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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8472919" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 81: March 1993part 2/5Mess With Their Minds!: Roger Moore is extra busy and writes two articles this month, on top of still editing Dragon. Where does he get the energy? To make a horror game truly scary, you need to go above and beyond the rules, mess with the player's perceptions of reality. Make an abrupt time skip to reflect memory erasure, and then they have to find out what the hell they did in the intervening time & deal with the consequences. Have them find out they're not who they thought they were, but clones, robots or transformed animals created for some creepy purpose. Kill them horribly, and then they wake up and find out it was all just a dream…… OR WAS IT?! It's an interesting read, but also a reminder that TSR are rapidly increasing the amount of railroading in their adventures, transforming PC's into puppets, animals, undead, etc or making broad swathes of class features stop working without a chance to resist in the service of metaplot heavy stories that give you little freedom of choice, with Ravenloft being a particularly egregious offender. Consent and trigger warnings? In our horror gaming? I don't think so. This is dated in that very 90's way you'll either love or hate, and I wasn't a fan of even at the time. Use with caution, for too much jerking around and your group will simply stop playing with you altogether. The Everwinking Eye: The last few issues have been flitting between the various cities of the moonsea. This time, Ed decides to show us what the small town life is like up there with a visit to Glister. One of the furthest north outposts of civilisation, even the nonevil people need to pay tribute to Auril to reduce their odds of being frozen to death, making her temple easily the largest & wealthiest. Tymora & Tempus are the only competitors, which lets you know exactly what overall flavour the average personality is around here - violent and living for the day rather than planning for the future. Well, when you're surrounded by ruins of fallen civilisations and marauding monsters of many races could sweep through any time, it does concentrate the mind somewhat, you get your pleasures while you can. Definitely a place in need of a few more adventurers if you think you've got the right stuff. There are still a fair few trading caravans crossing the area, but they tend to be large and heavily armed, which is another employment opportunity for adventurers. If you get to the point where even the challenges here seem mundane, the Bloodstone lands and their ridiculous epic level modules await, or maybe you could delve beneath Anauroch's sands and face the Phaerimm. Even in places hostile to humanity, there's definitely plenty of life in the Realms. If only they could learn to get along with each other despite their differences and each occupy terrains that are optimal for their physiology. Nah, then there'd be no game. Ed continues to be the person best at balancing worldbuilding with gameability. No change here then.</blockquote>

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