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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8588143" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 96: June 1994part 5/5Living City Character Generation: Just a year since they last gave us the character generation rules in here and they do it again. As far as I can tell, it's identical to last time, right down to the wording, only they don't go into the full list of how characters increase their ability scores as they gain levels, so this is just a refresher to pull a few more newbies in. Nothing much to comment on this time then.Network Invitational: As in the editorial, they're making another push to increase the number of adventures they get with the offer of winning prizes. Both Basic and Advanced D&D, of course, but stuff for Shadowrun is also in demand, and they'd very much like the Amazing Engine to be as well. (but we know in hindsight it won't) The usual criteria apply - show you understand the rules, use good SPG, come up with an interesting story, precisely 6 encounters, no more, no less, and make sure your name & network number is on every page so if one bit gets lost they can easily match them up again. You're not going to be getting any particularly experimental epics working under constraints that tight. I find it hard to work up any enthusiasm about the products of production line writing like this.The Raven's Bluff Trumpeter: We finish off with the start of another semi-regular column full of Raven's Bluff news, presented in a mostly IC manner with OOC stats in italics. The largest section is a look at the demographics of registered adventurers. There are currently 1495 of them, slightly over half 1st level, and then declining exponentially until there's only a single 9th level character, city council member Melissa Eldaren, who obviously has not been resting on her laurels since winning the election, as she was only 7th level in issue 84. Unsurprisingly, humans & fighters are the most common race & class, each twice as common as the nearest runners-up, which are elves & thieves, also to my complete lack of surprise. Let's hope we'll see updates on this in the future so we can find out precisely how fast they grow and average level increases over the years. The other big news is the death of Ambassador Carrague the building inspector, another NPC we've seen a couple of times before, and the appointing of his replacement, a low level fighter/thief called Guildernstern Shakespear (insert I understood that reference gif) who's also played by a regular RPGA member. So it looks like they're continuing to give regular PC's the chance to win various government posts and feel like important parts of the setting, although how much real policy control they have remains very questionable. Is anyone who managed that feat still around on the forums to tell us how significant those positions actually were? Did you get to make a difference or was the only reward of all that effort bragging rights and access to higher level tournament adventures?With a couple of new regular columns, lots of interesting spells, a decent amount of non D&D material, and a stepping up of their forgotten realms metaplot developments, there's lots of interesting and useful stuff in this issue. As ever, it's just a question of if they can bring people along, particularly if the changes they make here are lasting, but never explained properly anywhere else. Time to see what other stuff next issue features, and how obscure it'll turn out to be long term.</blockquote>

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