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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9025934" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 139: December 1999part 1/536 pages. Is there any point hiding your face as a sexy ninja assassin when the scars or tattoos on the exposed parts of your body make you instantly recognisable anyway? Just another of those questions you have to deal with in a fantasy world. I suppose if you kill everyone who sees you in action it won't become an issue anyway. Time to see how well another issue manages to justify it's existence both IC and OOC. Erik's Editorial: One of the big things Erik worried about after getting this job is if he'd actually be able to still play the game, between having to up sticks to seattle and the general workload of being editor and admin. Fortunately, WotC is pretty big on actually giving people opportunities to play, particularly when it comes to playtesting the upcoming edition. So he recently found himself braving an updated version of the Tomb of Horrors, fully expecting to die horribly in various interesting ways. He wasn't disappointed, and this actually turned out to be liberating after many years playing home and RPGA tournament games where deaths are rare. Like last issue of Dungeon, this serves as a reminder that sometimes going back to the old school and not pulling your punches makes an adventure more exiting than carefully designing adventures to always be half a dozen balanced encounters that you can fit easily into a 4 hour slot. Kill your players horribly every now and then, they'll thank you for it and it keeps them from taking the game for granted or feeling like their efforts and choices are meaningless. It's a lesson they need to remind themselves of every now and then as much as they need to teach it to us.Notes from HQ: Another year, another set of changes to the Living City rules. Actually, these ones are a lot more dramatic than any since they instituted certificates. The whole concept of retirement is dropped, you can advance to 20th level and keep on playing characters in the regular campaign even after they hit 20th. (but not gain any more levels beyond that) They're also loosening up on your ability to loot any nomagical items that are mentioned in adventures but not certificated. Stealing extremely expensive things will still get you in trouble with the law, but at least you can gain a bit more cash from selling the stuff from fallen foes. Since they've just announced a new edition and they're still not sure if or how they'll convert the Living City to it, this feels like taking the breaks off so at least they can go out on a high. If they're also running lots of high level adventures at conventions over the last few months then things could get pretty wild. It's still hardly a complete free-for-all though. Spells above 6th level are heavily restricted, requiring manual approval for each one learnt. Dual classing eats up a good 3 months of your downtime slots for the year. The tier system for awarding XP is getting rejigged so you can't zoom up in levels by adventuring with a higher level party and lurking at the back to stay safe. It's obvious that a fair bit of thought is still going towards running the campaign and they aren't just ignoring it to put all their resources into Living Greyhawk. If you alienate your most hardcore players even before the edition change the next one probably isn't going to do very well.</blockquote>

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