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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9317577" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 97/156: Mar/Apr 2003part 1/10166 pages. A beholder set against a backdrop of … out of focus spaghetti? Well, that’s considerably more mystifying than the average cover. I guess it is April, so they might have remembered to put in a comedy adventure. Time to see how they kick off the start of their first big adventure path and if they’ll remember to provide room for the smaller, more intimate moments as well between the action.Editorial: Unsurprisingly, this is all about their new adventure path. They’ve never done a series this big before, and it presents all sorts of logistical challenges, making sure continuity is maintained, making sure the number of encounters in each bit is the right number to get you to the right level for the next instalment, and most importantly making sure it’s fun to play. The characters they created for playtesting are a typically mismatched crew, getting up to all kinds of havoc and jumping straight to violence when they get stuck. Yet the adventure as a whole still help up so hopefully they’ve built it right. Now it’s time for the nerve-wracking business of seeing how the general public react. Oh yeah, and they’re also going monthly next issue, which is dropped ultra-casually after all the building up of the adventure path. So they’re making two big format changes in quick succession after a year of letting the dual magazine arrangement settle in. You’d think they would space them out a bit more, but I guess you need to release the adventures in an adventure path monthly, or make each part massive enough to fill at least 8 sessions, otherwise people won’t be able to run them in real time unless they wait until all the parts are out, which could take a long time. So they really needed to make both of these changes simultaneously for them to have a chance of sticking. Still, readership is at an all-time high so that probably made justifying the change to the bean-counters easier. But will the greater number of adventures they need to release each year affect quality control? Plenty of questions raised here, which leaves me eager to keep on going and see how the final decade of the magazine plays out, albeit maybe at a slightly slower pace due to the greater amount of content.Letters: First letter is another annoyed about the need to flip the magazine around to read Polyhedron. It’s not just a nuisance, it confuses other people looking at the cover of what you’re reading. They’re still not going to stop doing it though. Second is from someone in the air force correcting the technical details in PX Poker Night. They don’t even have post exchanges as that’s an army thing! This is the internet age, how hard is it to get basic details like that right?Third and fourth are both in favour of them putting mature topics into their adventures every now and then. Roleplaying shouldn’t be just for the kids and if they are playing it, the parents ought to know what their kids are getting up to. Sure beats them wandering the streets, where who knows what they might randomly encounter. Fifth has a couple more suggestions about how to get players to stay enthusiastic and remember all the lore in your campaign. Social contagion can be a powerful force and as long as at least one is heavily invested they’ll pass it to the others.Sixth and seventh are not so keen on the recent mature topics and may cancel their subscriptions if they overdo it. The jury is still out on whether there are more letters for or against the idea overall. Eighth is strongly in favour of them continuing to do Polyhedron. Even with the recent price increase, the two magazines together are really good value in offering a wide range of gaming material. Hopefully that remains the case even after they go monthly and the page count goes down again correspondingly.</blockquote>

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