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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8660297" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 106: April 1995part 2/5Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ed takes his alphabetical tour of Turmish villages from M-O, indicating that there's still several more columns to come on this topic. The very Tolkienesque Merrydell, filled with toy-making demihumans and houses covered with ornate decorations. Somewhere amongst this chocolate box of ornamentation is a key that opens the box containing the spellbooks of Meldarth the Mighty. Openly parkouring over people's houses in search of it will probably not be viewed kindly though. The hillside town of Moonhunt Down, home of the tomb of the Lord of Rubies. Bringing out all the rubies he's supposed to have amassed in one go would destabilise the economy and crash their price, so probably best not to do that. The town of Nonafel, another one founded by a wizard who's treasure cache remains unlooted because it's packed with teleportation traps, so one false step means months getting back here even if you survive the dangers wherever you're sent, and what adventurer has that much patience? Finally, the relatively easy Obelner's Well, where all you need to do is find the hidden tunnels leading off from said well. Better pick a time when the water level is low to try or be able to breathe it if you want to find everything. While individually these are still good, they're definitely starting to get repetitive, with different wizards using basically the same tricks in different places. You can have too much of a good thing, and I think I'm hitting that point here.In a Strange Land: We take a break from the Realms to go back to a literary source of adventure hooks. Gulliver's Travels has already inspired many a giant or tiny creature based adventure, even if the size differential is usually toned down for the sake of mechanical balance. Here we look at the second half instead, and what interesting adventures could be had in the lands of the Laputans or Hounyhnhnms. A flying city where the inhabitants have grown decadent and lazy, obsessed with abstract philosophy and scientific experiments, forgetting how the technology that brought them supremacy was created? There's a lot of adventure potential in that, even if you remove the specific parody elements where Swift pokes fun at english culture, university academics and colonialism. A land full of sentient horses and dumb humans also has it's adventure hooks, as even though they might consider themselves superior beings to any biped, there are still things hands can do that hooves and mouths can't, so they might have to trade with outsiders if it's too complex to train the Yahoos to do them. A breath of fresh air against the background of recent issues that are nearly all Living setting material and regular columns by regular writers. They still don't get that many reader submissions compared to Dragon or Dungeon do they. So while this may still be humorous, it's a better pedigree of whimsy than most of their adventures, and a better implementation than Dungeon trying to do Shakespeare. A few more like it would not go amiss.</blockquote>

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