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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8756182" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 117: March 1996part 4/5A World of Your Own: Roger intentionally goes for something completely different from last month to keep the variety up. We have enough worlds stuck at medieval level forever, and we just did a high tech & magic one. (where the players are kept away from the best tech so they don't ruin other worlds when they leave) Let's get out HR4 and do an Elizabethan era one instead, where everyone is a native of the world and there'll be several years between each adventure so players can get involved in big historical events and see technology advance accordingly. Supernatural creatures will be mostly derived from the legends and fiction of the era, including giants, dwarves, fae, griffons, unicorns, and maybe a bonnacon if we're very lucky. Similarly, the further away from England you go, the more the map diverges from reality, with Prester John's empire being real in this world and the America's geography more like the early maps they had at the time. Your adventures are going to wind up being unironically eurocentric and colonialist. So this is an outline that would have read just fine at the time, but comes off as very dated now in unintentional ways on top of the intentional ones that come with any historical setting. They can't help reflecting the era they were made in as well as the era they're trying to represent. The core idea isn't unsalvageable, but this one could do with a few more revisions before trying to run it with a modern audience. Notes from HQ is near the end for a change, which looking ahead will continue to be the case for the rest of the year. Like many of their format experiments this year, it's not an improvement. The news inside is even worse, which may well be why they wanted to put off telling it so it didn't spoil your reading the rest of the issue. The TSR mail order shop has closed down. This makes redeeming gift cards or getting that RPGA 10% discount on products just got a lot trickier unless your FLGS was one that's already got with the program. They're still offering some products discounted directly from this department to compensate and trying to put a brave face on things, but in hindsight this is one of the big signs that TSR is falling apart behind the scenes, their cash flow disrupted by dropping sales, which leads to unsold products being returned and distributors ordering fewer of future ones, which leads to even worse cash flow problems, inability to service debts and the whole house of cards toppling in slow motion. But we still have a few more months of trying to pretend it's all business as usual so they're still advertising their upcoming conventions as well, particularly the country-wide Weekend in Raven's Bluff special event, held in 12 cities on the same weekend. What big metaplot adventures will take place then, and how much will the actions of the players be able to influence the future? Will they get enough interest to turn Sarbreenar into a UK-centric Living outpost, which is another idea they're floating here? After the past few editorials got very repetitive and boring talking about little procedural changes, this is all much more dramatic and interesting to read about. Looks like we might get to discover a few more little details about what happened in the offices in those final months we didn't see in Dragon.</blockquote>

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