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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8084278" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 31: Jul/Aug 1986part 3/5Aliens and the Cryptic alliances: Aliens? In Gamma World? I thought the whole point of the game was that we got ourselves into this radioactive postapocalyptic mess. Ancient aliens on Gamma Mars I could accept, as it's a different sandbox from the main one, but this feels like definite dilution of theme. Oh well, I guess it's Jim Ward's game, and if he's getting bored and wants to spice things up after a decade of developing the same game, that's his prerogative. So the twist here is that instead of an overt invasion, which they're woefully outnumbered to accomplish even with their technological advantage, they're abducting and replacing one or two individuals in each cryptic alliance with crystalline clones, then trying to work their way to the top of these organisations. This is not going well for them, as they're not very good at the fine details of human social dynamics. So there are strong elements of comedy of errors in this, that give the PC's plenty of opportunity to stumble across the infiltrators and destroy them without ever even knowing what they were up against in the first place. It's not the typical cliche alien encounter I was expecting. Once again it looks like he has inventiveness to spare, which is a very good thing to see, especially after all this time. New Druid Spells: Jon Pickens continues converting magical items into spells, giving existing spells stronger or weaker variants, and occasionally even coming up with new ideas of his own. Unearthed Arcana is already out now, so obviously none of these will make it into there, but some will make it into the AD&D 2e corebook in a few years time. He decides Affect Normal Fires, Burning Hands, Flesh to Stone & Stone Tell make perfect sense on the druid spell list as well as the Wizard or Cleric one, lets you share your stealth in natural environment abilities with others, and fills out the top spell level with two very different save or die effects for when a Hierophant is well and truly sick of your naughty word. Since a fair number of these are not even new spells, but he still prints the full descriptions, this article feels particularly padded and hit-and-miss. I think he may be hitting diminishing returns on this idea. Let someone else submit actually inventive new spells instead.</blockquote>

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