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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9102111" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 145: Dec/Jan 2000/1part 1/668 pages. Never waste time dividing up the treasure until you’re certain the adventure is over and you’re safely out of trouble. Another of those lessons that’s easy to teach, but also easy to forget in the heat of the moment, particularly with companions of the more roguish sort you’re not certain you can trust. Time to find out how reliably they can deliver the contents of another issue.Network News: Dragon used the edition change to put the price up. It’s a little trickier in here because memberships paid are yearly or even several at once, but they’re also feeling the combination of inflation, WotC cutting the budget to their department, and the cost of putting up production values while simultaneously releasing a second magazine on off-months and adding several new Living settings to their roster. If your membership is running low, better renew it before the new prices kick in in March. Converting Living City, Living Jungle and Living Death to 3e all at once is also definitely putting their workload way up. To top that off, they just lost regional director Tom Ko and have yet to appoint a replacement. Overall membership is still growing and they’re still trying hard to be optimistic in general, but at some point this year reality is going to take it’s toll and their ambitious schedule will need to be downsized. This is just the first sign of the growing cracks in their system. Letters to the Editor: First letter complains that their cover was ruined in the mail. It’s a constant balancing act between providing protective packaging and cost, which obviously they got wrong this time, since they’ve had quite a few complaints like this recently. Second complains about the silly names and general whimsy of Living City settings & adventures. That’s not very high fantasy of them! Oh, honey, have you seen how often Ed Greenwood breaks the 4th wall. Like it or not, lighthearted silliness with a big topping of horniness is the original tone of the Forgotten Realms and people trying to make it dark and serious are the interlopers missing the point, like Smash Bros players playing Fox only, no items, Final Destination.Third very specifically wants an epic adventure featuring the githyanki, preferably written by Bruce Cordell. That’s more Dungeon’s thing than Polyhedron, but very worth considering. Maybe for a big anniversary or something. We shall see. Not until after the new psionics rules are out though, as you kinda need to know how they work to do them justice.Finally, some short but sweet praise to end things on a positive note.Living City Conversion Guide: Proving how complex the conversion process is and how many headaches it’s causing them, this takes a full 12 pages, considerably longer than either the old Living City rules or the new Living Greyhawk ones. 10 years of development, making the Vast increasingly divergent in tone to the outside Forgotten Realms. Several different editorial regimes of varying generosity when it came to handing out cool magic items. At this point it’s a teetering mess of patches that’s perpetually one wrong move from collapse. They’re hoping to cut a few gordian knots in the process of conversion rather than going for the most accurate one possible, even if that annoys some hardcore members. Class levels can go all the way up to 20, so you’ll probably wind up a similar level to before if single-classed, but multi or dual classed ones will have to make some hard choices about their new build. On the plus side, since the Forgotten Realms is generally a higher power campaign than Greyhawk, you have 32 points to assign to ability scores instead of 28. You have a wider selection of races, including the possibility of keeping nonstandard ones won in special events from the old game. HP are max roll at 1st and 2nd level, then 75% of your max dice for subsequent ones, which is a step up from the old 50%. Since the wall of the faithless is now a thing, everyone needs to choose a patron deity regardless of class or be unable to come back from the dead, with a whole load of little restrictions on who from where can choose what. How many people will continue to take a stand and actively choose atheism in the face of that? The downtime log sheet has been made more granular, going from 73 fivedays to a full 365 units per year to allocate. You can craft magic items if you have the cash & feats, but you can’t sell them to NPC’s and trading between players is very strictly regulated. Don’t be surprised if they further restrict precisely what you can make in the future. Alignment restrictions remain the same, and anyone not working together with the team and playing the game in the spirit intended can be kicked out. While there are a few little differences to Living Greyhawk, the restrictions are similar enough that it feels a bit redundant having both. Just because they’ve hashed out the rules, doesn’t mean those tensions in the playerbase will be going away.</blockquote>

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