TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 127: December 1997



part 3/5



HOM Sector For The Hol-l-DAYs: Paranoia is already filled with pop culture references, so doing a christmas themed article for it makes perfect sense. Of course, the contents themselves are as internally contradictory as ever, ensuring that everyone is technically a traitor for not spending at least 110% of their yearly credits on presents, and always giving more than they receive. You'd better watch out, because Santa Clone and the Santabots take the festivities very seriously. If they give you a present, you'd better show your appreciation for it, then pass it on before it explodes or make sure it's delivered to the proper address. Their newer Living settings may be increasingly serious and plot driven, but if you're playing Paranoia at a convention, chances are it's strictly Zap style shenanigans where most of your clones will be gone by the end of the 4 hours. This is all very much in that spirit, a bunch of plot hooks thrown together with no real attempt at coherence, but it'd still be fun seeing how players navigate their impossible demands. Not deep, but it doesn't make me groan like some of their attempts at comedy, these ideas seem entirely usable in a one-shot.



(un)Conventional Holidays: If you're starting a convention, you can't expect to go from nothing to thousands of attendees overnight, particularly in a small town. It's probably best to set your expectations accordingly and not even try to organise a full-weekend extravaganza, but go for a single day event instead. As they're also doing with the big conventions, probably the biggest decision is if you want to try and cram 4 4 hour slots for games into the day, or go for 3 with gaps between them so things are a little less exhausting and pressurised. Of course, the rules of the venue you're at might make the decision for you, as many will want you to be packed up and gone well before midnight. Don't expect to make a big profit, but if you charge a few dollars for attendance and promote decently it should be possible to break even at least. Another basic little piece on logistics that shows that they know they need to build up the grassroots stuff if they want to grow roleplaying as a whole, not just put on one or two big events a year. That's what'll get people buying books, playing for years to come and turning other people onto gaming in the future.



The Saving Grace of Valrenwood: It's nice to go out adventuring, but oh so much nicer to come home. At least, until you find out evil forces have wormed their way into your hometown and are planning on taking it over & transforming everyone into monsters. Not that you have any real emotional connection with them in a single session tournament adventure where you're all playing pregens, but that just makes it more of a challenge for your acting muscles. Anyway, you get home to find out that there's a sickness spreading through the place, mostly affecting the farm animals so far, but now the Elder's daughter is infected as well. There's plenty of rumors about what might be happening, most of them false, but at least they give you some ideas of where to start the investigation. Before long, you'll run across some Histachii, which if you're a knowledgable gamer will immediately let you figure out the big bad is a yuan-ti. Turns out the High Theocrat is secretly a Yuan-Ti pureblood, and if not stopped will drug everyone and do a big ritual in the ruined chapel to turn them into Histachii. Can you defeat him and his minions, and will you find the clutch of Yuan-Ti eggs hiding in the cellar of the chapel, or will the village face another round of trouble next year? No great surprises or particularly clever twists here. Less linear than most polyhedron ones in the order of encounters, but quite railroady in terms of dictating your reactions in the boxed text in many of the individual encounters. Overall this is about average by Polyhedron standards, which still means it's way below the Dungeon average and not one I feel any desire to use, but it doesn't do anything particularly annoying either. Just another day at the conventions.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 127: December 1997



part 4/5



The Day Of Grace: The cover story is actually pretty short, a single page, system free bit of plot hookery. Once upon a time, the Lady of Pain didn't kill a little girl who went up to her and talked to her. This was such an out of character event that they made the anniversary of it a regular celebration where people are supposed to be nicer than usual (which some factions are better at than others) and they have a big parade in the Lady's Ward. Easy enough to incorporate into your game, this reminds us that Sigil might be a big city filled with flavour, but that isn't it's primary purpose and everything that happens there is a sideshow to the inscrutable agenda of the Lady. She's obviously not a completely uncaring monster, given how often she mazes people who trouble her rather than just killing them, but if she felt like it, she could just get rid of everyone like you'd fumigate a bug-infested house and that has to inspire some existential dread in the smarter inhabitants. Being a bit superstitious seems an entirely rational reaction under the circumstances. If you want the planes to remain more than just bigger, weirder dungeons to delve it's important to keep some of that cosmic sense of scale in your campaign.



Winter Fantasy: They put the preregistration form for winter fantasy in last issue. Now it's time to promote it again with basically the same information, but this time in prose form for those of you who find it easier to digest that way. Tournaments slots have been reduced to 3 per day with 2 hour gaps between, so you don't have to choose between maxing out your gaming time and seeing the various seminars, special events and awards ceremony. See the previews for their upcoming releases such as Alternity and the new Marvel Super Heroes game. Find out if you've got what it takes to play Magic: the Gathering professionally. That would have been lower on the bill if it appeared at all under TSR management. There might be further changes to come, but it looks like they'll be trying to maintain their special relationship with this convention for now.



Decath10n: Despite all the challenges it's faced, they're still going to do another decathlon next year. But as they're in a generally more experimental mood, they're going to do some revisions to try and boost engagement. They gradually added on categories over the years until you had way more than 10 options to choose from, many of which hardly got any entrants at all. Now they're slimming it down to just 3 writing events, three service events, and any 4 tournaments out of the many they're running throughout the year. None of that option paralysis, just enter all 10 of them if you want a decent shot at winning. Another little sign that WotC is going to be a lot more happy to dramatically change things to make them profitable, and willing to cut them entirely if they still don't work. Will the decathlons still be going come the start of the next millennium? Like the membership drives, it's definitely something to keep an eye on over the course of the year.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 127: December 1997



part 5/5



A World of Your Own: Roger continues directly on from last issue once again, trying to figure out how to get Forgotten Realms players to take the commute from the planet to the Tears of Selune. Fortunately, there's already an adventure for that. Stardock, where you take a portal from Undermountain to save Halaster, because as annoying as he is, Undermountain without him managing it is even worse. Once up there, it's time to take elements from Realmspace, Rock of Braal, Dungeon issue 28, Dragon 184, 214 & 232, the 1996 annual and the complete spacefarer's guide to turn it into less of a day trip and more of an extended campaign which'll leave them wanting to stay up in space after the initial challenge is over. Another issue going quite heavy on Gotta Collect 'em All!, reminding us that even less popular D&D settings have more material than most whole other RPG systems if you scour the old sourcebooks and magazines and put it together. It's just a matter of if you can remember what's relevant and track it down. If not, just make up something of your own to fill the gaps, it's not as if anyone's marking you down for not sticking to particularly obscure bits of canon. About average quality overall for this column.



Behind the Screens: They retired A Few of Our Favorite Things as a column title last year, but this is clearly a continuation of the same set of GM'ing advice, this time featuring Ed Stark. Give every NPC a name and basic description so they can be recognised from the faceless crowd. What NPC's do is more important in actual play than coming up with extensive backstories. Don't make them unrealistically brave or cowardly, play them like real people, not just things to fight. Everything you improvise, note down so you can play an NPC consistently next time. Nothing I disagree with, but as basic and rehashed as ever. Rebranding has done nothing to make this column any more useful to me.



Like last issue, this is mainly interesting in seeing what they've changed, what they wanted to change but walked back, what they didn't really change that much but have rebranded because they've got to be seen doing something and what has simply stayed the same. It's obvious that they're feeling the pressure a lot more than the bigger magazines. Time to head onto next year to see if there'll be another short period of stability before they get absorbed into Dungeon, or it'll be all rushing from one idea to the next trying to stay afloat.

 

[(un)reason]

The Raven's Buff Trumpeter 2-1: January 1998



4 pages. The Heart of Bane looks like it'll continue to be the main macguffin for several months to come, causing all kinds of problems with the city. On top of spreading generalised corruption, it's also attracting followers of evil gods who want it for themselves. Fortunately they're not any kind of unified front, but open fighting in the streets between followers of Bane, Cyric & Iyachtu Xvim is a nuisance for everyone even if they do wind up killing each other off. Despite this danger, they're also instituting a program of austerity to rebalance the city finances after the war, selling off weapons and cutting back the city watch. I guess that leaves saving the day in the hands of adventuring groups rather than the government. (which is as it should be) Hope you're ready to deal with problems ranging in seriousness from evil gnomes to demonic rampages. Let's hope that whatever metaplot developments this year brings, they aren't so overbearing they prevent people from having a decent choice of adventures.



Living City Q&A changes hands, putting Cisco Lopez-Fresquet in charge of sageing, while also taking the time to talk about the many other new co-ordinators for various aspects of Raven's Bluff life. All of them have email addresses (mostly @aol.com ones) so you can easily contact them from anywhere in the world. Having their print arm out of commission for a year has really pushed them to exploit new technology in a way that would have happened slower if at all if TSR were still in charge. Let's hope all these people can manage to communicate effectively amongst themselves and have a system to deal with what happens when different ones make contradictory rulings.

Does Haste require a system shock roll for aging you? (Yes. Your odds of survival if you use it regularly are very low indeed. Please do not cast it on your enemies in an attempt to exploit this.)

What gods can half-elves be specialty priests of? (depends which side of the family raised them)

Can dual-class fighters continue to improve their unarmed combat skills? (no)

What do you do if a PC does evil things? (Paladins lose their powers straight away. Other ones need to show a repeated pattern of evilness before you remove them from play for good, so put a note on their record for future judges.)

If priests of Illmater memorise Call upon Holy Might in a regular slot rather than cast it as a bonus spell, does it require rest? (yes)

What gods can I follow as a Crusader or Monk? (considerably more than as a specialty priest, but still not all of them)

Can I use the quest spells from Prayers of the Faithful? (no)

Can a multi-class fighter/specialty priest wear armor if single-class priests of that god are forbidden? (no)

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 66: Jan/Feb 1998



part 1/5



80 pages. It's the middle of the night, clouds are gathering, our ship is sinking, and I'm still using a lantern rather than a continual light spell. Sea adventures continue to be a pretty stiff challenge for adventurers who haven't stocked up on water-breathing magic and picked equipment that won't be ruined by the trip. Let's see what level range and type of campaign the contents of this issue will best cater to.



Letters: First letter thinks they don't do enough haunted house adventures. Send more in now! I can think of many rarer types of adventure but that's an entirely valid desire.

Second simply wants lots of variety and for people to not get too obsessed with historical accuracy. Do you really want to die of dysentery post dungeon-crawl because you didn't properly sanitise the goblin's treasure?

Third is also sick and tired of the endless generic vs specific arguing and also wonders what happened to Wolf Baur. He moved on up, but he's got several more interesting adventures to release in here. Keep your eyes peeled, because otherwise the ghouls will do it for you.

Fourth thinks that Dungeon is much better bang for your buck than most standalone adventures. Twice the cost for often smaller page counts? Not worth it.

Fifth is relieved that Dungeon is back, but also apprehensive about what the new management will bring. Knowing how you become a playtester would also be nice. Just send a SASE and rough idea of what kind of adventures you like, then make sure you run it with your group and send the feedback within a few months.

Sixth likes their comedy gnomes. I might be annoyed by them, but they definitely have their place in the magazine and at least they're usually irritating in an interesting way.

Seventh has praise for both the writing and illustrations of Last Dance. Good horror creeps up on you, and this one did that quite effectively.

Eighth also praises Last Dance, as well as the comedy of the mad chefs. There's room for both at their table.

Ninth and finally, someone who wants more Birthright and absolutely no Fifth Age stuff. Just can't get rid of those system purists, can we.



Editorial: It's been all change around here. We've already got a good sense of Chris's style from the many adventures he's submitted. Now Jesse Decker the new editorial assistant introduces himself. Even someone as hyperactive as Chris needs someone to make sure everything's ready when he comes in so he can get through more work and focus on actually editing other people's submissions. If you don't do that, he might actually go through on his repeated threat to fill an entire issue with his own adventures. Fortunately, Jesse already has experience with this, being one of the few people who actually used the hireling rules properly in his own campaign. Adventurers who reinvest their money in the economy, hiring servants to create a support structure for their adventures and eventually building their own keep will be much more popular than ones who put it all in a portable hole and continue with the murderhobo lifestyle, only with more plusses on their magic items. So he's probably exaggerating the way their relationship works for comedic purposes, but with some underlying truth beneath it. Every Batman needs their Alfred, every Stonehill Boulderdash needs their Bob. Some day he may be the guy in charge, but for now he's content with his position. And if you're not, all the more reason to pretend to be right up to the point of your sudden but inevitable betrayal. We should be able to maintain some playfulness in the adventures as well under the guidance of this dynamic duo.

 

[Ancalagon]

I have issue 66, looking forward to your comments

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 66: Jan/Feb 1998



part 2/5



Enormously Inconvenient: Sometimes, you get shrunk down so what would normally be trivial obstacles become lengthy terrifying encounters. More often, someone gets the bright idea of making small creatures bigger, which can really upset the ecosystem if the changes are permanent and hereditary. Fortunately, that's not the case this time and there's no big cackling villain to defeat. It's just a broken beaker of plentiful potions leaking growth potion into a river, causing the animals downstream to grow in unpredictable ways. While on a journey, you'll come across giant ants eating a dryad's tree, causing her great distress. Save her and she'll give you the appropriate hint to follow the nearby river upstream and save the rest of the forest. Along the way, you'll encounter all manner of other giant animals, often engaged in humorous role reversals as the amount of growth has been inconsistent and some prey are now much larger than their natural predator. Giant frogs, giant raccoons, giant beavers, giant buffalo, giant carnivorous plants, all good clean enlarged fun. Take the broken pieces of the beaker out of the river and things'll return to normal in a few days, plus you'll have the gratitude of the fae of the area. All pretty easy to understand and use in nearly any campaign, apart from super serious and gritty ones, where it might ruin the tone. Another one to put in the solid but unexceptional category.



Side Treks - Avenging Murik: Chris might not have the time to come up with epic adventures like he used to, but a side trek? No problem to whip that up in an evening off. A pair of dwarves ask you for help in dealing with a troublesome stone giant who killed their companion. Seems like a simple enough problem. The twist is that one of the dwarves is actually a werebadger who instigated the unprovoked attack in the first place, and will try to use the fight to steal the giant's gold and leave the rest of you in the lurch. If the players are paying attention they can make peace with the stone giant and go after the real bad guy instead, which gets you more XP and less treasure, but this is 2e so you weren't gaining XP for gold anyway. A very 2e feeling little encounter that's all about reminding us that who the good and bad guys are isn't always clear, and if you attack anything you encounter unprovoked maybe you're the real monsters. Another one that's easily usable pretty much anywhere, anytime, competently written, but nothing particularly exceptional or original.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 66: Jan/Feb 1998



part 3/5



The Sunken Shadow: Turns out the cover story is pretty accurately represented by the cover, as it's aimed at starting level characters, so you will indeed be low on magic aside from some potions of water breathing provided by your employer. That means you'll have to use your brains to figure out and deal with the other supernatural elements. The PC's are hired by a Paladin to retrieve the treasure from a shipwreck, with a particular emphasis on a gold armband that looks like an eel. Since paladins aren't supposed to care about material gain, this should immediately be cause for suspicion that this won't be just a simple retrieval mission. Any suspicions will be further compounded by the ship losing a crewman each night of the journey to a massive eel-like creature. Unsurprisingly, the armband is cursed, and the paladin it's latest victim, turning him into a ravenous were-eel each night unable to resist his hungers and trying to make up for it in the day. To get the good ending you'll need to realise that and destroy the armband rather than giving it to him or falling prey to it's supernatural beauty and trying to keep it yourselves. Another very 2eish feeling one where you're strongly encouraged to take the heroic path and not take every mission purely on your own potential material gain. If you do nothing but those you'll stay poor forever and never get the chance to move to domain management even if you hit high enough level. It's no wonder that playstyle has been eroded from all sides over the years. So this is another adventure that isn't bad on it's own merits, but there's a lot of diminishing returns seeing the same idea several times in quick succession.



Side Treks - Swing Shot!: After several fairly familiar ideas, here we have one they've only done once before in Dragon, and not at all in here. A bridge over a chasm in the underdark, as seen previously in issue 131's underdark special, which means there's no way around unless you can fly and monsters can easily use it as a choke point for ambushes. Only instead of Gargoyles and Ogres, this time you're facing orcs and a giant snapping turtle in the water at the bottom if you get knocked off during the fight. They do have a shaman that'll use their spells intelligently to make the encounter more dangerous, but despite saying they're aimed at similar level parties, this one is much smaller and easier than it's precursor from a decade ago, reminding us that adventures have become much more forgiving in general over the years. Underdark exploring is common enough that both are entirely valid and could be used in the same campaign at different points, but this is definitely the weaker of the two in terms of both challenge and inventiveness. We could stand to see more iterations on the same idea, but they'd have to really put the work in to come up with different layouts and combinations of creatures to prevent diminishing returns.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 66: Jan/Feb 1998



part 4/5



Operation Manta Ray: Or maybe this is the cover story, since it's a second nautical one in the same issue. Yeesh, what was I saying about diminishing returns? Still, at least it's one that requires sneakiness rather than straight-up paladin style heroics. You get hired by the Sembian navy for a matter of top secret national security. You need to find your way into Immurk's Hold and rescue their spy in the pirate's midst before enemy forces blow his cover and subject him to unspeakable torture. A direct assault would be suicidal even at high level, as there's literally thousands of them, many spellcasters, plus gargoyles, malenti and magical wards that make entering from air or underwater no cakewalks either. It's time for a heist mission! If you already have a piratical background you might be able to talk your way in, particularly if you have the right kind of tattoos. (or at least know enough to fake them) Of course pirates are always looking for new fresh recruits, so even if you don't look the part you can get in on the bottom if you're willing to undergo the gruelling hazing of the Pirate's Run. However you get in, you'll then have to find your man by process of elimination and a passphrase, (without just going around saying it to everyone, which would raise suspicion pretty quick) which has the potential to lead to a whole bunch of side adventures. Then once you do, there's the additional complication that he's fallen in love with a pirate woman while undercover and doesn't want to leave her, but she's still loyal to the code and unless you have some pretty slick persuasive skills will rat you all out when she finds out her husband has been a double agent all along. This will probably lead to your escape being even more dramatic and perilous than your entry, but in a naturalistic way rather than an inevitable railroad. This adventure contrasts sharply with all the other ones in the issue, presenting a large, open ended, easily expandable scenario full of moral greys and then giving you fairly free reign to solve it yourself rather than having obvious proscribed good and evil solutions. You're probably not getting through it without getting at least a little grubby, but at least you'll be doing it in a way you decided of your own free will, not because your mind is being messed with by an evil magic item. It makes me really wish they were doing more decent sized sandboxes and fewer isolated prefab encounters, which they continue to get worse on as the years go by.



The Petrifying Priestess: Chris was pretty fond of the idea of customising monsters with class levels as a freelancer, so it's no great surprise that he accepted this one, which does exactly what it says on the tin. A medusa which is also a mid-level cleric of Gruumsh, giving her a whole load of extra utility tricks that are particularly handy if she's surrounded by minions, which conveniently she will be unless you scout the area instead of just leaping in and choose your time of attack carefully. Facing her, her maedar boyfriend and her orc minions both living and undead will probably have you outnumbered unless you brought hirelings, and if you only brought one mirror it'll be easily smashed before you can get her to petrify herself. (plus if the boyfriend is still alive, he'll be able to easily turn her back.) A pleasingly tough and very 3eish feeling little scenario where the parts fit together effectively in combat, while still retaining enough 2e focus on their day to day lives and ecological effect that you could solve it in a more sneaky way. A quite forward-thinking bit of writing that I thoroughly approve of, this is easily my favourite adventure of the issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 66: Jan/Feb 1998



part 5/5



Orange and Black: A tiger? A bad guy? But they're so kyooot! Yup, it's time for another adventure in the same issue where what initially seems like just a basic challenge to kill turns out to be a lot more complex. A little kid has gone missing from a village the PC's are passing through, so they'll be asked to rescue him. If you have any skill at tracking at all, you'll soon find him in the lair of said tiger, scared but completely unharmed. Unless you really force the issue or look like you're threatening the boy, the tiger won't attack you, strongly hinting something is up. It's actually a ranger polymorphed into a tiger, losing his intelligence but retaining enough of his former personality to still be kind to kids. If you figure that out, you then need to trap him and take him to a nearby abandoned shrine to have the transformation removed, which unsurprisingly has an undead guardian to beat. So this is yet another one with an obvious evil ending, (kill the tiger) neutral ending, (rescue the boy but leave the tiger alone) and good ending (turn him back, everybody lives Rose!) for you to get depending on your player's smarts and tastes. Very 2eish, but won't fall apart if they make the wrong choices, this is yet another one in the solid but unexceptional league overall.



The Statement of Ownership lurks at the back of the magazine, because unsurprisingly it's not great news. They've dropped to another 6,000 to a mere 23,000, losing a fair bit in both the newsstands and subscriptions. Like their other two magazines, it's time to put in the work of regaining trust by showing they can deliver regularly again and maybe finding ways to promote to potential buyers that TSR couldn't or didn't want to reach.



A lot of short and competently written but dull encounters here, there's nothing here that really offends me taking the adventures in isolation, but put together it's a pretty weak and repetitive collection. We're now hitting the point where 2e had ran out of new ideas and they were still figuring out what to do differently with the next edition. Dragon really upped the number of short crunchy filler articles in this period and it looks like Dungeon will be following suit. You can still get plenty of useful stuff for your game from them but you have to filter more carefully than earlier years. This is one I'm quite comfortable closing the final page on and maybe never opening again.