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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8165691" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 43: September 1988part 2/5Fun in Games: Rick delivers another trio of goofily presented ideas that just might have serious applications as well. Reward your PC's with things other than cash. How will they react if the townsfolk erect a statue of them, or write a song of their exploits. How will they react if it's an extremely bad representation? Muahaha. That's all too realistic and much more entertaining than counting up the GP again. Second, some rather dated taking the piss out of multi-class characters, that hinges on the concept that a class is something that requires years of rigorous training to get into rather than just picking up various skills as you go. You can definitely link that change over D&D editions to the general decline of rigid education curricula and jobs for life in the real world, and the rise of the gig economy and googling everything rather than learning from a teacher. You can also link the decline of getting a domain and followers at Name level with the decline of Westerns as a genre and the glamorisation of exploring and conquering new lands in general. The final one is considerably less interesting, just another example of the mysterious magical bookstore cliche. Nothing new there, and Terry Pratchett made the silliness in that topic considerably more actually funny. This column continues to be as hit and miss as ever then.The White Robes: A Dragonlance article at last? They haven't done any of those in here. You'd think their linearity would make them right up regular tournament-goer's street. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Nope, it's a Paranoia one, which curiously enough has been getting slightly more traction with the RPGA crowd. Richard Bingle plays catch-up with his brother with this story of the six lives and times of Dan_*_SHK, a Paranoia Troubleshooter. He might have been a mutant, but only some of his clones were commie traitors, which is a better record than most of his peers. They died one-by-one in various misadventures, but the 6th one managed to work all the way up to Ultraviolet clearance before meeting his end in a typically summary and arbitrary fashion, for at no rank are you immune to the ever-accurate and merciful judgement of Friend Computer. It's all thoroughly amusing, but reminds us that Alpha Complex would be a terrifying place if stripped of the cartoon trappings. There's no game material, but as that would be traitorous sharing of classified information anyway, that's probably for the best. It's a pretty good summation of actual play that'll probably turn a few more people onto the game, and there's nothing wrong with that. Do you disagree, friend citizen? (* middle initial changes repeatedly as he moves up clearances)Dr Brown's Miracle Juice: The adventure this issue is a Boot Hill one, featuring an unusually large amount of real world product placement. Dr Brown's vs Coca-Cola! People are rioting because they can't get their preferred shipment of sweet fizzy chemicals! Hopefully the PC's will act in a suitably heroic manner and calm the crowd. If they do, they attract the attention of the Mr Johnson for this mission, who hires them to transport Nitroglycerine disguised as Dr Brown's down to Mexico. Of course, anyone who knows anything about nitro knows it explodes at the slightest provocation. Escort mission hijinks ensue! The writing is scene based rather than location, but unlike most recent examples of this, it's not a railroad, and does allow for a certain amount of player agency and getting different results on their rolls without the whole thing falling apart. It's lighthearted without being outright silly, and feels like something that might have actually happened in reality in some form. It shows them actually doing something good with their different module needs and restrictions to Dungeon. Yee-Haw! :fires guns in the air: Ain't that a relief like a waterin' hole after three days on the open prairie.</blockquote>

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