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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9067678" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 143: August 2000part 4/5Fire Island: We haven’t had any adventures in here in nearly a year, so I’m mildly surprised to see one last Alternity one. Doubly curiously, it’s for the Gamma World setting. We’re off to Argentina, where floating cows radiate auras of serenity that protect them from all but a very particular caste of mutants which radiate auras of repulsion, which means they can charge high prices for their services but no-one likes them. They haven’t shown up this year, which means the village is getting worried about starvation. You need to find out what’s going on. Turns out that with their already misanthropic inclinations from being social outcasts, they were easy prey for the rhetoric of Robo-Hitler, who’s brain was saved after the end of WWII, kept in a jar for several centuries and recently put in a new cyborg body. He’s promptly set out to establish a new reich, which predictably means more obvious mutants need to be exterminated. (but psychic powers are just fine because nazi hypocrisy) You won’t find this out until the climax of the story though, and if the DM does it right you might well still be wondering what the hell just happened. (and your characters who lack any knowledge of pre-bomb history definitely will) So this marries the traditional gamma world wackiness when it comes to mutations with a surprisingly large scale pulp premise and also manages a greater emphasis on thinking about the ecological ramifications of all these mutant powers jammed together in one world. You’ll have to not only beat the more obvious combat challenges of nazi robots with nuclear bombs, but not kill all the nazi gaucho mutants, as their powers are essential to the survival of society as you know it. It manages to work decently as both a single session tournament adventure or slowed down a bit so you can pursue the more complex political ramifications of all this. I definitely approve of this adventure. Now more than ever, it’s important to punch Hitler on a regular basis in fiction, but also remind ourselves that we can’t simply kill all our political opponents without becoming the monsters we’re fighting against.Elminster's Everwinking Eye: The turbulence of the Border Kingdoms is underscored here, as having spent a couple of issues setting up a status quo, Ed changes it again. The mage-king spent less than a decade in charge before his big new school of magic was mysteriously nuked by unknown forces. His secret police weren’t seen for several months, then popped up again as tyrannical as before as if nothing had happened. Ondeme himself hasn’t been seen at all since then, and anyone asking about his fate faces their wrath. Is he really dead or is he merely lying low? Was all this destruction an external attack, or part of some big ritual to transform him into a lich or something even more powerful? Are the Slee the same people as before or something else disguised as them moving into the power vacuum? How are normal people supposed to make a reliable living when the law is essentially the whims of the highest ranking secret police in the vicinity? Despite all this, some people are coming in from neighbouring lands hoping they can take advantage of the opportunities here, but just as many are leaving, or only staying because they’re afraid of what will happen to them if they’re caught while trying to leave. Definitely a place in need of some heroic adventurers who not only solve the problems, but tell people about what happened afterwards even if it opens them up for retaliation, because without any resolution, the conspiracy theories are just going to grow and get ever more improbable even if the amount of immediate danger is reduced. Another entry that has a lot of adventure possibilities, but still leaves a lot open for you to decide in your own campaign. Even if the players read the newszine avidly, they’ll still have to do all the work of investigating the answers IC rather than knowing them OOC and conveniently making the right decisions for their characters based on that foreknowledge.</blockquote>

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