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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8991957" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 136: June 1999part 5/5Hunger in the Harbor: The mini-adventure this issue isn't a Raven's Bluff one, but could easily be used there, or any port town, or indeed any settlement with a bit of modification to account for the types of buildings present and their relative positions. Everyone is going about their day happily when a house-sized Gray Ooze attacks! What will you do?! It's immune to regular weapons and does lots of damage with it's attacks, but thankfully has a slow movement rate that gives you time to organise and figure out how to battle it or evacuate before it destroys the whole area. Your basic kaiju setup. Still, the clock is ticking and every turn you waste means more destruction. So this is actually pretty decent, turning out about the same kind of length and quality as the average side trek in Dungeon and giving you complete freedom in how to solve the problem set before you. It also gives advice on how to scale the numbers up or down, so it can be used with a wide range of levels, making it pretty flexible as well. If your urban scenario is getting bogged down this is an easy way to stop them from spending a whole session shopping. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Definitely one I'd use.Swash that Buckle: Swashbuckling isn’t the primary playstyle of the Living City, but it does still seem to be one of the more popular kits, simply because it’s quite a mechanically powerful one, particularly if you’re frequently put in situations where you don’t have access to your full set of gear. So one of your basic bits of system-free advice on how to emulate the genre in your own game isn’t completely out of place here. Keep the heavy mathspeak to a minimum, it’s bad for immersion. Keep your fights mobile, do things other than just hitting until someone drops and don’t hesitate to run away if you’re outnumbered. In a home game, be more lenient about special maneuvers like parry, disarm and called shots. Give your NPC’s dramatic personalities that make them all easily distinct just from mannerisms and don’t hesitate to put in plenty of quips, repartee and the odd bit of physical comedy. All the things that we take for granted in action movies, but can easily get lost when the DM starts making deathtrap dungeons that kill you unless you specifically stated you were being paranoid in the very particular way that counters the current challenge. Not really telling me anything new, as all this will be gone over again in greater detail next year in Dragon issue 273. Another distinctly mehworthy article.Winter Fantasy 2000: We haven't even got to Gen Con yet and you're already starting to promote winter fantasy as well? What's up with that? They're moving from Chicago to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and want to make sure everyone knows that well in advance so they don't waste hours driving to the wrong place. They're also holding the RPGA summit in the same place a couple of days before, in an attempt to boost attendance for that, so if you can get the free time there's a whole week's worth of events to enjoy. If you want to shape the future of the RPGA and it's Living Settings you need to get there and sign up to as many of the events as possible. They obviously have big ambitions as usual, but whether they'll get enough volunteers to carry them all out is another matter. Still, planning well ahead does increase the odds at least a little bit.A pretty solid issue overall, with a mix of good and ok articles that are generally pretty useful even when they’re not original in any way. They’re still getting a decent number of Living City submissions even if they no longer put them in every issue. Now let’s see how eager people are to explore the unknown, as that’s supposed to be the theme next time, and how far from home their submissions will range.</blockquote>

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