Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8330007" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 61: July 1991part 3/5Dark Sun gets Gladiatorial Combat tournament rules so you can create your own characters, bring them to conventions, and earn points for their arena fighting escapades. Unsurprisingly, they're a lot more generous than the Living City ones. 100 points to divide amongst only 6 attributes (no-one cares about comeliness in this harsh environment), everyone starts at 3rd level with max HP and a psionic wild talent. (which will likely be the real deciding factor in battles if used cleverly, particularly if you pick one with multiple prerequisites, as that make some choices strictly better than others. ) Let's get ready to rumble! Let's hope they'll have enough signups to tell some interesting actual play stories and keep it going long enough for characters to level up. Bookwyrms: Last year, the Forgotten Realms was invaded by mongols from the east. This time, the Faerunians are the ones doing the invading, as they blatantly steal from another bit of real world history with the Maztican colonisation. However, since Toril is a brighter and shinier world than Earth, and there isn't a convenient plague to wipe out 90% of the new worlders, things won't go nearly as well for them. While both sides will take losses, ultimately the invaders get repelled, and contact between Faerun & Maztica will fade away after a few years to make room for the next big metaplot event. (until they remember about them decades later just enough to teleport the whole continent to another planet for a century, and then bring it back, which was one of the biggest head-scratchers of the whole 4e era) While there are good and bad people on both sides, overall we're the bad guys here, and this doesn't forget it in the way it depicts things. Once again this falls into the category of shallow representation, but still better than no representation at all, and is at least trying to be more culturally sensitive than Boot Hill, while still making a Mesoamerican setting playable either as a native or a visitor. Hopefully there's still stuff to be found in the boxed set, trilogy, and adventures that's useful today. Back to Basics: The second promotional article this issue is pretty self explanatory. They're releasing a new basic set! Easier to learn, better production values, and with a set of cards helping you quickly reference various concepts. Upsell it to all the people in your life who don't roleplay yet, but you think might be receptive to the concept. Once they're in, the upgrade path is much simpler too. Instead of a full 5 boxed sets covering various level ranges, they're releasing the Rules Cyclopedia, which'll put everything up to level 36 in a much more conveniently organised way, and then an all-new system for Immortal level play. (not that many people'll get there, because the XP system for lower levels remains the same) So this sees them sweeping some of their built-up cruft away, and then setting out to replace it with plenty more, as they're embracing the current trend to put massive world-changing metaplot events in every campaign world, with yearly almanacs to keep you up to date on everything that's happened and what it'll mean for your PC's. That'll last :checks: 4 years before they decide to shake things up again, moving Mystara to the AD&D system, where it'll be cancelled for good well before they can update everything. There's good and bad points to the changes they're making, but ultimately, too many settings, treated too similarly will be one of the big factors in TSR's downfall. Oh well, it's still an interesting journey, even if we've done it before and know how it ends, hopefully there's still a few more insights that can be gleaned viewing it from this perspective.</blockquote>

Verification