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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8537454" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 44: Nov/Dec 1993part 2/5A hot day in L'trel: Following straight on from the editorial, we have a 4th trip to Volkrad, T. J. T. Zuvich's germanic influenced, fairly low magic home campaign setting.  During a hot dry summer, a large concentration of a certain highly flammable substance explodes and now the whole city is on fire. How much of a difference will the PC's be able to make? After a bunch of vignettes of firefighting in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, they find out that any equipment & money they left in the inn (with encumbrance & fatigue penalties enhanced due to the stifling heat to make sure that happens) has been destroyed. This puts them in a precarious financial position, and they're "strongly encouraged" to volunteer in the army until things are decently fixed up. (Which explains why this should only be used in a low magic setting, if you have plenty of bags of holding, sleep in a Rope Trick and spells to alleviate environmental penalties it'll fall at the first hurdle) This leads into a full month's timeline of things that will happen as they clear debris, maintain order, try to keep supply chains working, deal with various opportunistic monsters and generally prevent complete societal breakdown and the massive amounts of death that would follow. It's all pretty gritty and open ended, but there are a few moments of humour to lighten things up and provide contrast. You won't be able to save everyone unless you're way higher level and more magically adept than intended, but your choices can still make a real difference, and you can succeed or fail in individual encounters without it being the end of the campaign. All the layers of revision makes it feel like an odd duck tonally, not sure if it's intended as a one-shot tournament adventure or an epic exploration of the long-term ramifications of a catastrophe that can easily be further expanded to a full year of further events. It leaves me ambivalent overall, as it's interesting to read, but also wouldn't fit in many campaigns due to it's specificity and the way it destroys the PC's possessions to push them into the plot. Given the sheer volume of submissions they get, I can see why Barbara rejected it at first.</blockquote>

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