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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8398921" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 70: April 1992part 4/5The Living Galaxy: Roger gives us another article that is basically just a series of references. He looks at pretty much all the sci-fi RPG's on the market at the moment, and tells us his favourite parts from them. Each offers different ideas on how to build characters, and what kinds of personalities they might have, and some have more sophisticated stuff as well, such as Twilight 2000's extensive set of building plans or Traveller's guide to Startowns and how living in a port affects the economy & lifestyle. If you take all the best bits and put them together they become stronger than any one individually. Another reminder that the universe is a mind-bogglingly massive place, and if you want to represent it accurately, you need to do a lot of research, get perspectives from all kinds of viewpoints. He can point you in the right direction, but ultimately, you have to put the work in yourself if you're not running prefab adventures. (and even then, knowing more about a setting is handy if they stray from the expected route & plot choices.) Not straying that far from formula then, leaving this pretty middle of the road in terms of usefulness.The Living City 2: The second Raven's bluff article this issue is also filled with opportunities for adventure. 5 years doing this, you'd think they'd have thought about what kind of emergency services they have here sooner. The fire services turn out to be one of those areas where they use magic to simulate earthly technology, with a decanter of endless water to keep the pressure up on their water supplies. They're called the Red Ravens, which isn't just a figure of speech, as they have a wereraven member who's trained a whole flock of regular ravens to act as their lookouts and early response team, spotting fires and making it obvious from far away where they are so their wagons can get there quickly and actually save some of the property instead of just mopping up and preventing it from spreading throughout the whole city. Their fire-resistant work clothes also look somewhat like ravens, with large beaked helmets filled with stuff to filter out smoke. (the fact that it looks similar to real world plague doctor masks is an added bonus, and not a co-incidence at all) Because firefighting is not a full-time occupation, and also because the Forgotten Realms has it's share of dickishly evil people who will start fires and then attack anyone trying to put them out, this outfit also serves to conceal their identities so it's harder to attack them when they're off duty in retaliation. So this is an interesting mix of stuff that approximates modern technology, and fantastical elements that show an alternate path to accomplishing the same goals in a world full of adventurers and monsters that make those adventurers a necessity. It also has more than a little superhero genre influence, and would be very easy for heroic PC's to join to give them new adventure opportunities and the gear to have a decent shot at accomplishing them. If this were 3e, they'd almost definitely have their own prestige class. Definitely feels like you could get a lot of use out of this one as a campaign framework if you wanted too, so this gets my approval.</blockquote>

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