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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9225296" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 92/151: May/Jun 2002part 12/12Enemies: This is oddly short and doesn’t introduce any new monsters. Instead it’s just a few sentences each on Mind Flayers, Drow, Yuan-Ti, Formians and Sahuguin and their place in this solar system. Illithids are the biggest bads, an alien threat that came from another system, took over the planet of Moradin’s Forge and are now accumulating the minions they need among the drow and orcs to take over even more planets. That’s if the Drow don’t betray them first, as they aren’t likely to remain dependent on their benefactors for spelljamming technology for long and getting revenge on the other elves for their banishment is their top priority. Yuan-Ti are pretty similar to usual, the old villains who once had a big empire, but it collapsed and now they just lurk in jungles unable to do any large scale organising. Formians are Borg, nuff said. Sahuguin are only found on Quelya as they don’t have spelljamming yet, but are a pretty substantial threat there, since it’s 90% ocean so there’s not much inland to escape their attacks in. No great departures from the regular stereotypes or mechanics here either.Godlike talks about Pevnost, the Czech defector who can open a door and connect it to any other door. While this had enormous strategic advantages for the Allies, it couldn’t stop Hitler from holding his relatives hostage and killing most of them, resulting in him being pretty emotionally broken and alone by the end of the war. Being able to go anywhere doesn’t necessarily make you any more able to move on emotionally.The counters are tied into the Polyhedron side this time, with a bunch of spaceships for ship-to-ship combat. (not to the same scale as normal monsters) Humans get two tradesmen, two hammerships and an archelon. Elves get an arrowing and a warbird. Drow get two deathspiders and seven little spinnerets. Gnomes get a pair of wreckships. Illithids get two nautilioids and a swarm of eight little boreworms to terrorise everyone else with. Good to see them making everyone visually distinct even at this scale.The Dungeon side of this issue is interesting, but in a somewhat irritating way, trying very hard to create adventures with recurring antagonists despite all the many times that concept been proven a big hassle to implement under D&D rules. In sharp contrast, the Polyhedron side is competent but dull, without the obvious design clangers that were strewn through the draft version of d20 Modern last issue, but also losing a lot of the most interesting parts of Spelljammer without replacing them with anything new, with the attempts at fresh worldbuilding feeling pretty skeletal. If they’d made it a full-sized sourcebook they might have been able to really get going on putting new stuff in, but at the moment this mainly feels like selective subtraction. Overall, not their best work on either sides. Still, next time is a new day, another chance to find love. Let’s roll up our sleeves, apply some elbow grease and get ready for the Thunderball Rally, which definitely sounds promising and not a repeat of something they’ve already done in here.</blockquote>

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