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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8135807" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 39: Jan/Feb 1988part 4/5The Investigators: Our adventure this issue is a Marvel Superheroes one. Take on the role of the eponymous Chicago-based superteam and … not do a huge amount of investigating, actually. It turns out to be one of those missions where the PC's just get handed an assignment by their leader and from then, it's a railroad from one scene to the next with no real choices beyond combat tactics in the action scenes. It spends only 3 pages on the adventure itself, and a full 11 on the pregen heroes and villains, which seems entirely the wrong way around to me. If they'd put a bit more substance into the scenario part, there'd be enough setting material to give the players a bit more freedom of choice, and actually live up to their name. Rather disappointing, really. Superpowered detective stories are an entirely viable subgenre, as Superman's journalistic career, and the whole of Lois & Clark: TNAoS in particular demonstrate. It really should be possible to write them for RPG's as well rather than just falling back on a series of slugfests.Arcane Academe: Jeff finishes off his class advice series with Fighters. There's not a lot that you can do with them that you can't do with any other class, but he tries gamely anyway. They get to be the leader! Yeah, they don't have any powers which actually make them any good at it, and their favoured stats don't support it IC, but as the default class all the others deviate from and are measured against, they get to be the straight white male point of view character all the others revolve around anyway! They stand proud at the front of the party, they get the most credit for adventures afterwards, and attract the greatest number of devoted fanboys & girls when they get to high levels, even if they don't really deserve it. Basically, he's trying to push them into the role of party organiser and battlefield tactician, who understands things like positioning, drawing fire from the more fragile members of the party and team strategy. Something that would actually get mechanical support in 3e supplements with the Marshal & Knight, which then rapidly proved popular enough to become a core class in 4e as the Warlord. Like the Wizard/Sorcerer divide, tactical leader fighting characters are something that has tons of literary inspirations, and seems utterly obvious once they've done it, but it took such a long time to get there, and think to give them powers that make them actually good at what they're supposed to be good at. A good reminder of just how far we've come since then, and how some people did see the problem and tried to help, but in a way that didn't actually do anything concrete about it. The article equivalent of sending someone Thoughts & Prayers.</blockquote>

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