TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron UK Issue 7: May 2000



part 1/5



72 pages. How do you fight a creature with way too many limbs, each way too long and oddly jointed in their own right? Better hope they can't co-ordinate them as well as a creature with a smaller number. Well, I guess it's working out pretty well for mammals on this planet. But in a fantasy universe, all the rules could be different. Time to see what the rules are in the latest edition of our foreign exchange.



Network News: We saw that the RPGA as a whole had expanded dramatically recently, driven by the new free tier and improved promotion in game stores, probably also the news of 3e bringing D&D to the attention of people who used to play but lost touch for a while. The good news also applies to the UK branch, which has increased by 25% in just the first quarter of 2000. This kind of exponential growth probably isn’t going to last indefinitely, but it’s nice while it does. They’re increasing their European and African penetration, giving other countries their own bits of Living territory and generally trying to make everyone feel like their contributions to the whole are significant. All this extra membership money will hopefully let them improve the size and production values of the magazine further, particularly if some of those new members get to sending in more articles as well. So this is all very cheerful indeed. Happy days are here again. The panics about the WotC takeover are well and truly over and most people are willing to give them a fair shot at putting their own stamp on the game. The real test will be when it actually arrives and I wonder just how much the different countries will differ in their opinions.



Fiction - Of Meddling and Medallions by Iain Lowson: Chivalry & Sorcery continues to be a fairly popular UK exclusive. A typically mismatched pair of adventurers (the orc has more common sense than the human) blunder intro trouble when an amulet they’re carrying turns out to be a valuable magical artifact from the region and of great cultural significance to the villagers. To make up for this faux pas they’re sent on a quest to retrieve another item, which turns out to be held by an evil wizard who thoroughly outmatches them. Fortunately, just as all seems lost, the medallion turns out to have magic absorbing powers, which enable them to turn the tables and escape, albeit without either of the magic items, to continue their adventures alive but still poor. Like many a story featuring a cynically bantering duo of vagabonds, this definitely owes a debt to Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, but at least the characters aren’t obvious 1 to 1 analogs this time around and the storytelling is decent, plus it tells us a little more about the game’s setting in general. I wouldn’t object to seeing some more of it or them.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron UK Issue 7: May 2000



part 2/5



Alternity Star Generator: Here’s a type of article I haven’t seen in a while. Space is really really big, so you’ll often find yourself in need of randomly generating star systems & their contents if players wander off the beaten track. Looking at it, it doesn’t engage with the Alternity systems at all either, making it a generic one suitable for any sci-fi game. Unfortunately, the sci part isn’t that accurate, particularly in light of the many new discoveries of planets over the past couple of decades. They think that red dwarves won’t have anything worth settling when there are multiple planets in the habitable zones of our nearby neighbours (although the year length will be shorter than an earthly month, which might take a bit of getting used to, and if they’re tidally locked, that’s an even larger change in day-to-day life. ) The table also makes the majority of star systems single ones, when in reality 85% of them are binary or even more. It’s still not useless, but If you actually want hard science in your gaming you’ll have to do a lot of revising the numbers to get it to fit. I’m pretty sure there’s a better variant to be found now, particularly once you start zooming in and generating the details of individual planets.



A Walk in the Forest: Our first adventure takes real world UK events and gives them a blatantly supernatural explanation for the Delta Green variant of Call of Cthulhu. A UFO sighted in 1980 was captured by your basic secret government agency. Unfortunately, it was promptly suborned by a Karotechian adept in trying to exploit the aliens, a parasitic hive mind adapted from D&D yellow musk creepers. Of course, his pursuit of obscure arcane lore attracts the attention of your DG superiors, who send you on a mission to investigate the base. Once there, you’ll find everyone is suspiciously flat of affect and slow of reaction except the guy in charge and one conspiracy kook who only eats his own food & drinks bottled water, who is uninfected but obviously getting suspicious about what’s up with his co-workers. If you can get away from the guided tour trying to keep a lid on things you’ll soon encounter the secret labs filled with yellow musk zombies and worse experimental creations. Then the adept will turn up for a dramatic battle, before teleporting away when it looks like he’s losing. This uses up the last of his magic, which causes containment to fail dramatically and the base to self-destruct to prevent the creepers from escaping & spreading. Hopefully you’ll be able to escape for the second part next issue. It’s very much a D&D dungeoncrawl transplanted to another system, complete with “new” spells that are direct D&D conversions. It’s interesting, but currently unrunnable without the maps, so I can’t give a proper assessment on whether it’s a linear sequence of events or one that actually allows for a decent amount of exploration before reaching that dramatic railroaded climax. It does irritate me that the UK branch has done this three times now while the USA one always made sure each part of it’s multiparters had all the information to play it, even if you then had to wait a couple of months for the next instalment. That’s a completely unforced and very baffling editing mistake that they keep on making.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron UK Issue 7: May 2000



part 3/5



Reviews: The Dwarves Companion for Chivalry & Sorcery gets a very enthusiastic review. If you're a frequent dwarf player like our editor, it's packed with handy detail on their everyday lives you could use for any generic-ish fantasy setting. If you’re actually planning to spend time in Marakush, all the better.

Nox is one of the many computer RPG’s coming out lately that obviously bears a debt to tabletop ones. Pick one of three classes, explore the world and do a bunch of little quests that eventually add up to an epic one. Fortunately, those different classes do all start off in different areas and handle quite differently so it has plenty of replay value exploring everything and seeing which hidden bits are only reachable by one of them.

Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale are based on the same game engine, so they get a double page joint preview in the centre pages. As expected, this is pretty blandly positive, selling us on the improved graphics, increasingly large areas and rosters of monsters. All the things that’ll look dated just a few years later, where a good story would have remained timeless.

Age of Wonders zooms us out a bit and mixes rpg elements with turn based strategy ones. Some of the units are distinctly unbalanced, able to defeat whole armies of lesser ones, but that doesn’t stop it from being another huge adventure with lots of tactical depth and replayability they consider worth investigating.

Majesty retains the same isometric 3D viewpoint, but zooms the scale out even further to go full god sim. Can you guide your people through civilisation building and the attacks of your rivals with a large range of magical powers that make it more than just a lesson in mundane alternate history. This means there aren’t as many cultures to choose from as it’s rival Age of Empires II, but these things are always a tradeoff when hard drive space and development time are limited.

The Whisperer is a Call of Cthulhu fanzine. It's contents are received positively, but it's overall score isn't that high because it's smaller & lower production values than Polyhedron, yet also more expensive. Costs really don't scale linearly in this area, do they.



Chaos Reaver: The second adventure this issue is your basic macguffin quest for Dragonlance 5th Age. The titular magic item is a powerful sword created centuries ago by the Scions to deal with creatures of chaos. For quite a while the main conflicts on Krynn have revolved around good vs evil, so it didn’t get much use, but recent events have made people rather motivated to find ways to fight chaos more effectively and any reference in the ancient scrolls is worth pursuing. Of course, the forces of chaos are just as strongly motivated to find the sword to destroy it, so you’ll face plenty of adversity on the way, which as usual for the SAGA system is presented as a linear sequence of scenes. Getting lost in the foggy forest along the way and being attacked by worgs. Reaching the previous location of the sword, only to find it’s long since been looted, but there are further clues to be found to your next destination. Cross a chasm guarded by a daemon warrior. Face the ghosts and shadows that lurk in the ruins and figure out how to activate the magic mirror that’ll transport you to the next bit. Then you’ll have to prove yourself worthy to the ghost of the wizard bound to the sword, who’ll only let the purest of heart keep it, and has the magical power to ensure no-one else can even touch it. Finally, as you return, you get a chance to test just how awesome the sword is against a bunch of chaos wights. Your typical sequence of precisely 6 challenges of different types designed to neatly fit a 4 hour tournament slot. At least it’s for a less common system rather than yet another D&D one, but this is still very meh indeed.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron UK Issue 7: May 2000



part 4/5



The Librium Subtalis: Another common class of Dragon article gets a UK edition. It's time for a description of a spellbook filled with new spells, along with some info on it's owner. A good one becomes more than the sum of it's parts by combining fluff & crunch details in a way that makes them more than just another bit of treasure when found in game. Anyway, as the name implies, this one belongs to an Enchanter who prefers to resolve problems in a clever way rather than blasting through them, including not only new spells, but tips on how to use existing ones to good effect. That seems like a pretty promising start even before we get to the crunchy parts.

Beguiling Touch is just Charm Person, but delayed and touch-release, so you can cast it in advance and be less obvious when applying it. A very sensible little mod, especially when dealing with a group of adventurers who'll all go on the offensive if you obviously mindfuck one of them.

Allure of the Enchanter is a long term low level charisma buff, as will become a standard spell for all ability scores next level. (and then have it's duration massively nerfed in 3.5) Much less intrusive (and subject to resistance) than trying to cast spells on other people.

Bestow Hope gives it's recipient more confidence, working suspiciously similar to Bless only slightly weaker and with a different power source. But I guess a morale bonus and a divine bonus would stack in 3e so it's all good.

Cloak of Mail is a slightly more powerful, but also more finicky variant of Shield. Perils of using a school of magic that isn't optimised for the job so you can fill your bonus slots.

Elixir of Stupefaction halves the wisdom score of drinkers, which gives excellent synergy with other enchantment spells, and indeed the effects of mundane alcohol. A few penalties before the main course means you're much less likely to waste a high level spell.

Rune of Hold Person is another variant that's slightly less powerful than the regular spell, but makes up for it with increased flexibility and being able to cast it on lots of things to trigger later.

Bane Deflector is similar to Stoneskin, only instead of absorbing damage altogether, it transfers it into a piece of jewellery, which breaks once it's taken all the punishment it can handle. Probably weaker overall, but working differently once again makes them stackable.

Flaming Missile is kinda the reverse, drawing heat out of a hot coal to make a weapon flame. This is much weaker than just using evocation magic to create it ex nihilo. At this point it would be much easier just to collaborate with another spellcaster who has access to the schools you lack.

Silverblade's Mindkiller makes a victim believe it's been reduced to 1hp by your magical attack. Once again, weaker than Phantasmal Killer at the same level, but handy if you want to keep them alive to capture or get info, which you can't do if they've heart attacked themselves to death.

Silverblade's Woe drains confidence, acting as a wide area debuff on your enemies. Basic but effective when combined with a multi-pronged attack.

Charm the Crowd is an intermediate between charm person & mass charm. Remember, you only need to get some of them to turn a hostile mob into chaos or an indifferent one into patsies.

Gold Rush makes everyone who fails their save fight over a shiny item. Hopefully you're using that distraction to accomplish some other goal in the meantime like a truly subtle wizard.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron UK Issue 7: May 2000



part 5/5



Mailbag: First letter continues the debate on how and what skeletons can perceive. Without a more consistent and rigorous magic system than D&D, logical extrapolation can only take you so far.

Second has travelled quite a bit and wants to be able to combine the points they earned in the UK & USA into one account. Being able to set up a direct debit standing order for their membership instead of having to mail a cheque every year would be good too. Since that would increase retention, the staff are entirely in agreement and keen to overcome the legal & logistical hurdles currently in the way of those.

Finally, another open-ended rules question. Is magic missile an actual visible missile? What happens if there's an invisible creature between you and the intended target? Does it hit them instead, does it pass through harmlessly, or does it go around, revealing that something is up in that square? Now there's a pretty can of worms to get into.



On The Trail: The UK has Sarbreenar to develop as it chooses. Now Germany has taken control of Tsurlagol, reminding us that they're one of the strongest markets for RPG's and have been producing their own games & a german language edition of polyhedron for a while. Unsurprisingly, they kicked it off with a big interactive in which all the newly arrived adventurers in town saved it from monsters, making it clear this is a place worth sticking around in if you want to gain some XP. They have plenty of ideas for further metaplot developments, but who knows how much of those we'll actually get to hear about, given the already very incomplete coverage we get of all the adventures for their various Living settings. If any german players have any more info to volunteer about how their branch ran things and how much freedom they had I'd be very interested to hear it.



Along with the usual gaming-centric conventions, the events guide lists Furrycon as well, which means at least one of them yiffs amongst the staff. Who could it be?



The Ruby Inn: We finish up with one of those bits of prefab worldbuilding that has a specific location, but is easy enough to transplant elsewhere in your campaign. However, it’s not part of Raven’s Bluff or even Sarbreenar or Tsurlagol, but Cryllor in the Greyhawk setting. Given the recent announcement of Living Greyhawk, any submissions for that setting have been moved way up in priority for publication. It’s a cosy little place owned by a halfling and a gnome, which means most of the rooms are sized for smaller folk, but it still has a few human and elvish clientele who have to remember to be careful standing up and going through doors. One of the owners has a bit of a gambling problem, but it’s otherwise well-run, with even the rats doing a proper night’s work and acting as an alarm system in return for being properly fed, thanks to the gnomish ability to talk to small burrowing mammals. You might well hear about a good adventure hook here, but bar fights are unlikely, and probably going to be won by the side that doesn’t have a constant attack penalty from needing to stoop all the time. A decent but unexceptional example of its type, with enough supernatural elements to make it distinct, but not so much as to ruin the overall grittiness of the setting. Seems usable to me.



The average quality of individual articles still isn’t as good as Dragon or Dungeon, but they are functioning pretty decently as an all-purpose gaming magazine, providing articles, adventures and reviews for a wide variety of games. Now the other parts of this journey have all become much narrower in the topics they cover, that variety continues to be welcome. I already know it’ll get narrower still after 3e arrives, so I’m definitely going to enjoy the last few bits of it while it lasts. Once again, we head to the next stop along the road.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 80: May/Jun 2000



part 1/5



100 pages. We had a trip to a factory last issue, now it looks like it’s one of their periodical attempts to add firearms to a fantasy setting. It takes hard work by the druids and wizards to keep secrets esoteric and prevent technology from moving forward. Let’s find who’d responsible this time around and if you’ll get to keep their stuff for any length of time after dealing with them.



Editorial: Chris Perkins has boasted before about writing enough rejected adventures to fill the magazine for several years on top of being editor if he were so inclined. But despite his joking displays of egotism, he knows that this place works better as a collaboration. So the editorial is actually written by the other Chris, Mr Thomasson (almost as bad as hollywood leading men around here) and talks about the roles the rest of the staff play, their favourite movies and their favourite monsters. Art Director Larry Smith likes Mind Flayers & Young Frankenstein. Publisher Johnny Wilson also likes Illithids, but prefers the Godfather. Dave Gross likes dragons and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Perkins is a fan of Jaws and Beholders, while Thomasson himself picks The Shawshank Redemption and Blink Dogs. Not a huge amount of in depth analysis, but it gives us something to think about, possibly to check out as well if you haven’t already seen these. (not that any of them are particularly obscure or hard to find even now.) What would your responses to these questions be and why?



Letters is rather sparse this month. First letter notes that they recently did an online-only Side Trek on the website and wonders if there’s more in the pipeline. You’re in luck, because several other things have been released online only as free .pdfs recently. Make sure you download them now, because they’ll be gone in a few years time.

The only other one is your basic complaint about the whole idea of releasing a new edition, particularly one that forces them to release a whole new set of supplements redoing old ground under new rules. Surely they could continue doing at least one 2e adventure per issue for the sake of the holdouts? Nope. It’s a clean sweep and nothing’s gonna change the way they feel inside. Trust us, once you actually see the new rules you’ll agree they’re a vast improvement in so many ways. And that’s not even mentioning how fast the OGL will let the new edition blow past the number of old supplements and add new ones they would never even have thought of let alone let past approvals as a single big company.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 80: May/Jun 2000



part 2/5



Fortune Favors the Dead: Our tie-in adventure is ahead of it’s Dragon counterpart for a change, as their swashbucking special isn’t until July. We’re off to your world’s closest equivalent to Spain (Mystara/Red Steel players will find this particularly easy) for some treasure hunting. As is often the case, you’ve found part of a map, but someone else has the other parts and you’ll need to beat them first to unite them and get the full directions. First off, chase down notorious pirate Montova the Red and beat him in a dramatic ship-to-ship battle. Cross the desert to the village of Valencia, facing snakes, scorpions in your shoes and a bandito ambush. When you reach it, you’ll find it’s actually completely controlled by an even larger group of bandits and have to join forces with the local padre to free them to find the next piece of the map. Unfortunately, this is hidden in a nearby prison. You’ll need to either use magical stealth or go in as prisoners then figure out how to break out to get it. Then, to get the final fragment, you’ll need to break into the villa of the despotic baron of the region, who probably won’t be inclined to negotiate with you due to the stuff you did in the previous part, but that still leaves you the stealthy larceny or violent approaches open. Finally, once you have all the pieces, that’s several more days across tough desert terrain, beating the ghost of the guy who buried the treasure in the first place and figuring out the logistics of getting 700lb of gold back to anywhere you can spend it. While technically made up of half a dozen setpieces you have to go through in a linear fashion, the adventure as a whole feels like it would take rather longer than a single 4 hour slot to play out, with some expandable to take up whole sessions in themselves. (particularly if the prison part doesn’t go smoothly) Not my favourite type of adventure, but still a cut above typical tournament fare, with plenty of room for players to come up with ingenious solutions to the individual challenges and engage in dramatic derring-do & repartee. If your tastes run more towards a preset story than mine it’s a pretty good example of it’s type.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 80: May/Jun 2000



part 3/5



The Frothing Miscreant: Yet another nautical gnome adventure? It’s been a mere year since the last one! At least this one stays on the surface. Sick of not being taken seriously as a heroic adventurer, Skoradin Thinskin (very nomative determinism) decided to go evil and built himself a steam-powered paddleboat to raid in, which has considerable speed and manoeuvrability advantages compared to ones powered by sail or oar. After multiple very successful acts of piracy, people are obviously keen on stopping him. You get hired by a guy who thinks he has the scoop on how to counter his attacks, after getting hold of one of his projectiles. Thankfully he’s correct, which will come in handy if you do go on patrol and fight him on the high seas. However, you could also do some detective work and track things back to his estate, as constructing all this custom technomagical stuff requires a supply chain and people remember a gnome who wears platform shoes and buys a whole load of odd things at once. Either way, it’s a fairly short adventure, particularly because you’ll probably wind up using only half of it, but with some pretty inventive tricks & traps that use common items & spells in ways the PC’s could easily duplicate if they were so inclined. There’s plenty to learn from here even if you don’t use it exactly as is and the level of silliness is tolerable. Pretty good overall.



Nodwick and Piffany are just the right height to avoid gnomish traps aimed at taller folk, making this one of his less painful adventures.



Challenge of Champions III: Ooh, is it this time again? Off to the adventurer’s guild to participate in some nonlethal but very competitive puzzle-solving with a dozen other adventuring parties. Are you ready to solve each of these 10 cryptically named puzzles (who’s names combined are the solution to one of the puzzles in itself) within 15 real and IC minutes with only the tools provided? At least none of the other teams are trying to cheat this time, but there’s still a betting pool going if you want to up the stakes. As usual, they go to extra effort illustrating these so you have a proper idea what your PC’s are facing and clues to solving it, but the viewpoint is 3D isometric rather than the first person perspective as you enter the room of the previous one. (apart from scenario 8, which has a particularly complex diagram which you have to cut out and then give each of the 4 parts to different players.) Also as usual, I can’t describe these ones in too much detail without spoiling the fun if you run through it in the future, but the tricks are pretty inventive as usual. These adventures continue to scratch an itch no-one else is even trying to reach, making them extra valuable to DM’s who need a break from the continuity of a long-running campaign.



Nodwick goes through the challenge in extra detail, with a full-page extravaganza of unorthodox (and frequently painful to him) solutions that eventually results in the team being banned. We shall see if the guildmasters remember that when the next instalment rolls around.

 

[Richards]

Challenge of Champions III: Ooh, is it this time again?

I had a nice "every 11 issues" thing going for a while (Dungeon issues 58, 69, 80, and 91 holding the first four in the series) until going monthly messed up the sequence ("Challenge of Champions V" wasn't published until Dungeon issue 108).

Johnathan

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 80: May/Jun 2000



part 4/5



Side Treks - Sarfion's Collection: Double ooh. Looks like this is the first mention in Dungeon of the Far Realm, Bruce Cordell’s (quite successful) attempt at putting a bit more Call of Cthulhu in our D&D. As is often the case, it starts with a wizard opening a gate there. If he wasn’t mad before, he is now. Now he’s a servant of the Neh-Thalggu, capturing other wizards so they can extract their brains. He’s terrorised and geased the other wizards in his magic school so they can’t talk and there’s not much they can do, but all these mysterious disappearances are bound to attract attention sooner or later, or he’ll pick on the wrong group of PC’s. Since this is only a Side Trek, anyone investigating the place will soon find his secret lab and the abomination lurking there. Both he and the brain collector will try to flee through a gate when their HP gets low. Following is really not recommended in this case. So this is basically just a smaller fantasy-focussed version of the DG adventure in Polyhedron UK. Must be something in the water if both sides of the pond are independently coming up with the same idea at the same time. Since the implementation of this one is less railroady I’m inclined to prefer it out of the two despite reading it second.



A Head for Business: Our non D&D adventure of the issue goes a bit Roger Bacon for it’s inspiration. We’re off to an earth very similar to our own, only filled with paranormal weirdness for our first Alternity: Dark Matter adventure. A small-time criminal happened to witness a battle between Sandmen and Hoffman Institute agents. He managed to preserve one of the sandmen heads before their nanites could self-destruct it, hook it up to a computer and force it to speak. Despite it’s deliberate crypticness he’s still managed to get the info to construct some useful supertech and sell it on the black market. This of course attracted the attention of other sandmen who now want to plug the leak with extreme prejudice. Their first attempt attracts the attention of both your agency and the FBI and now you need to figure out what’s going on and stop several further sandman attacks. Capturing the guy and the head is also recommended once you know the score, although destroying it is also an acceptable outcome as at least it means more of them are less likely to show up in the future. Another medium length one which may well actually turn out rather shorter than intended unless the players take the specific solutions intended to get to the next scene, which are not always the most obvious choices. This definitely shows the limitations in trying to write a particular story rather than having branches in your map or plot. Not one I would have put on the pass pile if it were for D&D, but at least they’re trying and it’s an accessible enough read explaining all the lore in a way that makes sense to people who haven’t got the books. Hopefully it can still get a few more people buying Alternity and sending stuff in, then we’ll have enough choice of adventures to apply stricter quality control.