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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8372793" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 66: December 1991part 2/5The Living City: Turns out the family tree of the people on the cover is a little more complex than I thought. The woman is the half-elven granddaughter of the man, left with him when her adventurer parents set out on a particularly dangerous mission and never came back. Together with an adopted pair of ex-conjoined twins, they run Oljagg's Rag & Bottle Shop, the kind of place where people leave their worn out odds and ends, which then get cleaned up, stitched together in new ways and then sold on to other people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Because they're generally nice people, they know when to cut someone experiencing hard times a break to keep them coming back, and when to charge rich people more, so the business is decently profitable overall. So the commercial aspect of this is pretty ordinary, if somewhat archaic, and the interesting part is their personalities, and the representation of several unusual disabilities in both the writing and artwork. Even though they aren't represented mechanically in D&D, they still happen in D&D worlds, and magic isn't commonplace enough for ordinary people to be able to afford to cure themselves. They still have to make their way in the world and make a living, especially since there's no social security net there, and some of them will become adventurers. This shouldn't be controversial, but as we saw this the combat wheelchair stuff a few months ago, somehow it still is. Not every character is an all 18's mary-sue with no flaws apart from generalised angst, and having ones like these in your setting definitely makes it more interesting. Monstrous Mayhem: They continue to do contests pretty much every month. This time, it's giving you artwork of a monster and asking you to come up with the stats. It looks like a Dark Sun monster to me, with all those muscles and asymmetrical body parts, but you've got plenty of freedom to stat it up in whatever system you please. Winners get a copy of the 2e Fiend Folio, which this time is being largely done from RPGA submissions, rather than the British fanbase the 1e one drew from, but retains it's remit of being somewhat quirkier than the core monstrous compendia. I look forward to seeing what mechanical effect those weird tendril like left fingers will have. Martial Arts In Paranoia: Badass action heroes, karate kids and ninja turtles are all over the media in the early 90's. It's no surprise that Paranoia would get in on the action of parodying that as well. Interestingly, this is one form of knowledge that's not restricted to commie mutant traitors, with the computer seeing the value in training certain troubleshooters in unarmed combat to better deal with whatever they may be sent up against. So here's several martial arts styles, including their founders and the various types of moves each teaches. Underneath the pun names and pop culture references, this actually looks pretty mechanically functional, and similar to the unarmed combat stuff in the complete fighters handbook, so you could use it in a both the wacky zap style games and the more serious dystopian ones. This one definitely gets my approval, both as variety to contrast with the D&D stuff, and actual quality material. Now let's hope that'll be reflected in the tournaments. I guess Paranoia is more suited to one-shots than lengthy campaigns, so it would be pretty easy for it to get a foothold here.</blockquote>

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