Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8546777" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 91: January 1994part 2/5Shhh!: The adventure this issue is quirky in a particularly unusual way. The pregens are all clerics of the church of Zorakiah, sworn to silence except in very specific situations. They're ordered to guard a prisoner being transported for execution, who has allies outside who will try to rescue him, plus his own roguish skills at slipping bonds & picking locks to contend with. They need to contend with multiple challenges along the way, plus the moral dilemma of finding out that he's being killed for stealing food to feed his family and his rescuer is of Good alignment, all without talking, otherwise their god will curse them for breaking their oaths. You'd think if they'd been living the monkly life for years they'd have learned sign language to communicate amongst themselves but oh well. So this is a gimmick adventure built around the challenge of the players figuring out how to communicate with each other without speech and choose their reactions to puzzles more complex than "here's a monster, hit it until it's dead." At only 5 pages long, it would be easily finished with lots of time to spare in a tournament slot without that handicap, but with it, the whole thing becomes much more challenging and memorable. It's linear in design, but the individual encounters aren't railroaded, and it encourages the idea that the players have multiple valid options and should be conflicted about which one to take. That puts it well above average for a tournament adventure, taking it's premise seriously and letting any humour arise naturally in actual play. It'd lose most of it's charm if used in a regular campaign, but as a one-shot, it's a great idea. The Living City: Very unusually, this is the biggest column this issue, giving a full 8 pages to a place that's not just a single shop or set of NPC's, but a whole second adventure, including an unusually high number of illustrations as well. A swineherd who's father was framed for murder and imprisoned by the corrupt thief-taker Anton Paere, leaving behind hidden treasure somewhere in the vicinity of their farm. Since Anton doesn't miss a trick, he'll make it easy for him to escape, in the hope that he'll lead them to the treasure, so they can recapture him and get a load of extra loot on top. In the meantime, his son has taken up the family farm, working a poor but honest job and trying to save up money to get a decent lawyer for his dad's retrial. One of his granddaughters died in a tragic accident and has become a ghost haunting the spring on the farm, and there's several other things to discover in the area. As both setting building and adventure, this is also way above their usual standard, with multiple maps, and plenty of description of their everyday life and the various NPC's that makes the fantastical elements stand out by contrast. It takes elements from previous entries in the series and builds upon them in a good way, is flexible and open-ended in the ways you can use it and neither under or overpowers the characters mechanically. This gets my wholehearted praise and recommendation and I hope they do more like it.</blockquote>

Verification