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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 7980504" data-attributes="member: 27780">The Polyhedron Issue 9: Nov/Dec 1982part 5/6Scholarship Winners: A year ago, they announced the competition for the scholarship fund. Good to see that get resolved. Brent Johnson gets the first prize, while Ross Reedstrom, Susan Thompson, Mark Oxner and Eric Johnson are the runners up. The prizes seem pretty small in light of inflation, and even moreso with the vastly above inflation increases in higher education fees over the past 40 years. That's one area the world has definitely got worse since then. What are we to do with these gouging institutions?White Rabbits: Just the usual list of people they can't track down. Nothing much to see here.Notes for the Dungeon Master: Having spent last column encouraging you to keep your spellcasters under control by strictly tracking their spell components, Frank turns around and contradicts himself, saying he's got no time for that in his games. In fact, you shouldn't feel bound by any of the rules in the books. You're the ruler of the universe, you can change them any time you want. You can make them make placebo saving throws just to keep them on edge, you can mix and match monster appearances and stats, you can create an area where magic is reversed, and suddenly all those +5 swords are healing the enemies, while the guy stuck with the cursed one because you haven't found anyone who can remove it yet is going to save the day. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and opens up the gates for rules lawyers to take control of the game away from you. Basically, this is all about DM as god-overlord playstyle. When you're one of the designers of the game, you're aware that it's just a bunch of rules someone made up, and they can be changed or unmade just as easily. I think the power may be going to his head a little. Careful not to go too far in this direction, or you might as well be playing freeform.Letters is in the middle for a change, which is most unusual for these sorts of publications. First we have someone asking if they'll do modules. They don't have any immediate plans too, and their size makes it logistically tricky, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.Second, someone asking if TSR will sponsor their club. They have a mechanism for this now! Just flip forward a few pages and fill in the appropriate form.More interestingly, someone who not only painted their minis, but did a shadow box up to look like a dungeon for them. Neat. Requests for Polyhedron back issues and Dragon magazine subscriptions. Easy to solve. Act now while stocks last, and before prices go up!And finally, they have to repeat where the various Gen Con's are this year, because someone wasn't paying attention in previous issues. This job does need a lot of patience with repeating yourself, it seems.</blockquote>

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