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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8631816" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 102: December 1994part 3/5Unsurprisingly, the map takes up the centrefold pages. Turns out the plateau is about 800x600 miles, making it far larger than, say, the UK, but not as expansive as the USA or Australia, which still gives you more than enough room to wander for a lifetime, especially without any kind of roads or vehicles to speed your way. The tribal territories only make up a small fraction of the area, and are mostly situated next to one of the rivers, which I'm guessing are important trade routes as well as for drinking. There's several different terrains, and an obvious point where it's less difficult to get on and off the plateau, as there's a canyon making the cliffs lower and the ancient domes that maintain the magical shielding around the plateau are damaged near there. That's almost definitely going to be significant in the future. Good luck doing anything with those vast expanses of featureless jungle though.Hero Points: Well, this is a turnup for the books. Hero points have appeared in a few systems before now, and of course the Marvel superhero RPG was blurring the boundary between xp system and spending points to gain short term benefits since 1984, but they hadn't appeared in an official D&D book yet. Here's another way they're pushing the Living Jungle away from the regular rules, awarding you hero points for engaging in particularly dramatic and heroic actions, which you can then spend to increase your odds of success at further actions. The specifics are more low-key than I was expecting though, both in the number you can have and how much effect they have on the die rolls. +2 if spent before the roll or +1 retroactively? Up to 1 per level for humans or a flat 1 at a time for demihumans? That's not going to be causing many dramatic shifts of fortune, although it still might save your life if used on a critical save. It's nice that they recognise humans are a bit boring mechanically, with most games never reaching the point where the higher level limits come into play and want to give them something a little extra, but this is a little underwhelming after seeing what the likes of Monte Cook did with the same idea in 3e, and other systems have done in an even more dramatic and metagamey way. I guess they want to keep the bonuses low enough that you don't mess up the tournament adventures, which are probably going to be the same old railroads of half a dozen encounters dressed up in a fresh loincloth. So this manages to be simultaneously interesting, but also disappointing. They had a good idea, but didn't go far enough with it.</blockquote>

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