TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 92/151: May/Jun 2002



part 10/12



Space & Spelljamming: This is even more meaty, giving us 13 pages of ship rules, which are still very simplified in many cases. Most notably, while they do give ships distinct speeds for the purposes of close-quarter combat maneuvers, they completely abstract travel times, not even trying to give a scale for the planets and the distances between them. Gravity is massively simplified and decreases linearly with distance, because who wants to do quadratic sums for fun? Air supply also uses some pretty simple rule of thumb calculations. The thing that’s least abstracted, of course, is combat. Ships use similar rules to arial combat, but they’re generally larger and less manoeuvrable. We get full stats for 14 of them, from the standard human ships to the weird techno-organic illithid ones. So it looks like they’re concentrating on supporting cool combat scenes rather than worrying about larger scale logistical details, which fits with the talk of swashbuckling in the intro. You don’t have to worry about running out of air or food and dying slowly in the vast depths of space unless your DM puts you in that position via fiat for plot reasons.



Equipment & Magic: Unsurprisingly, the new equipment is also skewed towards stuff to fight with, both on a personal level and ship armament. They have gunpowder, which is used in pistols and canons of the age of sail tech level that the setting is riffing off of in general. They also have flamethrowers, for when you really need to incinerate an alien monstrosity regardless of how much air supply that wastes. The magic items are kept to a small practical list, a space anchor that allows a ship to stay still without succumbing to gravity, an organic spacesuit that’s essentially a living plant, Spelljammer helms, which as in the old edition come in major and minor form, (but no longer leave the spellcaster of the group useless for anything else on a day they’re flying) plus their cheaper but more dangerous relative Lifejammer helms, which may get you home if you haven’t got any spellcasters on board, but at a heavy price to your con score. (better hope you’ve still got enough supples to rest and heal between sessions.) There is one rare special item as well though, the Crown of the Stars, which automatically makes you master of any ship you board, able to override it’s regular controls and fly it merely by act of will. But overall, this feels way too short, forced to strip things down to the bare necessities due to overall page count limits, so there’s no room for more interesting variant ideas that would really make the setting feel distinct.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 92/151: May/Jun 2002



part 11/12



Setting: They’re didn’t mention interstellar travel at all in the systems section earlier, and here we see why. They’ve decided to avoid the whole weird business of crystal spheres and phlogiston by keeping it confined to a single star system, leaving you free to decide what kind of cosmology the wider universe has in your game. As with the space systems section, they don’t give hard numbers for things like distance between planets, length of year, day, etc on the individual ones at all, which is a level of vagueness I don’t approve of. The sun is occupied by salamanders and other creatures from the elemental plane of fire, and has a few earthbergs floating on it that are just about habitable if you have magic items to protect you from the heat. Then there’s 5 inhabitable planets before things get too cold and you’d once again need powerful magic to explore whatever lurks on the asteroids and comets beyond. The desert planet of Ashen, with hot days, surprisingly cold nights and lots of pyramids from a long-gone civilisation. The jungle planet of Verdura, heavy on the reptiles. The ocean planet of Quelya, where humans & halflings share the islands, but are vastly outnumbered by the Sahuguin that rule the seas. Similar to Verdura but cooler is the forest planet of Perianth, inhabited by the elves, with the Drow banished to the eponymous spider moon of the setting orbiting around it after a massive war. The Chain of Tears, once the original homeworld of the gnomes until they presumably blew it up in an experiment, (whether that could be classed as a failure or an excessive success is very much up for debate) now an undead-haunted belt of asteroids, with the main living inhabitants being pirates and treasure-hunters. Finally, the icy world of Moradin’s Forge, perpetually frozen on the surface but a planet-sized geothermaly heated dungeon inside. As should be obvious from it’s name, it was originally ruled by dwarves, but now the Mind Flayers are in charge, with only a few well-hidden villages continuing the resistance and obviously very paranoid, because when your enemy has that much mind-control power all it takes is a stray thought in the wrong place to ruin any plans of liberation. Overall it is a bit planet of the hats, and they don’t have any maps or even images of their basic geography from space, but at least effort has been made to make all these locations good places to adventure in, with distinct sets of antagonists and environmental challenges for each. Just the usual problem when you have a small page count to cover a very large area so you have to skip most of the the nuance and hope it’s still enough for the DM to build upon and run a game with. So this accomplishes what it sets out to do, be Spelljammer without the silliness or impossibly large scope, sticking close to the standard 3e rules wherever possible. If you set your sights low it’s easier to accomplish them.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 92/151: May/Jun 2002



part 12/12



Enemies: This is oddly short and doesn’t introduce any new monsters. Instead it’s just a few sentences each on Mind Flayers, Drow, Yuan-Ti, Formians and Sahuguin and their place in this solar system. Illithids are the biggest bads, an alien threat that came from another system, took over the planet of Moradin’s Forge and are now accumulating the minions they need among the drow and orcs to take over even more planets. That’s if the Drow don’t betray them first, as they aren’t likely to remain dependent on their benefactors for spelljamming technology for long and getting revenge on the other elves for their banishment is their top priority. Yuan-Ti are pretty similar to usual, the old villains who once had a big empire, but it collapsed and now they just lurk in jungles unable to do any large scale organising. Formians are Borg, nuff said. Sahuguin are only found on Quelya as they don’t have spelljamming yet, but are a pretty substantial threat there, since it’s 90% ocean so there’s not much inland to escape their attacks in. No great departures from the regular stereotypes or mechanics here either.



Godlike talks about Pevnost, the Czech defector who can open a door and connect it to any other door. While this had enormous strategic advantages for the Allies, it couldn’t stop Hitler from holding his relatives hostage and killing most of them, resulting in him being pretty emotionally broken and alone by the end of the war. Being able to go anywhere doesn’t necessarily make you any more able to move on emotionally.



The counters are tied into the Polyhedron side this time, with a bunch of spaceships for ship-to-ship combat. (not to the same scale as normal monsters) Humans get two tradesmen, two hammerships and an archelon. Elves get an arrowing and a warbird. Drow get two deathspiders and seven little spinnerets. Gnomes get a pair of wreckships. Illithids get two nautilioids and a swarm of eight little boreworms to terrorise everyone else with. Good to see them making everyone visually distinct even at this scale.



The Dungeon side of this issue is interesting, but in a somewhat irritating way, trying very hard to create adventures with recurring antagonists despite all the many times that concept been proven a big hassle to implement under D&D rules. In sharp contrast, the Polyhedron side is competent but dull, without the obvious design clangers that were strewn through the draft version of d20 Modern last issue, but also losing a lot of the most interesting parts of Spelljammer without replacing them with anything new, with the attempts at fresh worldbuilding feeling pretty skeletal. If they’d made it a full-sized sourcebook they might have been able to really get going on putting new stuff in, but at the moment this mainly feels like selective subtraction. Overall, not their best work on either sides. Still, next time is a new day, another chance to find love. Let’s roll up our sleeves, apply some elbow grease and get ready for the Thunderball Rally, which definitely sounds promising and not a repeat of something they’ve already done in here.

 

[(un)reason]

Spelljammer - Shadow of the Spider Moon recruitment thread is up.

 

[(un)reason]

It’s funny, how an incomplete success can hurt more than total failure. The first minigame only got a single applicant, who immediately wanted to houserule everything, which is kinda missing the point. The second had none at all. I had a little more hope with Spelljammer because it was a prexisting property. Unfortunately, that turned out to be as much liability as boon, as all the prospective players simply saw the Spelljammer part and not the Shadow of the Spider Moon part and started submitting whatever wacky concepts they felt like. I had no clue how to turn these concepts into a cohesive party and create a suitable adventure for them, and wound up freezing in panic and ghosting them rather than being able to properly discuss and explain the whole situation. I am not happy with myself at all after this episode. Oh well, at least I won’t have the same problem again until the 3e Dark Sun conversion, which is still less divergent in tone to the original than Shadow of the Spider Moon was. Let’s see if I can do any better next year.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

It’s funny, how an incomplete success can hurt more than total failure. The first minigame only got a single applicant, who immediately wanted to houserule everything, which is kinda missing the point. The second had none at all. I had a little more hope with Spelljammer because it was a prexisting property. Unfortunately, that turned out to be as much liability as boon, as all the prospective players simply saw the Spelljammer part and not the Shadow of the Spider Moon part and started submitting whatever wacky concepts they felt like. I had no clue how to turn these concepts into a cohesive party and create a suitable adventure for them, and wound up freezing in panic and ghosting them rather than being able to properly discuss and explain the whole situation. I am not happy with myself at all after this episode. Oh well, at least I won’t have the same problem again until the 3e Dark Sun conversion, which is still less divergent in tone to the original than Shadow of the Spider Moon was. Let’s see if I can do any better next year.

Play-by-Post is a difficult beast. I have failed more times than I succeeded with it. The trick, I have found, is to have a short scenario in mind rather than trying to think of it as a full adventure or campaign. And being as clear as possible about character creation guidelines and limits.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 93/152: Jul/Aug 2002



part 1/10



138 (168) pages. Epic level adventure? Can I ride my giant green-eyed white eagle? And wield my improbably large sword one-handed like the guys in Exalted do? Just this once? Well, alright. You still have to track encumbrance for everything outside your portable hole though. So it’s time to push the upper limits of power that the system allows and see if the bookkeeping required on all the stacked buffs remains manageable as the numbers add up.



Editorial: Unsurprisingly given the high level adventures in both this issue and the last, the editorial is advice on the same topic. If you want your campaign to make it all the way from 1st-20th and maybe beyond, it pays to plan ahead. Put the seeds of a world threatening danger into the very first session so it doesn’t come out of nowhere, remind them that the world is a big place and there are plenty of other adventurers out there, decide whether epic levels are something anyone can reach if they grind long enough or gated behind some magical seal or godly test like the ones from last issue. The kind of advice we’ve seen before, but a bit different this time because the rules are different this edition, with a sharp transition between the tiers of levels and how they’re handled by the rules that feels quite different to the more gradual BECMI or AD&D ones. So I guess this is another of those reminders that system does matter, often in ways that you don’t expect and are tricky to houserule without further knock-on consequences. Speeding up the advancement rate and the number of new powers you accumulate as you gain levels means you’ll be forced to deal with characters becoming too powerful for the episodic slice of life stuff much sooner so you might as well create campaigns that reflect that. Now if only they’d publish adventures that better reflect it as well, instead of mostly sticking to short ones designed to last a few sessions and gain you a level or two.

 

[RealAlHazred]

anxiously awaits your review of Thunderball Rally, the best-themed minigame they made

EDIT: I forgot about Hijinks!... Okay, the second-best-themed minigame they made!

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 93/152: Jul/Aug 2002



part 2/10



Letters: First letter is one of the familiar templates, the newbie who’s just discovered the magazine and is thrilled by the content. Always need a fresh supply of those.

Second is very pleased by the Razing of Redshore and wants more seafaring adventures and/or ones in specific settings. Some people may complain every time you do them, but keep on giving us that variety.

Third is quite pleased about them bringing Spelljammer back and full of plans to get their PC’s offworld in response.

Fourth is the usual dissenting opinion, which never liked Spelljammer in the first place and wishes it had stayed dead. Don’t worry, you won’t be hearing much more from it in the future.

Fifth is more cautiously positive about the new format, but still approves in the end. Just don’t start skimping on your core job of providing adventures because you’ve got all these new d20 shinies.

Sixth likes everything except making the place look like the 3e core books. Now if they could get something published themselves it’d be perfect. The updated writers guidelines are just down the hall. (but left out of the scan, to my irritation)

Seventh and finally, a letter pushing back on their negative review of The Foundation:AWIB&W. They stand by every mean thing they said, and are willing to cite page references to prove that they did indeed read it properly and have the factual details about how much sexual assault and leering over breast sizes is in it correct, or even understated. If you’re into that it’s not as if they can stop you from buying it, but lying when trying to defend it won’t work.



Vanity: We’re starting off with the short adventures this time around, which does mean they’re less likely to be overshadowed by the big one in the middle. We’re off to the Barrier Peaks again to deal with some unusually well-organised bugbears. They’ve been running a ransoming racket for a while, but picked a target who can’t pay and isn’t going to take it lying down. They’re holed up in an ancient crypt a few days hike away. Should you choose to accept the mission, it’s pretty much what you’d expect up to the point where it isn’t. You have a small linear dungeon which is guarded by the bugbears, who will use decent but not incredibly sneaky tactics if you don’t surprise them. They turn out to be led by an ogre, who is secretly being controlled by his intelligent magical greatclub, which is the real brains of the operation. This may of course lead to shenanigans if you successfully kill him and take his stuff, as it’ll try to take over your party in turn. If you search the place properly you’ll also find the secret door to the real coffin of the original occupant, which has quite an interesting backstory himself if you can get him to share it before his homicidal undead instincts take over. A filler adventure that’s unlikely to last more than a single session, but a pretty good one that gives the monsters a decent amount of depth that you could build upon to create further plots. Another day at the office, another one on the usable but not groundbreaking pile.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 93/152: Jul/Aug 2002



part 3/10



Side Treks - The Statue Gallery: Fresh from challenging our champions yet again, Johnathan M. Richards has another sadistic little puzzle for us with distinctly higher stakes. A medusa has accumulated a whole gang of minions that are capable of pretending to be statues one way or another. When the PC’s wander into their lair, they’ll blend in with the real ones from previous intrusions and then attack once the PC’s are in a bad position. You’ll have to deal with a phasm, a mimic, a couple of vargouiles and the medusa herself, who will at least hold off on the stoning until the fight turns against them because she wants to loot the bodies if possible and you can’t do that if you’ve already turned your opponents into statues. Like the big bad of the previous adventure, she has an escape plan, as they once again try to encourage having enemies survive and go on to become recurring antagonists, even though that’s not easy against an optimised party that knows how to concentrate their fire. But maybe if you run several of these adventures in quick succession one of them will make it to a second encounter. Think of it as a villain funnel, just like the one 0th level heroes go through in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Another short adventure that’s decent enough in it’s own right, but very similar in tone to the last one, which is a bad sign on an editorial level because they’re not putting enough variety in what they accept. It’s looking increasingly likely they will fall into the same trap Dragon did in the same time period of following formula to the point where it gets repetitive and redundant reading multiple articles even within the same issue.



Nodwick reassembles the surviving statues after the fight and turns them back to flesh. The people who now have other people’s body parts may or may not be pleased by this long-term, depending how attached they were to their original race and gender.