TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 138: October 1999



part 2/5



Lotus the Fire Blossom: The cover star from issue 136 gets the winning entry for their backstory here. It’s both ultra-cheesy and inconsistent with lore from previous issues, as the owner of the jewel store has a completely different name and personality. Unless it actually changed hands IC at some point in further reading I’m not aware of that’s not very good editorial work. Anyway, she’s a half elf, half kara turian thief, (who would almost definitely have been a ninja if it weren’t for the fact that she was an orphan) raised by wandering cloth merchants. Unfortunately, she had no better luck with adoptive parents than biological ones, and they were framed & imprisoned by a Raven’s Bluff noble saying they sold her shoddy goods. Now she’s stuck as a street thief trying to get hold of enough money to get them out one way or another. Having been wrongfully mistreated by the law already, respecting it is not on the agenda, although she’s still avoiding hurting regular people. This is definitely very adventurable, whether you’re trying to catch her or teaming up with her for a big jailbreak, but it’s also very cliched and feels like a throwback to the early days of the Living City where they’d accept nearly anything the readers sent in regardless of how it fit with other articles. I guess the continuity low tournament format always did have quite a bit in common with 80’s cartoons so it’s not surprising they’d wind up going back to it.



Member Spotlight: Our ultra-helpful member of the month is Jae Walker. She's been using the internet since before it was the World Wide Web and is responsible for a significant chunk of their online output. Starting with the TSR online stuff on AOL, she's now been responsible for the RPGANEWS mailing list, a big chunk of the RPGA website, the Star Wars RPG mailing list, and the formatting for the Raven's Bluff Trumpeter & it's spin-off the Procampur Shining Jewel. Great, more stuff they've never mentioned in here and I can't find hide nor hair of on the internet now. Once again, if anyone was signed up to the mailing lists back then and still has this stuff saved, I would be very appreciative if you could forward it to me so I can be even more of a completist in this journey. So this entry is above average in usefulness, but also frustrating, as it's another reminder of how much lost lore there is from the early years of the internet as the early websites disappeared without any backups, replaced by massive social media sites that are almost impossible to search for anything posted in the past, with an endlessly scrolling feed keeping you distracted from learning any in-depth information. A thread like this simply wouldn't be readable on Facebook, particularly since they got rid of the notes section and previous entries would take hours scrolling down my profile to find an old one you wanted to check. An excellent example of how not everything has got better since those days, despite data transfer speeds increasing by many orders of magnitude.



Internet 101: This column unsurprisingly gets spooky. Someone registered the domain name halloween.com pretty quickly after the web got started, and it's still going now, 29 years later. Also still alive and kicking (unlike it's contents) is boneroom.com, where you can literally buy both animal & human bones and have them shipped to anywhere that isn't banned. Hauntedamerica.com is also still doing quite well for itself, helping you find tours of spooky sites across the country. So that's 3 out of 4 links still going strong, a new record for one of these. Funny that our love of spooky stuff should be more stable than the government admin systems. You can definitely get something out of this one, especially if you have a little money to spend. (or a lot, if a complete human skeleton is something you simply have to have) A pretty promising start to the themed stuff.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 138: October 1999



part 3/5



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Our seemingly endless wandering of the Border Kingdoms takes us to Oeble, which firmly fits into the den of scum & villainy mould. Like Automata in the Outlands, it exists as much underground as aboveground, with a bunch of little stairways in various places leading you down to the unmapped tunnels where you can indulge any vice for the right price. Unlike it's planar counterpart, the surface parts are pretty grimy and dangerous as well, with dead bodies regularly being found in the streets in the morning. Still, they don't care about your race or sexuality as long as your money's good and you're not a snitch, so plenty of creatures that are seen as monsters in other countries and attacked on sight rub shoulders here. Since the editorial code is looser than it used to be, Ed can go into plenty of details on what those vices are, with strip clubs, massage parlors with extras, streetwalkers all making appearances, along with the magical defences they use to make sure the rougher clients don't get out of hand. If you just got a big haul adventuring elsewhere, coming here is an easy (but hopefully fun) way to blow it all. Or you could keep your guard up and have a whole load of adventures without ever leaving town, maybe even come out with a profit. Nothing particularly new here, but another stylishly delivered combination of elements which manages to be distinct from all the other settlements he's covered already. Long may he manage to mix and match them in different ways.



City Stories: This column takes a break not only from temples, but the Living City entirely, as we’re off to Gothic Earth for some seasonal spookiness. The real world history of subway systems has enough literal and figurative darkness in it, with plenty of overworked, underpaid workers killed due to lack of proper health & safety procedures while digging them. In a world filled with hidden monsters, it's even worse. There's the ones buried for centuries who react poorly to their lairs being disturbed. Then there's the smarter ones like vampires who see the value in a place where you can be active any time of day and filled with prey. These cancel out in terms of actual progress, so while the digging process might have been even bloodier, it still got done on time, but there are probably more hidden rooms off the public parts of the network and sealed up bits where they hit something nasty and had to make a detour. This turns out to be about 50/50 real world history and supernatural embellishments, and unusually, it's the real world bits that are more interesting and less formulaic, showing just how much drama goes into the creation of these places, between the financial wranglings to fund the construction, figuring out where to dig and labour relations along the way. It'd probably be possible to create a good game based on that premise alone. A good example of how doing lots of real world research can make for a better adventure than just making stuff up wholecloth. I approve of this, and the bibliography at the end can definitely go on my list of other things I'd like to read at some point if I ever get the time.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 138: October 1999



part 4/5



Living Greyhawk: Unsurprisingly given the new editor, the work to make sure their new Living setting is the biggest best thing ever continues to step up in intensity. First thing's first is to set the mood. It's the oldest D&D setting, filled with history and somewhere near the middle in terms of both magic level and general degree of niceness. Things aren't as grim as Dark Sun or Ravenloft, but they're not as froofy as Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms either. There are (hopefully) plenty of adventurers and a formalised guild structure for players to be a part of that sends them on missions, but also plenty of things for them to do and not so many high level NPC's that their job would seem pointless. Of course, someone's got to organise all this. They've divided everything up into regions and linked them to real world ones, but they don't have a full complement of volunteers for every region and a few still have none at all. Once again They Need You! : points out of screen: to do the job. Think you're up to developing local storylines, creating a website and regular newsletters, running various IC and metagame organisations and editing local modules? I'll wager not every region will manage all of those, but hopefully they can all run at least a few adventures a year for the people who sign up. Still a lot of work to do in the next year if they want the big launch to go off as planned then. Good thing they are telling us well in advance instead of just springing it on us like some of the smaller settings.



Dilemma's Tusks: Another thing that’s changing under the new editorial regime is the adventures, as this is the last one that appears in here. (until they merge with Dungeon and the whole format is completely changed.) It’s time to go way back and reuse an idea last seen in issue 22, where the roles get reversed and it’s the PC’s job to defend a site from waves of attackers, many of which are illusionary or otherwise tricksy. The local baron is trying to negotiate a peace treaty with a nearby hobgoblin tribe. Given the general history of human/goblinoid relations they’re unsurprisingly skittish and ready to go back to fighting at the first sign of treachery. The PC’s are hired to make sure such an inciting incident does not happen. Unfortunately, someone or something seems determined to make sure it does and you have to fend off a string of increasingly weird incidents at the manor. A mysterious and suspiciously fragile red dragon that appears out of nowhere and disappears just as mysteriously when beaten. A rhino in the corridors. Multiple things happening to the baron, from assassination to being shrunken to tiny size, that also turn out to be illusions. The baron’s son going feral and biting one of the PC’s on the leg, requiring subdual not killing if you want to get paid and not exiled or locked up. A ghost that is actually just a guy in a sheet, no magic involved at all. All culminating in an illusionary tarrasque if you don’t figure out what’s behind it and catch them first. A bit wacky, particularly as it escalates into increasingly tricky double-bluffs once the PC’s know illusions are involved, but a genuine old school challenge that many groups will fail at that isn’t just half a dozen linear encounters, where you could get a whole range of endings depending on your actions. A distinctly better than average way to conclude this department, even if it still isn’t quite up to the editing standards in Dungeon. It’s important to remind PC’s what it’s like when the tables are turned every now and then, and they haven’t reused this idea so often it grows cliched.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 138: October 1999



part 5/5



From the Trenches: Our Gen Con recap is shorter and less cheerful than usual. Yes, there was the announcement of 3e with great fanfare and the promise of being able to create all sorts of characters the current rules don't allow. But that also brings the worry of what to do with the existing Living settings. Do they convert existing characters as directly as possible to the new rules, which is a massive headache. Do they keep the general setting details but force everyone to start over at 1st, which is slightly easier but annoys the ultra hardcore people who reached highest level in this edition the most, quite possibly making them quit and causing the place to become a ghost town. Or do they scrap the whole thing and start new ones? (I note once again that keeping even one of them around using an older edition is not even remotely considered as an option)

That huge elephant in the room aside, there was still plenty of fun to be had. All the big gaming companies turned up, sales in general were up on last year, as were the number of tournaments and there were an incredible number of accessories being offered for sale. CCG's were also huge, but many of the cards were not being used for their intended purpose, instead being used to build an impromptu house of cards that somehow turned into a whole card city over the weekend, which were just left there afterwards, rare cards and all. So much for the collectible part, but it goes to show that fun is what you make of things, which isn't necessarily bound by the rules of the game. If following the rules mechanically stops it from being fun, you need to find or create a new game and there was not only plenty of that this year, but the next one as well, when we get there.



Winter Fantasy 2000: On the other hand, the preview of next year's Winter Fantasy is as long and elaborate as ever, showing they're currently more in the mood to look forward than back. Obviously there'll be a whole load of 3e preview stuff there, including developer Jonathan Tweet as a special guest, plus a chance to debate how the RPGA is going to handle the changeover at the summit just before. But there's still the whole load of regular tournaments, Living tournaments, interactives, charity events, and more. There's actually slightly few RPG slots than last year, but MUCH more board games, courtesy of Game Base 7, which is an interesting demographic shift. Should we feel threatened by the rise of Settlers of Catan? Meh, it's not as if Risk, Monopoly and Scrabble don't all outsell the entire RPG industry individually. There's still space for the more complex games we do. Another one where there's a decent amount of information for you to analyse and look for trends in compared to past & future years, which means it's still useful even after the thing it was promoting is long over.



In addition to the usual rating of the articles, the survey asks us our opinion on the music of Debbie Gibson. Not the most obvious choice of soundtrack to your games, but I guess that’s the point. A little humour might get more people filling them in so they can also improve the serious results.



As with Dragon, it looks like Erik is going to make changes pretty quickly compared to most editorial changeovers. Combine that with the wider ones mandated by the company as the new edition approaches and it once again looks like we’ll be living in interesting times. Just how I like it then. Time to get through another load of teasers, see what order they reveal them in to their most hardcore players and how it’ll differ from the casual route.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 77: Nov/Dec 1999



part 1/5



84 pages. Face the wrath of Keraptis!!!! Dragon and Polyhedron are boldly announcing the new edition, while Dungeon is still catering to nostalgia with one of the big silver anniversary tie-ins. How implausible will the evil wizard’s escape from seemingly certain doom have been, and what has he been up to since then? Let’s see if they’ve got the ambition to finish off the millennium in style before trying something completely different in the future.



Editorial: Chris delegates the editorial for a second issue in a row. Stephen Danielle matches the feat Tony Diterlizzi pulled off in issue 61 and illustrates the whole issue, (except the Nodwicks) plus filling this space with the story of how he got into this mess in the first place. It’s all the Tomb of Horror’s fault. They went to great effort to show you what was going to be killing you horribly if you made the wrong choice and when he started to make his own adventures he assembled his own visual aids from magazine clippings, then started to edit them to better fit his vision, draw new bits of artwork and before you know it you’re a skilled artist in your own right. So when the magazine wanted to do an old school homage, he was the first guy they called and a good year of hard drawing later (hey, at least it meant he didn’t have to hustle for more jobs in the meantime) here we are. It’s nice when following your passions leads naturally onto bigger things. Well that explains things pretty neatly, while also reminding us how long the process of creating an issue is, with various parts being completed at different times, sometimes years apart before finally putting everything together and reaching publication. If you don’t have the patience for that this probably isn’t the field of work for you.



Letters: First letter is very impressed by their reintroduction of antipaladins without making it a mindless hackfest. They weren’t so impressed with the Mere of Dead Men series and the contortions it took to keep each episode fully functional standalone. If you’re going for a big series you need to really commit to it.

Second is from a freelancer who recently had her adventure accepted by the magazine (although it’ll still take another half a year to actually appear) highlighting the rigorousness of their editing process. They bounced the manuscript back and forth five times before finally committing and although it was hard work, all the changes were for the better. That’s how they maintain their standards and if you want your adventure to appear in here, you’d better get used to it as well.

Third is also full of praise for The Forgotten Man and their recent output in general. Keep both the writing and production values sharp and he may actually subscribe.

Fourth is full of ideas for what to do with the Sleeping Dragon Inn. Can they make it into a place the PC’s want to hang out regularly at and get sucked into more urban adventures? There are worse themes they could choose.

Fifth Wants to see them do more non D&D adventures, and most definitely does not want an issue to be devoted to a single massive adventure. A regular column of reader-submitted plot seeds would also be nice. Like a traps column, they don’t say no to the idea, but it’ll need a bunch more positive responses before they give it any serious consideration.

Sixth has plenty of general praise, and once again singles out The Forgotten Man as particularly good. A mix of old and new ideas gets the best results.

Seventh thinks they’re doing too many vanilla modules at the moment. Next adventure series should be a higher level one involving the planes. Probably not all the way through, but a lot of them will climax by going offworld one way or another.

Finally, someone wondering what’ll happen to Dungeon when the edition change hits. Glad you asked. All the adventures will switch to the new rules straight away, no gradual transition, no conversion sidebars, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. If you’ve recently submitted one using 2e rules the chances of it getting in the last few issues before then are now very low indeed, but if you get something off straight after getting hold of the new ones they go up quite a bit. Well that’s not going to lead to a bunch of rush jobs where they’re still working from the game balance assumptions of the old edition at all, is it now?

 

[(un)reason]

Sorry for the unscheduled absence. Just had the worst plane flight of my life and it's taken this long to actually get to my hotel and get reliable wifi, with half my luggage still missing. Fun times. Normal service will resume for another couple of weeks, at which point I hope the return trip will be a little smoother.



Dungeon Issue 77: Nov/Dec 1999



part 2/5



Visiting Tylwyth: It's been quite some time since we had a solo adventure in here. Now it's time for something much much worse, one that's intended for a group but singles out one character and expects them to be the star of the show. (the elf, obviously ) Like that never causes resentment amongst players. Your starting level elf PC has to do a rite of passage before they'll consider him a proper adult and let him out to adventure. Unfortunately, their uncle who they're supposed to be learning from has gone missing so you have to go and find him. Head through the overgrown forest to reach his house. Try not to annoy his treant friend along the way, who will be typically long-winded in conversation before getting to any information useful to the players. Reach his house, search it for clues, eventually finding out that he last left to go fishing. Go to the lake, where you find signs of a struggle. Track it back to a den full of kobolds, who will flee when the fight turns against them, leading you to the lair of the witch who instigated this in the first place. Deal with her one way or another, rescue your uncle, listen to his cheesy dialogue and roll the credits. The kind of short, linear and jokey adventure that used to be Polyhedron's staple, this is absolutely not what I want to see in an adventure, particularly one at the very start of a campaign. Hand-holding and strong favouritism towards one character over the others? Just say no! One of the worst adventures on a conceptual level they've let through in a long time, even if the editing and artwork remains of superior standard to RPGA fare. Bleah. Not a very promising start to the issue.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 77: Nov/Dec 1999



part 3/5



Side Treks - A Feast of Flesh: Giant beetles are one of the first enemies you see in the D&D basic set, so it's surprising how rarely they've appeared in this magazine. I guess they are pretty mindless, so it's hard to write a plot revolving around them, while random dungeons have long since gone out of fashion. Indeed, to make this more interesting, they've made the beetles eusocial, so they're smarter than the sum of their parts and are developing basic tactics like farming fungi for more old school fun, and digging a big network of tunnels just below the surface of a village so they can pop out anywhere, prevent them from leaving and make easy prey of them. The people of the village obviously don't like the role reversal of being kept like livestock and will be willing to pay what little money they have to solve the problem. Will you venture down into the beetle sized tunnels to try and fight them, which will leave anyone above 5' tall unable to stand up and maneuver easily. Or will you try other tactics to lure them out and fight on more advantageous ground using flaming oil, magic and whatever other tricks you have in your arsenal? Either way it's probably going to be a grubbier fight than you expected. One of those reminders that any creature can be made more interesting and dangerous by using better tactics, even if their stats remain exactly the same. We've had enough examples of kobolds doing this, why not some of the other basic D&D staples?



Wind Chill: Another short adventure that barely escapes the side trek label in quick succession. But while last one used some of the oldest monsters in the book, this revolves around a brand new one. While travelling through icy mountains they attract the attention of a Windigo. (not to be confused with a Wendigo, which got stats in Dragon 119, because D&D has never had a problem with creating entirely different monsters from the same source material by using a slightly different spelling/pronunciation, as Tengu/Kenku, Goblins/Goblyns etc demonstrate) The evil spirit will do as evil spirits do and gradually escalate the foreboding scariness before attacking, because your fear is what it really wants to feed off. With wind control powers (obviously, given the name) insect summoning and the ability to go from incorporeal to solid selectively they're pretty scary, only limited by their claustrophobia. (but hey, there's tons of monsters that only appear indoors to take up the slack) All pretty simple & straightforward, this feels like they made the monster first and did the adventure afterwards just so it could get in here rather than Dragon. Another decent enough 6/10er.



Nodwick gives the Windigo indigestion, which I suspect often saves his hide.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 77: Nov/Dec 1999



part 4/5



Ex Keraptis Cum Amore: Another instance where the cover adventure is more ambitious than all the other adventures in the issue put together and the only one designed to last more than a session. Once again Keraptis (or someone saying they're Keraptis) has absconded with the powerful magical items retrieved from White Plume mountain a couple of decades ago, leaving a piece of parchment with a cryptic riddle behind. This is almost definitely a trap, but are you going to let a little thing like that stop you? Don't bore us, get to the chorus. It's time for a high level deathtrap dungeon that exists for the sole purpose of attracting adventurers and adding them & their stuff to its master's collection. Backstory is kept to a single page rather than waffling on, you're not breaking through the walls to do the encounters out of order unless you're even more ridiculously overpowered than intended, trouble can come from any angle and all the most interesting ways you can die are lovingly illustrated in the centrefold art booklet. It's exactly what it sets out to be, an old school throwback that's both more dungeony and more dragony than everything else in the issue put together. Many of the rooms can be bypassed without fighting if you solve the riddles, but said riddles are in an ancient language so you'll only be able to do so if you kept up your studies or memorised those magical translation spells. Getting through may involve retreating to rest and heal up repeatedly, which fortunately it will give you the room to do. (as long as you packed enough supplies.) The climactic final encounter takes you to a demiplane where you face the big bad and a ton of minions in a gladiatorial arena. If you fail to kill him for good (and oh does he have precautions agains that ) he will of course become a vengeful recurring nemesis. A good reminder of just how much fun you can have when you stop being ashamed of playing D&D and wholeheartedly embrace it's tropes, but also how rarely they do that these days, watering it down with lots of padding that's very unlikely to be of use in actual play. Will you just get on with it, for Zagyg's sake?!!!!



Side Treks - Stage Fright: Time for a combination of two gimmicks we've seen before, but not put together. In issue 39 they had an adventure set in a theatre. In issue 43 they had a Slaad chestburster situation. What if the lead actor was infected and the chestbursting happened live on stage while the PC's are in the audience?! You'll need to step up and do the heroic thing straight away before it grows to full size and starts infecting more people, which won't take long if it gets down to the basement and gorges itself on the rodent population. The question of if you should stop to pick up your full set of armor & weaponry will be a significant one. (another reason why any smart group invests in portable holes or transforming outfits) So yeah, this is Alien in a theatre. Whether it'll land for you group depends on if that premise sounds awesome to them, or a little too derivative and cheesy. It all feels very 2eish, with a lot of backstory for the size of the actual encounter. It makes exactly the same basic lore error its predecessor does, of having Red Slaad produce more red ones with their infection instead of blue ones. Overall, probably not one I'd use, but more because I don't see my players taking a trip to the theatre as something that'd arise naturally IC in the course of play.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 77: Nov/Dec 1999



part 5/5



To Walk Beneath the Waves: Another issue, another underwater adventure aimed at low level landlubbers who haven't got all the equipment to function down there for extended periods of time. You can only do one or two of them in any particular campaign before they stop being amateurs, unlike ones aimed at more experienced sub-mariners or aquatic natives. On the plus side, by putting this just north of Saltmarsh, home of the U series in Greyhawk, they're giving you a natural progression from low level, somewhat damp adventures to slightly higher, slightly wetter ones, which is a good bit of tie-in work. Anyway, the coastal town of Rawnis is suffering from an escalating amount of fishermen disappearing and general vandalism. People suspect Sahuguin and call for adventurers, putting together all the underwater breathing equipment they have. (which is barely enough, and some of it glitchy & unreliable) Down you head, only to find out it's not Sahuguin, but Kuo-Toa, which is actually slightly worse given their respective advancement capabilities. That knowledge won't change the mission though, kill them or drive them off, rescue any still surviving kidnapees and get back to the surface before your underwater gear runs out of air. It's comprised of a short wilderness bit and a short dungeon bit that would both be pretty simple on land, and the main challenge is all the extra penalties to actions & visibility being underwater will impose on you. (which would rapidly disappear if you were a higher level party bringing your own magical gear) It all feels like training wheels. More usable but unambitious filler to keep you busy for a session or two and earning XP between the bigger adventures.



Nodwick finds the kidnapped people are even dumber than his own adventuring party, falling for the most obvious of traps.



Maps of Mystery has a particularly cryptic 2.5D map of the underdark this time. Zoom in and you can get some hints what might be within each one, but it’ll be a tricky trek to get to the deepest reaches, with lots of filling in the miles of skipped over details. Maybe you could put it just off the west side of the Kingdom of the Ghouls, as they operate on a similar scale and there’s a convenient tunnel off the edge in both to join them.



Another issue where the gulf between the cover story and everything else is striking in length, production values, ambition and general quality. Which actually results in a pretty low batting average by the standards of this magazine. It shows them concentrating on their big tie-in adventures to the detriment of the regular ones, making them increasingly short, samey and padded out in word count. I suspect that having announced the new edition, they might not be bringing their A game to what's left of the old one. One that leaves me wanting to move on and get to the next big format change all the quicker.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 139: December 1999



part 1/5



36 pages. Is there any point hiding your face as a sexy ninja assassin when the scars or tattoos on the exposed parts of your body make you instantly recognisable anyway? Just another of those questions you have to deal with in a fantasy world. I suppose if you kill everyone who sees you in action it won't become an issue anyway. Time to see how well another issue manages to justify it's existence both IC and OOC.



Erik's Editorial: One of the big things Erik worried about after getting this job is if he'd actually be able to still play the game, between having to up sticks to seattle and the general workload of being editor and admin. Fortunately, WotC is pretty big on actually giving people opportunities to play, particularly when it comes to playtesting the upcoming edition. So he recently found himself braving an updated version of the Tomb of Horrors, fully expecting to die horribly in various interesting ways. He wasn't disappointed, and this actually turned out to be liberating after many years playing home and RPGA tournament games where deaths are rare. Like last issue of Dungeon, this serves as a reminder that sometimes going back to the old school and not pulling your punches makes an adventure more exiting than carefully designing adventures to always be half a dozen balanced encounters that you can fit easily into a 4 hour slot. Kill your players horribly every now and then, they'll thank you for it and it keeps them from taking the game for granted or feeling like their efforts and choices are meaningless. It's a lesson they need to remind themselves of every now and then as much as they need to teach it to us.



Notes from HQ: Another year, another set of changes to the Living City rules. Actually, these ones are a lot more dramatic than any since they instituted certificates. The whole concept of retirement is dropped, you can advance to 20th level and keep on playing characters in the regular campaign even after they hit 20th. (but not gain any more levels beyond that) They're also loosening up on your ability to loot any nomagical items that are mentioned in adventures but not certificated. Stealing extremely expensive things will still get you in trouble with the law, but at least you can gain a bit more cash from selling the stuff from fallen foes. Since they've just announced a new edition and they're still not sure if or how they'll convert the Living City to it, this feels like taking the breaks off so at least they can go out on a high. If they're also running lots of high level adventures at conventions over the last few months then things could get pretty wild. It's still hardly a complete free-for-all though. Spells above 6th level are heavily restricted, requiring manual approval for each one learnt. Dual classing eats up a good 3 months of your downtime slots for the year. The tier system for awarding XP is getting rejigged so you can't zoom up in levels by adventuring with a higher level party and lurking at the back to stay safe. It's obvious that a fair bit of thought is still going towards running the campaign and they aren't just ignoring it to put all their resources into Living Greyhawk. If you alienate your most hardcore players even before the edition change the next one probably isn't going to do very well.