TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon issue 79: Mar/Apr 2000



part 2/5



Keep For Sale: A Keep? On the borderlands of civilisation? Threatened by monsters? Why I never heard of such a thing! Our first adventure takes a very familiar starting point and puts it's own spin on it by making the keep itself the thing you have to clear. You get sold the deed to a keep for a suspiciously cheap price by a dwarf. Of course, there's a catch, and he's fully expecting you to be killed by the monsters in there, which means he can sell it again to another group of suckers a few weeks later. So you've got to get through several days worth of random wandering monster infested terrain, clear it out, and figure out how to keep it cleared, because if you leave it unattended to go back & restock, chances are something else'll have moved in by the time you get back. In the grand KotB tradition, there are several rival groups of monsters in different parts of the keep, which gives groups more inclined to roleplay a chance to ally with one and play them off against the others. Another pretty decent example of their current trend to play on nostalgia more, combining familiar elements with enough variation that it doesn't feel redundant putting it next to it's inspiration. If you want a low-level adventure that forces the players to think about their tactics & logistics, but gives them plenty of freedom in how they tackle the problem, it fits the bill nicely.



Side Treks - The Best Laid Plans: Now here's one a genre-savvy group of players will shortcut through big chunks of. While on the road, a bunch of badly wounded guys in a great hurry ride past you. If you ignore them and head on to the next town as intended, you'll find out they were bandits who just did a particularly large heist that didn't go smooth, stealing the coin moulds for the kingdom. Since you just saw where they were headed, you're in a perfect position to catch them and collect the reward money. Still, despite the hiccups, they remembered to set traps behind them. Their trail leads to a cave. Inside are some easily spooked bats, a tunnel with a blade trap, a partially flooded bit and some bear traps to catch the careless, a bunch of false exits leading to chutes that dump you in the river at the other end, and one that leads to a zipline across it, which leads to a small shack that is their real hideout. (so all those previous encounters were actually completely avoidable if you'd just gone around or over the hill instead of through) If the PC's blundered into the previous traps rather than spotting them, the bandits will have been alerted by the noise and be ready to fight. (although still not at full HP.) If you do beat them, don't even think of keeping the coin moulds for yourself unless you want to become public enemy no:1 in the whole country. A fairly convoluted series of events for such a short adventure which is quite challenging taken at face value, but there's a lot of opportunities for more magically inclined groups to cut the gordian knot and make it simple & easy. A good diviner is worth their weight in gold for all the fights they let you win without fighting at all. Still, this is also pretty decent overall.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon issue 79: Mar/Apr 2000



part 3/5



Bad Seeds: A third adventure aimed at basic level characters in a row? Whatever happened to catering to a wide range of power levels? Anyway, as the title implies, it's time for an adventure revolving around plant monsters. A pair of adventurers have been cultivating Obliviax as one of the ingredients in their extra-strong mustard. They managed to avoid the obvious pitfalls, but their forest incursions attracted the attention of a group of Nightshades. (the plant-based ones, not the super-powerful undead of the same name) Now they're going to add Yellow Musk pollen to the mix and turn the inn's staff & patrons into their zombie slaves. Thankfully the PC's arrive just late enough to miss the main course, so they'll avoid being controlled and have a decent chance of foiling the plot. They wake up the following morning with the inn empty and several obvious clues to the cause. If they can't follow the trail of their own accord, a bunch of kobolds will attack the inn, and you'll be able to interrogate them to get directions to the nightshade lair. From there it's a small but twisty dungeoncrawl with several other plant & fungus based monsters in to beat the nightshades and hopefully free the controlled people. Another perfectly decent little themed adventure, albeit with a bit of diminishing returns for targeting the same audience three times in a row, plus we've seen the theme plenty of times before. That'll be forgivable in the first few 3e issues where no-one'll have had the time to reach higher levels anyway, but not here.



Nodwick figures that any ointment that can make a dent in Yeagar's foot fungus will make short work of any other infestations.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon issue 79: Mar/Apr 2000



part 4/5



Cloudkill: For all the evil schemes we’ve seen in here, it’s surprising how few of them involve environmental pollution as a side effect. (and even fewer go full Captain Planet villain and have the despoiling being the main goal) I guess that’s another casualty of all the people who want to keep things medieval. Still, that means when they do decide to do one, it doesn’t feel rehashed. The Derro are on a war footing and have decided to industrialise their smithing process to produce more weapons quickly. This has turned the mountain peaks just outside into a smog-filled place that's very bad for the health of more sensitive creatures like Sylphs or Asperi. While trekking through them, you come across a near dead one, which will give you telepathic exposition whether you save it or not. (although saving it will obviously make the next bit easier. ) More Asperi will turn up shortly, and unless you killed the other one, will be willing to act as mounts and help you solve the problem. (although they'll still have problems getting too close to the source of the pollution and have to drop you off for the dungeoncrawling part. ) After a fair bit of exploring and room for other encounters along the way, you'll reach the chimney belching out the foulness. Getting in that way will require resistance to fire, so you might want to search for other routes, but one way or another, you should be able to get into the factory. This turns out to be another one where just charging in trying to kill everything will probably result in you being overmatched, but thankfully the derro always need more slaves so if you screw up they'll strip you of your equipment and set you to work rather than killing you straight away. Maybe you can then cause a slave rebellion to get your stuff back and escape or something. More stealthy approaches will probably work better - a factory has a lot of moving parts that are susceptible to sabotage, some of which are irreplaceable magic items. Taking out any of those will shut the place down permanently, giving nature room to recover. Another one with multiple ways to solve the problem, plus lots of worldbuilding that'll come in handy if players come up with other plans than the methods suggested at the end. An excellent adventure that does something they haven't done here before, this adds nicely to my options. It is nice when I can say that, as it becomes increasingly rare the longer I do this.



Nodwick’s team go straight for the Health & Safety Inspector route of dealing with the trouble. Nodwick gets the dirtiest parts of the job, as usual.



Map of Mystery zooms way out to show us a stretch of coast around the Sea of Andaria. A few big towns and a whole lot of savage wilderness between them, between the Lands of the Troll King, the Iron Heights and the Everwood. Definitely seems safer to travel by boat around here.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon issue 79: Mar/Apr 2000



part 5/5



The Akriloth: Our final offering is by far the highest level and least generic, being heavily tied into recent Forgotten Realms supplements and their metaplot. Mel Odom's Threat from the Sea trilogy saw the various races of the Sea of Fallen Stars threatened by the armies of Iakhovas the Ravager. He was heroically defeated, but the city of Voalidru remains an undead-infested ruin. Perfect place for adventurers of both the heroic rescuer and mercenary looter varieties. To make things more dramatic, apparently a magic horn in the temple of Eadro has the power to repel undead, which could be the key to clearing the city. Obviously, your adventuring party gets hired to retrieve it. Despite there being a whole load of sea to travel and city to explore, it then skips straight to the temple part. That doesn't mean it's short though, as the temple is a massive 4 level complex they devote 18 pages to. Despite this, more than half the rooms are left undescribed, with a short random generation table at the end so you can make the place feel less empty if you want. So this is a throwback to Undermountain, only underwater, which is another style of adventure design they've hardly used at all in recent years. It feels like less than half of a potential bigger adventure, with tons of room for the DM to add more details before, during and after the temple to make the adventure longer and more personalised. It doesn't hit the heights of epics like Kingdom of the Ghouls or Tortles of the Purple Sage, both of which manage to cover far larger areas while also making the adventure feel less sketchy, but it still deserves fairly high marks for being an ambitious adventure using a less common kind of format, plus a few more for being an underwater adventure that takes it in it's stride that the PC's already know what they're doing down there. If only they had made it a multiparter that did the whole concept justice instead of leaving the rest of it up to you.



We have a second helping of Maps of Mystery this time, showing us another abandoned keep in the same issue (conveniently given a location on the wider map) and the two levels of dungeon below it. The second of these leads to some more natural looking caves which have open ends so you can head into the underdark and possibly link this up with other maps. Maybe things coming up from those is why it wound up abandoned in the first place.



This issue feels like they're already moving into the policies they'll adopt next edition, with lots of well-written but very generic low level adventures with more actual dungeoncrawling in them than the 2e years. Still, two higher level, more unusual ones as well is a better batting average than the last few issues and they're all very usable, so I can't complain too much. Overall, it's still a net positive to my resources and another step closer to completion, so onward we go.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 141: April 2000



part 1/5



36 pages. So that's how you do the Mission Impossible zipline trick solo and low tech. Having to do the next stage of the heisting one-handed makes it a lot trickier though. Will this halfling make a stealthy escape, or a noisy, hasty one as a ton of traps and alarms go off? Roll the theme tune, preferably the classic 60's version, not the self-consciously contemporary Limp Bizkit one.



Even before we get to the cover, we have the schedule for Gen Con this year. 46 different tournaments, which are subdivided in several ways. 25 D&D ones and 21 for other systems. 22 Living ones and 24 with pregens. Even more interesting are the new additions to the Living roster. All the previously mentioned settings have at least one, including Run out the Guns and Threads of Legend, but they also have a Chronicles of Darkness tournament and a Hercules/Xena one. How long will people get to develop their characters in those before the licence gets pulled or the companies involved otherwise stop working together? In the classics section, we have Amber, Call of Cthulhu, Feng Shui, L5R, Rolemaster, both SAGA games, Shadowrun, SLA Industries, Sovereign Stone and Stars Trek & Wars on top of the usual Benefits, Grand Masters & NASCRAG wackiness. An impressively broad choice even if you're not part of the RPGA.



Erik's Editorial: Ah, the Fiend Folio. An impressively diverse selection of creatures, even if the quality control was not the best. But one man's trash is another man's treasure, so precisely which are awesome and which are unusable is something that's inspired a lot of debate, keeping it's name alive long after it's contemporaries were forgotten. The fact that they were mostly reader submissions from a wide variety of people played a big part in that, rather than all statted out by a few pro designers to consciously fill level and terrain niches. Erik definitely has a soft spot in his heart for it and wants to keep the DIY spirit alive, so that's the theme of the latest competition. Send in your new monsters in a FF stylee, and they'll appear in here in a few months, and possibly the 3e version of the book whenever that appears. Hopefully the results will be more interesting than the first 3e Monster Manual, which has very few new creatures inside and even the quirkier ones from older editions have been smoothed out a bit even when the numbers have been jacked up.



Notes From HQ: Another procedural change that they're hoping will get more people playing here. Some people are put off by the amount of form-filling after tournaments needed to gain points in the organisation. They just wanna have fun. So they're adding a no-vote option to them. Tick that, they'll put all the values at average for the purpose of scoring and let you move on quickly. Interesting. I wonder how long people have been asking for something like this and what long-term effect it'll have. Anyone there at the time who can talk about the ramifications of this addition and it's popularity?



Table Talk: After a brief break, this is decathlon central again. They spend the full two pages showing us exactly how much all the entrants scored in each category, so there can be no doubt that the winners won fairly. (which is obviously only possible with the small number of entrants) First place was the PM Players, with 35 points. Second were the Dragons & Wizards Network with 29. Joint third were the Gaming Enthusiast's Association of Rolla and the Fellowship of the Black Spot, both with 25. Will next year's top scorers manage to beat that? Will some categories still go without a single entry? I guess we'll find out next year, maybe with just as much detail, or maybe not, since they didn't do a breakdown like this in previous years.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 141: April 2000



part 2/5



Winter Fantasy 2000 in Review: The recap of the RPGA's favourite convention falls firmly in the blandly positive mould. Even before it started properly, the summit was well-attended, giving everyone a chance to air their opinions on what they should do in response to the edition change. The convention itself was their biggest yet, 600 people managing to play 273 tables worth of tournaments, or an average of about 3 tournaments per person. They got to advance the metaplot significantly in their existing Living settings, preview Living Greyhawk & the 3e rules and honor the best players & judges in multiple categories. Worshippers of Sune got the best deal, with quite a few getting permanent Charisma boosts for their parts in defeating the minions of Glasya. Now the big question is if they can top it next year. Some useful information here, particularly the names of lots more adventures, (that'd probably be a pain to find copies of now) but not overly interesting as a read.



Living City Update: That the Living City would have to convert to 3e was never in question, but they have at least delayed the change for another year. Now they have until Gen Con 2001 to sort out all the conversion details for existing characters and magic items, so you'll be able to choose between starting up a Living Greyhawk character under the new system or sticking with 2e for a little longer. There were a lot of 2e supplements, so that won't be nearly enough to come up with equivalents for the new edition, which means some magic items might not make the transition, but the much greater character building flexibility means your character concepts should survive even without their kits. That's the plan as it stands at the moment, anyway. We shall see how long it lasts before they change it again due to pressure from above, below or outside factors.



Origins/Gen Con Review: Having just finished recapping winter fantasy and the decisions they reached there, it's straight to looking ahead at the other big events on the social calendar. As usual, they have to juggle appealing to the people who are coming for the Living events and those which are actively put off by them, particularly the Living City. They also have to make sure as many people as possible come away with positive first impressions of 3e and want to get involved with Living Greyhawk. This means there's a lot events for different settings and systems mentioned. The RPGA summits at WF are proving such a success that they're extending them to Gen Con as well, so you have events all the way from wednesday to sunday if you can afford to stay that long. The Living Death bit is particularly notable, as they recreate the 1893 World Fair on saturday for a big interactive event. The Star Trek and Living City interactives are epic 8 hour events spanning two slots, so make sure you're fully prepared to go the distance if you sign up. Even the living jungle gets a LARP, so watch out for any loincloth mishaps. It does indeed make for a pretty persuasive package. If I were reading at the time I would be very tempted. But I'm not, so unless time travel is invented I can't. (and even if it was I'd probably be using it for more important purposes) As usual, getting enough judges to run all of this is still in question though, so they have a whole load of prizes available to people who judge at least 6 rounds over the weekend. That still leaves plenty of time to do other things, so hopefully that's enough incentive to fill the gaps.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 141: April 2000



part 3/5



Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ondeme's secret police evidently weigh large in Ed's vision of the country, because he devotes this column to describing 8 of them individually. The Spell-Captains and Nictars may be fairly few in number, but they have a broad array of powers and freedom to use them as they see fit on ordinary citizens as long as they don't fight each other or otherwise betray the boss. They still have a pretty high turnover, between said betrayals and taking on challenges beyond their ability without backup, as Ondeme has no hesitation sending his minions into tough situations without all the info and then taking it out on them if they fail but survive. A classic example of little bullies taking out the abuse they receive from the big bully on everyone further down the food chain, they'll go from swaggering thugs to snivelling bootlickers on the turn of a dime. It cements that this place operates on a saturday morning cartoon level of dog-kicking villainy, only with genuine consequences for the victims. It definitely needs some heroic adventurers to fix things up alright, and this way you can have the satisfaction of taking all of these different kinds of naughty word you've got to know personally down one-by one before finishing off the big bad like the final episodes of Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. I can definitely see how you could build a good campaign from this material and I wonder just how much more he's going to give us before moving onto the next location.



You Rogue!: Halfway through the issue and we're only now getting past the promotion & regular columns to do some themed stuff. Time for another rogue special, which do admittedly come much more rarely than the clerical or wizardly ones. Much of that is simply because there's fewer cool new powers you can give them. You can go some way to giving them new tricks with basic dungeoneering equipment, filling easily broken flasks with various dangerous things you find in your travails, setting up early warning systems or luring monsters with fake valuables, but even here, more than half the suggestions involve low level magic like continual light, grease or dancing lights. In a fantasy world, bards or multiclass spellcaster/rogues outclass purists with ease as tricksters. (and in the case of multiclass half-elf gypsy-bard/thieves, smoke them at regular thieving skills at the same XP total too) Not completely useless, but still a bit disappointing. This is why I'd go beguiler or factotum in 3e.



Dragon Fists of Legend: Huh, here's another obscure little part of WotC's history they never mentioned in Dragon Magazine. In 1999 they released a free RPG on their website called Dragon Fist. (now long gone but not too hard to find copies of with an internet search) it used a light version of the D&D system that's somewhere between 2e & 3e, trying to make it more suited to high action martial arts. (although it's still rather crunchier than the likes of contemporary indie games such as Feng Shui.) Not sure why they didn't make it a proper book when the original OA sold so well, but I guess when you're in the middle of a big edition change the littler projects get dropped and at least they released it for free instead of canning it entirely. Anyway, thankfully this isn't just a promotional article, but details on a new god and his worshippers. Kailang is the god of luck & gambling. He was born mortal, but managed to trick his way into eating the peaches of immortality by making a bet with their guardian that would have worked out whichever way the dice fell. Unfortunately he couldn't get hold of another one for his lover, so she eventually died of old age and now he wanders the world looking for her reincarnation, probably being generally mischievous along the way, helping other rogues and hindering stuffy authority figures. His followers are called the Saints of Kailang, and are a rogue kit rather than specialty priest type. On top of the usual roguish skills they gain boosted martial arts skills and superhuman luck, but can't settle down or keep hold of any wealth they win, frittering it away or donating it to the needy within a few days. (not you, other PC's) This drifter lifestyle also makes them generally unpopular with the current repressive regime, as even spreading news outside official propaganda is grounds for execution. They'll never lack for adventure opportunities. So this is an unusually significant article that could easily be used in regular AD&D, but also tells me about an interesting little bit of RPG history I would have completely missed otherwise. Another thing to go on the pile of games I'd love to play if I had unlimited time, because I'm very interested in seeing how the variant rules would turn out in actual play, along with all the upcoming Polyhedron minigames.

 

[(un)reason]

Another thing to go on the pile of games I'd love to play if I had unlimited time, because I'm very interested in seeing how the variant rules would turn out in actual play, along with all the upcoming Polyhedron minigames.

Screw it, I've been meaning to get around to learning how to use virtual tabletop long enough. I think I'll try running Dragon Fist as an episode zero so when I get to the polyhedron minigames in a few months I'll actually have some idea what I'm doing. https://app.roll20.net/join/15494379/t-dd9A If anyone wants to join me and we can defeat the dread spectre of scheduling hopefully I'll have something to report on this in a few weeks time.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 141: April 2000



part 4/5



Watching the Streets: Where there are thieves, there will eventually be law enforcement. Raven's Bluff has let PC's join the watch for quite some time, but with the introduction of downtime rules they've decided to reiterate and tighten them up in general. Each rank has an OOC minimum level for you to qualify, and uses up an increasing number of your time units, from 20 as a Private, to 65 as a special forces Captain, which leaves you a mere 8 for adventuring or anything else. There are a decent number of benefits as well though. You gain a +2 to local history rolls about your regular patrol area, plus an increasing number of bonus nonweapon proficiencies as you climb the ranks, plus another one if you join one of the special forces, room & board plus pay going from 5-150gp per month, which won't get you much at the magic trading interactives but at least means you'll never want for mundane gear. Plus being able to officially arrest miscreants during adventures of course, with the ability to send out an increasing number of warrants per month against less obvious suspects. Let's hope this encourages you to arrest enemies during adventures instead of killing them and not to engage in too much police brutality. (which will probably get you drummed out much quicker than in the real world because they actually take their no evil PC's rule seriously here) Now you just need to resubmit your character with proof of previous membership to make sure they're on the new database. More evidence that they're not planning on ending the Living City any time soon, increasing the number of ways players can get official positions and feel integrated into the setting. Living Greyhawk will have to work hard to catch up with that, particularly since it's spread over a much larger area.



The Silent Network: With all this emphasis on PC's becoming law enforcement, or at least acting like upstanding citizens who go along with them to solve problems, plus the bureaucratic hassle of certificates preventing you from stealing random stuff from neutral NPC's in adventures there's not much room for thieves to really be thieves. But at least you can be spies, gathering information and using it to perform secret missions for the good of the city. It doesn't catch you up with all the different knightly orders or posts for cleric & wizard specialties, but they are finally giving us a rogue-centric secret order for PC's to join. Of course, since it's a secret order, they aren't just going to tell you straight-up how to join, what the mechanical requirements and benefits are. You've got to talk to the right NPC's in upcoming adventures or interactives and make a good impression, then maybe they'll extend a hand and induct you into a cell. Still, at least you know they exist now, right? That's a start. This seems deliberately written to be intriguing but also somewhat frustrating. Will that motivate people to make the effort and seek them out? Did any of you manage to join this and if so what was your experience? Were there any adventures where being a member had any significance?



The Living City complications continue with a short sidebar reminding you that if you gained any permanent stat boosts in the course of your adventures, you need to register them before Gen Con as well if you want your characters to keep them after the 3e conversion. You snooze, you lose. That's almost guaranteed to result in a few complaints from people who aren't reading everything carefully.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 141: April 2000



part 5/5



The Society of the White Rose: In the Living Death campaign, all the PC's are inducted into a secret society before they even join, so you don't have to worry about all the hassle of finding other people who believe the supernatural is real and malevolent in actual play. But although they seem secure enough in their operational procedures that they're in no danger of being corrupted, they do not have unlimited funds or the ability to buy off the law with their secret connections. You may have to kill people who are secretly monsters in the course of your missions, but if you're caught any help will be indirect at best, because they can't risk compromising other agents. Some adventures may reveal a little more about the secrets of the inner circle, but you can't join them as long as your character is an active PC. A reminder that despite the horror trappings, this setting is still one of clear good vs evil, unlike the World of Darkness, and you're expected to be heroes who get pointed in the right direction, but then do all the work yourselves while (mostly) staying within the bounds of the law. No escaping that format in a Living setting.This article definitely falls into the competent but dull category.



Internet 101: This column is typically in theme. First link is to the biggest thieves of all, the IRS, who's website is unfortunately fully alive today and for the foreseeable future, even if filing your taxes on it remains irritatingly glitchy, because it's not as if they have any incentive to fix it, unlike a business where if it doesn't work after a try or two most people just spend their money elsewhere instead. More usefully, Fordham University's extensive list of material about medieval law is still up, as is the more modern focussed corrections.com. (although ironically that one gives me a not secure warning) So is the National Park Service's website devoted to Alcatraz, which remains it's power as a symbol of captivity despite being closed a good 60 years now. The FBI's list of famous cases and how they dealt with them are still there, but have changed their URL since then. Criminology.fsu.edu is also still around, but the specific links have long since rotted with the changing staff roster. There's also 5 completely dead links, putting the overall success rate of this column at just under 50% again. Good luck googling replacements that'll really give you the roguish scoop you're looking for.



The survey lists four of the goofiest fiend folio monsters and asks us which sucks the hardest, on top of the usual rating of the articles. Since the Enveloper can suck with it's whole body, not just it's mouth, I'm going to have to pass the golden envelope thataway.



An issue of two halves, with the second one considerably more interesting than the first, but both contain plenty of useful info about how they're handling the edition change and other things they're doing at the same time. Let's head to next issue to see how they've progressed, if it'll merely add more detail, or they'll have had to remove some bits and put others in their place.