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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8443657" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 77: November 1992part 2/5The Everwinking Eye: Having shown us enough of how depressing Mulmaster is to live in, Ed shows us that the rest of the Moonsea isn't much better, and fighting amongst themselves is the main thing that keeps them from being more of a danger to the rest of the Realms. The Zhentarim might be the most famous group with imperialist ambitions, but Melvaunt's masters have proven able to match them in both military and espionage skills, leading to an uneasy detente between them. There's plenty of nonhuman dangers as well, with enough monsters that the settlements will remain heavily fortified for the foreseeable future even if the humans got along, and miserable weather into the bargain. If it weren't for the plentiful metal reserves to be mined and sold, they probably wouldn't bother, and would be much less able to defend themselves if they had to import all their armour & weapons anyway. The only real place of safety if you're a good guy is the elven court, protected from marauders by powerful magic, and for that you'll need an inside ally to get through the defences. So there's plenty of challenges to be faced up here, but it's not hopeless, and there's plenty of rewards if you're smart and tough enough to take them. You need both the carrot and the stick to make a setting truly engaging, and Ed provides plenty of both here. As usual, I can definitely see why people would flock to his world over the other ones TSR is trying to sell. The right combination of the familiar and dangerous is a tricky thing to balance, and he seems to be the best at it.Downunder The Living City: Near the start of the year, we had an adventure where the PC's had to deal with the consequences of a stolen river being diverted through a portal on the ecosystem. Now they reuse the idea, only it's underwater. The water level might only be dropping by an inch a day, which would take years to drain the sea of fallen stars completely, but that's still fast enough for the people in charge of Raven's Bluff to notice and send adventurers to deal with the problem. The adventure itself is not nearly as big despite the potentially even more catastrophic stakes, as it's another linear one of half a dozen scenes that'll fit easily into their 4 hour timeslots, half of which are played for comedy, and some extra railroading to make absolutely certain you don't get to keep the magical portal once you find it, as that's the kind of thing that would enable you to do weird things to short-circuit future tournament railroads. It's all very formulaic indeed, and once again illustrates the conservatism working within a shared setting forces upon their design processes. Another one that would need vast amounts of expansion to truly do justice to the actually pretty epic core premise for a home campaign where you're not so limited. Just think of all the cool stuff you could uncover as the water level slowly sinks, including previously submerged dungeons, and the political wrangling that would take place as it spun out over months or years growing increasingly desperate. Then you have an Endgame-esque situation if you manage to stop the drain, but are still left with considerably less water in the world, and trying to bring it back without causing more massive devastation in the initial deluge of it's return. This is just incredibly underwhelming when I think of what could have been done with the idea.</blockquote>

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