Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8623699" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 101: November 1994part 4/5Weasel Games: Lester's ruminations continue to be less practically useful for the average gamer than Roger's, but a more interesting read. Humans are omnivores, capable of eating both vegetables and meat to survive, with a mix of both making it much easier to get all the nutrients you need for long term health than either on their own. However, if you have to choose, it's easier and healthier to survive on a purely vegetarian diet than a purely carnivorous one long-term. The same analogy can be applied to your gaming. Sure co-operating all the time is healthier in the short to medium term, but to really get ahead, mixing in a bit of backstabbing is both easier and more fun than playing it straight 100% of the time, and even if you don't plan to do so, it's important to remember that other people might not be so nice and take at least basic precautions. Basic game theory stuff, made more interesting by the specific example, where his character was mind-controlled, but decided to keep on working with the bad guy even after being freed because he (correctly) thought it would increase his odds of winning the game. Who would have expected he'd do that? Which I suppose is another important lesson. If you're going to betray people, you've got to switch up the ways you do it so they're less likely to be prepared to counter it. It looks like he's going to cover this topic from every angle by the time he's done, which is not what I was expecting from this newszine, given the shallowness of much of it's material. More power to him, I guess. Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ed continues to talk about the customs of Turmish, making it clear that while it might be bucolic and rural, it's not unmanaged. There's lots of little guesthouses, wells and root cellars along the trails so it's rarely hard to find shelter and food in a pinch. Just don't take everything or leave a mess behind you and ruin the system for everyone else.  Careful not to let too many Sembians in either or they'll privatise and charge for all that stuff and the place'll become much less hospitable. Curiously, both their big festivals involve acting out of character, the first by going to places you normally wouldn't, and the other your basic Purge Night where anything less than outright murder or wholesale destruction is permitted, so people spend it getting revenge, confessing dark secrets and otherwise unleashing all the pent-up frustrations of the rest of the year. Mentioning anything that happens on that day during the rest of the year is a big faux pas and will be punished more harshly than actual crimes committed then, so save any retaliation for the next Reign of Misrule. That has a lot of adventure potential while keeping the havoc confined to a tiny proportion of the time there. Having spent most of the word count on the status quo again, the actual adventure seeds are pretty short, but make it clear that Turmish has enough wizards capable of coming up with cool custom magic that invading Red wizards or Zhentarim won't find them a pushover. That's the thing with peaceful places where everyone chips in to help other people for free. Evil forces may mistake that niceness for weakness, and be surprised at just how well prepared they are to defend their way of life. Once again Ed manages to make even the nicer places in the Realms interesting via adding lots of little details and emphasising the contrasts with their neighbours. They should have enlisted his help when doing the upper planes books for planescape, particularly given how well his nine hells work turned out.</blockquote>

Verification