TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 92: February 1994



part 3/5



Arabian Wonders: As hinted on the cover, it's time for another load of magic items, this time with an Arabian theme. There's no shortage of weird items in the 1001 nights, so whether these are direct conversions or merely inspired by, hopefully that's enough info to draw upon to keep the right flavour.

Potions of Begging make you extra pitiful so you can easily make a living on the streets. Given the cost of making even cheap potions, they're more frequently used by spies and conmen than people genuinely in need.

A Bag of Flaming Stones superheats rocks and lets you throw them without hurting your hands. Pretty decent force multiplier as long as you aren't facing fireproof enemies.

Beacons of Fate are brooches give you runs of extreme luck, both good and bad. If you want the life of a swashbuckling hero who's always getting into near death situations then getting out of them by amazing co-incidences, pin one of these on your clothes. If you don't, give it to someone else, because holding down a regular job might be tricky.

Agate Buraqs are the first in a whole bunch of figurines that transform into their respective animal. They're very good at providing fast getaways, but not so great for combat or long-haul trips. Stealing their tailfeathers is an absolute no-no.

Amber Camels have a bit more stamina, but still only work for a week per month. Save them for the trip home from the dungeon, when you suddenly have a lot more encumbrance than you did going in.

Emerald Winged Serpents are another short duration one, only putting in an hour's work per week. Wouldn't it be nice to have a job where you can get away with that.

Jasper Hyenas are vicious combatants, and can put in a full day's dungeoneering a couple of times a week. Good thing Pride Rock isn't that large and complex to explore.

Jet Wasps become giant firebreathing, ridable wasps. If you're up against a giant who's brewed up giant-sized jars of jam, what better companion could you have?

Gems of Genie Delight are pretty valuable to anyone, but genies in particular will pay ridiculous sums or trade wishes for them. Mind you don't look too weak, or they might just kill you and take it without paying.

Gen Crystals let Sha'irs store more than one spell at a time without updating to 3e rules. Very handy if you want them to actually be any good in a fight instead of casting one spell and spending several minutes running away until their gen arrives with another one.

Instruments of Legend store your memory of a song and it's context, and let any other bard holding it play that song straight away. This is actually quite effective as a means of preserving information down the centuries. If you have a bard in your party, it could provide clues to all sorts of potential adventures.

Wooden Horses don't come to life, but fly just as they are if you can master their controls. They only seat two, so you still can't beat a good carpet for flying long distances in comfort.

Weapons of Prowess let you do spectacular stunts of spinning, trick shots and juggling to intimidate people and make money on street corners, but are no more effective than regular ones in an actual fight. Do not try against cynical heroes like Indiana Jones who'll shoot you before you even finish the show.

Bagh Nakhs of Punishment let you rip into evildooers with great gusto, but also attract trouble and leaves the stench of darkness on you, making you into the kind of antihero who's almost as dreaded as the fiends you fight. Whether this makes you sit on rooftops brooding at night is up to you.

The Apple of Curing is one of those near indestructible artifacts that seems pretty handy at first, but will bring about your downfall long term. Just smelling it heals damage and cures diseases, but eventually you become too chaotic good to function in society and set out on an epic voyage you'll disappear mysteriously in. Like many artifacts, the owner is incapable of giving it up willingly, so you may have to take it before it gets to that stage, and hope someone else will save you in turn. What a dilemma to deal with if you find it in a treasure hoard. Another collection full of effects far more interesting and mixed in positives & negatives than another plus to hit & damage.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 92: February 1994



part 4/5



Contest: The contest this month is another character statting one. An exceedingly large-footed ogre guarding a door, and a rogueish looking sort who's trying to negotiate or trick his way through. Come up with statistics, history & motivations for them both in 1000 words or less. Will anyone come up with a particularly inventive twist on the idea?



Into The Dark: More animated toys? Resilient little things, aren't they. Let's see if this trio are any fun to play with.

Pinocchio is of course the 1940 Disney one. On a technical level, it's an absolute marvel, still beating most modern animation despite the advances in technology with raw frame by frame attention to detail. Storywise, ehh, it's a disney film. You know they're going to sanitise it compared to the source material. The episodic nature of it will also seem odd to people who expect movies to be one big story rather than a bunch of vignettes and the tone is all over the place. Still, not using the formulas later films would stick more strictly to keeps it interesting to watch.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 takes the Pinocchio story and turns both puppet and his creator into horror movie antagonists. Highly derivative schlock horror that has no relation to the previous films in the series and only got that position as a desperate attempt to recoup a little money from dumb video store browsers. Not worth the rental fee.

Puppetmaster is yet another toy based horror that falls on the low end of the spectrum. The special effects are decent, but the story is boring, and made moreso by slow repetitive editing to stretch it up to theatrical length. No wonder the writer didn't want his real name attached to the final result.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 92: February 1994



part 5/5



Jenette LeFleur: Raven's Bluff may strictly restrict your ability scores and magic item selections, but apparently they've got no problem with your PC being trans. Jean LeFleur was a young boy who's mother was a priestess of Sune. Men weren't allowed to live in the temple, so she disguised her son as a girl. They kept up the charade for 7 years, up until he was about to be initiated as a temple priestess himself, when Sune manifested and transformed him into a real girl as a "punishment". Now she lives in Raven's Bluff, initially trying to disguise herself as a man, but with much less success than the other way around, going on adventures and generally doing good in the hope that someday she'll get an opportunity to turn back. Her own attraction remains firmly towards women, so she's got very good at matchmaking as a way to get irritatingly persistent swains off her back. So this is much more in the shakespearean comedy end of things than any kind of sensitive depiction of trans life, revolving around multiple layers of nonconsensual transformation and the idea that people would find a woman who was originally a man hotter than the regular women around her and what would they do if they found out? ( Cue Ace Ventura vomiting scene. ) This is all pretty cringe. Not the kind of thing that would get released today without at least some complaints.



The Living Galaxy: Roger helps us find inspiration this time with another familiar trick (to me, at least). The joys of combinatoric math. If your game is directly based on one property, it'll be pretty obvious to anyone familiar with the source material. If you take three things and mash them together, it'll be much less so, and even if someone else uses the same building blocks, it'll probably be put together differently and still not seem completely stale. As befits the rule of threes, he then gives three examples of this idea for different game systems, and then another 4 shorter ones that are system agnostic. As usual with Roger's columns, you could spend several days just tracking down and reading all the different multimedia references, particularly the ones that are out of print and no longer in libraries. I approve this message, even if I have seen it before, and suspect I might do so again before this journey is over.



We finished off with a detailed two page character sheet aimed at making looking things up in play more convenient and standardised for Living City players. Along with the uptick in maps, they seem to be making an effort to improve their visuals in general, which is a good thing to see.



An issue in which the Raven's Bluff material was less pleasing than the more generic stuff, which is mildly unusual to see. Overall, another fairly middle of the road issue qualitywise, lifted up by the increase in production values. I can live with that, but feel no inclination to hang around this time. Onto the next chapter.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994



part 1/5



32 pages. An arabian cover two issues in a row? A reminded that Al-Qadim was planned as a limited series, learning from the mistakes of Oriental Adventures, but actually proved popular enough that they extended it beyond the initially planned set of supplements. Let's see what they have to offer on that front, and how it'll differ from last issue's selection of magic items.



Adversaries: A rogues gallery by any other name would still smell just as sweet, particularly after going long enough that you can't really call it new anymore. So they decide to rebrand to focus more on challenges for your players, and less on other people telling you about their characters. The first is Lady Aridaye Phylund, a waterdhavian noble who is the very model of an evil stepmother. Marrying a much older man to get the title, who then met with an end at the claws of an unexpected owlbear (now who could have carelessly let it out of it's cage?) she's now trying to arrange a similarly unpleasant fate for her stepson so she can gain full control of the family fortunes. In the meantime she does plenty of sleeping around as an eligible young widow looking for a new husband, and has no problem with mixing business with pleasure and manipulating any paramours into doing shady stuff for her, which is where PC's are likely to be sucked in. Will they realise what a nasty person she is under the facade, and how much will they already have done for her by the time they do? As a 0th level character, she won't be any challenge in a fight if it comes to that, but if the PC's follow the rules of civility & chivalry she'll exploit that for all they're worth, and she'll probably have guards or other precautions if expecting trouble. So this leans very heavily into all the fairytale sexist tropes about scheming women who pretend to be helpless to accomplish their schemes, with an extra helping of promiscuity = evil. The kind of thing that would probably have been more bowdlerised if it appeared in Dragon or an official book, but got published here as is because they have a lower filter. I think I'll pass on using this one.



Notes From HQ: Another talk on the rise of the internet here, and the way it affects people's gaming. With only text to communicate by, you're freer to play your character as whatever age, sex and race you want. Typing is generally slower than speech, and that tends to lead to a more considered form of playing with people taking the time to come up with extended descriptions of their actions and the little mannerisms that would otherwise be implicit. What it does not encourage is lots of combat, particularly if the place you're talking has no dedicated dice roller to keep things fair. So you're more likely to get games where conversations go on for hours with relatively little action and people drop in and out, which suits WoD games better than D&D. This reminds us why the 90's was a time of heavy setting-building and roleplaying over rollplaying, until technology caught up and dedicated MMO's could cater for the combat lovers with strict rules and real-time fighting of massive monsters with lots of other players from all around the world. Then technology got even better, and we could have real-time voice & video communication making gaming online even closer to tabletop on Roll20 and the like. But anyway, they're currently big on worldbuilding and encouraging people to put more talky encounters in their adventures, and that even applies to the tournament ones. Please send in more adventures that aren't all hack & slash! Another reminder that the game designers are often ahead of the trends compared to the average player, and also likely to be trying some things that never catch on due to their greater desire for variety. Still, if they can bring the standards of the adventures in here up, that would be very welcome. There's already been a noticeable change since Dave joined up in terms of making adventures more open-ended and better mapped out. Hopefully there's room for more of that while still keeping to their strict 4 hour timeslots for tournament scheduling.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994



part 2/5



Crystal Web Space Station: Our irregular Star Wars columns have moved beyond the original trilogy and are now looking at ideas for New Republic adventures. The Crystal Web is near a nexus of good jump points, and it's owners specialise in information gathering, so it's a good place to get leads for new adventures. Basically, this is them doing the same thing for Star Wars as Raven's Bluff or Sigil for their D&D settings, a place that is both a staging ground for missions elsewhere, while also having a fair number of internal plot hooks if you want a more social and intrigue based campaign. Like Sigil, it's built to be accessible by creatures on a human scale, but the real powers behind it are quite alien - crystal spiders for whom the knowledge is much more important than any financial incentive. It all feels a bit formulaic if you've been reading their other books from that era, but at least we know it's a formula that works. If they build on it with a few more articles like they intend too, this could be a valuable addition to your spacefaring games.



Bestiary stats up a few more monsters from various Forgotten Realms novels that haven't been incorporated into the game yet.

Groundlings are one of the Zhentarim's experiments in creating the ultimate assassin, dwarves spliced with badgers to create something with superhuman smell and digging ability. Not the most subtle means of murder, but the ground suddenly collapsing beneath you and being dragged into their tunnels to be ripped apart sends a clear message to everyone else in the vicinity that no-one is safe, wherever you run. Of course, they're not particularly fond of their creators, and getting them to achieve independence seems a good longterm goal for a group of heroes.

Deathmirror Beetles link two people they bite so each takes the same damage the other one does. This is pretty tricky to remove and serves as a plot device to force people who would otherwise kill each other to work together in classic awkward buddy comedy style. A sadistic DM could have a good deal of fun putting PC's in a situation like that.

Shadevar are another plot device monster. Near unkillable immortal beasties from the plane of shadows, good luck figuring out their highly idiosyncratic weaknesses without NPC exposition. A reminder that the novels have never been particularly bounded by the rules of the game, and so can produce unfair results when things from them are converted back into D&D.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994



part 3/5



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Only 4 entries in the final selection of short adventure hooks, taking us from T-Y. Thrindilar, where a cloud castle crashed centuries ago, and there's still the odd few giant sized treasures to be found if you search hard enough. Three Trees Pass, prime mining territory that's once again already occupied by orcs, making for vicious turf wars between the humans, dwarves and natives. Try to stake a claim here, you'd best come prepared to defend it. Viperstongue Ford, home of another ex adventuring party who's undead haunt the forest nearby, but good luck finding their treasure. And finally, Ylraphon, which gets more detail than the other three put together, with full stats for many of the elven-made magic items that were common when they were the dominant race in the region. Another of those reminders that the Realms isn't static long term, but has been through several cycles of different races rising and falling, and humans would be just the next in line if it weren't for the fact that it's a commercial property being marketed to humans in real life. Some use magic for nearly everything, some don't, and it's actually on a bit of a downswing at the moment due to all the wild & dead magic zones that have cropped up since the time of troubles. How many spells from 2e never got converted to subsequent editions and now technically count as lost lore? The history of the Realms actually looks all the more interesting now it has many decades of real world history accrued as well.



A Fool's Errand: Despite Rogues Gallery being gone, it looks like they have a second article introducing new NPC's and their stuff for us. Mempter & The Smiling Viper are a clearly Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser inspired pair of high level adventurers with intelligent magical items, custom spells, and a decent line of sarcastic banter in the face of life-threatening peril. They've been doing this for several human lifespans, but of course there's always more places to explore and treasures to find in the Realms. They're probably too high level for most parties to fight, particularly ones who are working their way up fully legally through Living City adventures, but you can still find a use for them in your own campaign as advice-givers or rivals for the same treasure, or just having your PC's find the new items & spells separately. They're transhuman, but nowhere near the cheese level of Elminster or many of the other more famous archwizards that dominate the Realms fiction. Overall, more palatable than Gygax's attempt at riffing on the same concept with the Gord novels. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more of their adventures.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994



part 4/5



The Living City: Our location this month is both well mapped out and very adventure friendly, essentially being an open-ended location based scenario rather than their usual railroads. A weredragon and werespider have set up an inn for monsters and criminals called the Stash & Crash Inn, only accessible by a movable magical portal as obviously any adventurers finding out about this would love to shut them down terminally and gain lots of XP in the process. It's currently situated in an abandoned aqueduct tower, and the owner is getting suspicious, but they've been surreptitious enough in their comings & goings that searches haven't found the portal yet. Will you find out about it and decide to play the big heroes, or be on the wrong side of the law yourself and see the value in keeping it around as a place to hide out and meet people for other larcenous missions. Either way it seems pretty flexible, as you can easily scale the challenge level to the party by changing what the guests are at the time, and how likely they are to fight if the inn is attacked or just get out of there because they're not looking for trouble. It's much better as an adventure than their usual fare, and pretty decent as a location as well, reminding us that Raven's Bluff has some pretty heavy speciesism going on, but many "monsters" just want to go about their business and make a profit like anyone else, so places catering to them will spring up even if they're illegal, just like drugs & prostitution in the real world. Another instance where the short term heroic path doesn't fix the big structural injustices, but D&D isn't really equipped to run a game about tackling those anyway. You can have a decent enough session using this the way it was intended, and if you use it in other ways as well, more power to you.



The Living Galaxy: Roger goes for another fairly formulaic topic that turns up regularly in advice columns - the challenges and rewards of one on one games vs ones with a full party. Whether it's a side-quest involving a single character from a larger campaign, or intended to be that way from the start, there's definitely some satisfaction to be found in not having to constantly share the limelight and concentrate on one person's backstory and struggles for self-actualisation. However, there are also some real practical problems, especially in D&D, where characters are siloed into narrow rigid skillsets by the class/level system. Most sci-fi systems are an improvement by comparison. However, there are absolutely tons of literary references in this case, with stories focusing on one protagonist actually being more frequent than ones that give equal screentime to a whole team. (and even if they try, one or two characters will probably wind up dominating anyway) So this is another of those columns that really demonstrates how bad D&D is at telling certain kinds of stories, and the things you can do to get a little closer. Get yourself playing something that'll let a character put a few points into everything, and then boost the ones they turn out to need selectively in play. Don't be afraid to give them more points than usual to boost their survivability, after all, it's not as if you have to worry about outshining the other players, or boring them by catering very specifically to one person's likes and dislikes. The fewer people you have to cater too, the less you need to worry about fairness and consistent application of the rules. Which really strikes to the heart of what RPG's can be, a way to make improv acting more fair and result in a narrative where everyone has a decent amount of input. Pretty thought provoking really, and also explains why the more massively multiplayer a game is, the more rigid it tends to become, explaining the ultra linear and restrictive living city modules, and the harder it is to keep it fun for everyone, not just the people on top. Living in a society gets exhausting, and sometimes wish fulfilment without endless compromising or waiting around for other people to turn up and be ready to play is what you need.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994



part 5/5



Into The Dark: James goes for a highly specific theme this time, with a deep dive on The Quatermass Experiment series. Originally TV serials, then adapted into films, they're a fairly dark set of sci-fi mysteries where clever science is as much a cause of humanity's problems as it is a solution. The kind of thing that might seem slow and clunky compared to what you can do with modern editing and special effects, but still have plenty of thought-provoking ideas. Well worth looking at to see what fears about the future have changed and what remain the same.

The Creeping Unknown kicks things off with a relatively simple mystery, as an alien organism infects an astronaut and they have to figure out how to stop it before it transforms him completely and spreads to others. In the meantime, his horror at his own situation is communicated quite effectively with minimal dialogue. The serial and film are quite different in how they characterise Prof Quatermass, but both are valid and interesting watches.

Enemy From Space makes the lead a little more sympathetic than the first one, and ups the stakes considerably, with the aliens infiltrating the government instead of being kinda obvious. This makes it much creepier as a watch.

Five Million Years to Earth didn't do too well commercially, but it's James' favourite, giving it a full 5 stars for it's complex and thoughtful plot about the nature of human aggression and conception of evil. But no, the masses prefer another vampire or werewolf with flashy transformation sequences over taking a good look at their own flaws and maybe working to improve on them.

The Quatermass Conclusion finishes the otherwise excellent series in a muddled and unsatisfying way. The basic concept isn't as strong as the others and shooting for a TV and a movie version simultaneously just makes the pacing even more uneven and messy. Only really worth watching for the sake of completism.



A pretty good issue, with plenty of interesting worldbuilding for multiple systems. It looks like Dave Gross might actually be bringing some long-term improvements to this place after too many years of railroading cheesiness being the norm. Of course, he'll only be here for a couple of years before being promoted, and I haven't looked ahead to see who replaces him or what changes they'll bring. But I'll do my best to enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 46: Mar/Apr 1994



part 1/5



84 pages: An early incidence of youtube thumbnail face here, as the dwarf mugs for the painter while the wizard gets down to the real business. Will What Happens Next Shock You!, or will it be formulaic challenges designed to satisfy the algorithm? Time to see if another issue is forward thinking, dated, or merely of it's time.



Editorial: The editorial is devoted to a particularly long response to a letter. They were quite annoyed to find that many of the things they suggested not to do in your own adventure submissions had appeared in other recent adventures. Double standards? Not at all. Just a desire to avoid too much repetitiveness. Doing exactly the same thing over and over soon hits diminishing returns even if the quality stays the same. They want you to stretch your imagination and come up with adventures that aren't just more wanders through caverns or rescuing kidnapped princesses. You can send one of those in, but it'll be held to higher standards because they've already done that. Another reminder that they reject a lot of adventures for every one they publish, and a lot of that filtering is ones that aren't exactly bad, just cliched and not bringing anything new to the table. The trouble with being a professional in a field and immersed in it every day is developing more sophisticated tastes than the people you're selling too and having to either consciously dumb things down for mass consumption or risking leaving your audience behind. It's a battle that only gets harder, and a good reason why you need to change the lead person up every now and then in long-running franchises. Even if they do go back to basics, they'll do it in their own way. Excessive jadedness is no fun for anybody.



Letters: First letter is a lengthy one replying to the letter a couple of issues ago about aimless players. Remember that you control everything they see, hear and touch. If they're bored it's because you haven't provided the right information to hook their attention.

Second continues the debate on types of adventures, wanting ones that are more setting and less linear plot. They're the ones that really remain useful over the course of a whole campaign. If they put their mind to it, they could easily come up with their own rival to Raven's Bluff for readers to build on month by month.

Third notices that it's been a while since they published any adventures by Willie Walsh. Is he ok? Several more are in the pipeline so yes, he's alive and well. Thanks for your concern.

Fourth combats the problem of aimless or disruptive players by reminding you that you can actually talk about the kind of campaign you want to run with your group, make sure everyone's on the same page, and if someone isn't interested in that playstyle, drop out gracefully. if you just worldbuild in isolation and then drop them in the middle of it, don't be surprised if they don't operate on the same implicit assumptions as you.

Fifth worries about the long term risks of putting anachronisms like steam trains in your campaign. Don't do it unless you're prepared for your players to run with the implications and change the world accordingly.

Sixth is insulted by the idea that there's a natural progression from hack & slash to rules mastery to focussing more on roleplaying. There's real skill needed to survive those old tournament adventures and a lot of modern players wouldn't last beyond the first room. They should stop being so snobby and respect the old ways because their life may depend upon them someday.

Seventh has yet more advice for the stumped DM. It once again boils down to actually communicating with your players. Roleplaying is a fundamentally social pastime so the most inept nerds are forced to either learn or drop out.

Eighth is another of the periodic complaints from people who'd prefer them to do more gritty low magic adventures, particularly when it comes to treasure allocations and assumption of literacy. Another area where doing this long term pushes things towards the more fantastical, simply because you've done the first few levels many times and worrying about encumbrance, rations & dysentery gets boring after a while. A fresh editor would probably bring that down again, at least for a little while.

Finally, someone annoyed at the rules lawyers. It's your game, a DM should be able to do whatever they want. If you had to deal with a larger, more wargamey group you'd soon change your tune. As we explored over in Polyhedron, creating the best balance between fun & fairness shifts as you scale up.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 46: Mar/Apr 1994



part 2/5



Dovedale: Which is not one of the Forgotten Realms Dalelands, to my mild surprise. [Dr Who] A lot of worlds have Dales. [/Dr Who] Instead, it's time for another starting level basic D&D adventure that features some very familiar monsters and themes. Goblins :takes drink: have stolen the river :takes drink: to help them catch a magic fish :takes drink:. The PC's are the only ones with the initiative to fix the problem. :takes drink: Rescue the river's fairy and normal flow will be resumed, saving the day. :takes drink, passes out at the bar: Still, despite having seen all the elements before, it does at least put them together decently, with the general wilderness surrounding the town and the goblin lair both getting plenty of detail, although the town itself is much sketchier than many of the similar adventures we've seen here before. A fairly standard lighthearted beginning to your adventures, challenging if everyone's 1st level, but easy if some of the team have hit 2-3, with chances to get through many of the encounters with stealth or roleplaying rather than violence. The kind of thing I have no objection too, but can't be surprised in any way by either. I can see why they'd want to encourage the readers to submit on more esoteric topics.