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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8853315" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 127: December 1997part 3/5HOM Sector For The Hol-l-DAYs: Paranoia is already filled with pop culture references, so doing a christmas themed article for it makes perfect sense. Of course, the contents themselves are as internally contradictory as ever, ensuring that everyone is technically a traitor for not spending at least 110% of their yearly credits on presents, and always giving more than they receive. You'd better watch out, because Santa Clone and the Santabots take the festivities very seriously. If they give you a present, you'd better show your appreciation for it, then pass it on before it explodes or make sure it's delivered to the proper address. Their newer Living settings may be increasingly serious and plot driven, but if you're playing Paranoia at a convention, chances are it's strictly Zap style shenanigans where most of your clones will be gone by the end of the 4 hours. This is all very much in that spirit, a bunch of plot hooks thrown together with no real attempt at coherence, but it'd still be fun seeing how players navigate their impossible demands. Not deep, but it doesn't make me groan like some of their attempts at comedy, these ideas seem entirely usable in a one-shot.(un)Conventional Holidays: If you're starting a convention, you can't expect to go from nothing to thousands of attendees overnight, particularly in a small town. It's probably best to set your expectations accordingly and not even try to organise a full-weekend extravaganza, but go for a single day event instead. As they're also doing with the big conventions, probably the biggest decision is if you want to try and cram 4 4 hour slots for games into the day, or go for 3 with gaps between them so things are a little less exhausting and pressurised. Of course, the rules of the venue you're at might make the decision for you, as many will want you to be packed up and gone well before midnight. Don't expect to make a big profit, but if you charge a few dollars for attendance and promote decently it should be possible to break even at least.  Another basic little piece on logistics that shows that they know they need to build up the grassroots stuff if they want to grow roleplaying as a whole, not just put on one or two big events a year. That's what'll get people buying books, playing for years to come and turning other people onto gaming in the future. The Saving Grace of Valrenwood: It's nice to go out adventuring, but oh so much nicer to come home. At least, until you find out evil forces have wormed their way into your hometown and are planning on taking it over & transforming everyone into monsters. Not that you have any real emotional connection with them in a single session tournament adventure where you're all playing pregens, but that just makes it more of a challenge for your acting muscles. Anyway, you get home to find out that there's a sickness spreading through the place, mostly affecting the farm animals so far, but now the Elder's daughter is infected as well. There's plenty of rumors about what might be happening, most of them false, but at least they give you some ideas of where to start the investigation. Before long, you'll run across some Histachii, which if you're a knowledgable gamer will immediately let you figure out the big bad is a yuan-ti. Turns out the High Theocrat is secretly a Yuan-Ti pureblood, and if not stopped will drug everyone and do a big ritual in the ruined chapel to turn them into Histachii. Can you defeat him and his minions, and will you find the clutch of Yuan-Ti eggs hiding in the cellar of the chapel, or will the village face another round of trouble next year? No great surprises or particularly clever twists here. Less linear than most polyhedron ones in the order of encounters, but quite railroady in terms of dictating your reactions in the boxed text in many of the individual encounters. Overall this is about average by Polyhedron standards, which still means it's way below the Dungeon average and not one I feel any desire to use, but it doesn't do anything particularly annoying either. Just another day at the conventions.</blockquote>

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