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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8221555" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 49: September 1989part 2/5Cataclysm part 2: If the PC's are still following the railroad at this point, they'll find themselves pointed towards the temple of Bast, where they'll have to deal with several whimsical feline encounters, and then suddenly find themselves face to face with the Cat Lord. If they're still leaning towards feline genocide as a solution they'll find themselves facing an abrupt TPK. A mildly less disrespectful interaction will still result in every cat in the city magically naughty word off, leaving it at the mercy of the bubonic plague, which if you're playing this tournament style also counts as failing the mission and draws the curtain on the stage rather than having to play through months of quarantine and heavy deaths. Only being thoroughly obsequious will get them through this and let them find out the identity of the real villain so they can get to the next bit of dungeon-crawling (rat themed, obviously) to finish him off for good. So there's some definite tonal whiplash going on here, as they veer between lighthearted humour and distinctly heavyhanded plot writing, and players who can't switch gears correspondingly will fail the scenario. The result is another one I have no particular desire to actually play or run, particularly not in an ongoing campaign, as it'd require a fair bit of expansion work to reduce the linearity and give players other ways to solve the problem. The way they write tournament adventures continues to not really be my idea of fun. The Mutant's Armory: A third instalment in this series, this time devoted to the joys of actual armor. This is even shorter than the previous two, as try as you may, there's fewer ways to protect people against dying than there are ways to kill them. I guess there are still more than in D&D, because there's both physical armor & various kinds of force field, and many are noted as being particularly good or bad against certain kinds of damage. Still, there's not a huge amount to say about this. Competent but dull. Let's move on and find out if they have anything else to fill our equipment lists with next issue. On Your Feet: The first half of Peter's column is devoted to responding to the many letters he got about judging quieter characters/players. He doesn't change his basic opinion, but does take on board ideas about how to fix the problem. Randomising which characters players get instead of letting them pick in particular pushes them to roleplay outside their comfort zone and improve their general skill at both acting and system mastery. In a tournament adventure where the DM has no reason to keep you alive, you can't afford to be complacent the way you can in a home campaign. They may have become somewhat less lethal and more focussed on roleplaying over the past decade, but you still need to bring your A game when playing in a randomly determined group of people you've probably never met with a strict time limit. The second half is a fairly typical bit of advice on showing not telling. Describe things in enough detail that they can come to their own conclusions instead of just telling them what's happening, with a decent chance to get it right, but also the possibility of getting it very wrong. This is particularly important when the actual things out there are trying to deceive the characters, and the DM has to balance the image they're projecting with subtle clues that they could have picked up on in hindsight. The endless battle between simultaneously being the player's adversary and the neutral judge of the universe. There's something that never goes away unless you split the two roles up between different people. (which is entirely an option, and can work very well.) The challenge is coming up with enough extraneous detail that whatever is dangerous or plot-relevant isn't instantly obvious to the players.</blockquote>

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