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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8375425" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 66: December 1991part 5/5The Living Galaxy: So far, most of what Roger has covered here has been topics that work better in sci-fi games than D&D. Not this time, as he's talking about treasure. Now that's definitely an area where D&D goes into more detail about what stuff you can get for beating each particular creature, how useful & valuable it is, and how much of it you can carry than pretty much all other RPG's put together. Without being linked to a magically enforced objective gold standard, what is considered valuable will vary widely in sci-fi campaigns, depending on tech level and hardness of the science. If you've got replicators, for instance, value of material things due to scarcity pretty much goes out of the window (until they come up with gold-pressed latinum or whatever that can't be replicated for handwavey reasons) and the most important thing becomes your energy reserves and information. Even in less advanced ones, the bulk of a thing and it's value can have very little correlation and fluctuate wildly from place to place. And no matter the tech level, some things will have sentimental value, so people will be willing to pay above the market value for the original even if a copy would be just as good in practical terms, or be illegal, so the extra cost is hazard pay for creating it and getting it to the buyer surreptitiously. It's a good reminder of how complex and largely illusory the economy actually is. Without an objective financial standard, what will your character choose to value once they have enough to survive comfortably indefinitely? (As any group capable of extended space travel pretty much has to have) That's going to affect what adventures you go on quite a bit.The Ultimate Contest: They've been doing competitions a lot this year. They must be running out of ideas, because now they get meta and ask the readers to submit ideas for more types of competition that they could do next year. A lot of them will probably be repetitive variations on a theme, but hopefully there'll be enough good ones in there to keep variety up for another year or two before they have to either reuse ideas or scale back on competitions as a whole to focus on something else.1992 Games Decathalon: While the previous competition and all the lesser competitions that will be created as a result of it are open to all members, the Decathlons are a little more exclusive, as you need to be part of a registered club to participate. Given how few clubs there still are worldwide, if yours is organised enough to participate in all 10 of these events over the course of the year, you've already got pretty decent odds of winning, so no excuses. (except possibly not wanting to participate in the latest obnoxious Fluffyquest instalments, now in both AD&D and Boot Hill flavours.) Will enough enter to make the competition genuinely competitive, or will one wind up dominating the whole year simply by default? Keep on tuning in to find out!Another issue with a few good articles, a few bad ones, and a whole lot of formulaic average ones. Asking for competition ideas in particular feels like the people in the office are getting a little stuck in a rut and they know it. Will they be able to add any new members of staff or a particularly enthusiastic volunteer to shake things up next year? Tune in tomorrow for the next step towards completing this journey through history.</blockquote>

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