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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8628158" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 50: Nov/Dec 1994part 4/5The Object of Desire: From one seaside stop, we set off on a second voyage where events overtake the PC's. They're hired to protect an arabian themed princess on the way to her marriage. Unsurprisingly, she'll be kidnapped no matter what precautions the PC's take and it's up to you to rescue her. So far, so cliched. But that's where things get weird. It turns out the kidnapper is a beholder (who's actually a human turned into a beholder and forgot he's originally a human) who fell in love with her through his magic mirror and now wants to marry her instead. The PC's aren't nearly powerful enough to fight him head-on, so you're strongly discouraged from doing so, then sent on a macguffin hunt by a friendly ghost to gather the ingredients to turn him back. If you do get the beholder to drink the potion, it turns out to only restore his mind, leaving him still trapped in a beholder body with decidedly unreliable control of it's magical abilities. You're then sent in the direction of the wizard who originally transformed him, who's made himself immortal by storing his heart in the petrified body of the beholder's original love. Hopefully you'll be able to get through this, turn them both back and save the day. The kind of adventure that would be good as a story, but is less so as an adventure due to it's general linearity and multiple bits where they bend the rules or incorporate magical items that only work for the NPC's so you can't keep them afterwards. It is still much more interesting as a story and ambitious as an adventure than any recent Polyhedron one, with each of the three main locations being easily the size of a single-round tournament dungeon, and at least a few different options presented for some of the scenes that won't ruin the overall flow of the plot. Not terrible overall, but I'm still left ambivalent about the idea of actually playing it and the odds of it turning out the way the writer intended if you don't fudge rolls to keep the plot on the rails.</blockquote>

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