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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8795997" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 122: August 1996part 2/5The promotion then switches to encouraging people to form new clubs. It only costs $20 to set one up, which is a trivial cost if you've already managed to get at least 6 people together regularly, and there are so many exclusive things you can do in one. Sign up to tournaments as a team instead of getting a bunch of strangers with no tactical co-ordination! The Decathlons! Discounts on all sorts of products! Playtest unreleased adventures & sourcebooks! You'll easily recoup your initial outlay and have more fun than gaming with the same home group every time. Why wouldn't you want to be in one? Yet only a small proportion of the RPGA are, and only a small proportion of the clubs actually participate in the decathlon. Knowing the numbers from previous issues, it's all the more obvious why they need to put on a chipper exterior to try and get more people engaged, even if they're not feeling nearly so optimistic in the offices.Point System: Continuing their attempts to put everything a newbie needs to understand the RPGA in one issue, it's time to reiterate the system of levels you can earn in real life as a player and judge, separate from your individual characters in the various Living campaigns. Once upon a time, they told you exactly how much you'd earn from a tournament, based on if you got 1st-3rd place or worse. But since the late 80's when they got their computer database fully functional, the math has become more complex and obfuscated. They won't reveal the precise formulas because they don't want the rules lawyers exploiting them, but they can give you averages. The numbers are much less even now, as they're based on a whole load of factors both specific to each adventure, and how the judge and other players rated you post game. The numbers needed to reach higher levels have also been inflated in an uneven way, with getting to 12th level as a player requiring the rather precise number of 1,598,250 xp rather than the neat 500,000 it did in the mid 80's. I'd be very interested to know how they decided on figures like that, particularly as no-one's actually got above level 9 yet. This winds up raising more questions than it answers, making me wonder how complex and rigorously applied the internal math actually is, and how much of it is just to hide the fact that they never have enough volunteers handling this stuff, so those there are are overworked, often backlogged and making mistakes in summing things up as a result. Without being able to see and sort through all the piles of paperwork myself, I guess we'll never know for sure.Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Ed is not joining in on the theme of the issue, continuing to wander through the Border Kingdoms in a leisurely fashion instead. This time we look at the busy town of Gallard, a trade centre where there's plenty of skilled craftsmen to turn those raw materials into valuable items. Given the dangers of the region, anyone with any money tends to accumulate an entourage of toughs, plus their own personal musician who's real purpose is to make a lot of noise and deter eavesdroppers on sensitive conversations in public. Rather than pubs, the most common social venues are firesword houses, big barbeque/kebab places where all kinds of meat slowly rotates on skewers over central open fires. (although I'm sure there are still plenty of alcoholic beverages to wash it down) Vegetarians and people who dislike a hot, smoky environment will <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfwgbMrffOE" target="_blank">struggle to win friends and make good business deals around here</a>. The government is neither overly onerous or corrupt in it's regulation, but anyone living here still needs to have licences for their weapons, which at least keeps the tax revenues flowing and helps solve serious crimes because they'll know who any particularly distinctive weapon belongs too. Another entry where he manages to paint a picture of a place that's distinct from all the previous ones, but not so exotic as to be hard to run and put in lots of little details that you could expand on and use in your game. It might not be the prettiest and it's even further from being the nicest smelling place you'll ever visit, but it's another place that can solidly support many sessions of adventuring with a little work.</blockquote>

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