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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8647899" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 104: February 1995part 4/5Poised for War: When Raven's Bluff has a problem, it usually winds up being solved by some group of adventurers that happen to be passing by. But some problems are too big for any one party, and every country needs some degree of standing army to deter invasions, even if they hope they never have to use it. So here we have a chunky 7 page article on their army, navy, and very small (but also very prestigious) air force of 20 griffon riders. War nerdery can fill massive books, so this is unusually dense and statistic heavy, giving specific numbers of types of troops, their levels, equipment, command structure, etc. The numbers look improbably high as a percentage of the overall population of the city, but many of them are reservists or private guards in their day job rather than full time members. While fighters make up the bulk of the forces, they do mention some wizard & priest units to buff and support the mundane ones, plus the aforementioned griffon riders and navy seals who are literal wereseals. The example NPC's are all firmly on the heroic side, showing that the command structure as a whole is not corrupt or a target for high level adventurers to earn more XP by slaughtering everyone, and PC's that try it will be railroaded into failure to preserve the Living City status quo. Another of those articles that shows the big problem with a shared setting like this. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to allow the PC's any kind of real influence on the setting, or to give the supposed dangers they face in the adventures any weight. The proportion of NPC's with class levels is so high that the city as a whole is never in any real danger and sooner or later you start to wonder why you're bothering. Basically, it's all too safe and cosy, which is a problem that shows up repeatedly in the Forgotten Realms material. Ed can make things interesting despite that filling his entries with flavour and plot hooks even in the safe zones, but many other contributors fall at that hurdle, and this is one of those, that makes the setting as a whole duller and less inviting to play in by closing off avenues rather than opening them as it adds detail.Uninhabited 2 - The Barracks: A full year after the last one, we finally get a second competition to fill up an empty map in whatever way you choose. As the name says, it's a barracks, or possibly a prison, lots and lots of little square rooms with individual doors leading off long corridors. There are a fair number of secret tunnels underneath the main floor though, connecting places with much more windy, cramped secondary routes. Whether they're for defence or secret attempts at escape is up to you, but either way they make invading this place much more interesting for an adventuring party. We never got to see the winner of the previous competition, so I'm not particularly optimistic that we'll see this one fully statted out either, but that doesn't mean you can't use it yourself, so this still has some value.Spath Investigations: The second Living City article this issue is also fairly long, showing that the new coolness of the Living Jungle isn't going to be displacing it in popularity and number of submissions any time soon. Put on your fedora and start narrating your actions in the third person, because it's time to learn about a detective agency. As with the army, they're firmly in the mould of heroic detectives, so while they might do some minor breaking and entering in their pursuit of evidence for a case, they'll never take the law into their own hands or blackmail you with the threat of revealing your secrets, and will be flexible with prices depending on how rich the client is and how desperate their need. Unlike the army one, there's lots of jumping on points for getting involved in an adventure with them, as they always need new employees, so roguish PC's might want to seek employment there, or they might find themselves in the middle of revenge plots by a slighted thieves guild or the Zhentarim, save the day and wind up employed that way. A decent enough read that doesn't neglect the precautions they have against being robbed themselves, this is one I wouldn't mind seeing referenced again by future instalments. Now they just need to figure out how to fit mystery adventures into 4 hour slots without making them too easy or railroaded, as that's still a big problem.</blockquote>

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