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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8440214" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 76: October 1992part 3/5The Valley of Death: As the cover shows, we're once again venturing into a gothic land terrorised by undead. However, the big bad isn't a vampire, but a lich with several vampire lieutenants. Vampires being the egotists they are, they want to be in charge, and will happily turn on him if they think they've got a chance of winning, preferably in a plausibly deniable way like giving help to passing adventurers, as failing in open rebellion would be hazardous to their unlife. So this is an adventure that could go quite differently depending on how you interact with the monsters on the way, as despite being mostly undead, some of them can still be talked too, and might be found in different places at different times of day. The map has just one path through the encounters overall, but there are a fair number of optional offshoots along it that you might or might not engage with, changing the amount of danger you face, and treasure you could gain from the adventure as a whole. It allows for a decent amount of roleplaying, solving the puzzles in the rooms in different ways, includes a fair number of interesting new or customised monsters and only has a few irritating joke references for NPC names. It's still a linear tournament adventure, but as linear tournament adventures go, it's one of the better ones. I can both see myself using it as is and stealing the individual elements to use elsewhere.Into The Dark: This column is shorter than usual, picking a particularly niche topic. Horror movies that also have meta elements, making the cinema itself a set for the killings. Well, if the movie is loud and long, you could kill someone in there and be hours gone before it ends and the ushers find the body if you're sneaky. There are definitely worse tactics if you're feeling homicidal. Of course, these are more likely to indulge in cheap shocks and gore than realistic ways of killing someone & getting away with it. Let's see just how cheesy these are. Movie House Massacre is the kind of cheaply made movie that's bad in deeply baffling ways. Terrible jokes terribly delivered, incoherent chronology, a bizarre obsession with shots of people using vacuum cleaners, you don't know whether to blame the writer, director or the editor more for the way it turned out. Some movies would never have been good even if they did have the time and money to do as many takes as needed to get things perfect.Drive-in Massacre is similarly technically inept, but it's weird choices are at least entertaining in a b-movie way, and the special effects people come up with some quite interestingly gruesome deaths. Coupled with better actors it's ideas might have actually become good. I guess we'll never know for sure.Popcorn is the only one of these that's actually decent, even if it is filled with 50's B-movie references that I wouldn't get. Why is the slasher killing people in the theatre this time? Will they diversify out of the typical teenage girl targets? Don't skimp on the concessions if you plan to find out.</blockquote>

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