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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8632923" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 102: December 1994part 4/5Races: Malatran Korobokuru are mechanically the same as regular ones with their saving throw bonuses boosted to 2e standards, and occupy pretty much the same societal niche as comedic dumbasses, drinking and boasting their way through life. They can be heroic, are excellent craftsmen and deadly foes of the ape-men, but it's still hard for other races to take them seriously. Once again Polyhedron's editors can't resist going for a bit of lowbrow comedy in their game design. Katanga are Malatran Hengeyokai variants. They come in Caiman, Monkey, Pangolin, Snake, Tiger and Leopard varieties, all but one of which are new. As with the OA ones, they can only change shape a number of times per day equal to their level, which is a big limitation at 1st. Their personality traits and the special powers they get in their animal forms shouldn't be too surprising. The only significant change from 1e I can find is retaining their full HP when they change shape. Tam'hi is the Malatran name for Spirit Folk. They only come in Jungle and River varieties, as there's no seas to be found on a high plateau. Unlike Kara-Tur ones, they're not tied to a specific location and die if it's destroyed, but also can't autoheal within their home place. They also gain an extremely strong irrational fear of fire that'll make using it not an option at all for any group containing one. That's another solid obstacle in the way of players getting access to technology outside the permitted milieu. Shu are completely hairless halflings. Like regular halflings, they're very good at stealth, so other races will rarely see them except in a multiracial party of PC's. They're not as vicious as Athasian halflings, but still much more inured to hunting & killing than the ones that live in pastoral lands and smoke pipeweed. Apparently, no Shu has ever killed another one though, which I'm sure will be broken pretty soon after players get their hands on the adventures. Put a plot hook like that in your write-ups and you're just painting a big target for someone to do something contrary and sadistic with. Saru are your basic ape-men, even less civilised than any of the other races. They're good climbers, but have an irrational fear of magic that seems even more crippling to party cohesion than the Tam'hi fear of fire. Having to save or flee every time an ally or enemy casts a spell just seems game-breaking if you want to get adventures completed. A really bad idea on a mechanical level that I hope they fix after a bit of actual play has taken place.Architects of Adventure: After spending nearly the whole issue giving us the general setting details for their new project, now it's time to remind us again that they can't make it work without regular members submitting adventures and playing in them. Many of the guidelines are the same, like submitting an outline to them before writing the whole thing and structuring adventures around tournament time limits, but there are some differences from the Living City ones. The big obvious ones are the addition of hero points and the removal of money as a goal of adventure. (although specific magical or otherwise useful items are still good as treasure) This encourages heroic play over bean counting, and writers should make sure that adventures give players opportunities to be heroes. They recognise that maybe the current crop of modules are a little too linear for some tastes, and give primers to decision tree or matrix based adventures so hopefully some more writers will submit those. And finally, they fiddle with the XP awards so you should get off 1st level quicker and then stay at non game-breaking mid-levels for longer, which means you keep the same character instead of having to retire them because they don't have any adventures to cater to that power level. So it's apparent that they have learned at least a little from four years of running Living City tournaments, would do some things differently if they were starting fresh, and are going to do them differently here even if they're not going to retcon the ideas back to their established setting and deal with all the hassle that'd cause. Now they can do is carry on and see what submissions, if any, they get over the next year. Then hopefully they'll learn some more lessons and tweak things further for whatever next setting they try.</blockquote>

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