TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 46: Mar/Apr 1994



part 3/5



Side Treks - Floating Rock: Steve Kurtz gives us his final adventure in here, a short one that feels like side material from his recent Al-Qadim work that didn't quite make sense in the books. A bunch of bugbears have set up camp on a Zaratan floating around the seas. Recognising the precarious nature of their home, they've decided that the best way to keep it from waking up and submerging is to keep it well fed, sending a large proportion of the food they capture into it's open maw. They could show up anywhere the PC's are on a nautical adventure, will attack in large quantities and do their best to capture the PC's, strip them and feed them to their island. Fortunately there's enough sharp objects in it's stomach from previous sacrifices that escaping won't be too hard, but getting all your stuff back and getting revenge will be considerably harder.

So this shows that he can be more railroady than the average author even in a short package, putting you in a situation where you're supposed to bend the rules to beat the players without killing them and then encourage them to run away rather than fighting back when they escape. It's basically for if they have too much stuff, and you want to do a hard reset on all their cool gear and magic items, forcing them to start again from scratch while keeping their characters. It once again shows that he thinks more on pulp story logic where characters don't advance that much, lifethreatening cliffhangers & turnarounds are normal no matter how experienced you get and the cool stuff & money they find is just as easily lost again, rather than D&D logic where equipment is often an integral part of how your character functions and many classes are lost without it. If we were playing Adventure!, particularly the d20 version, his work would be one of the first things I'd go too for conversion, but when you're dealing with players expecting D&D style gaming it's another adventure from him to use with caution, because it might be an interesting read, but with the wrong group it'll be more upsetting than just killing their characters outright.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 46: Mar/Apr 1994



part 4/5



Goblin Fever: A third goblinoid focussed adventure in a row? No wonder they're complaining in the editorial about not wanting too much of the same stuff. Still, it's not just what you've got, but what you do with it, because once again they're playing a different role here, more a catalyst than the main course. It's one of those stories that's actually more common in reality than fiction, a disease which is relatively mild in one species makes the jump to another, where it's massively more deadly and cuts a swathe through the population because they haven't evolved any resistances to it. Since we've been living through that for the past couple of years, I'm very interested in seeing how this one holds up. :reads: Pretty well actually, as it's full of people doing batshit counterproductive stuff as a response to the situation in a way that seems all too real from looking at the news, including a guy going around naked apart from a pair of antlers, which is a little too prophetically on the nose after the QAnon shaman. Explore the city of Waen Fawr, which is all boarded up and descending into chaos. Snipers on the roofs, fires breaking out, hoarders and looting, trying unorthodox and unhelpful "cures", people suddenly finding religion. It's an unpredictable, rapidly evolving situation, and just because you got in one way, doesn't mean you'll be able to get out again the same way. Will you decide to be heroic and look for a cure, or just try to survive & make a profit and join in the killing & looting? Either way, you have an interesting sandbox made more noteworthy by one of their centrepiece format experiments, a selection of cutout tiles that represent the city blocks in a quite efficient way with a little repetition and notes on how certain areas may use the same basic layout but vary in occupants. This means you can get a lot of play out of it for it's size, (Which is already pretty big for a Dungeon adventure) and recycle the parts for other adventures as well. This one gets my strong approval, as plenty of work has gone into making it good looking and useful in multiple ways that a purely homebrew adventure would struggle to replicate.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 46: Mar/Apr 1994



part 5/5



The Iron Orb of the Duergar: No goblinoids in here, thankfully, as duergar tend not to get along very well with them. Instead it's the completely different cliche of the indestructible artifact that corrupts it's owner and leads them down a path that causes much misery for all around. The high priest of Odin is our designated idiot ball holder this time, and so your world's vikings or closest equivalent have massively stepped up their raiding, gathering stuff with the ultimate goal of constructing a giant golem body for the orb. (which will actually result in it becoming their openly ruling evil overlord rather than useful magical servant.) Some definite LotR influence there then, but with the specific details very different. The PC's are hired by his concerned daughter to solve the problem, preferably in a nonlethal way by taking the artifact away from him, and without being corrupted themselves. Unfortunately, one of the artifact's many powers is scrying, so you do not have the element of surprise, and have to penetrate the place the golem is being forged the hard way. This leads you through a tough high level dungeon where you'd better have magical weapons with enough plusses to damage the constructs, and the brains to deal with Duergar's psionic trickery. It's middling on the linearity front, as the dungeon is big enough to have some choice of routes, and while there are some bits where the NPC's do big melodramatic scripted speeches, you're free to react to them how you want. Overall, decent but not exceptional, and at least it's pretty near the top of the level range they've ever covered and has suitably high stakes. Plus it's easily expanded on, as destroying or sealing the orb away once you have it can be a whole other adventure. I'd have no problem using this.



This issue was actually pretty decent, but it felt like it was harder work behind the scenes than usual to make it so, with all the talk about trying to reduce the number of repetitive submissions, and then using a lot of the same elements, but in different ways in the adventures. If doing this wears me down, think how much worse it is going through 8 years as full time work and rejecting hundreds of mediocre unoriginal adventures every month. Still, not having that choice and accepting any old crap that fits the length constraints would be even worse. Speaking of which……

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 94: April 1994



part 1/5



32 pages. That's a lot of holy symbols, including one from the god of ravers, from the looks of things. Will they be sufficient to stave off the undead surrounding this priest so he can get back to dropping an e as sacrament (as the shamen said, E's are good) and listening to techno at the church of 'avin it large? Or will this issue's servings be of a much more austere kind. Time to put another load of information in my brain and see if it stays down, because we're still a long way from last orders.



Notes From HQ: In keeping with the Winter part of Winter Fantasy, even their charitable donations are chilly this time, as they're sponsoring a polar bear and a penguin in Milwaukee Zoo. Not the most efficient way to use your dollars to make the world a better place, but people need environmental enrichment as well as healthcare & housing. The rest of the editorial is unsurprisingly telling us about the cool adventures they had, to try and persuade fairweather gamers to come next year. Lots of different systems, both tabletop and computer. Nothing going dramatically wrong here, just good wholesome fun. Nothing much for me to comment on then.



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: After a whole lot of traipsing around in the wilderness and small villages, Ed goes in the opposite direction to give us some Sembian plot hooks. Well, they are pretty rich, so they can be profitable both as employers and targets of heists. For several years, the country was intentionally left undeveloped beyond the basic outline to give you more freedom in your own game, but with the rest of the Realms getting pretty full up and interest in other continents subsiding, might as well give us a few more setting details here. One merchant with a penchant for collecting tomb-scents (ie, recreating long forgotten perfumes, not literal grave odours, because you never can tell in a weird fantasy world) is causing political instability by his hiring of all the adventurer types he can find to go raid. (as if they wouldn't be doing that anyway) This has lead to paranoid rival merchants to start assembling their own private armies in self defence, which results in bidding wars for the service of high level adventuring parties, backstabbing politics and all manner of other fun. So here we have the outline for a big metaplot event that's incredibly easy for your players to get involved with in all sorts of ways, most of which would also pay well as long as you can survive and make it back to your employer. After all the relatively inconsequential rumours of treasures in dungeons that'll hang around forever if not found that's a very interesting change of pace. To top that off, we have a new spell that reflects that merchants want guards that don't destroy their stuff in the melee if they're facing bandits. Lightning Lash is higher level than Lightning Bolt and no more damaging, but it's arc can be precisely shaped and do lots of complex little angle changes Darkseid style so it only fries your opponents. If you've lost a spellbook from casting a fireball in a confined space you'll definitely appreciate the value of that. Once again Ed isn't just a one-trick pony, but can produce adventure ideas useful for all sorts of campaigns. I can definitely see this premise supporting a year or two of IC and OOC adventure time and taking your characters up a few levels. Two thumbs up.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 94: April 1994



part 2/5



The Luminous Bantha: Bill follows on directly from last month with a trio of adventure ideas set on and around Crystal Web Station. The crystal spiders selling some of their unique technology. The empire representative will be on their best behaviour, and if the PC's are too rude or trigger-happy, they'll lose the deal. Not every adventure can be solved with hack and slash hijinks. Somewhat more solvable with violence, but also with the option to avoid it is the security chief being pressured into dubious actions by a debt owed to an imperial Moff. Do you find a clever way to technically fulfil it without suffering adverse consequences, or just cut the gordian knot with violence? Finally, a cantina fight over a Bantha statue that's even more valuable than it initially looks. All of these emphasise the importance of information - who and what you know is more important than the number of credits you have or your combat skills. I guess that's a decent enough theme, albeit a very 2e feeling one. Once again you're playing in the Star Wars universe, but won't get to do any of the world saving heroics of the movies. Hopefully you can still find ways to have fun despite that.



The Cult of Ao: Ah yes, the comedic monotheist wannabes. After the revelation in the Time of Troubles that there was a more powerful being that the god were beholden too, some people decided to start worshipping it. When it turned out that Ao does not grant spells to clerics, and might not even protect worshippers from the wall of the faithless, (not that that's a thing yet) most of that evaporated fast, leaving only the hardcore with faith with a capital F in the face of no concrete rewards for worshipping more commonly seen in the real world. Social commentary, everybody! Now they're trying to enforce what they think is Ao's will, policing all the other faiths to make sure Ao doesn't have to return and do it personally. Since there's not many of them, they're at a power disadvantage compared to servants of gods that actually communicate with worshippers and grant spells, and nearly everyone thinks they're a laughable bunch of cranks, they have to be selective with their targets. So here we have a particularly unusual set of plot hooks revolving around that idea. Whether your PC's want to join up, are clerics of a faith that they've decided isn't doing it's job properly for some arbitrary reason, or merely bystanders in the big stew of events that is the Realms day to day life, you can use them in some interesting encounters that both challenge your players in game, and make them think about big philosophical questions in reality. What does belief mean in the face of gods that are provably real and regularly meddle with the world? How do you react when they turn out to have petty likes and dislikes beyond being the embodiment of their portfolio or you're on the receiving ends of their lusts? That's right up my street, so this article gets my approval.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 94: April 1994



part 3/5



The Living Galaxy: Roger spends a few more pages coming up with example solo adventures. Since you won't have other players to bounce off, coming up with a compelling villain that you can get some conversation in with before coming to blows becomes even more important. Since it's only one person, take care not to make them too powerful, particularly if the PC has already faced a load of minions and taken some damage. The example campaigns riff off of The Running Man, Little House on the Prairie, and the Vietnam war. Each has different examples of how and why they could go to or from a full group campaign for both IC and OOC reasons, reminding us that games can often stop or change suddenly due to real life events rather than the natural flow of the narrative, and it helps if you have a few contingencies prepared in case that happens. Another solid entry that mentions some game systems they've barely covered in here or Dragon, reminding us that Roger is one of the people who tried to keep system diversity up in the face of not enough submissions. Despite having left his editor job, he's still keeping this column running along smoothly.



Sidekicks: Issue 83's big competition was for sidekicks to put in your game. Nearly a year later, here's the top 3 entries. Una, a kobold who ran away with the adventurers and become a priest of Lathander. Since the release of the Complete Book of Humanoids, that kind of side switching has become much more frequent. Maybe some day everyone will be integrated and that kind of prejudice will be a thing of the past, but I guess you have to take small steps with such a big problem. Coriander Chervil, a gnome with the terrible deformity of a human-sized nose. Good thing gnomes are good at illusions then, even if it does use up a valuable spell slot hiding it every day. As befits his name, he's an excellent cook, so even if he's pretty useless in a fight he's still worth keeping around. And finally, Geoffrey Skimplydough, a spoiled rich kid who now wears a mask and fights enemies blindfolded as The Dandelion, a mysterious swashbuckler who loves to taunt his opponents as he fights. This kind of behaviour tends to make highly motivated enemies, so he's looking for some more experienced adventurers to tag along with until the heat is off. Given his talent for being annoying, this will probably result in accumulating more nemeses not fewer as you gain levels. All of these definitely fall on the more whimsical side of things, which isn't surprising at all for the newszine. Whether they'll be any use to your campaign will be heavily dependent on your own tolerance for cheesiness and whimsy.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 94: April 1994



part 4/5



The Living City: Straight from one swashbuckler with dangerous nemeses that the PC's might get entangled with to another one. The mysterious one-armed man known only as Myriad ( or Paul to his parents ) runs a fencing school in Raven's Bluff. Despite this handicap, he's very capable indeed, and even more dangerous when you discover that he's not actually one-handed, merely hiding his dominant arm in a bag of holding underneath his clothes, because you've got to one-up the guy from the Princess Bride somehow. He's actually a paladin in disguise seeking vengeance for the death of his friend at the hands of the Zhentarim. If he finds the left-handed man who fights with his right, things will get interesting. So the influences are very obvious with this one, but at least they're good influences, with both the day job and the adventure hook highly relevant for most parties, giving you a chance to get to know him at low level before you find out his backstory and decide if you'll help him in his quixotic quest. Comfortably on the usable end of the quality spectrum but not original or mindblowing.



Fantastic Memories: As usual after talking about a convention in the editorial, they also have an external perspective. Paul Culotta lets us know how much less stressful it was than Gen Con, where everything is prebooked months in advance. Ok, you still had to get up early on friday to be sure of getting the precise tournaments you want, but that still means you can see what's in high demand and what's not and go for what you feel like on the day. He got to tour the TSR facilities ands meet lots of the staff in person, and the tournament he wrote went down very well. (more on that in a future issue) The days of things being total chaos seem to be comfortably behind them, (although avoiding the worst of con crud by simply not selling food, so you have to go out to proper shops or restaurants nearby seems like the lazy option organisation-wise) and overall it was quite a pleasant experience. Nothing to rant about here, just a demonstration of how working at things and gaining more experience can result in long-term improvement. May they have more like it in the future.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 94: April 1994



part 5/5



Into The Dark: Another issue where James just jumps straight into the reviews without any preamble and lets us figure out if there's any theme to them on our own. Those seem to be coming more frequently these days.

Godzilla vs Biollante pits the most famous kaiju of all against a giant mutant … rose? Huh, they must really have been running out of ideas. Guess they wanted to get in on that Little Shop of Horrors fanbase, since that was a hit just a few years before, and the original ending had Audrey II grow to kaiju size and take over the world. It still manages to be more scary and less cheesy than the 50's movies, so it's a decent enough addition to the monster roster.

From Hell it Came is a cheesy 50's monster movie where a man is killed and comes back as a monstrous tree to get revenge. Like many old suit based monsters, the resulting creature is so lumbering and awkward it's hard to take seriously as a threat and the people look stupid for standing around and letting it catch them. The dialogue is also cheesy and overwrought to the point of parody. One for the MST3K crowd only.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is of course one of the classic old horror movies, speaking to both our personal and political fears about trust and if it's ever possible to truly know anyone else. It's been analysed to death when it comes to symbolism, but James still finds it holds up as a story too, with good casting and tight pacing. If you can, get the version without the executive meddling adding an abrupt happy ending. It does not improve it as a story.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) does not improve on it's predecessor in most ways. While longer, it's also slower, and changing the setting from a small town to a larger city makes the change in people's personalities less personal and emotionally impactful on the lead. Still watchable, but not moving the genre forward in the same way.

Seedpeople is one of the many B-movie rip-offs churned out by Full Moon Features, who were apparently the Asylum of the video rental era. James has exceedingly scathing things to say about both it and them. They suck and only survive through sheer cheapness of production. Stick to the real thing.



Cruise Con?! The final page decides to plug a particular convention much more strongly than the rest of the listings. I guess cruise ships are expensive to hire, so they have more to lose if no-one shows up than some town hall or rented hotel ballroom.



An ok issue overall, but with a particularly large and good set of Forgotten Realms articles, giving us more bits and pieces that never appeared anywhere else. The longer this goes on, the more it becomes apparent how important Polyhedron was in establishing the Realms' supremacy over all the other settings, rewarding the hardcore gamers with as many details as their brain can take in and the sense of satisfaction that they know things about the place non-members can't. Will next issue have even more of that, or will it be dominated by one of their increasingly rare excursions to another system? Tune in tomorrow, and all that jazz.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 95: May 1994



part 1/5



32 pages. Another cleric on the cover, but this one is sticking to worshipping a specific deity instead of playing the field. Will their faith hold firm against the challenges inside, or will atheism seem like the more reasonable option by the end of this?



Notes From HQ: Last issue they talked about their time at Winter Fantasy. This time it's smaller conventions Egyptian Campaign (in Carbondale, Ill, so not sure why it's called that) and Conncentric (in Connecticut, which makes perfect sense.) that get the spotlight. Both attracted several hundred people and included a wide variety of entertainment, including the explosively growing distraction that is Magic: the Gathering. Both the wargaming and roleplaying sides took advantage of the bumper sized tables to construct props that wouldn't work so well in a home campaign to enhance the experience. Once again, it's all very positive, despite the knowledge in hindsight that those CCG's will be a big part of TSR's downfall, and their continued sales dominance a similarly big part of WotC's decision to cut 5e's staff & release schedule to a skeleton crew in the future. Another reminder that the tabletop gaming landscape would be very different now had CCG's not existed. Whether it would be better or worse who can say, but it's another good example of the complex ways the world is interconnected, and changing one thing also changes a whole bunch of other ones.



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Everyone knows the Harpers, the Red Wizards and the Zhentarim, but there are plenty of lesser secret societies knocking around the Realms, trying to advance their agendas. If you're getting bored of facing the same old foes, try one of these in your campaign and see how it shifts the balance of power, or all at the same time and enjoy the chaos.

The Broken Sword wants to end human supremacy and go back to the time when lots of different races shared control of the world. A laudable goal, pursued in a not so laudable genocidal fashion. If your adventuring party is majority human, it could wind up suffering attacks of opportunity nearly anywhere, and then you can have lots of fun trying to track down other cells of the organisation and get revenge.

The Knights of the Storm are a bunch of disaffected nobles led by a guy in very impressive magical armor, getting revenge on other nobles. Whether their overall goals are good or bad is very ambiguous so whether you might want to join up or oppose them all depends on how you feel about underdog stories and ironic justice.

The Masters of the Cowl on the other hand, are definitely bad guys. Your basic mysterious cloaked wizards who want to keep magic mysterious and rare, and will brutally kill any other wizard they think they can get away with killing & take their stuff, with a signature move of burning off their victim's faces. Have fun foiling them.

The Gold Fist are a group of merchants working together behind the scenes to minimise taxes and regulations on trade. They try to make sure that places that give them free reign prosper, and ones that mess with free trade find crucial resources are scarce and expensive, leading to their downfall long term. This means they probably accomplish more good than evil overall, but from the basest of motivations. Such is the nature of capitalism, seeking stability because the opposite is bad for business. Will you support them, or does your vision of an ideal society involve a little more socialism and health & safety regulations? I can definitely see opportunities for adventure either way. Another entry where Ed manages to pack plenty of useful material into a small package that's easy enough to use in other campaigns as well.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 95: May 1994



part 2/5



The Living City: In issue 83, Zeb Cook talked about the somewhat corrupt system of law enforcement in Raven's Bluff. Here, he follows up logically on that with another unusually long and significant article talking about their prison system, once again showing the extra leeway he has as a member of staff rather than just a freelancer. As with that, he draws liberally on both the current prison system and the even worse ones that preceded it in the Victorian era as inspiration to make them grotty unfair places you really don't want to get stuck in unless you have enough money to afford the good prisons, in which case you can live in comfort and probably manage a criminal empire from the inside to maintain your cash flow. If you're a known spellcaster, things get even worse, as you're sent to a place where the guards make sure you never get a full 8 hours sleep again, which will probably kill you from sheer fatigue and inability to heal any wounds you incur either within a few years. If you're a powerful enough supernatural being that even that seems too risky, or you make politically powerful enemies, they'll throw you into a massive lead vault coated with anti-magic shell on a small island nearby called Ill-Water and leave you to your own devices, which will probably involve becoming lunch for the long-term inmates unless you're similarly paranoid and ruthless. If anyone's ever managed to escape from there they're also smart enough to not come back to Raven's Bluff and try to get revenge. So this is a reminder that the law are not the good guys around here and the summary executions adventurers normally deal in are a mercy by comparison. Respect their power, but don't trust them, because they'll throw you in jail on trumped up charges and let rich, influential bad guys off on technicalities. Just like the real world then. No wonder the place needs heroes.