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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8729692" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 115: January 1996part 1/532 pages. Not a good idea to upset the pumpkin merchant in the Living City. Even a lowly street vendor has pretty good odds of being armed and having class levels. If they're a spellcaster, you never know what they could have protecting their cart. Time to see just how strictly they'll be enforcing the rules this issue, and if any weird and fantastical new additions will be permitted.The House of War: They've been slowly building up to a big war in the newspaper for most of last year. So it's no great surprise that they do a big article on the temple of Tempus in Raven's Bluff. Despite being chaotic neutral, he's actually a surprisingly responsible deity, with a strong code of what kinds of battle are and are not acceptable. His temple is also a large, well-organised defensible fortress that works with the community it's in to encourage it to be strong and war ready. This is why he's a greater power while Garagos was killed and is now mainly remembered in a festival where Tempus's worshippers celebrate the anniversary of his defeat. It's all a matter of understanding the long view. Can't have a decent war without the supply chain to have lots of strong healthy warriors with good equipment and periods of peace inbetween the fighting to rebuild. Plus if you slaughter all the noncombatants on the other side after winning where are you going to get your next generation of people to fight? So they'll heal people on both sides after a battle, help them rebuild, take in any war orphans, look after them and train them to be soldiers or clerics themselves to keep the cycle going. Superficially wholesome and heartwarming, but pretty creepy when you look under the surface, this is what happens when your anthropomorphic personification of war actually has some brains and wants to keep conflict at a level that's sustainable long-term. Blessed be the arms dealers, for they give greater strength unto all. Well, at least it's an ethos and it provides plenty of reasons for adventurers to keep busy. Between the map for the temple, the stats for it's inhabitants and the wider talk about the faith there's definitely lots of useful stuff for a game here, and it also gives you a greater insight as to why the Realms remains technologically static. The war god doesn't want people developing chemical weapons or nukes, as ironically that'd make war too deadly and there'd wind up being less war overall long term. And if you think destroying him would let the world become more peaceful, just look at what happened in Athas, where there were no divine beings to keep the whole system from spinning wildly off course. Once again ethical questions become an enormous headache when you think long-term and have to juggle millions of variables for the least worst option rather than just killing anyone who's causing a problem right now & taking their stuff like your basic wandering adventurer. Bantam Knights: It's been 5 issues since they introduced the idea of knightly orders and they still haven't given us the full details of how you join them and the benefits for doing so. This issue they at least fix that for your basic Knights of the Golden Rooster. They raise the prerequisite for joining from 2nd to 4th level, (although they're not kicking out early adopters) which is framed as an IC drive to improve standards. They still cost 1000gp and two real dollars in administrative fees to join, and now also require a tithe of 10gp per tournament you play in to represent lodging, training, pensions, etc. In return you gain fame points faster than a regular character, require three fewer honor points to move up to another knightly order, (if they ever get around to detailing those) get to attend swanky parties and serve in the city watch. So this puts a little more detail into the idea of them as plucky contenders strutting around the city, trying to make a name for themselves, and many of them using it as a stepping stone to more prestigious knightly orders. They're not as strictly regulated as the other orders, but that gives you more leeway to go off on quests to prove your skill & valor. Hopefully they will give us the chance to take those further steps in the near future, because if the progress of these ideas seems slow to me it would have been even more frustrating for people reading each issue for updates and champing at the bit to join up in real time.</blockquote>

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