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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9304096" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 96/155: Jan/Feb 2003part 5/10Beyond the Light of Reason: Even though 3e’s tagline was going back to the dungeon, we’ve still seen very few large site-based adventures where the enemies mostly stay in their rooms until the adventurers come to kill them. Here’s one, although there’s still a fair bit of exposition as to why this is the case and how things work there so it’s not some gleeful old-school throwback like the return of Keraptis. 50 years ago, a cleric of Pelor foiled a cleric of Nerull scheming to destroy the village of Rutherton. After an epic battle underneath the nearby mountain, he came back with a magical lantern that repels evil creatures from the village, keeping them safe for decades. Unfortunately the PC’s arrive in town just as there’s an enormous storm that extinguishes the lantern. They’ll need to go back under the mountain and relight it from Pelor’s Pyre before the monsters in the area realise the village is now vulnerable. Of course, this isn’t simple. While the lantern repels monsters, the larger pyre attracts them and traps them in it’s vicinity so there’s several levels filled with various challenges before you get down to the bottom, finding out that the cleric of Nerull was also trapped down there rather than destroyed, became an Lich and has spent the past 50 years working on a magic ritual to break his imprisonment. (which will also release all the other monsters on the world as well.) Fortunately you’ll arrive just as he’s in the middle of the ritual, which will somewhat hamper his ability to fight you, but if you don’t act fast he’ll be freed and plane shift out of there to cause more trouble later, plus you won’t be able to relight the lantern and have to deal with all the other monsters around the hard way. So while this is a fairly large site-based dungeon where most of the monsters will attack on sight, it also has a strong time factor added in to prevent the PC’s from pulling 15 minute workdays and is set up so there’s a distinct possibility you’ll fail the mission without dying. That leaves it a fairly satisfying read I’d have no problem using. The Statement of Ownership shows them hitting a new peak and then starting to decline again, with average circulation of 51,000 but a last month one of 49. Some of that’ll probably be made up in back orders anyway, so it remains to be seen if they’ll be doing better or worse overall next year. Table Talk: Our editorial reminds us that there is life beyond gaming. If you want to create an interesting new world, don’t restrict yourself to reading other RPG’s or even just works of fiction, but do real world research as well. A good encyclopedia is worth it’s weight in gold in providing random information that even the internet probably wouldn’t give you unless you were specifically searching for it, and then only if you already knew the right keywords. You can work your way through it alphabetically, or just let it fall open anywhere and try to build an adventure around the first thing you see. Another familiar topic they do every few years because it’s important to keep perspective. Why, I could wind up going quite mad otherwise. :giggles: Bolt & Quiver seek a unicorn for surprisingly wholesome purposes.</blockquote>

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