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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8839955" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 126: October 1997part 5/5Tournament Characters - How to Write 'Em: After making a whole load of changes both little & large, here's an article that could have been written at any point in their history. Remember that you're writing for lots of different players & DM's, who have to wrap the whole story up in a 4 hour slot, so you need to paint in broad strokes, giving details that are useful in portraying how they interact with each other rather than spending pages on backstory. If the same character is appearing in multiple rounds, they might have changed in a few specific ways due to events, but they need to be consistent in both statistics and personality traits. Think carefully about their proficiences and equipment lists, both the obvious things like making sure they can use the weapons they own and in putting more esoteric bits of equipment in that could be used cleverly to solve puzzles. Don't put overly powerful magic items in, particularly in Living games where they could break future adventures. Always get someone else to doublecheck all your math to make sure everything is mechanically legit. All pretty familiar and basic, but they are putting more emphasis on mechanical solidity than they used to. As with Eric's ultrapowerful creatures, this is another reminder that the big changes of 3e were built up to gradually behind the scenes, even if they might have seemed dramatic to people who'd lost touch with the gaming scene for several years before picking up the new edition. If you're willing to get forensic there's a fair number of clues who was responsible for what. Personalities of Note: Following straight on from last page, they have a couple of Living City NPC's that they'd like to see turn up in multiple adventures, hint hint to all the tournament writers. Reusing the same characters saves effort and makes the setting feel more consistent. Captain Dominic Cutler, a tough mercenary currently protecting Raven's Bluff, and Noah, a half-elven graffiti artist painting anti-war political slogans anywhere there's a bit of blank brickwork, which does not endear him to the Watch. There are plenty of ways you could wind up interacting with them, both friendly and hostile. This is the only article here that really feels out of date, as both character's backstories heavily reference the war, which is now pretty much over. Probably intended for the december issue last year and been sitting ready to go since then. Not completely useless then, as I'm sure they're still living around there doing something, but less so than they would have been if they were on time. Classifieds is a big conspicuously blank page due to the hiatus, as obviously no-one's been sending any in for quite some time. Will it be filled again next issue, or will it struggle and wind up being cancelled? On the other hand, the preregistration form for Winter Fantasy looks as packed as ever, with 11 AD&D tournaments and 7 for other systems. They've changed the schedule so there's only 3 timeslots for tournaments per day, with several hour gaps between them for food and seminars, so you no longer have to rush straight from one to the next trying to cram everything in. Make sure you set an alarm if you schedule one that ends at 1 in the morning, then another that starts at 8am the same day though, as oversleeping and missing that would be embarrassing.A much more interesting issue than the first Dragon or Dungeon ones back, with less sloppy out of date stuff and already showing clear signs of how the new management will change things around to shift them back towards profitability. I guess that's a benefit of taking your time instead of rushing to the presses at the first opportunity. Now to see how the return to bimonthly schedule agrees with them long-term, and how much faster it'll make the next few years go by for me.</blockquote>

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