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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8998054" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 137: July 1999part 2/5Member Spotlight: The profilee this time is Greg Dreher, one of their most prolific adventure writers. Since 1995 he's produced 23 of them, with no signs of stopping. That's one every couple of months! I guess RPGA adventures are pretty short, but that's still a pretty fast rate when combined with his day work as an actuary student. On top of that, he maintains the database for the Living Jungle, keeping track of all the adventures, who played them and corresponding character advancement. If anyone has a clear picture of how the place is developing and all the metaplot stuff that's happened that has mostly gone unmentioned in the newszine, it's him. Another profile that serves as a reminder just how much hard work goes on behind the scenes, and how many adventures they run that we never hear about, and are probably lost to time now. Did anyone manage to archive copies of the living jungle or death adventures and where could we find them?Internet 101: This column gets in on the competitions. Send in your most useful websites so we don’t have to do all the research ourselves. Anything that could be remotely gaming related, as long as it’s safe for work. Top three get actual prizes, and any number of your entries could wind up appearing in future instalments of the column. Can’t say fairer than that guvner. The actual links this time are fairly high survivability, as it’s mostly official .gov ones. The NSA, the Whitehouse itself, and other big institutions like the San Diego convention centre, the Webster library and the Juno Library. You won't be finding the true top secret info on there, but you can get some useful layout stuff for your modern day espionage games. This one still has some usefulness even now.Elminster's Everwinking Eye: Off to Nether Mukshar this time to complete the trilogy. Once again the main threat is bands of dopplegangers led by illithids, a pretty formidable combination if you don’t have countermagic to root them out before they take over your social structures. It’s no great surprise that the ruler of the place is very keen on attracting adventuring groups, paying them well to go on missions for him. (although the source of his wealth remains mysterious. ) Craftsmen are once again high on the social scale, as the lazy dopplegangers rarely have any skill at practical matters so that’s an easy way to test if someone is still legit, plus the practical things they make are just generally handy and a good source of income. (undercut somewhat by there being a religious order that also specialises in crafting that gives out stuff for free. ) There’s still plenty of challenges, but humanity seems to be winning at the moment. So this turns out to be a testament to our adaptability, that even powerful tricks like shapeshifting and mind-reading combined hit diminishing returns after a while, with the survivors becoming increasingly savvy at countering them. (although having to live in a perpetually paranoid way does weird things to the economy.) This is definitely a place you could have a lengthy series of challenging adventures in, with several secrets hinted at but not fully explained that you could come up with answers for in your own campaign. Another solid swing and a hit in Ed's long and mostly successful series of articles.City Stories: Yet another temple this month, as we look at the new temple of Mystra. The old one was destroyed last year by tanar'ri, and the new one may be overcompensating a bit with the fortifications and magical wards. A chunky L-shaped building that extends quite a few floors both above and below ground, it's designed to be easily defensible and filled with statues & gargoyles that can come to life in case of emergency. Anyone trying to break in had better be pretty well equipped if they want to get out with more treasure than they went in with. Still, there are plenty of powerful magic items and bits of ancient lore there, so some groups might be foolhardy and amoral enough to try it, which means it's a good thing they do include proper maps here. The sample NPC's are more varied than usual, as on top of the usual high level priests of Mystra, we have a young one blessed with visions, which like many a prophet she didn't ask for, so she finds being coddled by everyone here and not being able to choose her own path in life somewhat frustrating. She could easily be persuaded to run away with a group of adventurers containing any hot guys. They also have a priest of Azuth as a permanent liaison, reminding us that the Realms has multiple gods of magic, one of which is new to the position, and it's a good thing they're mostly on good terms, because the Realms would be in a much worse state if they fell out. This one seems decently above average in actual play usefulness in various ways.</blockquote>

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