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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8607041" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 99: September 1994part 3/5Templars Of Tyr: This article is misleadingly named, because it stats up 6 different templars from nearly every city-state except for Tyr. (who's templars are at a severe disadvantage now they've lost their powers. ) With one exception, they're not very nice people, because the sorcerer-kings they serve are not very nice either, and what's more, despite thousands of years of doing this, they still actively promote abusers into positions of power even though it makes their city-states less competently run. But what do you expect when their own powers are built on ravaging the ecosystem. Any conservation lessons are hard-won and forgotten at the first emergency, of which there are a lot of on Athas. There's still plenty of variety in fashion choices and the ways in which they'll exploit and screw you over, but expecting niceness is deeply foolish, as even the one who enforces the rules consistently and fairly is still enforcing rules made unilaterally by Lalali-Puy. Have fun avoiding their attention, and if you do fight them, don't do it in a way that'll bring down the whole might of their respective city's bureaucracy upon you. I think this is sufficiently dark to be usable, even with some of the ridiculous postapocalyptic haircuts that remind us Mad Max is a big part of the world's DNA. Lightsabers: After all the little challenges and annoyances of Athas, we follow us with a Star Wars one that's also high on the mundane details and low on the action. Luke might have been able to build a lightsaber out of a bunch of scraps with minimal training, but you will not be permitted too under the D6 system. Instead, you need to meet 5 different prerequisites and make three rolls with different stats to build one successfully, then roll some more to repair it regularly to keep it from breaking down. If you get hold of someone else's lightsaber and try to use it, particularly if you lack any force powers, you're as likely to do yourself an injury as your opponent. The kind of article that's doing it's best to bog down a high action, cinematic movie series with tedious little details that make sure your characters will never get to be as cool as the ones on screen even if they play for years. Very boring indeed and annoying how completely they're missing the point of the licence.Weasel Games: Four columns in, and Lester has reached the point where people have read the first one and started to react to it. It's a lot harder to be an effective backstabbing weasel when everyone knows you are one. So you have to know when to switch it off, let their memories fade just enough to let down their guard so you can betray them again. When you do, he has two new tools to try so you can survive to continue to backstab. The first is whining. Starscream did not survive 65 episodes without knowing when to act pathetic in the face of his schemes failing yet again and neither will you. As long as they underestimate you, any punishments you do get are less likely to be severe ones. The other one is shifting the blame. A good traitor becomes adept at spotting the signs of impending treachery in others and snitching, currying favour by uniting everyone else against some scapegoat. So this shows how quickly incessant treachery hits diminishing returns. Outside Carceri or the Abyss, it's not an optimal way to prosper long term. Like spicy food, you should only serve it sometimes so it keeps it's impact. As fun as it might be to play the diabolical schemer, you can't go all Snidely Whiplash the whole time in a long running campaign without stretching credulity and being backstabbed in turn. I can't argue with that.</blockquote>

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