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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8675526" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 108: June 1995part 3/5Living Jungle Q&A: Man, the rules lawyers are really out in force for this setting. Here's another two pages of errata and clarifications to keep everything straight between all the groups playing here. No paladins or witch doctors, wizards start off knowing 5 spells not 4, Tam'hi can be priests, but only up to 5th level. No seamanship as no-one's ever seen the sea, no specialising in rock throwing as rocks themselves are too unstandardised, no spells from supplements, no Dex bonus in animal form, no using weapons forbidden by your class even if your tribe gets them for free. In pretty much every case the rulings are on the conservative end, showing that they really want to keep this setting locked down, keep the 4th wall solid, be very stingy about doling out treasure and not let them have a lot of things that would be routine in other ones. How they're going to keep adventuring here fun despite all that seems a good question that no-one's asked yet. Jungle Lore: After the general rules questions, here's three more pages focussing on new, altered and forbidden nonweapon proficiencies. Any characters already created using the old rules are strongly encouraged to swap slots around to fit the new ones. About half of these are spelling out more strictly how the limited technology of the region prevents you from using all their functions, while the others are new or drawn from other supplements. Bartering is extra important in the absence of money, sending smoke/drum signals is a valuable way to speed messages along, vine swinging like Tarzan is awesome but particularly costly, learning to hide somatic components as a spellcaster can be a lifesaver and creating improvised weapons in a pinch even moreso. Some interesting choices here, but it's also pretty heavy on if you don't have a proficiency in it, you can't even try it, further hemming player options in. It's increasingly looking like it'll be even harder to avoid being railroaded in their adventures here than the Living City. What's So Bad About the Dark Side: After a good year of talking about the weaseliest things he's done, who better than Lester to talk about the temptations of using the Dark Side in Star Wars. Why should killing people directly with telekinesis be more evil than just slicing them in half with a lightsaber or zapping them with a blaster? They're just as dead in the end? Turns out he can't justify it in terms of real world moral philosophy, so he has to go for the in setting justification of the force itself being alive and responding to the way people engage with it. Han Solo can shoot first and be as morally ambiguous as he likes, but as soon as you start using magic, you're dealing with objective morality here and even one use for dark purposes starts a slippery slope. A reminder that Star Wars is a fantasy setting  IIINNNN SPAAAACEEEE!!!! and doesn't try to pretend to be anything else, and doesn't even try to work out any particularly rigorous theories of how it's FTL or force powers work, with future products contradicting it even when they do. (stupid midichlorians) People who play RPG's for the worldbuilding and logical exploits of different laws of physics should go elsewhere. No particularly deep insights here then. A bit disappointing really. Video Drone: This column appears for only a second time before disappearing for good, although whether that's because the writers couldn't find the time or the new editor decided they wanted to cut out the non RPG related material remains unknown. In the meantime, they've decided to go for some comic book adaptions, see how they hold up on the big screen, as that should have plenty of crossover with the newszine's audience. The Crow is of course particularly notable because the lead actor died near the end of filming, so they had to use stunt doubles and digital trickery to "bring him back" to finish it, ironically paralleling the plot of the film where the character also comes back from the dead to get vengeance on his killers. Donna is a huge fan of the sexy goth boys and loves everything about the film, but Brian also has pretty solid overall praise for both the premise and implementation. It fully deserves being remembered, even if the direct to video sequels do not. Dick Tracy doesn't get quite as high praise, but both of them are entertained by it's willingness to go full comic book with the plot and aesthetics, and make big name actors near unrecognisable under exaggerated makeup and prosthetics. Donna isn't so keen on the attempt to promote it with tons of toyetic tie-ins, and the real life Warren Beatty/Madonna relationship dominates the whole thing, but it still has some merit behind the whole annoying media circus.</blockquote>

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