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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8874726" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 129: April 1998part 3/5Jungle Tales: This irregular column goes back to one of the plot hooks dropped in the very first Living Jungle issue. The lion tribe have never met a tiger, but have legends of their existence that say when they do it's going to be pretty disastrous all around. Now the signs in the prophecy are happening and it looks like dark times are ahead. Will they be able to hold off the enemy long enough for their guardian spirit to fully awaken and save the day? Is all of this literal, or a warped retelling of the days when their ancestors travelled the stars and fought alien races, with the "tigers" another intelligent race and the "spirit" some kind of AI in their crashed spaceship? Either way, this looks like a lead-in to another big metaplotty adventure where your PC's get to find out a little more of the history of their world and how it really works, maybe get to keep some cool <s>ancient technology</s> magic items. Coming to a convention near you, hopefully. Good to see them continuing to develop the setting in ways consistent with what's come before, and I hope that the adventure linked to this was of decent quality.Trouble In Mind: As well as Dungeon, we're also getting at least one Dragonlance 5th Age adventure in here, which is nice to see. Steve Kenson sends us off to the Dragon Isles to root out a traitor planning to sabotage the Legion of Steel. Of course, this being polyhedron, there'll be no real detective work involved, just a linear sequence of 5 scenes where you won't be permitted to solve the problem ahead of time and short circuit the dramatic final confrontation where the villain plans to hatch a Fire Dragon egg by throwing it into a volcano and you have to struggle with him on the summit. Instead, you'll have to go through a whole session's worth of roleplaying with no action or significant choices, then a final fight where you don't have the option of solving things by talking. Much worse than the Dungeon one which took pains to point out the multiple ways each scene could be solved and detail types of roll & difficulties for each one, this just feels unfinished by comparison. The core idea has potential, but it needs another round of development to make it worthwhile to play. The Jungle Books: One problem with adventuring in the Living Jungle is the lack of books to use for inspiration. While there's a fair number of books where people venture into the jungle, there's far fewer where people live there the whole time without interference from outsiders and even fewer were actually written by natives rather than white people, many of which have never even seen a jungle in real life. Unfortunately this particular bibliography falls firmly into that mould. Tarzan, The Jungle Book (obviously), Heart of Darkness, King Solomon's Mines, Lord of the Flies, The Most Dangerous Game, you won't be finding much lived-in expertise here. The music recommendations are similarly pasty. The Kinks, ELO, Paul McCartney, Jethro Tull? It's just a mercy they didn't mention the all-time cheese classic by Toto. The kind of thing we could do better today with a casual google. Running In The Jungle: Shadowrunners are stereotyped as big city dwellers, but there's plenty of wilderness left outside the urban sprawls and it can be very dangerous indeed if you don't know what you're doing. Sooner or later you're going to be hired for a job that takes you out there and if you aren't prepared you'll have a very bad time of it. All that cyberware will short out and rust in the damp unless you went for the expensive stuff, progress can often be slow and it's easy to get lost when you can't see beyond the next few trees. Don't even think of trying to swing on the vines like Tarzan if you weren't raised there, between the ones that are poisonous and the ones that can't hold your weight just grabbing on a random one is a crapshoot even if you're a trained gymnast. On top of the mundane hazards the growing magic level is bringing back giant carnivorous plants and other monsters, often abetted by the local shamen who aren't fond of outsiders, or possibly any kind of human interaction at all. A humorously presented bit of IC advice that reminds us that Shadowrun is a pretty gritty crunch oriented system underneath the magical bits, where anyone trying action movie style heroics will rapidly learn the error of their ways. You have to scope out the situation and bring the right gear just as you would with an urban run if you want to come out the other end and collect your payment. Like the D&D supplements that took us to fantasy asia, arabia & mesoamerica, Shadowrun's success is letting it release a whole load of supplements on other parts of the world at the moment and this is a good reminder of that. You can do all sorts of things in this world beyond hanging out in Seattle waiting for the next Mr Johnson to show up. Maybe a road trip would be just the thing to keep your campaign from getting stale.</blockquote>

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