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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8345512" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 62: August 1991part 5/5The Living City 2: The second Raven's Bluff article this issue is somewhat more useful than the first. A half-deaf cranky old mapmaker, who's maps include places not only all across Toril, but a few places from other worlds as well? There's plenty of fun to be had in both short-term roleplaying and long-term plot hooks in that. You can spend money to make your expeditions easier, and make money by mapping places further afield that he hasn't got in his collection yet. It's one of the most important parts of old school gaming, along with tracking encumbrance, and neglecting them is one of the quickest ways to make you feel like you're playing a video game with unlimited hot-swappable inventory space rather than exploring a real world. If you want a campaign to last for years, you need to build up the little details and make them feel like their explorations are meaningful, with definite progress, but not escalating to god mode too quickly. This seems like a clear enough picture to me. RPGA Network Retail Members: Over the years, a fair number of companies and games shops have signed up to offer discounts for RPGA members, in the hope of driving further traffic. But as it's usually mentioned just once when they start, it might be a bit tricky to keep track of what options you can apply this too. So here's an alphabetical list of all 52 places in the USA you'll get special privileges at if you flash your membership card while making a purchase. Let's hope it doesn't go out of date too quickly. Paperwork Etiquette: Tim Beach gives us his first communique as a member of staff to tell us what he'd like to improve about the network, and what he wants to see from us. Obviously tardiness in filling out and submitting your tournament scoring sheets is the number one irritant, with other basic errors like not titling your submissions, remembering to put a name or return address, or just sending a computer disk with no indication of what's on it or what brand of computer you use it with close behind. There's also some less objective preferences, like a list of cliches in adventure writing that he's thoroughly sick of, and will reject with great prejudice if you persist in regurgitating them. On a similar note, more non AD&D adventure submissions would be very welcome in general, to keep the variety up for the RPGA staff and give people more choices in what they play when they go to big conventions. In return, he'll do his best to simplify the forms and speed up turnaround on his end of the submissions & approvals process. Good luck. They come in all fresh-faced and optimistic, thinking they can do a better job than their predecessor. Most are wrong, and will be ground down by the system soon enough. We shall see just how much change he can actually implement. At least he's managed to make what could have been just dry bureaucratic lists interesting with a bit of wit and personal asides that help us get to know him as a writer. I look forward to hearing more from him. Wolff & Byrd are apparently not immune to time loops, which is a real problem when your client is in a Groundhog Day scenario, as they'll have to explain themselves over and over again.An issue that was oddly high on silliness, particularly considering the time of year. That definitely made it interesting, but also meant it had a fairly low ratio of articles I'd actually want to use in a real campaign. I'd miss it if it went away completely, but this is too much. Curious that they do have so much more of it in general than Dragon or Dungeon. Is that because they get more joke submissions proportionally, or just because they don't have the same quantity in their slush pile to choose from overall? Or is it just because Jean & Skip are more inclined towards making cheesy jokes in general than Roger & Barbara? Given the books and adventures they've written themselves I suspect it might be the latter. Oh well. Their tenure will end eventually, and then I'll be able to test that theory. Let's keep on moving and see what next issue brings us.</blockquote>

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