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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8780671" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 120: June 1996part 3/5Elminster's Everwinking Eye: This issue's town du jour is Felsharoun. Another walled town that stays safe in these dangerous lands due to some powerful patrons. Each of the towers at the corners is home to a powerful wizard, and although they might not appear in public that frequently, just knowing they're there and their apprentices are running scrys ready to fry on the gates keeps most of the trouble outside. Then there's a decent number of rangers keeping the woods & fields nearby well managed and a surprisingly civil and well managed court system which lets anyone bring complaints before the Baron and his Knights of Justice. A fairly safe and pleasant place then, but the interesting part is the system of checks and balances that keep it so in a dangerous world, rather than just say it's a good place because it has a good supreme ruler who keeps it good by fiat. You need a good balance of people with different skillsets to make a functioning society, and they all need to watch out for people who'll mess it up if they get into a position of power. A paladin is only interesting when they're actively fighting evil that's strong enough to be a challenge to them, not just being statically perfectly virtuous in a vacuum. (plus getting the armour on and off again is hard when you're spherical.) Ed must like this place, because he can't even fit everything he has to say about it into one issue. He's already gone from several entries per issue to just one. How much more detailed will he get before the editors have to reign him in and remind him to keep things modular?The Florida Key: The D&D adventures in here have been somewhat less linear recently, but this Shadowrun one is pure tournament railroad, giving you 6 pregens and sending you through 10 encounters in order with only one minor fork in the path near the end. Your sextet of miami-based shadowrunners are hired to retrieve a magical idol stolen from the New Seminole tribe. A basic lore check while examining the scene of the crime will reveal that they're evil confederates, probably based in Fort Myer. Then hitting up your contacts or going to the local dive bar and asking the right questions will narrow it down even further. Turns out the mooks were hired by a cyber-shaman known as Filth, who casts spells by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKecz2ak78Y" target="_blank">doing sick air guitar riffs.</a> Find the building on the waterfront he's hiding out in, beat the toxic city spirit he's summoned as protection and him. Then the storm spirit in the idol manifests and demands you free it. You're not supposed to do this (and the adventure doesn't even tell you what will happen if you do, in typical bad railroad fashion) but ignore those demands and return it to the tribe, as it can't attack you anyway as long as you keep hold of the idol. (but how are you supposed to know that?) A fairly typical early 90's tournament railroad with no real worldbuilding to account for if the players make decisions other than the one the writer intended and a dose of irritating whimsy on top of that then, only for a different system. I really haven't missed them and have absolutely no desire to play this. Can't you get any better submissions for your non D&D games?</blockquote>

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