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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8022207" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 18: May/Jun 1984part 4/6Two New NPC's: Following on from last article, two other wizards get fully statted out. As with last issue, they're quite different in both personality and the way they use their powers. One is cautious and likes to use his divinations to help out from behind the scenes, while the other likes to blast things to naughty word with liberal use of charged magic items. Both have disgustingly high ability scores that definitely weren't rolled up randomly, which is a bit tiresome, but oh well. They still have enough quirks and backstory plot hooks to be interesting and easy to use in your own campaign, which is what we need out of articles like this. Two Cents: Instead of a forum where lots of different people give their opinions on all sorts of topics, this column is turned into soapbox for one reader to expound on their likes, dislikes and playstyle. Joseph Wichman is very much against PvP and evil characters, somewhat disapproves of railroading, and is in favour of keeping IC and OOC knowledge properly separated. Nothing too unusual there. We all want freedom to do what we want with our characters, but have to learn to get along with others so we don't step on their freedom's too much and ruin other people's enjoyment of the game. If you want to play a game where competition against the other players is the intended purpose, there are a lot of rulesets better suited to it than D&D. Layover at Lossend: Our Star Frontiers material has a deeply cringy attack of old school racism, as the PC's have to deal with intelligent apemen while en route from planet Gollywog. That's either very unfortunate, or an entirely intentional and nasty bit of dogwhistle association, especially as said apemen fill all the superstitious primitive stereotypes. I think it's safe to say I won't be touching this one with a 10 foot pole. Whether it was intended maliciously or not, it can stay buried in the past where it belongs. Money makes the World go Round: We conclude with another fairly basic bit of advice. Make sure the PC's have plenty to spend the treasure they found during their adventures on. Between training, currency conversion fees, taxes, restocking food and supplies, hunting out new plot hooks and outright robbery, there's a lot of ways you can eat into their savings and force them to get back on the road again. If they want to invest in the stock market or buy up property and become a landlord to make their wealth self-sustaining they'll have to make a conscious effort to do so. That's both realistic and sensible, although you might still want to be a little kinder on them than reality is to us. After all, it is supposed to be a game. Nothing particularly surprising about this. Another middle of the road little article.</blockquote>

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