Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8199539" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 47: May 1989part 3/5Building Characters: As part of their attempts to encourage more people to write and submit modules, here's some advice on creating pregens for said adventures. They still haven't properly implemented a system to create and track your own in official tournament modules, and an adventure will be enormously improved by having a set of characters that are properly tuned to the challenges they're going to face. Neither too easy, too hard, or with abilities that completely short-circuit the adventure if applied the right way. A proper amount of equipment for their level that's also useful to their class, with maybe one or two curveballs, no more, otherwise they won't think to use them anyway. Similarly, personality has to tread the fine line between too broad a stereotype, and too complex to roleplay easily and consistently. Remember that they're coming in cold and each round has a fixed runtime, so they need to be able to glance at the sheet and get going fast. Like the character sheets it describes, this is clearly and concisely written, gets the job done and doesn't outstay it's welcome. Absolutely no objection to the advice here. With Great Power: This column decides to give us a couple of more obscure characters from distant corners of marvel earth. Blitzkrieg is from West Germany, and combines wind and electricity powers a la Thor, with a little bit of green lantern energy object creation thrown in as a bonus. Unlike most superheroes, he actually has a solid relationship with his family and day job. Let's hope they don't get abruptly killed for the sake of plot drama in the near future to prove that wrong. The Collective Man is somewhat more stereotypical and cringy. Five Chinese identical quintuplets who can merge into a single being with the strength, speed, intelligence, etc of them all put together, plus draw on the collective unconscious of humanity as a whole for even more knowledge and power temporarily. They almost completely lack individual personalities and happily follow any orders from the government. This seems likely to put them into conflict with heroes who do let their own consciences guide them. Definitely written by someone who's only ever seen the far east from media portrayals. Another thing to put in the file of stuff that hasn't aged well. The Mutant's Armory: Kim Eastland once again has plenty to contribute to Gamma World with 5 pages of expanded and revised equipment. Virtually every weapon in the D&D equipment list, plus a whole lot more gets statted out with notes on their special qualities. As the cover indicated, there are indeed chakrams, and a whole bunch of other obscure weapons from various cultures around the world, plus the klingon bat'leth with the serial numbers filed off and various things they originally put in the Star Frontiers system. I was a little nonplussed at why he was doing this, before I remembered the Gamma World was originally created by Jim Ward, a definite poster boy for wild enthusiasm over balanced game design with proper editing. Getting someone else to do a big overhaul of the mathy stuff probably does improve the system a fair bit. Hopefully this made it into an official book a little later, otherwise it seems like a lot of effort for the small audience of the newszine. Not a hugely interesting read in itself, but I'm sure the crunch will be useful in actual play, and the context around it is interesting. There are much worse things they could have filled this space with. Convention Bound: They've had an article full of DM-facing convention advice, now it's one aimed at players, particularly newbies who haven't done this before. This is a return to the kind of general and basic advice that's useful for pretty much anything, and mostly boils down to learning proper time management and logistics. Figure out which games you want to play in beforehand, make sure they don't clash, make sure you have transportation and food sorted, arrive in plenty of time, and don't be surprised when things go wrong or run late, because in a huge place with lots of moving parts, something probably will go wrong, with knock-on effects. Nothing here I haven't heard before. The kind of advice that's necessary to give every now and then, but very boring for me as a long-term reader. Next!</blockquote>

Verification