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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8767788" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 118: April 1996part 5/5Notes from HQ: Since they promote it for long enough, the events at Winter Fantasy are the biggest story here. Once again, they managed to be bigger than ever, with both the tournaments and seminars packed. The big highlight was of course a gigantic minis battle of the sort you simply couldn't set up at home, where Raven's Bluff was attacked from the north. The usual limitations of number of players at a table are thrown out the window and everyone involved potentially gets to have their characters interact with everyone else's.  Not sure how they handled everyone waiting for their turn to act or split that responsibility between multiple judges for different areas but it's nice to see them pushing the envelope with things you can't do in a home campaign after all these issues dedicated to telling us what we're forbidden to do with our characters around here. The rest is yet more repetition of their ongoing rules tweaks. When and how you book a slot zero for your judges to play through adventures before running them for others, reminding us how long you need to book in advance for your adventures to count for points and whatnot and making their "flexible six" table size rule default for all Living campaigns. Just because one convention succeeded, doesn't mean that you have to stop working to get everyone following the rules and making sure there are enough judges available to meet demand at future ones. Fresh from finishing Winter Fantasy, they have three pages of Gen Con adventure listings to encourage people to sign up early, especially the potential judges. Which of the 17 AD&D ones and 11 for other systems will get enough to satisfy all the potential players, and which will be forced to scale down or cancel due to general lack of interest? Given the lack of Rolemaster material in here, I wouldn't be surprised if the big three round elimination tournament by the ICE staff turns out a half-empty white elephant.The Raven's Bluff Trumpeter: The newspaper presents the same convention events as the editorial, but from a more IC perspective. Still reeling from the pirate attack two months ago, the Zhentarim decided to take advantage of the city's weakness in the middle of the winter festival to send in their own forces. Fortunately there were plenty of brave adventurers present and armed to repel them and still have time to carry out the planned wedding spectacular of Lord Charles Blacktree & Lady Katharine. Things weren't so positive a little further out, as the outpost of Belgard's Stand fell to a well-organised army of mercenaries and the whole thing was razed to the ground. The war theme of the year continues to escalate and it looks like they're coming good on the promise to let player actions affect the way each battle goes and make a small difference to the overall course of Forgotten Realms history. Where will be the target of the next attack, and which big convention will the scenario play out at? All very exciting to read about, but try not to lose your character in the battles, because a mention in the obituaries may be nice, but getting back to your previous level with a new character could take years.I definitely preferred the new articles in here to the greatest hits part, which is curious, and shows that they are still gradually improving overall, even if some of their decisions do remain baffling or just plain sloppy. Still, the worldbuilding and scenarios seem to be on an exciting upswing, so I remain interested in seeing what the future has to hold for their living settings, and if any of it'll be useful removed from that context and put in a home campaign. Bring on the next issue.</blockquote>

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