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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8616748" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 100: October 1994part 2/5The Analects of Sigil: Planescape's first article in here is also a bit of mechanics free fiction that's also an in setting document. In a universe shaped by belief, intangibles can be stolen, traded or given up, and there are those that value the knowledge of how this can be done highly. Our narrator sought out the Five Citadels of Surrender, places on the negative elemental planes that are themselves defined as absences in the surrounding material. (which is particularly tricky to discern in the already regularly empty quasiplane of vacuum) Exploring them will strip away your fear, hope, compassion, regret, and what the 5th one removes remains undocumented, because the narrator is already too sociopathic to function in society and got himself arrested by the Sigil authorities, which is how we're reading about this. A nicely atmospheric read that reminds us that Planescape was specifically designed as TSR's answer to Mage:the Ascension, trying to make the planes more than just more places for high level characters to go kill things & take their stuff and instead explore more conceptual avenues of storytelling. Not that it always worked out like that in actual play, but they still earn some points for trying to expand our minds. I quite like this, and unlike the Dragonlance one it's a plot hook not repeated in the books, so this is extra nice to unearth.Cult of the Great Hunter: Looks like it's not just the usual suspects getting articles in here, as we have one for Earthdawn, of all things. The eponymous Cult are a decentralised group who worship Verjigorm, and are dedicated to stymieing and destroying dragons to whatever extent they can. (as directly fighting a dragon is very stupid for all but the most powerful adventurers.) This does not mean they're heroic in any way, as Verjigorm is an eldritch horror from another universe that can't enter this one as long as the mana levels are too low. So this is mixing your call of cthulhu with your regular fantasy campaign with elves, dragons, wizards and whatnot, forcing the regular people to choose between working with several different flavours of massive terrifying monster. What a choice to have to make. Not surprising that the creators of Shadowrun would make their fantasy world darker and more morally ambiguous than D&D as well. Another quite interesting article that shows this special is going to be a lot wider reaching than their regular issues. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what other less well known RPG's they'll give some space too.Gorlash Spacescum: Speaking of space, now it's time for a spelljammer character. Gorlash was once a normal wizard from Toril who got turned into a three-armed kobold by a wild magic zone. Now he's a pirate captain in wildspace, where people are more accepting of weird looking creatures with unusual body plans. His third arm is fully functional, which means he can cast spells with his regular limbs and do something else with his third one, making him pretty dangerous in a fight. His crew include a Giff and an intelligent Shambling Mound, which are also pretty tough opponents with their own personalities and special tricks. A fairly interesting set of antagonists for your players, whether you meet them while sailing and have to fight them, or in port where you could form a more ambiguous relationship, this once again seems quite usable in both it's original context and adapted to other settings.The Tower Of Gold: Al-Qadim gets a mini adventure that's both very setting specific, and very railroady, as it involves the kind of genies that are powerful enough to basically do whatever they want, so the players have to make the right choices to pass their tests no matter high level you are. The ruler of a city mistreated a genie, and was cursed to be trapped forever inside his tower along with his daughters, while the rest of the city fell into ruin. You have to pass one test for each daughter, plus an additional one from the genie himself to free them, at which point they'll be exceedingly horny from centuries of confinement and want to marry the PC's straight away. Once again we see that what works in the stories can be irritating and disruptive if applied to groups of PC's in an ongoing campaign, even if it's faithful to the source material. The aesoping morality play elements are quite heavyhanded, and the fine details still need filling out to make it a complete adventure. Not satisfying at all.</blockquote>

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