TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 106: April 1995



part 5/5



The Living Galaxy: Roger finishes off his current set of lengthy lists with several more types of TV show and how they force a party to stay together and focus on a particular objective. Military ones, which are pretty much the easiest as you just have all the PC's assigned to the same unit and openly given a mission, then your only concern is if it's so suicidal or repugnant that they all decide to go AWOL at once. The opposing perspective of a decentralised resistance movement, where you have a bit more freedom of who you associate with and how you attack the enemy, but the fact that they're actively invading your country means inaction is not an option. The more unambiguously heroic missions of the medical or fire services. Another look at various castaway scenarios, whether in space, time or both, where if you don't work together and figure out a way of securing basic resources you'll starve soon enough. The much more open-ended scenario of a mobile business, where sometimes people will call you up with cases, but you may also have to do some advertising and investigative legwork of your own to get enough jobs to make a living. One where you're a politician, trying to do the best to juggle all the competing demands from your constituents, … or not bothering and fending off the flak for your corruption. The unique roleplaying opportunities and constraints of being prisoners, probably better suited to a smaller group. Another reminder that even though we complain about too many shows these days being remakes, there are lots of shows from the past that haven't been remade and might be worth investigating, see if they're worth reappraisal. For every one that went into syndication there are dozens that were cancelled after a single season and hundreds that only made it to the pilot stage. Find one with a particularly unique premise and see if you can do it better.



slade's corners: As part of the creation of the Encyclopedia Magica, they asked us to submit some new magical items. Here's a collection of the various one-use items they received, that might save the day once, but won't change the whole tone of your campaign long-term. Good luck getting your PC's to actually use them instead of hoarding them in the inventory until the very final boss of the campaign.

Cloaks of Damage Absorption add an extra buffer of short term HP until they fall apart. They probably won't last high level adventurers very long.

Dust to Dust finishes off anything that's been reduced to 0 hit points but refuses to die, or destroys the body of dead things to prevent resurrection. Exceedingly handy against trolls and other powerful regenerators when you can't be bothered to research their specific weakness.*
*(probably will not work against the Tarrasque)

Instant Door Seeds create a convenient means of escape thrown against any wall. Elminster is smart enough to take inspiration from looney tunes cartoons and make them selective in who they admit as well for extra convenience.

Combat Rations keep you fully fed for three days on one meal. At 1,000gp per pop, investing in mundane rations and a bag of holding will probably be cheaper in the long run for a really extended trip.

Wings of the Mayfly give you flight for 24 hours before shrivelling and dropping off. Longer than a potion or spell, so use that time well and save sleep for later.

Copy Paper is basically just real life carbon paper, only better. Meh. Not the most impressive way to end proceedings.



An issue with lots of laundry lists of stuff and regular columns plugging away in a formulaic way, making it rather a slog to get through. Quite a bit of it would be useful in actual play, but we're once again hitting the point where 2e was too much of the same old same old for me, and it would read better to people who haven't been through this before repeatedly. Let's see if next issue has any of their esoteric setting delves that do still hold interest for me.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 107: May 1995



part 1/5



32 pages. Initially, this could be any old elf from a generic fantasy setting on the cover, but look a little closer and more clues become apparent. How many elves have a walkman? And the shape of the skull on that staff, that's the real giveaway for connoisseurs of physiognomy. It's time for a bit of shadowrunning, chummers. Time to hit the streets, get the job done while taking precautions against the inevitable treachery of Mr Johnson to earn another day's living.



Notes From HQ: After years of the staff staying fairly stable, they have a second big changeover just a few months after the first. Dave Gross moves up to Dungeon. Wolfgang moves up to Dragon, where we already know he won't stay for more than a few months. And complete newbie Duane Maxwell, who I can't find much info on by googling, takes the editor slot here. He has some credits on 3e books, particularly the Forgotten Realms ones, so he obviously sticks around with the company for a while, but whether he'll stay with Polyhedron for any length of time or bring in any particularly interesting changes remains to be seen. Another reminder that things were becoming increasingly turbulent behind the scenes back then. Many old guard will wind up leaving, many new faces will come in, only a few of which will have the constitution for the long hours and low pay of working on RPG's long term. Who'll be next to crack or jump ship for a better offer?



Forgotten Deities: Our god this month is a relatively familiar one, as he's already been the big bad of multiple novels and a computer game. Moander the rotlord, killer of plants and spawner of weird fungal hybrids. Now there's a god you'd have to be a real idiot to serve, as not only is the spell selection he grants priests extremely limited, the transformations he forces them to undergo are even more extreme than Ibrandul. Instead of just scaly skin, his seeds completely replace your internal organs, letting him control your body or kill you by accelerated rotting at any time. Since he only grants powers to chaotic evil people, who generally do not react well to this kind of obsessive micromanagement, you can see why he wound up losing repeatedly and dying to heroes like Alias & co. Anyone attracted to his credo while he slumbers will rapidly develop buyers remorse when he awakens and they find themselves forced to obey his every whim, probably in a suboptimal manner, because even if they can't betray him at this point, they won't be rewarded for using their own initiative either. Any well-informed diabolical power seeker would pick a god that appreciates them as a minion a little better.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 107: May 1995



part 2/5



slade's corners: We finish off the disposable magic item contest winners with a much smaller second half. Obviously one of those instances where they had to shift stuff around and use little articles like this to make the overall amount of content & page count line up.

Cat Talismans of Nine Lives are another of those items that save your life, but don't heal any damage beyond that, which means you can burn through all 9 uses in a few rounds if up against enemies with multiple attacks. It's not the best way to implement the concept mechanically.

Self-Attaching Buttons do exactly what it says on the tin, so you don't waste time replacing them in a dungeon situation where light is limited and wandering monsters are checked for every turn. Trying to run away with your pants falling down is a particularly humiliating way to end an adventure.



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: This column continues to crawl through the alphabetical list of Turmish towns, getting from P-R this month. Peldrathan's Pool, protected by priests of Eldath who attack looters with high speed spinning wheels of bones. Many a more gothic priesthood would like the details of that particular spell. The gnomish town of Quorngar, where there might be treasure buried somewhere beneath the roads or cellars, but the owners will charge any wandering adventurers trying to dig on their property through the nose. The rough and tumble mining town of Ravilar's Cloak, haunted by an intelligent magical helm that seems to be more benign than Thentia's revolutionary sword, but still has it's own mysterious agenda that it can't share simply because it can't talk or write. And finally, the fittingly named village of Regalia, which is the place for any royal of refinement across the Realms to have their items of office crafted. This obviously means lots of opportunity for escort missions, as there's lots of valuable stuff coming and going from here in various states of completion, plus the fees to pay for it, which are also pretty high. So this collection is pretty high on thinking about the logistics of a world where adventurers are common, and how the people trying to live in the places they're passing through would react to that, not always positively. For every one that's cheering the heroes on, there's several who want to make a profit off them, or would just prefer the quiet life. The trick is to make those obstacles further interesting adventures in themselves rather than boring roadblocks.



Dispel Confusion: Only a single question for them this month, asking which official settings have psionics in. At this rate the column'll be dead again soon. Mystara & Krynn don't have any psionic natives, but alien visitors or their descendants may have out of context tricks. They used to be unknown in the Forgotten Realms, but are rapidly growing more common since the Time of Troubles. They have a long rich history on Greyhawk, albeit not quite as common or well understood as magic. They are surprisingly well-studied in some Ravenloft domains though, within the limits of anything planar travel related simply not working, and other powers inviting madness or corruption. Athas of course has them far more common and accepted than magic. And Spelljammer & Planescape are big places all over the place in psionic frequency, but don't expect them to shock or confound people in a cosmopolitan place like Sigil. Pretty wide variety. Now if only they could increase the variety of what other other classes are allowed and how they're handled in different settings as well.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 107: May 1995



part 3/5



Virtual Seattle: A third new Living setting this year?! They really are stepping the pace up. Unlike the Living Jungle, we have heard a few rumblings about Virtual Seattle in previous months, as they hashed out the details behind the scenes and persuaded the RPGA heads that it was worth supporting officially, but here's where they're making the big push to get players. It does have to be said that Shadowrun is particularly well suited to the linear mission-based style of adventures that they prefer in here. All your PC's have to be SINless shadowrunners living in Seattle, unable to get an above-board job because you don't have a legal ID. This means you do literally need to stick to the shadows if you want to survive, and keep on scrabbling for your next job, even if you do have some cool big guns stashed away for missions, because if the police stop you they can be as brutal as they like. On the plus side, you all know Ms Claudia Tyger, a prominent fixer who will be your agent, giving a good IC reason why you're assembled into different teams every mission with people you don't know and hopefully filtering out the worst of the treacherous Mr Johnson problem. So this is all much more tightly written than any of the D&D Living settings in terms of spelling out expectations for what you'll be doing, how you'll be doing it and making sure your characters have a clear reason to be going on adventures. It's also much stricter in terms of looking at all the material from the supplements so far and telling you which bits are allowed at character generation, which may be allowed later on if you discover it in an adventure, and which definitely will not be. It seems like this is a case where the passionate amateurs are doing better than the people for whom this is a full time job because they genuinely care about the details of what they're making. A very interesting development that I'm much more optimistic will get further follow-ups than the Living Jungle.



Born To Run: Having spelled out the general details of the setting and how it'll differ from a home game, they go into more detail about character generation here. Everyone starts with decent competency in computer skills and street smarts, to ensure that people can engage with the basics of finding jobs without blundering around like a dumbass in seedy bars and getting shanked or falling for a basic sting operation. They're also more generous than usual with languages, obviously not wanting the hassle of PC's not being able to communicate with one-another. They do intend to be quite strict with tracking lifestyle costs and need for medical treatment if injured though, which will eat into your ability to hoard your nuyen. So this actually makes characters better in some ways than going strictly by the book, rather than just slapping on restrictions to the more broken gear & magic, and seems to have a clear idea of what kind of game they want to encourage. This is actually quite exciting to read about. Hopefully that extra care at the start'll pay off and they won't need to add on more restrictions later, apart from as a response to new supplements.



Primed Runners: If you don't have the patience for all that point juggling and just want to get down to the action, here's five pregens for you to use as is or engage in minor ability shuffling to make your own. Sorcerer, Shaman, Physical Adept, Samurai and Rigger. Just pick a race, add on the appropriate modifiers and you're good to go. In the process they remind us that magic-using characters need a lot more XP to reach their full power than muggles in this system. Let's hope they'll be running enough adventures that you can make some progress and they won't put an artificial cap and force you to make a new one if you survive more than a few years.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 107: May 1995



part 4/5



Gothic Heroes: From heroes of Science!!!, to heroes of … baseball? I guess if you're a bunch of everymen who've just realised you're in a horror story, someone who's good at throwing balls and whacking things with a bat would be good to have in a pinch. So here's stats for Adrian Constantine Anson, Denton True Young, Wee Willie Keeler and Ed Delhanty. All are statted as mid level tradesmen with Lawful Good alignments, ignoring whatever personal flaws they had like being racist, alcoholics, cheaters, etc. There's very little variation in their selection of weapon or nonweapon proficiencies either; surely at least one of them had an interesting hobby beyond their baseball playing that research would have turned up? There are some mentions of how each could be tied into the supernatural, but unlike the last two entries, they feel pretty shoehorned in. So this series continues to present a weirdly whitewashed view of the past, particularly for a horror game, where delving into the darkness of human nature and then further exaggerating it is the point. Not very impressive on either the historical or the mechanical accuracy fronts.



Weasel Games: Lester turns his attention to the weasel possibilities in the latest craze - Collectible Card Games. Since they're usually one on one fights, the more obvious weasel possibilities of making alliances with other players then betraying them at opportune moments is less of an issue. But there are more subtle possibilities. The first one is the psychology of mystery, intimidation and bluffing. You can reveal some aspects of your deck to show the other players just how many badass rare cards you've collected. You can keep your cards close to your chest so they've got no idea what they're up against until they start. You can hint at what kind of deck you'll be playing then pull a bait and switch, bringing more than you can use in one go and varying things each round of a tournament. The other big one is really getting into the trading part of the metagame experience, haggling for the best deal with friends and conventiongoers. How do you convince people to part with something that'll be a big upgrade for you when combined with other cards, while giving away stuff that's of no use? Whatever the rules of the game, the skills needed to do that are universally applicable once you've mastered them. This shows he's still learning new things, and didn't just write these columns all in one go and trickle them out later. When you're a game designer, it's important to stay knowledgable about the competition, even in related fields, see what you could use to improve your own games. D&D 3e will definitely show CCG influence with the emphasis on character builds, for better or worse, so we know he's not the only person in the office thinking like that.



The Living Galaxy: Roger's advice this month is very fitting with TSR's current policy of putting metaplot in all their settings. Don't make your own settings too static. Both ones where everything is safe and utopian and ones where evil is ubiquitous and apparently unbeatable give the players little room to actually do anything. Without that, the campaign is unlikely to last. Look at real world history. There have been plenty of evil dictatorships, but they usually have some form of resistance movement and always wind up falling apart in the end. Sparta seemed to have the most badass warriors in the ancient world, but without the logistics to back it up, they got their asses kicked by the persians. Not too controversial a statement. The trick, as ever is sticking the landing so it makes sense with what came before and doesn't ruin the setting for further adventures, which TSR had decidedly mixed results with when changing their settings. I guess it's much easier with a home campaign where you know all the players personally than an official one where thousands of people are playing it differently in different places, so you don't know what changes will screw up their game and a small percentage is going to whine whatever you do.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 107: May 1995



part 5/5



A Few Good Rangers: New Kits? In this newszine? I know that kind of crunch is more a Dragon thing, but I'm still surprised we've got halfway through 2e with only a single lacklustre one so far. I guess that's probably due to the changes in management. Dave's time in Dragon is noticeably higher on little crunchy articles filled with new monsters, spells, etc than the first half of the 90's as well. Let's see how these turn out in terms of flavour and mechanical balance.

Deep Rangers are explorers and protectors of cave ecosystems. This gives them a perfect toolkit for a dungeon delving adventurer, at the cost of all but one of their nonweapon proficiency slots. They're still probably coming out ahead overall powerwise, but it's not a complete no-brainer, especially if the DM baits & switches and most of your adventures turn out to be overland or urban ones.

Desert Rangers, on the other hand are all bonus, getting a boosted spell selection, stealth skills, and obviously desert survival abilities handy for the whole group, with the supposed penalty of attracting assassins irked by their do-gooding ways just more opportunities for XP. Like Swashbucklers or Bladesingers, they're strictly for cheesy high power campaigns that don't care about balance and just want fast-paced action.



Testing the Mettle: We finish things off with a surprisingly ambitious new set of optional rules for those of you who want more horror focussed games. Ravenloft already has Fear & Horror checks, but they don't last long. What if you want a more Call of Cthulhu situation where people acquire permanent phobias and tics as a result of the horrible stuff they encounter? Well, here you go then. This definitely wouldn't have appeared in here under the old management because that kind of optional rule isn't allowed in tournament adventures, so it's of no use to their core audience, but they seem to be diversifying into more general gaming material lately, as the kits in the last article also show. The kind of thing that works better in systems built around it rather than trying to shoehorn it into D&D, where you naturally increase exponentially in power over a campaign and go through lots of enemies in the process without any permanent harm, but is still interesting to see here as a change of pace. I'm very unlikely to use it myself, but I have no objection to it being here.



One of those issues where the special feature dominates the issue, expanding what the RPGA does for it's users once again and hoping enough of them take up the offer to make it sustainable. The other features are also interesting, showing a definite shift in the kind of articles they're accepting and publishing. Time to move on and see what sticks, and what falls by the wayside in the next few issues as the staff responsible come and go.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 53: May/Jun 1995



part 1/5



80 pages. Polyhedron is making big plans, venturing off to both the victorian era and the cyberpunk future, but Dungeon is still firmly down in the … well, dungeon, fighting another load of mouldering undead. You could have just left them there and they probably wouldn't have bothered anyone, but no, gotta get those grave goods back into economic circulation and prevent deflation. Let's see where this crop of adventures falls on the greed/heroics spectrum, and if they'll attempt anything more ambitious involving any kind of continuity.



Editorial: Willie Walsh celebrates his 20th adventure published in here. Despite being fairly well known and getting fanmail from people who've played his adventures and want more, he still gets more than half the adventures he submits rejected, which means there's enough other ones in his archive to make a pretty big book now. (which would probably sell quite decently if he were to update them to a more recent edition or an OSR retroclone and publish it as an OGL product) Some of them were serious, some were comedic, and many fell somewhere in the middle, but they were mostly of above average memorability. So this is a reminder that becoming the most prolific adventure writer here was not easy work, and the editors still expect him to put the effort in when coming up with new ones, not coast on his reputation. This means you're still in with a chance as a completely unknown writer, you just have to send in a good enough idea to get the editor's attention. Will anyone ever manage to catch up to him, or is his lead too great, like Ed's in their other two magazines? Let's hope it's fun finding out.



Letters: First letter is one in support of Dungeon reusing adventures already published in older editions, particularly if they're updated and expanded. It can be pretty difficult to get hold of them in these pre .pdf times and many players would still appreciate them.

Second wonders what happened to their collectible trading cards? They stopped doing them after 1993 because the last batch didn't sell that well, and new lines which actually have games attached to them like Magic: the Gathering and Spellfire are superseding their place in the gaming ecosystem.

Third is the usual round of mistakes spotted in recent adventures and the resulting errata.

Fourth wonders what to do with unbalanced parties. If you track XP strictly they'll even out pretty quickly due to the exponential level requirements. They also have a fair few solo adventures by now, so run the lower level ones through those on their own to help them catch up.

Fifth wants more Forgotten Realms and Council of Wyrms material. The first, you'll get plenty more of over the years. The second, not so much.

Sixth is particularly in love with Al-Qadim at the moment, and obviously wants more adventures set there. I think they might just about be able to manage that.

Seventh also wants lots of setting specific material, particularly Forgotten Realms again and Planescape. Maybe they do have enough generic adventures by now and can afford to specialise a little more.

Eighth has their name redacted, and is from someone who's had two adventure submissions rejected and thinks they're a bunch of unfair nepots. Just polish up your writing style, try to come up with slightly less overdone ideas and try again. As they said in the editorial, even the most frequently published regulars are still batting less than 50% acceptance rate. A thick skin is the most important thing to success in this field, far more than natural talent.

Ninth praises them for putting their own twist on Shakespeare. Even if it's not original, it makes for a more memorable adventure than ones that supposedly are.

Tenth is from someone excited to see his childhood friend finally get into print here. How many knockbacks did it take before he finally pulled it off?

11th praises Bandits of Bunglewood for taking a gang of common monsters and making them all fleshed out individuals you can roleplay. You'll be seeing more of that in the future.

12th asks what happened to Castle Hart in the Greyhawk Wars. It sustained some damage when attacked by Iuz's troops, but still remains in heroic hands … for now. It sure could use the help of some heroes to make sure it stays that way, hint hint.

13th is from David Howery, also praising them for taking inspiration from Shakespeare, and talking about other sources he's used to create adventures from. Even the best artists steal, they just hide it better.

14th wants more Dark Sun adventures, which they badly need. Probably not going to be impressed with their future output then, as they wind up with fewer than Spelljammer by the time the line ends.

15th praises them for increasing the amount of backstory in recent years. His players respond to adventures with nonexistent or inconsistent stories with great mockery. Just make sure you don't go too far in the opposite direction and start writing all the stories before play as well.

16th is notable forum founder Eric Noah, who's also pleased by their version of The Tempest, but worries about copyright issues. It's well over a century old, so no worries about that, and besides, you can't copyright ideas, only specific implementations, so you can continue to file the serial numbers off more recent source material and send it in as adventures.

17th is another person who's very grateful that the magazine is around, because they simply don't have time to write their own adventures between studying at college and a job on top of that. You might have time if you weren't also running 4 different campaigns a week. There is such a thing as quality over quantity.

18th and finally, setting a new record for number of letters in a single issue, is someone who wants to know more about L'Trel. If you're lucky, T.J.T. Zuvich will send in some more adventures set there. For now, the precise details remain unknown to all but him and his own group. Another one that would probably have more than a few sales if updated to a later edition and released under the OGL.

 

[Davies]

Editorial: Willie Walsh celebrates his 20th adventure published in here. Despite being fairly well known and getting fanmail from people who've played his adventures and want more, he still gets more than half the adventures he submits rejected, which means there's enough other ones in his archive to make a pretty big book now. (which would probably sell quite decently if he were to update them to a more recent edition or an OSR retroclone and publish it as an OGL product)

Unfortunately, as Mr. Walsh seems to have dropped off the Internet in 2014, I suspect he may no longer be with us.

 

[el-remmen]

Unfortunately, as Mr. Walsh seems to have dropped off the Internet in 2014, I suspect he may no longer be with us.

I hope you're wrong.

He and I had a few email/forum exchanges back in the day. Lovely fellow.

 

[Davies]

I hope you're wrong.

As do I.