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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8397459" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992part 2/5The Everwinking Eye recovers it's definite article. Must have lost it down the back of the sofa or something. Ed decides to take a break from geographical meanderings to tell us about Elminster's pipe. An innocuous enough seeming thing for an old man to have, particularly when you're playing in a system that has no mechanically codified odds for contracting cancer or what it does to your body if you do. But no, it's actually one of his more versatile magical items, with a whole suite of tricks that both make his life more comfortable, and might save it in a pinch. It can automatically light itself on command, it can provide clouds of smoke to obscure an escape, it can shoot mini-fireballs, it can teleport to his hand on command, it can help him breathe underwater, it can even reflect magic missiles. All with considerably less time and obvious signs than casting a spell yourself, as we're also a long way from metamagic feats becoming a thing, so even Elminster can't do that casually yet. This is another interesting demonstration of Ed's all-round inventiveness, showing how Elminster's jovial eccentricity is a cover for all kinds of paranoid tricks that have kept him alive through the centuries. It's also a reminder of how depictions of smoking were common 30 years ago, but have now been banished from both mainstream media and public spaces in general. If you put a pipe smoking wizard in your story these days, it would be a very deliberate choice that would probably be remarked upon by reviewers and internet commenters. It's the little details like that which make the difference between something written decades ago, and a historical pastiche merely set in the past. All in all, a very thought-provoking article indeed. Sea of Fire pt 2: Having spent a session showing you the effects of prolonged drought on an ecosystem, part two of the adventure ironically does the exact opposite. Now they've reached the source of the river and found it was diverted through a magic portal, the PC's follow it to the other side and find themselves in the middle of Wa, which is now rapidly flooding, and the Wu Jen who created the portal has no interest in shutting it off again, having long since taken his payment and left. You'll need to get to his tower fairly quickly, as every day that passes, both the people with too much and too little water will be having increasingly rough times. As with the first instalment, this is structured as a linear sequence of encounters, but at least gives you a decent mix of combat ones and puzzles and the freedom to solve them in different ways, and isn't filled with obnoxious comedy to undercut the stakes. The final encounter does a particularly interesting example of this, as the Wu Jen's unethical experiments in pursuit of immortality attracts the Dark Powers of Ravenloft, so if you aren't quick and careful, you can wind up being sucked into the mists with him, which will leave you alive and quite possibly able to still defeat him, but completely unable to complete your original mission, and with much bigger problems long term. That's an interesting twist, particularly when used with players who are sufficiently knowledgable OOC to understand the foreshadowing and realise the danger they're in. While I'd still prefer a good sandbox, this is pretty near the top quality I've seen for linear tournament adventures, and very usable in campaign play as well. If only we were seeing more serious challenges and fewer adventures that are basically just 4 hour comedy routines in here.</blockquote>

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