TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 38: Nov/Dec 1992



part 5/5



Horror's Harvest: Straight from one adventure that's a direct rip-off of a specific movie to another. The cover story is indeed Invasion of the Body Snatchers transferred to Ravenloft, although whether the doppleganger plants are real aliens from another D&D world captured by the dark powers for crimes of their own or just monsters created wholecloth for the lols remains a mystery. Either way, the small Falkovnian village of Delmunster is suffering from a new person each night undergoing a radical personality shift, and then equally radical weight loss over the next couple of weeks as the plant sucks their lifeforce away, all the while trying to pretend everything is fine, or at least throw people off the scent about the precise cause of the problem. Any passing adventurers who's disappearance wouldn't be missed are prime targets for possession, since that'll slow the depopulation rate. On top of that, there's a few more familiar gothic horror monsters hanging around to round out the challenges and keep things feeling suitably Ravenloftish. It's all quite interesting and atmospheric, with plenty of little setting details for the GM to riff off of, and the main thing that'll decide if it goes down well with your group is how players react to their characters being taken over and asked to secretly turn against the rest of the party. How will they balance their desire for secrecy, deteriorating physical condition, and absolute refusal to leave the area of the plant's mind-control to keep the others off balance until everyone is taken over? Basically, if they enjoy PvP, this one looks like it could be an absolute hoot, giving you tons of roleplaying and puzzle solving opportunities and relatively little combat (since you'll probably want to free them from control, not kill them). If they don't, it'll flop. Hopefully you know your group well enough to know which category they fall into.



Three adventures that are fairly low on combat and high on roleplaying here, which is welcome, but making multiple adventures that are directly derivative of specific movies rather than mixing & matching ideas is somewhat less so. That path may seem easy as a writer, but if you don't add new details to account for the players making different decisions from the film, it risks plot railroads very easily. Let's see if next issue does anything similar, or they'll manage to mix things up once again to keep the variety up.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 78: December 1992



part 1/5



34 pages. I know being merely a zine means they have a lower art budget, but this is barely a sketch. Who are these silhouetted adventurers, and what lies up the stairs? Could be virtually anything. Let's hope the interior has a little more time and detail put into it.



The Third Degree: They haven't done RPG reviews for a good 3 years now, so the job is wide open to anyone who can be bothered to submit them. Jeff Cisneros takes a shot at it, using the framing schtick of a private investigator. (as would later appear in many reviews by notable forumite Dan Davenport) His first case is the Gamma World 4e corebook. His conclusions pretty much agree with the stated intentions in the previews, that it's a big improvement over the previous editions in organisation and worldbuilding, much more able to support long-term campaigns. Now the challenge is just finding enough people who want to play it to make up a group. A pretty blandly positive start. Will he stick around long enough to stamp his own personality on proceedings, give some more critical responses and tackle some more obscure products? Tune in to future issues to see what cases he takes on next!



Notes From HQ: As usual, they talk about how Gen Con went a few months late, due to the way their production schedule works. Thankfully they don't have to repeat their complaints about flaky judges, although more people signing up is always welcome. The Spelljammer and Ravenloft tournaments did pretty decently, but it's the Fluffyquest benefit one, fittingly raising money for guide dogs that really attracted lots of attention, both positive and negative, and they fully intend to have another fluffy scenario ready to inflict upon us next year. I guess having something to love to hate keeps people engaged. Looks like next year will also have plenty to irritate me with then. Oh well, the show must go on.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 78: December 1992



part 2/5



Letters: First letter suggests they could make a regular feature of doing profiles for important RPGA members, preferably spotlighting the unsung heroes rather than already famous game-designers. Sounds like a good idea they could spin out monthly for quite a few years. They'll get right on it.

Second praises their crosswords, logic puzzles & movie reviews. They might not be directly RPG connected, but they make the newszine more entertaining by their presence. They'll keep on doing them for the foreseeable future.

Third is yet another complaint that they do too much AD&D stuff, and not enough of anything else. As ever, they know, and would like to fix that, but can only publish more stuff for other systems if you send it in. Please do!

Fourth is a complaint from an english reader who found the newszine arrived too late to enter a competition. Even making the deadlines a month or two longer would help a good deal with that. But not too long, otherwise people have no sense of urgency, then forget to get around to creating their entries and actually send in fewer submissions than one with a shorter deadline. Another tricky set of variables to balance.

Fifth, someone defending Fluffy from all the haters at Gen Con this year. She got as many boos as cheers when they did the 10th anniversary celebration. How rude! After all she's done to raise money for charity too! Why am I not surprised. Seems like Rick's work is very much a love it or hate it thing, and I'm not alone in finding it irritatingly cheesy, stiflingly linear and not at all what I'm looking for in a RPG scenario. But the people running the RPGA like it, so it's not going anywhere.

Finally, the winner of their award for charitable gaming-related activity this year thanks them, and apologises for being unable to make it to Gen Con and accept the award in person. Thank you for helping us raise money to fight cancer, and see you at a convention next year, hopefully.



Kenderspeak Anyone?: After years of no Dragonlance content, articles two issues in a row? How curious. The lack of previous material to build upon means it's much larger scale and vaguer than the Realms stuff again. Contrary to the title, it doesn't even give us any specific words, being just a single page guide to the various language families you can choose from. I'm pretty sure this info appeared in the Tales of the Lance boxed set released arounds the same time, so this is basically just a promotional excerpt that's of no further use once you've bought the product. Those never cease to be tedious. Once again demonstrating why they'll never catch up, because Dragonlance was always just a few people in the TSR staff telling you specific stories, without the same kind of room for audience contribution the Realms was built with.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 78: December 1992



part 3/5



A Fluffy Wonderland: Christmas based RPG adventures are usually comedic regardless, but a Fluffyquest christmas adventure?! That's just over-icing the cake. Fluffy is not lost or kidnapped this time, but the rest of her canine family, assembling from all over the world for the festive celebration, has been captured while en route, leaving her catatonic with distress. You're going to have to save them, whether you want too or not. As usual for these adventures, this leads you down a linear path filled with puns, references and general wackiness, where your input has very little influence on the overall course of events. Get a bunch of quirky magical items of dubious utility as presents. Ride one horse open sleighs, which leave you open to being pelted with snowballs by mischievous carol singers, face three symbolic christmas ghosts, close harmony singing wolves, popsicle zombies, and the celebration hating snow drow (can you dig it?) that started all this trouble in the first place. If you've played any of the previous instalments, you'll know exactly what you're getting into. As usual, it gives me absolutely no pleasure at all to trudge through this, but apparently a sizeable fraction of the RPGA do really like it. Hopefully now the 10th anniversary is over Fluffy appearances will drop in frequency again. And whether Fluffy will survive the TSR to WotC and 3e changeovers to get a 20th anniversary celebration remains unknown to me at the moment. We'll deal with that when we get there, if it becomes necessary.



1993 Games Decathlon: They've been doing the decathlon for three years now, and see no reason to stop next year. As usual, the rules get a little larger and more complex, giving you a fair amount of flexibility in exactly what you participate in. You can still only get points for participating in 10 events, but they can be picked from several dozen tournament ones in many conventions over the year, 8 different writing competitions, and two service events. The approved conventions do actually include enough international ones that it's not completely unwinnable if you live outside the USA, but it's still definitely easier the closer to the midwest you are. Hopefully the increased flexibility will increase the number of competitors similarly.



The Living City: In issue 75, they did two interlinked establishments owned by people who know each other. Here, they stretch that to three. A trio of adventurers have retired and taken up artistic professions in a big bohemian space in uptown Raven's Bluff. The bard makes musical instruments, unsurprisingly. The thief has become a poet. But it's the fighter that's been the most commercially successful, revealing an unexpected flair for portrait painting that really touches the hearts of the viewers. While they have no particular interest in hitting the road again, they retain more than enough tricks that anyone trying to rob them won't have an easy time. Unlike many of these, there's no teenage kids to worry about/present plot opportunities, but they do have the unresolved question of what happened to the 4th member of their party, lost on their final adventure. If anyone could confirm her life or death (or confirm her death but retrieve & raise the body) they'd be very appreciative, as it continues to weigh on the back of their minds. While not bad, this definitely falls into the more niche end of their setting building, as it'd take a bit of work to get to know them enough to unlock the personal details & side quest, and these artsy things like poetry & portraits aren't the kind of thing most adventuring groups would bother to spend their money on. Good for a few groups then, but ignorable by most parties. Oh well, plenty of alternatives by now, so it's not as if including a few ultra-niche ones is going to hurt. Quite the opposite. The longer they're going, the more niche they have to get to avoid repeating themselves. How much further can they go in this direction before we see complaints in the letters page? Given the rest of the company, I'm sure we can make it at least to 1995 before they become significant. But maybe they'll have some surprises for us. Let's see what next year brings to the living city.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 78: December 1992



part 4/5



The Living Galaxy: Another round of weird example PC's in here, this time taking reader suggestions. They range from bacteria to planet sized, and with all sorts of weird abilities and limitations. The problem, as ever, is coming up for an adventure with a mixed party that makes everyone useful. The fantasy derived ones such as each person playing one head of a multiheaded monster or a group of intelligent magical items seem easier to make work ruleswise than the pure sci-fi ones. Which is the problem this column has faced all along. Fantasy is usually shaped in some way by our desires, while reality is a lot less accommodating. We still don't have robotic limbsuits for intelligent cetaceans to operate on land and go on adventures with us, and that's entirely within the bounds of physics. As usual, there's plenty of good ideas here, but none of them are oven-ready, so you'll need to put in a load of work to make them fit into your game, whatever system it may be. This column would work better if TSR did have an active sci-fi system to focus on and put more specific statblocks into.



The Everwinking Eye: Ed zooms in on Melvaunt this time. While not as unrelentingly unpleasant and treacherous a place to live as Mulmaster, it's still not a particularly nice place for the common folk. Taxation is low, but very strictly enforced, and political influence is openly purchased in a way that would be viewed as corruption in most countries but here is just the standard way of doing business. Good and evil gods are both worshipped openly, and seem to hold about equal importance politically so neither can ban or drive out the other. Basically, this is what happens if you let libertarians get into power. Just enough rules for the state to protect itself from external threats, and then the strong are free to do what they like to the weak as long as it doesn't make too much public mess. They have many expats who made their fortune there, then moved somewhere safer to raise their own families. Nice place for adventurers to visit, with plenty of plots to foil, money to make and fights to be had, but only the baddest mutha:shut yo mouth:s will want to live there full time, particularly during the harsh winters. Could be fun as long as you remember your escape routes. As ever, his ability to write places that feel alive, and give you room to participate shines through. Any of you have stories of your characters time there?

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 78: December 1992



part 5/5



Into The Dark: James gets meta again, with a round of films where other films within them play important parts. Whether they actually have characters step out of the screen, or what they're watching merely messes with their minds, this is a fairly effective way to blur the boundaries between reality & fiction and unsettle the viewer, particularly when watching in 3d. There's plenty of different variants of this idea to explore.

The Purple Rose of Cairo has Woody Allen spice up his usual rom-com plot by having the handsome leading man step out from the movie screen, leaving his role empty and the rest of the characters thoroughly confused, while Mia Farrow has to take care of him in the "real" world. What happens when the character meets the actor who plays him, and how will she deal with her romantic feelings for them both? The ending isn't particularly satisfying, but that's what happens when you choose reality over fantasy.

Demons is your typical video nasty, only the monsters on the cinema screen escape and start infecting the people watching, turning into a cascade spawn of gruesome transformations, that as usual would be a lot shorter if people would spend a little less time screaming and standing around like idiots. The effects are decent, but the plot and characterisation is paper thin, so you won't be particularly upset to see the people die.

Demons 2 is the churned out sequel. The acting is a little better, but the plot is even more recycled and derivative, openly stealing whole sequences from other better horror films. Further instalments tried for more originality, but failed messily, getting released under multiple names and being increasingly difficult to find.

Videodrome, on the other hand, has no trouble being found and remembered, although the faint of stomach may not want to do so. The trappings of the corruptive reality warping power of TV may seem a little dated now, but they could be applied just as easily to the internet. The degree to which it maddens you might seem a little quaint to long-term 4chan denizens though. I guess it's the same kind of problem reading lovecraftian works now. Too many deconstructions and parodies, you get to the point where you can't play it straight any more and take it seriously.

The Video Dead is just your basic low budget direct to video flick, only the zombies come out of the TV. Slow, tedious, and not particularly coherent, this is just filler to round out the column's word count, and one to avoid.



Feats of Valor: We finish off with a lighthearted bit of gaming advice that reminds you that even in a hack and slash game, a little roleplaying can really help your survivability. Knowing when to look intimidating and when to look weaker than you are can make the difference between the enemy fleeing or surrendering and fighting to the death. Once you have got a few kills under your belt, a public display of dismembered body parts on a pike is an excellent way to spread your reputation faster and ensure you can charge more for future jobs. Large parties are better than small ones, even if you have to use a little social engineering to get reluctant people to join up. A good mount or pet is worth several people at low levels in both combat capability and increasing your memorability. All pleasingly old-school stuff that reminds you that the rules are not the entirely of your existence and effectiveness in an RPG, and thinking outside the box will really help you live long enough to get to higher levels. Even in tournament railroads, clever use of the equipment you've been given can be the difference between life and death. Don't leave your fate entirely in the hands of the combat dice rolls.



Bloodmoose & Company find the adventurer lifestyle of seeking fortune via hired violence doesn't work too well in the technologically advanced future.



Another issue that it's definitely a relief to finish, due to the heavy packing of fluffy cheesiness that's been casting a shadow over the entire year. Not an era I have any desire to revisit now it's over. Let's head to the next year, and see if the prospect of an election gets them to be a little more focused and serious.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 79: January 1993:



part 1/5



32 pages. A misty arctic scenario is about to be made much worse for the people wandering it by a remorhaz. You might be temporarily saved from frostbite, but if it melts the ground below you then you're in a short race between being scooped up for dinner and hypothermia. Presuming they're bothering to track any of this, and it's not just a mindless combat encounter in whatever railroad they've cooked up for us this month. Time to see what potential rewards braving the winter has to offer.



Notes From HQ: Ah joy. It's one of those occasions where a company does something wildly unpopular, and is forced to back down, only to try and implement the same thing more circumspectly. After many years of saying they want to support other RPG's than AD&D in the RPGA, but not managing more than a small minority of other adventures, they were planning to give up & drop support for non TSR properties entirely. People absolutely hated that idea! So instead, they've merely outsourced the sanctioning of adventures by other companies to said company, forcing them to have an active RPGA liaison if they want to have tournament games count for anything, which rules out all the small companies where everyone's doing this part time. (and adhere to the TSR code of conduct as well, which rules out White Wolf games from being played in the RPGA despite their popularity) The kind of thing that seems likely to have a long term chilling effect on diversity, and accomplish their original intention, just a few years later than they'd originally planned. It's always frustrating when a company shows they have no idea what their userbase wants, and do something self-sabotaging in the pursuit of greater profit. From New Coke to the great Tumblr porn purge, history is littered with examples of this, some walked back, others pursued to the bitter end. Well, that's a pretty depressing way to start the year off. Their bad decisions extend beyond the casual racism and excess of bad comedy railroads. I have a feeling we're going to see quite a few more of them between now and the WotC takeover.



Letters: The first two letters are from recipients of their charity benefit tournaments. In the cruel world of USA medical expenses, every little helps. But even if it saves some individual lives, it doesn't solve the larger scale structural problems. This is why gofundme becomes one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms in the world. It's not that individual people lack compassion, but individual donations pale in efficiency compared to a properly funded national health service.

The third one is one of the many people angry about them trying to drop non TSR tournament adventures. Since they gave their response the page before, this feels like the wrong way around. Another casualty of the nonlinear publication production process locking certain things in long before others.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 79: January 1993



part 2/5



Take a Byte: They've been promoting their novels in here for years. Now they decide to do something similar for TSR's licensed computer games, although since those are higher effort to produce than books, this column definitely won't be appearing every month. They start off with their upcoming trio of Dark Sun games, designed to take characters from 3rd to 20th level through multiple adventures using the same game engine. They spend a lot of time selling the improvements in size & visual quality over previous computer adaptions of D&D, which as usual look risible in hindsight. It fits on 6 floppy disks or one CD and requires 2 megabytes of RAM! Characters have 29 frames of animation! Another case where I'm quite happy to live in a future where the exponential expansion of computer technology has levelled off, and you can enjoy both hyperrealistic AAA games and 2d indies and the gameplay is the important thing, not how many polygons and ray tracing effects you can cram onscreen. Does the gameplay of these hold up in hindsight?



The Everwinking Eye: After briefly noting the Melvauntian propensity for sado-masochism, Elminster decides that's enough dwelling on their personal habits for a family friendly publication, and heads off to Thentia instead. Initially things don't seem that different. Both are low tax places where there are few laws other than don't mess with the flow of trade, which is punished very harshly. Thentia does at least seem to be a little more straightforward, responding to external threats by purchasing large quantities of mercenaries rather than magical espionage & blackmail. Their favourite god is Selune rather than Loviatar, and there are a decent amount of nonevil characters in positions of power. It seems a somewhat more pleasant place for an adventurer to make their base of operations than the previous couple of cities they've covered, although once you're high enough level for teleportation and other fast travel, you'll still probably want to spend winter in warmer climates. Another fairly interesting entry that shows how the various moonseas cities can seem superficially similar to outsiders travelling through, but have all sorts of nuances if you spend more time there and get to know people. Another pretty decent instalment adding more of the depth the Realms is known for, and their other settings can't compete with.



Evansburg: The adventure this issue is a Gamma World one, interestingly enough. Only the second one that's appeared in the newszine too. But while the first one was wacky to the point where it was near unusable in a regular campaign, this is basically just a D&D adventure converted to a different system. A whole load of kids have been disappearing in the poor part of town. The PC's are asked to deal with it. After a bit of investigation, they track things down to the sewers, where they find out it's giant mutant cockroaches. Fight them, destroy the nest of eggs before they hatch and go from a few adults to hundreds of hungry babies, and save the day. It's only 4 pages long, so it's one that will fit into their standardised 4 hour game slots with loads of room to spare. As usual for them, it's almost completely linear, although it's not actually that jokey, which is mildly surprising and shows how much they're trying to make 4e a more serious game. If it were a D&D one it would merely be underwhelming and formulaic. i'm inclined to be slightly more forgiving because at least they're trying to support other systems, but it's still on the mediocre end of ok. They could do so much better.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 79: January 1993



part 3/5



Bestiary continues straight on from the adventure with a couple more Gamma World monsters. Even the plants can't be trusted once they have enough radiation in them.

Claptraps are giant venus fly traps. They can blend surprisingly well into thick vegetation. Step on them and you'll have a very bad day being slowly digested unless you have friends to help get you out. Nothing too surprising really, but a pain nonetheless.

Horl Ep are mutated pines that use their very pointy cones as missiles. If they get stuck in you, there's a distinct chance they'll germinate, which gives gives you short term fast healing as they boost your metabolism before a painful but pleasantly pine fresh smelling chestburster situation takes place. People have tried to cultivate them to take advantage of this or their guarding properties, but it usually ends tragically. Whether Weyland-Yutani survived this particular apocalypse or not, the human impulses behind their business practices remain universal.



The Living City: This month's instalment is not technically in Raven's Bluff, being a restaurant on a pier just outside the city limits. The Painted Boat is not technically a boat either, although it has appropriately nautical decor and serves a heavily seafood based menu. Since they're already bending a bunch of rules here, it's no surprise to find the place is run by a group of mid-level rogues (and a wizard) who are well equipped to settle things personally with any troublemakers without involving the city watch. The entertainment is similarly dubious, with plenty of animal fights, fire-breathers and other stuff that would fall afoul of regulations in the modern world. (no dancing bears though, as they wouldn't fit with the low ceilings) They also have an even more legally dubious side job as shipwreck salvagers, and are not above making the waters nearby even more hazardous with rocks & fake lighthouses so they have more wrecks to loot. That definitely gives PC's a reason to come into conflict with them if involved with legitimate trading & deliveries, or an example to follow if they're more underhanded sorts as well. So there's plenty of potential for interesting fights here, combining darkness & fog, unsteady shipboard footing and swimming in a way that would put unprepared PC's at a big disadvantage even if they're of the right level overall for the challenge. It's definitely on the nastier end of the locations in here, but that just makes it all the more useful, between the well developed NPC's and their new magical items. Without dangers, what are adventurers even for?



The Living Galaxy: Roger is much more specific than usual, recommending science magazines Ad Astra, Astronomy and Discover as good sources of game ideas, and then going through their output from the past year for particular articles from each month. Amazingly enough, all three of these magazines are still going and have functional online archives, so you can actually get hold of the articles referenced legally even now. That definitely puts this in the above average category in terms of usability and is a reminder that not every company has a history as turbulent as TSR's. Science may make new discoveries as the years go by, but it doesn't often have edition wars where entire fields are discarded and replaced with new ones. Not that these magazines won't have their own eras of changing editorial focus, with connoisseurs being able to read through the archives and say which were good and bad years, (anyone out there willing to take on one of these as a Let's Read?) but the changes will be more in tone and formatting than whole new rulesets. This means they'll stay relevant and useful for longer. Nice to have another glimpse at the outside world in here.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 79: January 1993



part 4/5



The Art of Winning: Skip makes another attempt to increase engagement for their competitions by reminding us that it's not actually that hard to win as long as you follow all the instructions carefully. They don't actually get that many entries on most of them, and a significant percentage get disqualified by not following basic procedural details, so if you can come up with a complete idea, write it down coherently and then give it decent formatting (and not overegged with tons of fiddly fonts and color changes that wouldn't transfer to the newszine's printing process anyway) before sending it in you've actually got a decent chance. The bar seems so low when you phrase it like that, yet many people still manage to fall short. This all leads up to this month's competition, which is quite a significant one. They're finally trying their hand at a Living Gamma World location, and the details of the first few submissions will set the boundaries for all the ones that follow. Get in on the ground floor, and you could make a big difference! Will they finally be able to give a non D&D system a decent amount of airtime and worldbuilding for a few years at least, or will it fall at the starting gate and go nowhere? This definitely has my interest. Looking forward to finding out what happens next.



Adding To The Anvil: Another of those topics that turned up repeatedly in Dragon and makes me sigh every time I have to deal with it. Someone thinks nonweapon proficiencies aren't realistic enough and splits them into more, more specific ones, in the process increasing the total number you need to really get comprehensive knowledge of all the aspects of a thing and making it more inaccessible to PC's. This time it's weapon crafting they're turning their attention too, separating out blacksmithing, whitesmithing, and knowing how to properly add jewels to the armour & weapons you craft. This will not improve matters in the vast majority of campaigns, and is a whole load of wasted effort for me, particularly after having seen subsequent editions go the opposite direction and pare down the complexity of the skill system without affecting the overall degree of fun. The fundamentals are sufficiently poorly designed that no amount of tinkering with the surface elements can fix them. The new kit at the end is particularly bad mechanically, adding a minor benefit in crafting magic weapons that higher level wizards can do anyway, at the cost of an across the board -15% chance at learning new spells. Really not worth it.