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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8604626" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 98: August 1994part 5/5Weasel Games: Lester turns his attention to the idea of the nuclear option. What does it do to a game when there's an overwhelmingly powerful move that there's no defence against? You would think that everyone would try to get hold of it and use it as fast as possible. But in many cases, people don't, or get it and then come to gentleman's agreements not to actually use it unless someone else does first, because it would make the game unfun. Still, even if you don't actually want to use it, you can get concessions from other players simply by the threat of using it, as in Chicken and other games of brinkmanship. A reminder that making a game completely fair and balanced does not always make it more fun, and definitely does not make it more realistic. Sometimes you should intentionally leave imbalance in for thematic reasons, make sure the game isn't polished into blandness, leaving reviewers with nothing but polite indifference. His approach continues to stand out and amuse against the backdrop of the rest of the articles.The Raven Express: The actual ravens of Raven's Bluff have appeared several times now. Ravens that curse you, wereravens, ravens that are trained to act as an alarm system for the fire department. Here we add to that with ravens trained to act as a carrier service, which they're much better suited to than pigeons because they're bigger & stronger, and you can actually send them to different destinations and have them come back on their own. You can send them to any of 9 neighbouring cities, with more likely to be added in the future. This has multitudinous possibilities for espionage and smuggling small light items of contraband, and the owner has no problem with that, being a thief himself. In fact, you'd better watch out, because he's reading your messages and has no qualms about using that inside knowledge in other ways to turn a profit. So this is both useful for players in an obvious way, and has plenty of potential to be turned into an adventure in itself when a letter they send goes missing, or someone who shouldn't has information they tried to keep secret and they investigate the inner workings of this place. Then if you do bust up the joint, you'll have to figure out how to clean it up and keep it working without the current boss and his raven training talents, or there'll be a lot of people pissed off about a basic utility stopping working, which would also lead to unpleasant consequences if they know you're the ones responsible. This all seems like it has plenty of potential for fun roleplaying and inspiring socioeconomic debate, so it gets my approval.With Living City content taking up well over half of the issue, it feels like they're doubling down on what's most successful, reducing more generic material to a sideshow. Elsewhere in TSR the number of settings is booming, but here it's all Raven's Bluff and it's neighbours, with even more far-flung areas of Toril barely mentioned. It makes me worry they're going to oversaturate the place to death without any replacement or alternative. Such are the perils of success. Time to see how the next issue varies the same basic formula and if it's too much or too little change for the readers at the time.</blockquote>

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