TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 76: October 1992



part 5/5



The Living City: We've already had a ghost dragon, a skeleton dragon, and multiple swords of dragon slaying in this issue. Now we have an actual living dragon in Raven's Bluff, making this issue particularly heavy on the game's namesake. Eormennoth is a middle-aged bronze dragon who through an extended series of events involving living in the area even before the city was founded, has wound up the city's treasurer. This causes the rest of the government a considerable amount of stress due to questions of how much of the treasure in the vaults is his personal hoard and how much is public funds, made worse by them not agreeing on a precise salary, so he's been gradually transferring over what he thinks is a fair price for services rendered over the decades without any oversight. To be fair, he is both very effective at stopping any would-be treasury thieves and curbing piracy in the general vicinity of the city, so the city council have no immediate desire to fight him, but they're aware that they could face an awkward budget shortfall any time, particularly if he ever attracts a mate and has kids, and are planning accordingly. A fairly amusing look at what happens when realpolitik meets powerful creatures with considerably longer lifespan than human, this definitely looks like it has lots of adventure possibilities whether you side with the dragon, the human parts of the government, are caught in the middle, or are more rogueish PC's who think they can pull off a big heist on everyone involved. It won't please the letter writers who want Raven's Bluff to be more grounded and largely occupied by 0 level characters, but for people who want the fantastical elements fully integrated into the setting, and not just monsters you go out to slay without thinking about how they'd make human society differ from the real life medieval era, it's pretty pleasing to see.



Wolff & Byrd discover what happens when a PC meets their player. It could definitely have gone a lot worse.



Bloodmoose & Company engage in a little morse code, which unfortunately proves to be time-consuming and not a very effective means of communication with lots of false positives.



With a particularly high quantity of themed material and interesting crunchy stuff, this was a decently above average issue that was pretty easy to get through. Let's head onto the next one and see if they can sustain any momentum, or it was merely the disproportionate number of horror submissions they get that pushed things upwards temporarily.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992



part 1/5



34 pages. Polyhedron once again proves they're operating under considerably laxer editorial standards than the rest of TSR, as they can put some full-frontal underwater nudity on the cover, not even barely covered by a convenient veil or bit of passing seaweed. I wonder how the letters page will respond to that in a few issues time. It is at least in theme, as it looks like we're taking advantage of Raven's Bluff's coastal location again inside. Let's find out how gratuitous the contents of this issue are.



Convention Sights: Some photos from Aloha Con, predictably in hawaii, and the somewhat closer to home Glathricon, Indiana fill out the inside cover. There's some very large game boards, people using tape measures to determine movement, and someone using their computer to run a game as well, which is a lot trickier to fit at the table than it would be now. Can't beat a sturdy laptop if you want to save time setting up and breaking down between tournament slots.



Notes From HQ: Last issue, they were complaining about people not filling in their post-tournament assessment forms properly. This time they're complaining about people not telling them when they move house, then getting really angry months later after they've missed a load of issues. We've seen that plenty of times before, and I'm sure we'll do so again, for human stupidity is ever with us. The rest of it is slightly more interesting, as it talks about their current standards & desires for submissions. More non AD&D stuff please! Short fiction is a Dragon thing, not a Polyhedron thing, do you even, like, read the publication you're submitting too or just spam it everywhere? Raven's Bluff stuff is more likely to be accepted if it's connected to previous entries in some way. Adventures need to be tournament-friendly - ie completable in less than 4 hours, or broken into chunks with obvious convenient breakpoints for multi-round ones, so size them accordingly. Spells, monsters, magic items, convention anecdotes are all good though. Nothing you couldn't have figured out by reading regularly for years, but some people need it spelled out, just like they do with the bureaucracy. Let's hope enough are paying attention to push their submissions in the direction they'd prefer.



Letters: The first letter questions the logistics of sending adventures in and running them without the original writer. This is standard. There are lots of conventions around the world, and the same adventure might be used in several of them (although hopefully their membership system tracks who's already played what, so a particular person can't grind the same adventure by playing it multiple times in different places) Gen Con is just the tip of the iceberg. If you specifically say you're going to a certain convention and want to GM an adventure you wrote, they'll try to accommodate it, but no promises, particularly if you make the request last minute.

Second and third defend Polyhedron against the complaints of the anonymous hordes. The RPGA has improved and grown a great deal over the years, and gives excellent bang for it's buck as entertainment. The comedy elements of the adventures may be silly, but they're fun! The desire to have fun in the moment definitely seems more important to them than any kind of consistent worldbuilding, which isn't surprising when you start with new pregens every module and only gradually introduce any elements of campaign play.

Finally, another set of opinions on handling groups with widely divergent ages. Avoid stereotyping on both sides of the divide, remember you can try a group for a week or two and then drop out without fighting if things aren't working out. Don't segregate the RPGA into age groups, as it means people will have less opportunities to learn from each other, and result in a big culture shock when they do move up a division. Nothing too controversial.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992



part 2/5



The Everwinking Eye: Having shown us enough of how depressing Mulmaster is to live in, Ed shows us that the rest of the Moonsea isn't much better, and fighting amongst themselves is the main thing that keeps them from being more of a danger to the rest of the Realms. The Zhentarim might be the most famous group with imperialist ambitions, but Melvaunt's masters have proven able to match them in both military and espionage skills, leading to an uneasy detente between them. There's plenty of nonhuman dangers as well, with enough monsters that the settlements will remain heavily fortified for the foreseeable future even if the humans got along, and miserable weather into the bargain. If it weren't for the plentiful metal reserves to be mined and sold, they probably wouldn't bother, and would be much less able to defend themselves if they had to import all their armour & weapons anyway. The only real place of safety if you're a good guy is the elven court, protected from marauders by powerful magic, and for that you'll need an inside ally to get through the defences. So there's plenty of challenges to be faced up here, but it's not hopeless, and there's plenty of rewards if you're smart and tough enough to take them. You need both the carrot and the stick to make a setting truly engaging, and Ed provides plenty of both here. As usual, I can definitely see why people would flock to his world over the other ones TSR is trying to sell. The right combination of the familiar and dangerous is a tricky thing to balance, and he seems to be the best at it.



Downunder The Living City: Near the start of the year, we had an adventure where the PC's had to deal with the consequences of a stolen river being diverted through a portal on the ecosystem. Now they reuse the idea, only it's underwater. The water level might only be dropping by an inch a day, which would take years to drain the sea of fallen stars completely, but that's still fast enough for the people in charge of Raven's Bluff to notice and send adventurers to deal with the problem. The adventure itself is not nearly as big despite the potentially even more catastrophic stakes, as it's another linear one of half a dozen scenes that'll fit easily into their 4 hour timeslots, half of which are played for comedy, and some extra railroading to make absolutely certain you don't get to keep the magical portal once you find it, as that's the kind of thing that would enable you to do weird things to short-circuit future tournament railroads. It's all very formulaic indeed, and once again illustrates the conservatism working within a shared setting forces upon their design processes. Another one that would need vast amounts of expansion to truly do justice to the actually pretty epic core premise for a home campaign where you're not so limited. Just think of all the cool stuff you could uncover as the water level slowly sinks, including previously submerged dungeons, and the political wrangling that would take place as it spun out over months or years growing increasingly desperate. Then you have an Endgame-esque situation if you manage to stop the drain, but are still left with considerably less water in the world, and trying to bring it back without causing more massive devastation in the initial deluge of it's return. This is just incredibly underwhelming when I think of what could have been done with the idea.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992



part 3/5



Weather Report for Krynn: Not often that you get Dragonlance material in here. Krynn is somewhat smaller than earth, and it's most inhabited continent is in the southern hemisphere. This means the weather patterns are not quite what you would expect, winds go around the world faster, and extremes of temperature are more common with less mass to buffer things. Not that this is particularly heavy on the hard science (you'd need to have a massively denser core to have the same surface gravity & retain an atmosphere at that size, which would have all kinds of knock-on effects, and we already know Spelljammer intentionally avoids even trying to emulate that kind of technical stuff.) but at least they're trying to have interesting weather effects happen a bit more frequently than earth to make it more challenging for adventurers. The kind of thing mostly interesting due to the novelty, and also in comparing it to Dragon 68's similar article on Greyhawk weather. (which is probably the superior one of the two as it's more detailed) Now if only they'd at least try to give other campaigns worlds the same kind of attention they do to the Realms in here.



They've plugged Winter Fantasy twice already trying to get people involved with their Raven's Bluff elections. Now we get to see the preregistration form in the centre. 7 different AD&D events and 5 for other systems, as usual leaving no doubt about who's in charge. 7 are single round, 5 have two, evidently they're not big enough for any truly epic contests. Dawn Patrol is apparently still alive & kicking even though we haven't got any articles for it published in years. Shadowrun & Star Wars have joined the now familiar Gamma World & Call of Cthulhu as the next most popular also-rans. Boot Hill & Gangbusters are dead again despite recent new editions, and Buck Rogers never even stood a chance. Which games will fight for their place next year? I'll keep my eye out for more of these little snapshots.



The Living Galaxy: After several years of advice on building various types of settings, Roger finally decides to try his hand at a prefab adventure. (while showing all his working, of course) He decides a colony on a Pluto-like planet would be a good place to set an adventure focussing on isolation, claustrophobia and paranoia. Visitors don't come along very often, and when they do, it's a big deal. Everyone's eager for news and whatever amenities you might have they can't make themselves. If you're good you get lots of … er, … opportunities to keep their gene pool from growing stagnant. If you make a bad first impression or something goes wrong, all the tropes involving small towns that are suspicious of outsiders come into play. On top of that, there's secret government shenanigans going on that most of the citizens aren't aware of, which will hopefully be the meat of the plot in the next instalment. This all seems interestingly dark, and not railroaded like their tournament adventures or D&D only like Dungeon's output. But setting building is easier than coming up with a plan that survives contact with the PC's. Let's see if he can stick the landing next time.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992



part 4/5



Into The Dark: Oh god. An entire column devoted to Fu Manchu movies? What a theme to pick. He's certainly appeared in plenty of media over the years, but a lot of it has dated … very poorly indeed. This definitely seems like it has the potential for large amounts of cringe. Going into this one with high levels of trepidation.

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu is the first, and as usual for a franchise, one of the better instalments. It still looks pretty clunky by modern standards though, as it was made right on the cusp of talking becoming a thing in movies, and they hadn't really got the hang of recording & delivering dialog yet. At least fully silent films have a style all their own, so they ironically seem less dated when viewed now.

The Mask of Fu Manchu sees Boris Karloff do his best with the material he's given as usual, but since that writing leans full tilt into the most racist parts of the source material, that might not be a good thing. The tonal shifts where they replaced directors midway through and did reshoots to lighten things up are also fairly obvious. Definitely having Josstice League flashbacks reading about this.

The Face of Fu Manchu is the first film from the 60's revival series starring Christopher Lee. It's less racist than the 30's ones, but looking at the whiteness of the cast that's still not saying much. It does at least make Fu competent as an antagonist right up to the climax, where it all falls apart and feels like they ran out of money. Still doesn't manage to make it seem like something I'd actually enjoy watching.

The Blood of Fu Manchu is the 4th Christopher Lee one, and diminishing returns & continuity errors not only with the previous films, but within this one are really creeping in. The director is an exploitation B-movie one, so the amount of gratuitous gore and nudity is way up as well. If you really want to watch it, you can go in knowing it's not for the story.

The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu is an utterly dire parody starring Peter Sellers and produced by Hugh Hefner, of all people. A surprisingly classy cast is convinced to appear in it, and then wasted on poorly written crude humour. It managed to kill his cinematic career all the way up to 2007, when Nick Cage stepped into the moustache in the similarly tongue-in-cheek but somewhat better Grindhouse. Did anyone really miss him?



The Living City: The Raven's Bluff material once again concentrates on high magic stuff that might be handy for adventurers. A beauty shop run by a powerful illusionist might repel macho idiots, but smarter PC's will see the value in magically disguising themselves for all kinds of larcenous purposes, and she's no slouch with mundane makeup techniques either. If you've got the GP, you can easily change your hair, facial features, even apparent race, (but not sex, because that's ridiculously hard (and even harder to turn back) in AD&D for depressing transphobic reasons) making it much easier to adopt new identities, infiltrate places and get away with it afterwards. As usual, she's got a teenage daughter who's learned the basics of the trade, but chafes at the everyday routine of the job and will take very little persuading to join up with your adventuring party and earn some XP. If your campaign is less about the dungeon delving and more about the social engineering shenanigans, you could definitely get a fair amount of use out of this one. So as is often the case, the attitudes are a little dated, but it's still got plenty of useful detail to draw upon and maybe tweak for your own campaign. I can deal with that.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992



part 5/5



Enigma: This month's competition is another stat the picture one. A woman with one half of her face attractive, the other rotting, dressed in egyptian-looking garb. I'm guessing we'll see a lot of greater mummies, with a few liches and vampires into the bargain, maybe one that's still living but cursed. Can someone come up with both good stats and backstory? See you in 6 months or so.



Cutting Remarks: As they do fairly often around this time of year, they have a crossword puzzle for us. Another chunky heavily interlinked one, full of nerdy references. Some are easy, but others are dated or obtuse enough that google is no help. Definitely going to have to wait until next issue to see the whole picture here.



The Bard's Corner: It's been a while since we had a comedy routine in here. A pair of gamers are talking about their exploits in a restaurant. The other people present think they're talking about a real event and call the police. The police hear them talking about their collection of in-game assault weapons and call a SWAT team. This of course turns out to be a big waste of time. The kind of thing that loses it's funniness when you're aware that if they'd been darker-skinned, the cops would have shot first and asked questions not at all, ands also that this kind of militarised policing is mostly a USA exclusive thing that wouldn't have happened elsewhere. Knowing that, this becomes much darker gallows humour. But of course, the RPGA is so white it virtually glows, and it'll be a long time before the internet lets more diverse voices spread their life experiences to wide audiences, so they can carry on obliviously making casual jokes like this for a good decade longer.



Bloodmoose & Company find they have some ridiculously overinflated debts from their recent criminal activities to pay off.



One of those issues that falls on the interestingly bad end of the spectrum overall, showing how their smaller number of contributors & readers leads to laxer editorial standards. Will that ever change, or will it continue to be a hallmark of the newszine right up to the point they merge it with Dungeon, or even beyond if the departments stay separate even when they share a spine? Another of those questions it'll take a long time to answer, and even longer if I don't keep my foot on the gas pedal. Let's see if next issue will go smoothly enough to accelerate through.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 38: Nov/Dec 1992



part 1/5



66 pages. The cover once again spoils the big twist of at least one of the adventures inside. Pod people! How very 50's of them. Better watch out, or part of the party'll be replaced and then paranoia will really set in. Just how easy to spot and powerful will the replacements be, and how elaborate are their plans? Let's crank up the tremolo and blast some surf licks and see if it helps me get through this one any quicker.



Editorial: Polyhedron regularly spends 6+ months between talking about a competition and publishing the results, and more than a few have simply died a quiet death due to lack of submissions. By contrast, Dungeon gave us a survey last issue, and already has enough results in to be confident in the overall opinions of their readership. Unfortunately, it turns out the average reader is more conservative than the TSR writers, and a surprisingly large proportion want nothing to do with terrains where they might encounter darker-skinned humans. Adventures involving real world diversity will continue to be thin on the ground for the foreseeable future. Psionics will also continue to be a niche topic for the rest of the edition. The average age also skews somewhat higher than Dragon, with a mean in the 20's rather than the teens. A somewhat dispiriting start that reminds us that the TSR staff tried a lot of things their audience responded too with a resounding meh, forcing them to go back to the generic D&D well over and over when they'd rather be working in different settings and under different systems. Making a living out of creativity when most of the audience only wants to hear the greatest hits over and over never stops being a struggle.



Letters: First letter reinforces the cynicism from the editorial, saying they only publish adventures that tie-in to new products as a means of making more money through cross-promotion. Hardly. If it were purely about money, they'd all move to the mainstream book or computer game industry, where they could earn several times as much with their skillsets. They do actually want you to like the things they come up with and expand on them with more adventures, not just publish one or two bits of in-house support and then have them fall by the wayside.

Second thanks them for offering constructive criticism even when they reject submissions. It means people are much more likely to try again. They don't want the magazine to devolve into a nepotistic circle of the same few people getting published over and over. (although things will naturally trend that way long-term even if you actively fight it.) That would not be good for their output on a creative level.

Finally, feedback from a group that played through Asflag's Unintentional Emporium and suffered a TPK. Despite technically failing, it was still great fun to play. It's not really about the winning or losing, it's the journey that really counts. Don't feel you have to make adventures too nice, just make sure the challenges are interesting, not just waves of undead or deathtraps with no clues on how to avoid them.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 38: Nov/Dec 1992



part 2/5



A Blight on the Land: Crop failure in Tethyr? Monster invasions and revolting peasants as people compete for what food there is left? This sounds like a job for the Company of Eight! Unfortunately, it's too big a job for them to tackle alone, so they deputise a mission to your group. Clear the route to Ithmong so they can get emergency aid there. Seems simple enough, right? Of course not. A certain evil organisation who's name shall go unspoiled but is easy enough to guess has been using summoning & mind control to add to the chaos and further their long-term political schemes. They won't take kindly to interference. Your wilderness wanderings will lead you to clues, and then right in the middle of the region of greatest monster density is a suspiciously untouched mansion filled with wizards & baatezu. Beating them will reveal correspondence that connects them to a well-regarded local politician who is likely to wind up king if not exposed. Presumably you'll want to do that and save the day for good. That presumably is doing a lot of work here. There's a lot of boxed text in this one that presumes the PC's reactions to events, rather than letting them roleplay it out themselves, and not following it will mess up the adventure pretty easily. So this falls into the irritatingly linear category, designed to tell a specific story with potential long-term metaplot implications, and taking the wrong route means you have to make up everything afterwards yourself. Not a particularly satisfying way to start things off. I have to deal with enough of that in Polyhedron.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 38: Nov/Dec 1992



part 3/5



Things that go Bump in the Night: Contrary to what you might assume from the title, this is not a horror one, and also involves a fair bit of politics. But unlike the previous adventure, it's one with no definite right solution that gives the PC's free reign to solve it in multiple example ways, plus plenty of other not so optimal ones. An elven forest vanquished an assault of hobgoblins many centuries ago, but now the abandoned fort they used has started making weird noises in the night. Being superstitious and not wanting to lose their long lifespans to energy draining undead, they reluctantly hire adventurers to deal with it, once again doing the thing where they blindfold people coming in so they can't give away the precise location of their forest home. Turns out that while there are a few undead in there, they're not the main challenge, which is the complexities of the interactions between the various fae creatures of the forest; firbolgs, spriggan, treants, a non-evil drow (with a unicorn mount, so any adventurers who are paying attention should realise something is up), plus some lost adventurers and the less intelligent forest animals to spice things up. Trying to hack and slash your way through everything will have you outmatched and worn down pretty quickly, so your best course of action is to talk to people, try and get the more whimsical fae creatures to stop pranking you long enough to listen, find out what everyone wants and reach a compromise solution that'll only mildly annoy everyone. (or please almost everyone, and then go kill those remaining pains in the ass. ) There's plenty of depth here to work with, and they list the playtesters at the end as well, which is definitely a promising sign that it'll hold up for a good few sessions whichever decisions the PC's make. As long as they can deal with a moderate level of whimsy and don't try to kill everything, this one could turn out pretty well.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 38: Nov/Dec 1992



part 4/5



Pandora's Apprentice: The short adventure is a little too long to fit in the side treks category, but still well less than a session. A young wizard's apprentice put on a ring of contrariness from her master's collection while she was alone, and is now acting like a megalomaniacal naughty word, stealing any magical items she can get her hands on. The PC's fall prey to her cute little girl act, then while pursuing her run across one of her friends who informs them that this is thoroughly out of character behaviour for her, discouraging them from going full murderhobo. (If they hadn't already realised that summarily killing a little girl in an urban scenario is the kind of thing that'd get the full weight of the law thrown at them.) Once they follow her back to the tower she'll use phase doors, a wand of wonder, and various nonmagical traps to give PC's the slip, steal more stuff, and make over the top wannabe archvillain speeches. Basically, it's Home Alone as a D&D scenario. Whimsical and low in lethality, but could be very annoying indeed when used on the wrong party, or over very quickly if they're smarter than Harry & Marv and roll well. Not really to my tastes, but at least it's not linear like it's Polyhedron counterparts. Hopefully it fits in at least someone's sweet spot of lighthearted gaming scenarios.