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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8051880" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 24: May/Jun 1985part 3/6Needle part I: Our centrepiece this time around is Frank Mentzer's tournament module from last Gen Con. While the Prophecy of Brie got half published as standalone modules, then the other half in here, making it rather tricky to see the full picture, this gets a considerably better deal, appearing fully as both instalments in here and a compiled module in 1987. Guess it was more popular with the staff and/or players. The first instalment is the shortest, as half of it is devoted to giving us full stats, personalities and a relationship map for the 7 pregen characters, (all of whom have silly nicknames rather than proper ones) leaving only 8 pages for the actual adventure. The adventure itself is evenly split between getting to the dungeon, and the dungeon itself, a maze in the middle of a jungle that turns out to be a crashed spaceship. So I guess this is Frank's version of the Barrier Peaks, just as Bigby's tomb was clearly drawing from the same well as Gary's Tomb of Horrors. As with those, this is not an adventure that pulls punches. Incautious adventurers will die abruptly without a saving throw in multiple places if they make the wrong decision, and it's literally impossible if you don't have certain key spells and bits of equipment the pregens are equipped with. So I definitely can't recommend using it outside of it's original tournament environment, for if you put it in a regular campaign, with players who've worked up to mid-level the hard way, they're not going to be happy about abruptly losing a character because they didn't poke everything with a 10 foot pole before proceeding, and stalling the adventure because they built their characters wrong and the DM didn't doublecheck their sheets. That's a quick way to a very pissed-off party.How Game Reviews Are Done: Reviews aren't a thing polyhedron has really done so far, but that's due to lack of people sending them in, rather than any particular objection to the idea. To encourage this, they publish a page full of guidelines to the format and style they're going to use. Whether other people will stick to it, or indeed, whether anyone else will send any in remains to be seen, but it's good to see them trying new things. It gives me more variety in what I read, and connects them more to the outside world, and those are both positive changes to make.</blockquote>

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