings, Ed casts his mind back in time, to that brief period when gods roamed the earth, and it was possible, if tricky to kill them permanently. Lots of things happened during the time of troubles, many already detailed in the books, but there's always someone you forget or had to cut for the sake of the page count. So here's stats and goals for the avatars of Beshaba, Tymora & Iyachtu Xvim, in case your players want to fight them for whatever reason. (or don't get given the choice) They're all on the weaker end of the godly spectrum, but still not something you've got a chance against unless you've got a decent sized party of double digit level characters. The kinds of thing that's interesting to completionists, but probably not going to be useful in many actual games, particularly with the increased hostility towards ideas of direct encounters with the gods in the 2e products. This mainly serves as another demonstration of Ed's attention to detail and tendency to create things just for the love of it, even if there isn't any particular story involved … yet. You never know, you might get something out of it in the long run. Just make sure you keep your indexing up to date so it doesn't stall play looking these guys up if it suddenly becomes relevant.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 71: May 1992



part 4/5



The Living Galaxy: After several rather ambitious game ideas, Roger decides to scale things down and remind us that it's quite possible to run an entire campaign on a single planet. In fact, in any other genre, that would be the norm, and might be further restricted to a single country or even city. It could be a cyberpunk game rather than straight sci-fi, you could be pioneers going years at a time between new arrivals from the motherworld, you could be marooned and trying to survive until you can make repairs or someone answers your distress call, or you could be trying to hunt down the X golden macguffins that will give you ULTIMATE POWER!!! (which are conveniently all on one planet) As usual, he has plenty of examples of each from literature & movies to draw upon, so you'll never be short of options if you follow them up. There can be considerably more discreet locations to explore and creatures to interact with on a small moon than billions of miles of interstellar space. Basically, it isn't size that matters, it's what you do with it. As usual for this column, this is competent, but not particularly groundbreaking. You'll probably need to heed it at some point because no system supports things getting more epic indefinitely. (although some last many orders of magnitude longer than others) Let the playing field be small for a while, and it'll have more impact when big things happen again.



Into the Dark: No theme this month. Instead, James is reviewing a motley collection of films recommended to him by the other TSR staff. Hopefully this means the quality will be slightly higher than average, although these things remain pretty subjective, so just because they liked it (or at least found it bad in an interesting way) doesn't mean he will.

Legend sees Ridley Scott try his hand at fantasy, having recently been responsible for sci-fi classics Alien & Blade Runner. The result is not quite so successful or well remembered decades later. Tim Curry is perfectly cast as the Dark Lord, and the lighting, makeup & camera work is excellent, but the plot is just the same old "save the unicorns!" tripe filled with comic relief fairy characters, so many comic relief fairy characters, including an inexplicably horny ancestor of Navi. :shudders: He needs to pick his scriptwriters better.

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires sees Hammer studios try to mix their horror bread & butter with martial arts noodles, or some similarly tortured metaphor. This is precisely as uneven as it sounds, with lots of cool elements that don't blend together very well. It did nothing to prevent their eventual demise.

Gor the movie lives down to it's source material quite effectively, with a "hero" who ignores most of the injustices and sexism of the world he winds up in, and is basically replacing one naughty word leader with another. Most of the people involved seem to know exactly what level of turkey they're dealing with, and the acting suffers accordingly. Not the kind of property I feel like supporting, even ironically.

Outlaw of Gor is the even worse sequel, rushed out straight after the first one. You wouldn't think they'd suffer from diminishing returns when the bar was already that low, but I guess you can always scrape the bottom of the barrel a little more. I pity the executive who greenlighted this thinking they were getting the next Conan.

A Chinese Ghost Story reminds us that asia produces plenty of home-grown horror that mixes stuff from their mythology with scares & gore more effectively than western bandwagon-jumpers. Just watch out for the subs vs dubs purists because those wars can be as terrifying as what's actually being portrayed on the screen. Fortunately, this one manages to be quite clear about what's going on without either.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 71: May 1992



part 5/5



Role Reversal: We finish up with a fairly large and complex crossword puzzle with much fewer black spaces than most newspaper ones, so any mistakes will become obvious fairly quickly. Another thing to fill a few hours pondering over, that'll prove pretty insoluble if your nerd references aren't fairly broad. Interesting to see, but doesn't give me much to comment upon.



Bloodmoose & Company remind us how bad invasive species can be for a planet's ecosystem.



An issue that was very heavy indeed on the comedic side of their tournament gaming, not only showcasing it, but actively encouraging other people to write adventures in a style I find grating and unchallenging. It once again makes me marvel at how the different TSR periodicals have wound up with such different tastes in adventures. Oh well, I guess gaming is a broad church, and more variety means someone somewhere is getting something out of it. Time to hop over to the side that is definitely proving more useful to me as time goes on again.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon issue 35: May/Jun 1992



part 1/5



76 pages. Looks like we're in a gothic mood again, with a very painterly cover of a young wizard, his eye of agamoto, and a ghost. What challenges will they have for us to get our acting and dice-rolling muscles into this time, and how much choice will they offer the players to influence the final outcome of the story? Time for another selection of short adventures to get stuck into, and decide if I'd ever like to play.



Editorial: This is another round of the specific settings vs generic. Safe to say there's still plenty of strong opinions coming in on both sides of the fence so the overall policy of one per issue hasn't changed. What they are doing is elaborating on the specifics. Oriental adventures are out, arabian adventures are in, as they've only get the energy to care about one group of token non-white characters at a time. Way to say the quiet part loud guys. Meanwhile, despite having the same absence of submissions for basic D&D, they're still trying to make that happen, so they'll give preferential treatment to any you do send in, hint hint. They do have a few Spelljammer, Ravenloft & Dragonlance adventures in the pipeline, but wouldn't be averse to more. Forgotten Realms continues to be plentiful to the point where it counts as generic. No great surprises then, apart from definitively cancelling OA instead of just letting it trickle to a halt for lack of submissions. They never said that in Dragon, and checking my reviews did publish a couple of OA articles next year. First sign of creative differences between Roger & Barbara. That is interesting to note.



Letters: First two letters are aggressively negative on the idea of adventures involving specific settings or non-D&D systems. They also contain factual errors, which Barbara delights in pointing out to them. You going to try make the magazine more boring, you'd best come correct.

Third praises putting posters in the magazine. They put it up on their wall, so keep it up.

4th reminds them that too many specific settings is bad for sales. They know. Doesn't mean they don't have to juggle their own boredom with the need to make money.

5th is Randy Maxwell, pointing out another cartographic error in one of his adventures that somehow made it to print. It won't break the adventure, but it does ruin the point of the room a bit.

6th praises their recent covers and the scrapbook, and wonders why they run so many adverts for the American Heart Association. Are gamers that much more of a risk than the general population? Probably not yet, but give it a few decades. Maybe cut down on the mountain dew a little bit and mix up the tabletop & LARP stuff some more.

7th has lots of questions. They all get mostly sensible answers. They're doing their best to please.

8th is Steve Kurtz, also complaining that the cartographer made mistakes on the Lady Rose. Diesel had better watch out or they'll dock his pay.

9th also praises their recent poster and wants more, and asks if they're doing anything viking related. Why sure. That doesn't involve any brown people, so it falls into the generic category for purposes of accepting submissions.

10th praises isle of the Abbey. Another satisfied customer.

11th reminds us day lengths vary with season, affecting travel times. Greyhawk is a geocentric solar system, so it might not work quite the same way there, but the general reminder is solid. All depends if you're playing a gritty enough game to trouble with all those little modifiers.

12th reminds us that a picture is worth a thousand words, and several early modules like Tomb of Horrors & Shrine of Tamochan featured full galleries of them. Maybe they should go back to the old school and do that for some in here. It would cost a little more, but they don't flat out say no to the idea.

13th likes the trading cards. Why thank you. More coming next year! :teeth ting:

14th complains about the lack of basic D&D material. They know. They've got none in their slush pile at the moment and they've been complaining about this problem for years. Doesn't matter if the demand is there, if the supply isn't there's nothing they can do. You write some if you care so much.

Finally, a complaint about inconsistencies between FR9 and the core Forgotten Realms map. It wasn't written by Ed, so it's subordinate to any material that was. Curse these incompetent lesser sages! Don't know why we keep them around.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon issue 35: May/Jun 1992



part 2/5



Twilight's Last Gleaming: James Jacobs continues to appear more frequently in here than he will for a long time in Dragon. it starts with a premise we've seen a couple of times before in here, that of a gloomy pass through rough mountains that is also an important trade route, making it easy pickings for any monsters who can control the high grounds and ambush travellers. The PC's get asked to clear it out. This does not turn out like the previous times, however, but leads into a far more epic plot in which a Rakshasa imprisoned in the demiplane of shadow seeks his freedom. Through a convoluted series of events, the artifact binding him's power was weakened, but not broken, so his spirit could leave and possess people, but despite being considerably less vulnerable in this state he'd still prefer his original body back. You get manipulated into going there and freeing him. Presuming you follow the exposition without getting suspicious of course, as there are some clues that this isn't entirely legit if you keep your eyes open. But even if you do, that won't ruin the challenge, merely shift the grounds you fight it on, and maybe skip some of the middle encounters. A pretty interesting adventure, with my main complaint being that it's too small, and feels like it was originally a much larger story that was heavily hacked down in editing. With a well-fleshed out antagonist like this, which has the potential to be the big bad for a whole campaign, it's a shame to throw them away after a session or two of adventure. It makes me itch for the future issues where they will embrace the idea of multi-part adventure paths where you can foreshadow the big bad long in advance, instead of having to tweak a bunch of small adventures to make them seem like a bigger whole post-hoc. Better press on if I want to get to the years he's staff instead of just a freelancer in a decent amount of time then.