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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8920524" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 69: Jul/Aug 1998part 5/5Sleep of Ages: Eric L. Boyd has been contributing frequently to Polyhedron over the past few years before moving onto full books, becoming one of the biggest names in Forgotten Realms material after Ed himself. Now he brings that love of obscure lore in here as well, with an adventure with one of the longest infodumps before you actually get to the playable part yet. Beholders FROOOOOOM SPAAAAAAAACEEEE have been a big part of Tethyr & Calimshan's history, conquering city states and being overthrown again repeatedly. One of their most effective enemies were the knights of the crescent moon, but they weren't popular with the peacetime rulers. So they disbanded, with many of them actually staying, but going into suspended animation in case heroes were needed to deal with a massive threat in centuries to come. Surprise surprise, that time is now. A gnome archeologist manages to figure out their location, which ironically attracts the attention of the modern day beholders & their minions. Now he's their prisoner and you have to save him, defeat the monsters invading the halls of the sleeping legion, wake them up, and convince them you're on their side. (in any order, but some are much easier than others) So while this is technically a dungeon crawl, it's one where you're not expected to kill everyone and take everything that's not nailed down, but stop the previous set of invaders before they do too much damage, while also having to deal with the old defences they haven't set off yet. That gives you plenty of room for the full gamut of fighting, exploring & roleplaying. The flavour he puts into his godly column is firmly in force here as well, making this firmly aimed at the hardcore in both lore and mechanically. There's lots of forgotten realms specific, high power monsters with extensive lists of spell-like powers and psionics, making this one definitely not for beginners or people who don't have a good head for detail. So this is pandering to people like me after many years of them trying to keep most adventures accessible to people who prefer to play core only and I love it, but can see how it wouldn't be to many other people's tastes. Another early sign of the direction that they'll take 3e in mechanically and the people who'll be responsible for that.Nodwick's party have way too much sadistic fun trying every method of waking the magically asleep.With three long adventures that are all doing something exceptional in their own ways, this feels like a very significant issue indeed, showing a strong move away from the standalone stories of previous years to focussing on both the fine details of the rules and drawing more on the built up lore of their settings. They're moving away from keeping it simple for the newsstand buyers to actively catering to the hardcore players in a way that TSR never did. If this continues and Chris continues to make ambitious sweeping changes it looks like the next few years in here are going to be pretty awesome. Let's see if next issue keeps up the momentum.</blockquote>

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