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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8559551" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 93: March 1994part 1/532 pages. An arabian cover two issues in a row? A reminded that Al-Qadim was planned as a limited series, learning from the mistakes of Oriental Adventures, but actually proved popular enough that they extended it beyond the initially planned set of supplements. Let's see what they have to offer on that front, and how it'll differ from last issue's selection of magic items. Adversaries: A rogues gallery by any other name would still smell just as sweet, particularly after going long enough that you can't really call it new anymore. So they decide to rebrand to focus more on challenges for your players, and less on other people telling you about their characters. The first is Lady Aridaye Phylund, a waterdhavian noble who is the very model of an evil stepmother. Marrying a much older man to get the title, who then met with an end at the claws of an unexpected owlbear (now who could have carelessly let it out of it's cage?) she's now trying to arrange a similarly unpleasant fate for her stepson so she can gain full control of the family fortunes. In the meantime she does plenty of sleeping around as an eligible young widow looking for a new husband, and has no problem with mixing business with pleasure and manipulating any paramours into doing shady stuff for her, which is where PC's are likely to be sucked in. Will they realise what a nasty person she is under the facade, and how much will they already have done for her by the time they do? As a 0th level character, she won't be any challenge in a fight if it comes to that, but if the PC's follow the rules of civility & chivalry she'll exploit that for all they're worth, and she'll probably have guards or other precautions if expecting trouble. So this leans very heavily into all the fairytale sexist tropes about scheming women who pretend to be helpless to accomplish their schemes, with an extra helping of promiscuity = evil. The kind of thing that would probably have been more bowdlerised if it appeared in Dragon or an official book, but got published here as is because they have a lower filter. I think I'll pass on using this one. Notes From HQ: Another talk on the rise of the internet here, and the way it affects people's gaming. With only text to communicate by, you're freer to play your character as whatever age, sex and race you want. Typing is generally slower than speech, and that tends to lead to a more considered form of playing with people taking the time to come up with extended descriptions of their actions and the little mannerisms that would otherwise be implicit. What it does not encourage is lots of combat, particularly if the place you're talking has no dedicated dice roller to keep things fair. So you're more likely to get games where conversations go on for hours with relatively little action and people drop in and out, which suits WoD games better than D&D. This reminds us why the 90's was a time of heavy setting-building and roleplaying over rollplaying, until technology caught up and dedicated MMO's could cater for the combat lovers with strict rules and real-time fighting of massive monsters with lots of other players from all around the world. Then technology got even better, and we could have real-time voice & video communication making gaming online even closer to tabletop on Roll20 and the like. But anyway, they're currently big on worldbuilding and encouraging people to put more talky encounters in their adventures, and that even applies to the tournament ones. Please send in more adventures that aren't all hack & slash! Another reminder that the game designers are often ahead of the trends compared to the average player, and also likely to be trying some things that never catch on due to their greater desire for variety. Still, if they can bring the standards of the adventures in here up, that would be very welcome. There's already been a noticeable change since Dave joined up in terms of making adventures more open-ended and better mapped out. Hopefully there's room for more of that while still keeping to their strict 4 hour timeslots for tournament scheduling.</blockquote>

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