TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 137: July 1999



part 3/5



Techie Toys for all Ages: Gauss Grenades emit an electromagnetic pulse that thoroughly messes up all electronic gadgets in the area. In Shadowrun, this can be very expensive and potentially lethal if large parts of your body are replaced with cyberware. Adding one to your equipment could well make the difference between success and failure in a run, but make sure you don't catch your decker in the blast radius. There are also larger gauss missiles, which are probably too large and expensive for PC operation, but make good plot devices for you to save the city from.

Tactomorphic Digital Sheathing is silly putty with extreme memory that can be used as a skinsuit by small aliens in the Men in Black universe. Just pour it over your target, give it a quick burst of cold, peel it off and put it on yourself. Accurate right down to the fingerprints, although retinal scans may still be a problem. The putty tries to go up all your orifices, which seems definite cause for a bit of neuralysing if you're not into that. This seems to strike the right balance between useful but also awkward to use and gross for the source material.



Of Sigil and the Sea: A big city like Sigil must have a fairly reliable water supply for it to support so much humanoid life. Yet open bodies of water are conspicuously lacking on the map in either of the sourcebooks dedicated to it. But here's some more info on the biggest one they do have, a 50' wide heavily polluted canal that serves as the coolant and dumping ground for a lot of the industrial stuff in the Lower Ward. The end of it is one of the few places you can easily jump off the edge of the city, which means it's a common destination for the suicidal or in immediate danger to make a quick escape and hope their random destination is better than their life now. A particular type of flower only grows on the little islands at the edge of the estuary, which means it's acquired symbolic meaning for those people seeking a new start. A suspension bridge built over it has become the anchor point for a particularly large and flexible gate, letting ships come in and out of multiple worlds by bringing the correct gate keys. Not every ship is welcome though, and the wreck of an Arcane & Giff ship that somehow annoyed the Lady of Pain sits in the harbor, with no-one foolhardy enough to try and salvage the treasure within. Will your PC's risk being mazed for it? There's also the more mundane docks and industrial stuff that keep supplies moving, (and properly taxed by the Fated) and your typical rumours that some kind of sea beast lurks in the harbour and takes the odd docker or dabus as food. (entirely true) A pretty interesting bit of worldbuilding that packs a bunch of new adventure possibilities into a small space while still leaving room for you to develop them further, this is on much the same quality level as Ed's column, which is high praise. Planescape could definitely do with someone like him regularly championing it's cause.



Horses In Combat: Horses aren't actually that useful in exploring unknown lands. Sure you can get to some places faster, but other terrains they'll be more of a hindrance than a help, plus they spook easily, require carrying a whole load of extra food if not in a place with good vegetation and risk going lame at inopportune moments. But they sure can inflict lots of damage to your enemies if properly trained so some people are willing to put up with all those drawbacks. This piece manages to be a fairly well-balanced look at the cool maneuvers you can pull off with a mount, but also the annoyances involved in their upkeep. You can do the familiar double damage on a charge, they can send people behind them flying with a well-timed double kick, they can rear up and trample, which also lets you use the downward momentum for extra damage with your own weapon. Plus there's the general intimidation factor of towering several feet above your opponents, which shouldn't be underestimated in stopping some fights before they even begin. But remember, all this is only possible if you can form a bond with your mount and communicate clearly with them, otherwise you'll find yourself thrown off or kicked in the nads at an inopportune moment. Mundane, but not useless advice, and it's on a less commonly seen subject so it doesn't feel particularly rehashed. There's room for increasing the amount of mount/pet related content in most D&D campaigns.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 137: July 1999



part 4/5



Mentors, Patrons & Sponsors: Here we go again. Time for some more basic roleplaying advice. It can be a lot quicker and easier to get to the fun part of adventuring if you have someone more powerful giving you a leg up, providing you with equipment, tuition and pointing you in the direction of any quests. But what is the difference between the three titles? A mentor is more likely to be teaching you because they genuinely like you and think you have potential rather than for any monetary reward. A sponsor is more likely to be a shorter term relationship, helping you get into an exclusive organisation. A patron is more likely to be expecting something from you in return for their support, be it a cut of the treasure or the accomplishment of particular heroic deeds. Another of those reminders of how play has changed over the years from just going down into whatever dungeons are there to exploring the personality & backstory of your character and going on missions for NPC's. Yet at the same time, it's a reminder that all that plate mail, 10 foot poles, lamps and whatnot that old school adventurers took for granted didn't just appear from nothing and the average adventurer must have come from a decently advanced society to get hold of all that before even starting play. Not that you can't have interesting adventures taking all those assumptions away, as Athas and Malatra have shown, but you need to either compensate for the power reduction in other ways or recalibrate the degree of dangers they face if you want them to make it past 1st level. Really, this demonstrates the degree of privilege you enjoy as a human. You may not have infravision or inherent spell-like abilities, but you're from a big society that mostly works together and supports each other where most other creatures wouldn't, and that gives you the space to learn things instead of going straight to scrabbling to survive. That has far more of a long-term compound benefit than a few flashy special abilities. So despite being fairly short and basic as an article, this has actually given me quite a bit to think about. It's nice when that happens.



Astral Threats: Since we've already had one planar article this issue, two might seem like overkill, but a lot of multiverses have astral planes and it turns out this is for Shadowrun rather than Planescape. Exploring other universes is still in it's infancy here and there's a lot of dangers to discover, a lot of research to do before you can go there and come back safely. Here's some of them, presented with the usual cynical chatroom banter.

FAB Rounds use sophisticated modern targeting systems to explode a cloud of bacteria in the middle of an astral form, seriously messing up the day of anyone who thinks they can waltz in and do a bit of corporate espionage completely undetected. A very interesting use of previously established setting details to accomplish that goal nonmagically, I strongly approve of this.

Allurers are your basic siren things that assume an attractive shape and hypnotise astral travellers with their singing, keeping you there until you die from running out of essence. Another good reason to have someone watching your back and not be the only spellcaster in a team.

Krabben are elephant sized crab/octopus things that bear a fair amount of resemblance to the thing on the cover of the AD&D manual of the planes, but not quite enough to be copyright liable. They can manifest on the material plane as well, so once you've got their attention there's no easy escape. A serious fight for the whole party whichever arena you choose to fight them in.

Ant Lions also resemble their earthly counterpart, only much larger. They're not quite as terrifying as Krabben in terms of size & power, but somewhat smarter, able to trace your silver cord back to your body and manifest there to attack your companions after chomping you on the astral plane. The more magic levels rise, the more things like this will be found near to earth and the more dangerous casual astral jaunts will become.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 137: July 1999



part 5/5



Recipe for Mutiny: Like last issue, the adventure this time is a single encounter that's designed to liven up a dull bit in a session rather than filling a whole one. The PC's are on a ship voyage when the first mate tries to pull a Starscream and take over. He'll spend several days trying to butter you up, then make his move when crisis strikes. Will you join him or defend the proper chain of command? Either way, it's your basic low level brawl between a bunch of fighty types plus a single spellcaster, where you probably don't want to kill all your enemies whichever side you choose otherwise getting back to land'll be a nightmare. If you break out your unarmed combat rules, grappling or magical immobilisation effects it'll probably go better for you long run. A pretty decent little idea that makes sure it puts names and basic descriptions to all the NPC's so you can get to know them and find out why each picks the side they do, maybe influence the ones that are on the fence. The amount of use you get out of this will be proportional to how long you can string out the roleplaying bit beforehand, so they actually get to know all the various crew members and maybe have some actual attachment to them, making them less likely to go full murderhobo regardless of the consequences. Overall, this one definitely falls on the usable end of the quality spectrum.



Living City Campaign Update: For a good 4 years now, they've refused to put downtime rules into the Living City despite them being a big part of Threads of Legend, saying it would be too much work. Looks like they've finally found someone willing to take on that task. Here's how it's going to work. You can not engage with them at all, in which case you can continue to participate in as many tournaments as you can afford to attend, but not do any downtime stuff. Or you can have 73 fiveday slots, and each adventure & downtime thing you do will consume a certain number of them. Once you've used your whole allocation for the year, you can't do anything else with that character until next year, as all their time is now accounted for. Seems simple enough. Will it turn out that way in practice, and will they have the usual headaches chasing up people who don't do their paperwork properly? As usual, commentary from people who were there at the time and have actual experience using this system is extra welcome.



Not a very impressive themed section this time, but plenty of other useful bits and pieces to make up for it, plus the living city continues to develop in an interesting way. But how long will that continue, since there's a certain big announcement coming up at Gen Con next month. Let's see how they report on that in here and how people react, plus whatever other tournamenty fun they also included over the course of the weekend.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 75: Jul/Aug 1999



part 1/5



92 pages. We've already seen them make a big deal about the return of Monks & Assassins recently in the Scarlet brotherhood book. Now they're trumpeting the return of the anti-paladin on the cover of this issue, which is another pretty strong sign of the direction they're planning to take the next edition in. Shades of grey and winning by talking to your opponents? Not this time. Let's see if going back to the dungeon is fun this time around, or merely formulaic regurgitation of nostalgia.



Editorial: The cover was all about the villain. In sharp contrast, the editorial is all about letting the heroes be awesome. Hero Points have been a part of the Living Jungle & Death campaigns for years now. Monte Cook also likes the idea, but his implementation in his home campaign is much more dramatic, letting you cheat death or perform normally impossible stunts. It all makes for a much more cinematic game style and Chris is all in favour of that. (especially when it's his character that gets to be even more awesome than usual.) Another reminder that many of the upcoming changes have been years in the brewing and what will get to appear in the corebooks next edition and what will be cut and only appear years later in 3rd party books like Arcana Evolved & Ptolus is currently the subject of heated debate in the WotC offices. Slightly more conservative heads will win this time around, sticking to the tactical dungeoncrawling as default playstyle, but there will be plenty of opportunities to experiment and customise once the dust settles. A pretty decent bit of foreshadowing that mentions these things earlier than they did in Dragon, this definitely has more historical significance than the average editorial.



Letters: First letter double nitpicks the one in last issue about druids turning banshees. Apparently, they specifically can do that in celtic campaigns for some reason. The joys of trying to keep track of tons of sourcebooks with different exception-based designs.

Second wants the next adventure series to be set in the Great Glacier. There's a lot of unexplored ground there that you could put all kinds of weird dungeons in. Maybe two per issue as well so it all goes a bit quicker?

Third really doesn't want multiple adventures in a series in the same issue, as that'd destroy it's general utility, but going monthly would be nice, whatever kinds of adventures you prefer.

Fourth also wants them to keep the variety up in each individual issue, and would also like a better idea of just how stiff the competition is for each slot in the magazine. Maybe some league tables or something like Polyhedron has? Chris is happy to give his own acceptance & rejection stats, but spares the blushes of the other freelancers. Maybe some more info will appear next time around.

Fifth wants to see more Spelljammer stuff, but worries about it alienating other groups. Would writing it so it's easily converted to a terrestrial nautical campaign help? A little, but you still need to make it a good adventure either way to get accepted.

Sixth is very happy to see more Greyhawk material, and also wants them to keep adventures easily customised, like those old school adventures. That's the way to ensure they remain useful and encourage DM's to hone their own design skills.

Seventh wants more complex plots, particularly if they do another series. The adventures in the Mere of Dead Men series might have been good individually, but they were pretty episodic and formulaic. Something that forces the PC's to grow and develop both statistically and as characters as the adventures go on would be superior next time.

Finally, someone who wants more adventures that revolve around a particular area rather than a specific ongoing plot. You'll want the Living City for that, although pick your adventures carefully, as the average standard is pretty weak compared to Dungeon's high competition contents.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 75: Jul/Aug 1999



part 2/5



Non-Prophet Organisation: Another issue, another covey of hags causing trouble for a small town. They're trying to put a weak-willed patsy in power by sending him dreams of upcoming disasters and then making them happen, so he can stop them and gain the respect of the townsfolk, leaving them wide open for further manipulation. Eventually they'll send a vision of a town-destroying storm, lure everyone into a cave in the hills for "protection" and have everyone for dinner & take their stuff. We've definitely seen dumber schemes, even if it does seem like they could get more profit out of it long-term by keeping the place alive and skimming off the top. That's the kind of short-sightedness you get from not being real prophets. A pretty familiar formula, giving us a description of the area and it's inhabitants, and a timeline of what will happen if the PC's don't interfere, using familiar monsters that act in familiar ways. This all fits comfortably in the competent but formulaic category of adventures that'll fill a session or two and maybe let you reuse the village afterwards as general worldbuilding.



Nodwick figures out that a hag's eye can be used quite effectively to cause motion sickness.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 75: Jul/Aug 1999



part 3/5



The Amulet and the Underdark: A macguffin retrieval mission? That's also a pretty familiar plotline by now. The head of one fiefdom sent a gift to another as a peace offering after many years of conflict. Unfortunately, it was intercepted by bandits. The other lord didn't believe that excuse and now you need to find that missing amulet fast or war will break out all over again. Better not pull any 15 minute workdays this time even if you do get a little beaten up in the process. When you catch up with the bandits you find out they've already sold the haul. You'll have to track down their spriggan fence and get the info out of him without killing him either. Unsurprisingly, he's sold it on already as well, to a bunch of duergar down in the underdark. The settlement is probably too big for you to fight them all, so you'll have to use negotiation or stealth to get in there, find the treasure and get out, maybe with some more stuff to keep for yourself. Another decent but unexceptional mix of roleplaying heavy bits in the start and old school tricks & traps in the underdark section that I'd have no problem using, but I'm not surprised in any way by either. We're a long way from the keep on the borderlands and everything makes much more sense, but that doesn't mean it's more exciting to play through.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 75: Jul/Aug 1999



part 4/5



The Forgotten Man: Ah, now here's a plotline that's appears repeatedly in TV shows but they haven't done in the magazine yet. A memory loss episode! A powerful antipaladin (see Dragon issue 39) who caused devastation centuries ago was sealed away in suspended animation. When he woke up, he'd lost his memory. (Funny how often that happens) The first people he encountered after wandering out of his tomb were worshippers of your world's god of rebirth/redemption, and under their care, he's developed into a nice person. But of course there are ancient evil forces who want to find him and restore his memory so he can pick up where he left off. Fortunately, the PC's will happen to be in the vicinity of the village when this starts to happen. Hopefully they'll decide to stick around to deal with the increasing number of monsters in the area, develop a positive relationship with the guy so when it all comes to a head, they'll have a genuine emotional reaction to it and a genuine moral dilemma about forgiveness vs punishment vs just killing him. So while there are a fair number of monsters to fight, particularly if he gets kidnapped and returned to the nearby castle of evil for the big dramatic climax, the real success or failure of this adventure will be if you can land the small emotional moments between the fighting. This manages a pretty good balance between it's new & old school elements then, and deserves credit for combining two things that they haven't done in the magazine before in an interesting way. They can still expand their horizons, it's just a bit trickier than it used to be.



Nodwick's companions don't quite get the whole redemption thing, since they've always been firmly in the muderhobo mould anyway, but they can put on a good show for the cameras.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 75: Jul/Aug 1999



part 5/5



Into the Nest of Vipers: Ooh, here's another one where having read the various magazines all the way through from the beginning is beneficial, as we're going back to the tiny town of Sevenecho, last seen in Polyhedron 87. A group of bandits have moved into a dead magic zone nearby. Recently, they discovered that poisons brewed from plants grown in the zone retain their magic resistance elsewhere, making clerics useless in countering it. Of course, they had to test that, putting a batch of it into one of the Sevenechos wells. It only killed a few people, but a lot more got sick and now there's a general alarm going on, which means any adventurers passing nearby will be called upon to find out what's going on and fix it. Knowledge of the herbalism proficiency will be helpful but not essential, as there's plenty of clues you can use to find their hideout the nonmagical way and procure samples of the poison for analysis. So you have a short, linear detective bit, and an equally short, but slightly less linear dungeoncrawl at the end where your magic doesn't work most of the way through, so you can't short-circuit either of them unless you have a psionicist in the party or something. It's all a bit forced, but at least they're acknowledging how common magic is in the Realms and using already established ideas to prevent the easy solution instead of simply ignoring the whole issue. Overall, a pretty ambivalent way to finish things off, as is often the case.


Like last issue, the cover story is easily the best and most unusual in the issue, showing that at least they know which adventures are most important, but it doesn't stop the other adventures from feeling like just more of the same old same old. The low-mid level adventuring life does get pretty repetitive when they can't include anything that takes you to strange new places or lets you have any big effects on the world. Just how many villages can you save or fetch quests can you do before it starts to feel like the 9-5 job you became an adventurer to escape? Time to see if they've had the chance to come up with anything bigger next issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Gen Con Special: August 1999



part 1/3



16 pages. Polyhedron's schedule has already been somewhat erratic this year. Now they slip in an extra issue outside the regular numbering in a similar way to the one they did 10 years ago, aimed specifically at newbies who signed on at Gen Con. Let's find out just how basic the contents will be this time around and if any of them will still manage to be fresh or useful to me.



Notes From HQ: Unsurprisingly, the editorial is all about explaining how the RPGA works and what you'll be able to do if you join up. You can be a Fellowship level member, which is free, but limits your advancement options. Or you can pay $20 per year to get the full privileges of a Guild level member, which are numerous and more than worth the price. Similarly, there are two kinds of play, the Classic tournament play where each adventure has it's own pregens, and Living ones where you bring your own and advance it through playing lots of tournaments, plus the odd LARP where you get to play them in a more freeform environment and do more actual roleplaying. There's plenty of them to choose from, including three different AD&D ones, plus Shadowrun, Alternity, Earthdawn & Rolemaster ones (although they don't mention those last two here, showing they're the smallest and least important), with Living Greyhawk coming next year to hopefully eclipse all of those in sheer scope. Pretty basic, but it does do a good job of selling the RPGA as an active, changing organisation doing it's best to expand and add new games to the roster. Who knows what else you could get them to do if you get a few people to sign up and all ask for the same thing.



Gen Con RPGA Activities: This is an expanded version of the preview from issue 135, telling us what's going on framed as different circles of hell. It's grown from 3 pages to 4, but large chunks of it are direct copy-pastes. The main expansion is in the second and third layers, the regular and special interest tournaments, with several new ones added in the intervening time. While not useless for it's target audience, it doesn't leave me with much to say and makes this already undersized special issue feel even slighter from my perspective.



Make 'em Wine: Looks like we do have some system-free roleplaying advice in here after all, not just self-promotion. Conventions are often pretty boozy affairs, so putting in an article about the classy way to drink wine does seem appropriate. Making good alcoholic drinks is a lengthy and finicky process involving years of slow fermentation under carefully controlled conditions, which is why you can sell decades-old bottles for obscene prices. When you do finally decide to open a bottle, you don't just chug the lot in one go, but carefully decant it into glasses, check the colour & aroma and savour it slowly before coming to your conclusion on it in as florid language as possible. Silly, but there's definitely plenty of good roleplaying opportunities in that, presuming the setting you're in has a culture around consuming alcohol similar to the real world. (and hey, you could easily take the concept and apply it to other consumables instead, like Ed did with that one country that revolves around barbecuing) Plus it's an idea they haven't done to death in here already, since they tended to downplay that kind of stuff during the Code of Conduct years. This is actually pretty decent and usable in all sorts of campaigns with a little work.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Gen Con Special: August 1999



part 2/3



There's Magic Afoot: Magical footwear isn't one of the most common types of magical items, but it's nowhere near the rarest either. We had several recently in Dragon 250 & 256, so apparently interest in them is on an upswing at the moment. Let's see if these are worth making regular daywear, or we'll go through more of them in the campaign than Carrie Bradshaw trying to find the perfect accessory to her current outfit.

Boots of Dust leave no tracks and boost your chances of moving silently. Pretty similar to regular elven ones, only without the racial branding.

Boots of Cowardice let you move at double speed, but force you to flee whenever things get dangerous. If you're playing Shaggy you won't even notice the hindrance. (although even he might have trouble with the not being able to take them off without remove curse bit, given how often they do quick outfit changes for disguise in scooby-doo.)

Boots of Safe Travel let you know if you come near anything likely to collapse or otherwise cause trouble when you step on it. In a dungeon full of pit traps and other low-lying dangers, this is a massive help.

Boots of Tracking let you near flawlessly follow anything once they've touched it's footprint once. Only teleportation or planar travel will reliably let them get away once you've got a lock-on.

Cirilan's Scaly Slippers automatically turn into flippers when they get wet, and back again when they dry off, giving you comfort on land and a substantially boosted swim speed in water. Investing in water breathing magic would probably be a good complement to that.

Serpent Slippers let you turn into a snake, which doesn't need footwear at all. Depending on the size and venomousness of the snake, the amount of combat utility this has can vary quite a bit, but you'll always be able to slither into tighter spaces than you would as a human so it definitely has its uses for an explorer.

Shoes of Many Footfalls let you make your footsteps sound like whatever you want. This has plenty of stealth, misdirection and comedic applications in the hands of a clever player. Plus you can stamp them to create an AoE shockwave once per day. That definitely seems like it encourages good roleplaying more than just adding to your speed or jumping ability would. Overall, a pretty good collection.