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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8787151" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 121: July 1996part 4/5Contests: When Jean was in charge, they ran a new contest nearly every month, although many of them never got enough submissions to have winners declared and died obscure deaths. With all the quick changes, they've let that slip a bit. But Jeff Quick to the rescue! Unsurprisingly given the issue theme, it's a Living Jungle one, looking for yet more types of Katanga. What tropical animal do you think would make for cool PC's? Winner gets their idea added to the official options for the setting. Don't make them too powerful mechanically, or we'll have to nerf them. A World of Your Own: Roger goes for a nonhuman option that isn't available in Malatra. (yet) Centaurs! What would a world where the dominant race are four-legged and longer than they are tall look like? Very few buildings more than one storey tall, that's for sure, and much wider design in general so you can't get stuck in a narrow corridor unable to turn around. On the other hand, everyone being able to travel faster overland and carry more stuff while doing so would speed along the development of trade and exploration, particularly if their digestive system can still survive off grass alone for any length of time. (which also implies very flexible torsos.) He isn't willing to be so radical as to ban bipeds altogether though, so there are still some in the world, but mostly giants and purely in an antagonistic role. This also means he can still use at least a few published adventures, although extra care will have to be made double-checking the layouts to see which are now suddenly much harder or impossible to navigate. (anything with ladders in particular) So this is a pretty interesting theme, but he doesn't seem able to fully commit to it, putting in compromises simply because it would be too much effort to work out how everything would function under these constraints from whole cloth. Like campaigns entirely in space or underwater, it might seem like a cool idea, but at some point the writer is going to put in handwaves like artificial gravity just so they don't have to stop and remember the ramifications of just how different things are there all the time and enjoy a few conventional action scenes. You could definitely implement this better than him and good luck to you if you feel inclined to try. Living City Rulebook: Another of their increasingly frequent attempts to make sure everyone knows exactly what house rules they should be using in their tournament games. Make sure you track your encumbrance, initiative modifiers, weapon speeds and spell component costs. Terrain types, facing, logical effects of heat vision, pay attention to them. Let them hover at death's door instead of dying instantly at 0hp. So far, all standard rules, erring on the crunchy side in most cases. Then there's the bits where it differs from the corebooks. Alignment changes are highly discouraged, and of course if you become evil that's an instaban. Darts have been nerfed so you can't throw tons of them and multiply your full strength bonus out. If you're high enough level to have followers (all the half a dozen people that applies to <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> ) you can't bring them adventuring with you. You can only pick up items if they're listed as treasure at the end of the module and have certificates - even if it makes no sense diagetically, you can't loot the stuff carried by opponents or steal from NPC's unless specifically permitted. Maybe their bodies go poof when killed like video game monsters or something. Similarly, if your PC dies, you can't leave any of your items to your next one and there are strict rules on your ability to donate your items to PC's owned by other players. (and once again no PvP looting allowed) Where they're unrealistic for the sake of keeping unexpected things from happening, they go hard on it. Another reminder why I have no desire to play in a campaign like this, as hitting arbitrary plot walls or suddenly losing your character for impersonally bureaucratic OOC reasons is very irritating.</blockquote>

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