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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9278899" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 95/194: Nov/Dec 2002part 5/10The Porphyry House Horror: Freed from several decades of being forced to keep everything family friendly, the Book of Vile Darkness tie-in adventure predictably overcompensates with the edginess. James Jacobs does his best to go full Frank Miller and cram in as much rape, cannibalism, whores, blasphemy & other miscellaneous crimes as possible in 31 pages. (but only one exposed nipple and no genitals of either gender, because they still don’t have the courage to push the artwork as far as 3rd party d20 books.) We’re off to Scuttlecove, a pirate town ruled by a triumvirate of cannibal ur-priests who encourage pretty much any depravity that doesn’t endanger the town as a whole apart from open displays of religion. But there’s always someone who’s not happy with even that degree of freedom, and a Yuan-ti cultist of Demogorgon is scheming to take over. She’s cornered the prostitution market by using Yuan-ti polymorphing to turn animals into cheap sex slaves of any race desired. (then jacked up the prices once her competitors were out of business) Eventually she plans to perform a massive orgy that’s also a magical ritual to turn everyone in the city into demons, with her as the most powerful one. Probably the kind of thing the PC’s will want to stop even if they are evil, as both monopolies on non-utilities and everyone turning into demons are bad for the economy. (all that at-will teleportation really undercuts the supply chain) Fortunately, they’ll make some little mistakes that give the PC’s plenty of opportunities to get involved. An escaped abused gulgthydra, introducing new drugs that threaten the market shares of other powerful citizens, there’s plenty of reasons you might decide to investigate Porphyry House.  Once you get there, things obviously get even worse. The upper floors may be primarily intended for pleasure, but they have more than enough guards and traps for anyone who strays from their assigned rooms or tours, plus said pleasures include sado-masochism, baby-eating, and one of the largest libraries of porn on the Oerth. The basement is where you find out how the pudding is made, with a menagerie of monsters yet to be polymorphed and put to work. In terms of actual play it’s not that different from a regular site-based dungeon where you’re underleveled to fight your way through everything and have to use sneakiness if you want to survive, but oh, the trappings. Overall, it’s a qualified success, as it’s not an annoying railroad and it does do things that no adventure in here has been allowed to do, but at the same time it’s nothing exceptional in terms of overall design and it won’t be beating Black Tokyo in the sheer perversion stakes anytime soon either. Will it get any follow-ups from regular writers, or is this going to be a one-off bit of boundary pushing only the official staff are allowed to do? I guess we’ll see in time. Table Talk: Erik’s editorial is in praise of the many d20 variants that are licences of some other property. Wheel of Time, Call of Cthulhu, Everquest, Farscape, all have already got d20 editions of varying quality and suitedness to the ruleset. Still, even if not all of them are great, the fact that they’re all cross-compatible makes using them convenient, particularly if you want to run a gonzo multiverse hopping kind of game. Of course, there’s still tons of things that don’t have d20 versions yet, some of which Erik would very much like to see. Doing little checking, the only one on the wishlist that actually comes true is Perdito Street Station, which will appear in Dragon in 2007. (also helmed by Erik, obviously he held onto the dream and really put the legwork in to secure that one. ) They Live! or the works of William S. Burroughs, on the other hand, you’ll need to put together yourself. (The first of those sounds considerably easier to get the tone & rules right than the second) So this is distinctly above average in providing me a whole bunch of interesting references to check out, showing how the d20 ecosystem is expanding. A little more data on what was happening when.</blockquote>

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