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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8602747" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 98: August 1994part 3/5A Handful of Dust: Another month, another Raven's Bluff centred adventure that's specifically designed to probably be nonlethal whether you succeed or fail at the objective, but allow for various degrees of financial gain or loss in the process. The PC's are walking the streets when there's an explosion, and then they get press-ganged by a wizard into finding some mummy dust, which they need to do in the next 3 hours, or his experiment will fail, and they can look forward to life as a toad or similar small animal. This puts you in a 24 style scenario where real time is also game time, so the DM needs to keep track of exactly how much time has passed for the proper tournament experience. As is standard formula around here, you have to get through half a dozen different challenges in a purely linear fashion to get there and back, testing your combat, roleplaying & puzzle solving skills as well as your moral fibre. The individual encounters are pretty interesting and varied, and the conceit of linking up game & real time surprisingly effective, so this is actually pretty decent as tournament adventures go, taking the strict limitations the writer is working under and making the best of them, but it still has an irritatingly high level of whimsy and is much too railroaded for my tastes. It shows once again that having persistent characters is making them dial the lethality of modules way down and try to focus more on roleplaying heavy urban adventures, which is not what the D&D system is designed to do well. It could still probably be fun in the hands of a good judge, but it could be so much better if it wasn't hemmed in so much. The Sable Feather: Time for another collection of NPC's that would have been put in the Rogues Gallery column a few years ago. The Fellowship of the Sable Feather is one of the increasing number of clubs and guilds that your PC's can join, giving you extra adventure hooks and an easy way to denote allies and rivals when meeting other RPGAers at conventions. Founded by a paladin of Tyr and his wizard son, it's very firmly on the heroic side, which also means it's accumulated more than a few enemies distinctly unhappy about their evil schemes being foiled. Despite both being firmly heroic, they're not boringly written, with both carrying trauma from their active adventuring days, and some tension between father & son over him choosing arcane magic to study rather than divine. So this avoids the big trap most of the old galleries fell into when telling you about other heroic characters and their exploits, and gives you a way to engage with them for mutual benefit without making it all effortless, as they have high standards for who they'll allow to join. This seems like it could be built upon in quite interesting ways, especially if they add a few more intentionally contrasting organisations competing for PC members in future issues. Fingers crossed other writers see the potential and exploit it properly to make the setting even more active and player-directed in the future.</blockquote>

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