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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8415686" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 73: July 1992part 3/5Starting From Scratch: After a whole bunch of stuff that's quite RPGA specific, here's one of those ultra generic single page articles that could appear in nearly any publication in any era. Don't just roll up a character and pick a class, think about what they look like, their history, likes & dislikes, why they've become an adventurer, etc. Seen it before, frequently in much greater detail. The kind of thing that makes me emit a resounding meh and move on quickly. The Living Galaxy: Roger is also continuing to be generic, but in much greater detail and with plenty of reference materials for further reading. What do the PC's know about their homeworld, how does the DM decide all this and how much detail do they go into creating it's geography, history, political factions, etc, particularly if they'll be spending most of their time starfaring so it might not even be relevant to the plot. Do you make it all up yourself and give them a big infodump that they probably won't read, do you hash it out in session zero, do you leave it vague and give them freedom to come up with big chunks of it when it becomes relevant in actual play? For ease of play, it's best to make things mostly earthlike with a few big differences, even if that does risk planet of the hats style worldbuilding. Whether newly colonised or with millions of years of history, there should be some interesting conflicts taking place that would make for good plot hooks. Decide what overall tone you want to set, the hardness of the science, effectiveness and integrity of law enforcement. Give plenty of literary examples of each type of campaign you're suggesting. Put next to the previous article, it finely illustrates the difference between being formulaic and rehashed in a professional way vs an amateur one. The pro has a lot more tricks up their sleeve, some of which will hopefully be fresh to the audience, and executes them in a more reliable way. You're still probably engaging in a cycle of doing a bit of investigation & exploring, then some killing things & taking their stuff in actual play, but you should be doing it with a bit more style and efficiency. Bestiary: In most other editions, Bahamut & Tiamat appear in the corebook or a significant supplement. 2e hated allowing direct interactions with deities, so they only put simplified avatar versions in Monster Mythology, and shuffled the full statblocks off to Polyhedron where hardly anyone will see them. Like regular dragons, the stats have been substantially boosted from their 1e incarnations, but the basic details of their personalities and surroundings remains pretty familiar. So this is a particularly odd footnote in D&D history as a whole, reminding us of some of the political wrangling behind the scenes in what was kept in and left out, and who was against these changes and gave them at least a limited release despite opposition. Which is probably more interesting than actual play stories involving these two, since so few campaigns get to the stage where you can legitimately challenge them in a fight, and who wants to fill their campaign with railroading & deus ex machina?</blockquote>

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