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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9058933" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 142: June 2000part 2/5Table Talk: All about resolving previous contests rather than any actually new news in this column, as we take a look at the top two entries for the legendary weapons contest. Will they actually have stories worth recounting, or just lots of kewl powerz for the players to lust after? The Makah Whaling Spear is an ancient inuit weapon passed down through the generations. In the shadowrun universe that makes it a powerful magical item not just in combat, but also with the ability to detect all whales in a half mile radius, which won’t be useful in every adventure, but very handy indeed when it is, and anchoring incredibly strongly when driven into things, which means it’s also helpful for tricky climbs. That’s an interesting selection of powers that also make sense with the concept. Just don’t kill all the whales you see, because the supply grows increasingly limited these days. The Tools of the Common Man are a staff, shovel and pitchfork that give their wielders powerful fighting abilities, and boost the morale of everyone on your side, but only in defence of community. If there’s a larger scale threat to it you can justify using them on an adventure, but their real place is once again doing the everyday work that keeps a settlement alive rather than killing enemies, so probably best to give them back afterwards because they’ll stop working for you anyway if you’re just wandering around killing things and taking stuff. These definitely seem more likely to have their legend passed on than something that’s been sitting undisturbed in a treasure hoard for centuries.Fear Theatre: Our cover story unsurprisingly takes us to Gothic Earth to look at the Grand Guignol theatre. Despite it’s name, it was actually a pretty small place, but that freed it to be much more experimental in it’s choice of repertoire than broadway. So they indulged in increasingly shocking displays of horror and dark comedy, which unsurprisingly earned them a strong cult following and plenty of notoriety even from non-attendees. Equally unsurprisingly, there’s a supernatural underside to it in this universe. The owner has psychic powers, while the fear elicited by all the shows goes to nourish a greater Feyr, which regularly buds off smaller ones but remains mostly inactive … for now. Of course, if any adventurers investigate, particularly spellcasting ones, that could easily change, giving you an obvious adventure hook. One of those articles that’s pretty interesting, but barely scratches the surface of what you could do with this place. Since it ran for more than 60 years, you could make studying all that history and the vast number of plays put on in that time a special interest in itself. How many of those still have surviving scripts and could be put on again now? How many of them could easily be adapted into RPG scenarios? Another esoteric area of study I could see eating up years of my time in an alternate timeline where I’m not preoccupied by finishing off this enormous journey. Oh for immortality so I could pursue every dream to it’s proper conclusion.</blockquote>

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