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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8603649" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 98: August 1994part 4/5Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Having established the relatively safe and peaceful norm of Turmish, Ed gives us 5 societies of varying degrees of secretiveness that are competing to keep it that way or change things more to their liking. The Masked Masters, a group of illusionists who primarily serve as historians and storytellers, but of course that means they must have pretty effective divination magic as well, to accurately recreate all those historical events, which makes other people paranoid about what secrets of theirs are in their records and if they use that knowledge to more practical ends as well. The Ghost Swords, mysterious floating macguffins that lead people to treasure or other things in trouble and the cult that's grown up around them. The Nail, a secret group of merchants infiltrating other trading organisations to engage in insider trading and eventually take over the whole distribution chain. The Five Lions, your typical group of retired adventurers that now make a decent living training up other adventurers and sending them to test dungeons intentionally restocked with easy monsters. Whether they're actively colluding with deepspawn to do so remains unproven. And The Fellowship of the Purple Staff, a pan-faith network of clerics working together to keep Turmish stable and prosperous, although their plans involve reducing the amount of wilderness and may bring them into conflict with the local druids. So most of these are more good than bad, but even with no obvious cackling villains around there's still enough ambiguity for them to come into conflict about goals and the means they accomplish them by. You can have some interesting political intrigue here without it ruining the overall feeling of pastoral safety. It's useful to have some safe places in the world to give the darker ones like Thay or the Moonsea some contrast, so I have no problem with this at all. The Living Galaxy: Roger has another bit of very generic advice to string out to 4 pages with sci-fi examples this time. Always have a notebook. (or in the modern age, a smartphone with both written and voice notes easily accessible) Noting down interesting things you see and ideas you have while out is important because the simple act of writing it down makes you much less likely to forget things, and even if you do, you have the physical notes to remind you. I can't argue with his reasoning, as I know my brain works better when up and moving around than spending hours at the computer trying to squeeze out a little inspiration, but this is particularly basic as advice goes. If you haven't already encountered it in your own education you've led a very sheltered life. I can't work up any enthusiasm about this one at all.</blockquote>

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