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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8814209" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 125: November 1996part 4/5Formats and Other Pesky Details of Tournament Submission: After two articles on the creative aspects of writing adventures, they once again have to remind you of the technical ones. These have gradually become stricter than ever. You need to send in both physical and electronic copies, and the digital ones must be compatible with microsoft word. I thought the advantage of the internet was cutting down on paper use and mailing costs, not increasing them. It also means they can be even stricter about what fonts and sizes you're meant to use. You also still need your SASE and the ethics guidelines seem ever more anachronistic as well. It shows once again that they weren't adapting with the times anything like as well as their rivals and were ripe for being knocked over. Forces to Reckon With: Eric Boyd has finished talking about deities, but he still has plenty of passion for taking ideas casually tossed off by Ed and fleshing them out further. Tulrun's Tracer first appeared in Dragon 69, in one of his many Pages from the Mages. Now we get a full couple of pages on the man behind the spell. Not your typical wimpy mage living at the top of a tower, he's a savage weretiger who's pretty buff even in his human form and lives in the far north with just a tent (albeit a pretty swanky tent) to protect him from the elements. Over 700 years old now and still going strong, he's had an eventful life that includes decades at a time spent in the outer planes, finding the true love of his life, losing her to demons, going mad with grief and becoming little more than a beast for several more decades, being healed, developing a centuries long enmity with Arauthator, the white dragon detailed in issue 230's Wyrms of the North, before eventually coming to an uneasy peace and probably lots of other things they don't have room to fit in here. The kind of article that's written specifically to reward people like me who've been reading realmslore for years, and like to see things introduced years apart in obscure places connect up and have more details added. He definitely seems like an interesting character who could interact with your PC's in a friendly or antagonistic way, depending on how they encounter him, and have a distinct perspective on how to unravel mysteries or solve big problems threatening the Realms. I could easily see a few years of this kind of thing being a pleasing read.A World of Your Own: Roger is also delving into Forgotten Realms esoterica this month, as his thoughts on islands take us to the Tears of Selune. A cluster of asteroids following behind Toril's moon, many of them still have atmospheres and life because spelljammer gravity doesn't work remotely like real life. Since surface area increases as the square of the radius even one several miles across can support hundreds of miles of terrain to explore and a population of tens of thousands if the land is fertile. If it's also dug through with dungeons this can be multiplied further, giving even a tiny island the potential for years of exploration. If you have a suitable spelljammer you can travel anywhere in the Tears in a matter of minutes, but if you don't, you're stuck where you are until someone comes along. (and it's very unlikely you'll be able to dig up the raw materials to build your own, giving DM fiat control as to whether you can get on or off at any particular time) A fairly interesting variant on a theme, even if the references are all to TSR books that didn't sell very well and it feels like he's trying to promote them to shift remaining stock. Even within the Realms, some areas are massively more popular and detailed than others, such as the cities which have computer games named after them. If you head off to Maztica or up to Realmspace you have a lot more freedom than if you hang around in Neverwinter. Might as well take advantage of that as a DM.</blockquote>

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