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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8120761" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 6: Jul/Aug 1987part 5/5Tortles of the Purple Sage - part 1: Yay! Our first multi-part adventure! Hopefully this'll be less of a railroad than the multi-parters in Polyhedron, which definitely suffer due to the limitations of their tournament origins. It's not standalone in other ways either, as it's the first adventure heavily tied to one setting, to the point where it'd take a whole load of extra work to use in any other one, and references a whole load of basic & expert set modules which cover adjacent areas of the Known World. It's Tortle mating season, and the PC's are hired to protect them on their journey to their ancestral spawning grounds, which are hundreds of miles upriver like real world salmon, and also recently conquered. The future of the Tortle race depends on you! Well, that's definitely a pretty unique adventure premise, simultaneously epic and whimsical. Once you have your mission, you have a lot of freedom in your route. Depending on where in the Known World you start, it'll probably take several months of travel to get there, during which the Expert set rules for wandering monsters and getting lost in various terrains will get a serious workout, and you might well stumble across whole other small adventures on the way. (like many of the ones included in the last couple of issues) So this isn't so much a singular adventure, as a whole campaign arc giving you a reason to set out on a grand adventure, and encounter all sorts of weird and wonderful things along the way, while still having a long-term objective to keep you pushing onwards rather than just wandering randomly in search of treasure and things to kill. It's very different from anything else they've published so far, but also pretty damn awesome. It manages to combine the best aspects of an escort mission and a wide-open sandbox, with tons of distinctive flavour, and introduces ideas that will influence future modules down the line in Mystara and Red Steel. I very strongly approve of this, and hope it won't be a complete one-off in terms of style and design quality.The Manual of the Planes advert reminds you not to neglect dental hygiene, no matter what universe you're in. Sure, you don't need it on the astral plane, but it's still a bad idea to get out of the habit, and who knows how quickly abyssal bacteria will give you cavities. Probably their strongest issue since the 1st one, as although they're starting to cycle through repeating themes for adventures, they chose a good set of individual adventures, which did some interestingly envelope-pushing things, and had a bit more continuity with outside products rather than being purely standalone. With a year under their belt, they're starting to get more confident. Let's see if they have any special presents to offer for their 1st birthday, or It'll take a considerably bigger number before they decide to do any envelope-pushing and retrospectives.</blockquote>

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