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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8772764" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 119: May 1996part 5/5Dispel Confusion: Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Once a rival to Sage Advice, it looks like they've brought it back and rebranded it from answers to game rules disputes to clarification of RPGA rules, since they've been changing those nearly every month lately and can't fit all of that information in the editorial alone. It's another religion focussed article, as it concerns the recent release of Faiths & Avatars, and what things from it are allowed in Living City games. A good 20 of the good & neutral deities are allowed as specialty priests and you can say you're a generalist cleric of any non-evil one. Another of the things that's permitted is the new version of Monks, which means they've also added the unarmed combat rules from the complete fighters handbook to the permitted list. That'll be a definite windfall for the people wanting to write more adventures with nonlethal solutions. (which as we saw last Dungeon are very strongly in fashion at the moment. ) However it does also show how interconnected the 2e ecosystem has become, making some more recent books require several previous supplements, some of which are already out of print to make sense. That'll wind up driving more than a few people away. The Raven's Bluff Trumpeter: No further assaults this month, giving the city a small breather to recharge. The news this month goes heavy on advertising for military recruits and appointing new people to replace fallen higher-ups. That doesn't mean things are going smoothly though, as there's both political wrangling about who gets these battlefield promotions and a rising crime rate, some of which is likely driven by outside saboteurs. One of their reporters was killed when investigating these gang wars, which is very concerning to them. Will journalistic truth be another casualty of the war? It's definitely getting darker around here, although there's still hints of the old goofiness, as we also find out what Jean Rabe's character got up to during the big fight and it's as silly as ever. This whole plotline probably wouldn't have got started if she was still in charge. A reminder that the change in management is having a difference on the overall tone of the newszine even if they haven't made formal declarations to radically change direction. Notes from HQ: Not content with tightening up all their Living tournament procedures, now they want to create a formal charter or constitution for the RPGA like some sort of government? Sounds like a whole lot of wrangling that mainly benefits the rules lawyers and slows things down. But in their current mood, they think that creating a defined bill of rights and responsibilities for their members is a good idea, it's just a matter of pinning down precisely how many of them you should have and what they should be. Well, that'll give them something to talk about in the editorials for many months to come. All this talk of responsibilities neatly segues into another plea for more Judges at their big conventions. Even relaxing the table limits from 6 to 7, there's still not enough to go around, particularly for non AD&D adventures where they can't shuffle people who signed up wanting to run one adventure to another to meet demand if there's simply no-one who knows the system and stop me, oh oh oh, stop me, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before. It just never ends, does it. Where are all the people who actively enjoy GMing? You should be spending more energy figuring out how to encourage and reward them and less on empty words of a constitution that's always going to be an ideal rather than a reality. Another busy issue with quite a strong theme running through it, with a full 5 religion focussed articles of various perspectives. There's some definite signs of strain between what they want to be doing and the reality of the situation they're in though, and they haven't even mentioned that they just lost another editor apart from changing the masthead. Onto the next issue to see if they'll explain that, or if things'll just continue to get more messy for the rest of the year.</blockquote>

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