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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8237730" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 51: January 1990part 3/5With Great Power: This column is in a slightly silly mood, as it's covering the Great Lakes Avengers, the off-brand team of misfits and rejects (oh, and Squirrel Girl, but that's still in the future) from more serious superhero groups that protects Wisconsin and the surrounding region. The founder, Mr Immortal, who can come back to life from apparently anything, and dies a lot because that's his only superpower. His anthromorphic pterodactyl lover, Dinah Soar. G-rated Chuck Tingle before he got started <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" /> Big Bertha, the supermodel that transforms into an enormous super-strong fat woman. No chance of anyone connecting her civilian identity with her superheroic life. And filling out the ranks are Flatman & Doorway, who's powers are entirely self-explanatory, plus established superheroes Hawkeye ("The city is flying, we’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.") & Mockingbird, currently on the outs with the regular Avengers. What wacky adventures will they get up to this week before their comic gets cancelled due to lack of sales or they get sacrificed to show how serious a big crossover event is? Will anyone care enough about them to include them in their own campaign as PC's or NPC's? Did you? No, really, if you did, I'd like to know. The Caves of Confection: Last article was mildly silly, but this one really goes the whole hog. Rick Reid takes a break from forcing us to rescue small but well-coiffeured canines, and sends us into the sugar mines instead to clear out the monsters that have moved in and restore the proper supply of confectionaries to the surrounding country. As with the previous stuff I've seen from him, this is both very linear and extremely silly. A river of chocolate, a marshmallow-addicted harpy, an annoying grandpa in the middle of the dungeon who has somehow miraculously avoided the monsters, jinsu orcs, and the final boss is a snack dragon who's breath weapon encases you in a delicious (but immobilising) candy coating. It's pretty short and not particularly challenging, so it probably won't even last you a single session. Really, this fails on all levels, challenge, funniness, and most importantly meaningful choice. Would it have killed him to write a few more jokes so we could at least have had branching paths, secret doors, variability in the order you do things and amount of treasure you get, so players could feel some degree of choice and achievement for exploring and discovering things or not. Instead of treating them like people to roleplay with, it treats them like a passive audience for him to tell his comedy routine too, going straight from the start of the script to the end with their only contribution being rolling the dice at the appropriate points. It misses the whole point of a roleplaying game, and I'm both annoyed at him for writing it, and insulted that the editors think it's remotely what we want from our gaming and let it through. I mean, really?! Ugh!!! Minus E406 stars for you.</blockquote>

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