(un)reason
Legend
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.
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.