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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8530690" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 89: November 1993part 2/5The Game Fair in Pictures: Unsurprisingly, this follows straight on from the editorial, showing that several people cosplayed as klingons, which George Takei seems quite amused about, and there are plenty of knights, wizards and cardboard castles for the fantasy fans as well. People really bring their A-game here, some of those outfits must take a lot of time and money to buy or create. Well, it only comes around once a year, and people drive or fly from all over the world to attend, so it's important to make an impression. Just make sure you don't wear the same outfit all three days, because that latex would be pretty stinky by the end of the weekend. The Ugly Stick: For the past four years, the Living City has kept Comeliness for their characters long after the rest of the AD&D ecosystem has dropped it. For the first time, that actually becomes significant, as they give us an adventure revolving around it's gain and loss. The wand of ugliness drains your comeliness when you hit people with it, making the metaphor of the title literal. Then hitting people with the wand of beauty transfers the drained beauty over, albeit with a lot of inefficiency and diminishing returns as your score gets higher. Like most artifacts, these are nearly indestructible and require special countermeasures to neutralise. What a surprise that now they've turned up in a health resort and one of the staff is draining the clients to make herself ever prettier regardless of the consequences. Can you search the area and find the pieces of the counter macguffin before going for the final confrontation? While moderately silly, this is the least linear adventure they've done in here for many years, giving you complete freedom in the order which you do the various challenges, and a fair amount in whether you go for straightforward violence, talking or sneakiness as well. The various encounters are of quite varied difficulty levels, and the main villain will knock you out and drain your comeliness before fleeing rather than killing you outright if possible, creating the possibility of losing the adventure as a whole and suffering real consequences for doing so without dying. I'm surprised to say it, but this is actually good, although it's still not suitable for every campaign. Despite being an AD&D one, it'd fit particularly well into Gazetteer era Mystara with it's tourist economy and sense of humour. Nice to be able to say that after so many tiresome railroads recently.</blockquote>

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