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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9358131" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 98/157: May 2003part 1/890 (100) pages. Hello, my eyes are up here. Proper loincloth maintenance is important if you’re planning on getting into a fight, unless you think the distraction value will outweigh the vulnerability. Or maybe she’s using magical armor like Alias to enjoy the best of both worlds. But I won’t get distracted from the imminent peril. Time to open another issue and see how much slower the months go by now I need to deal with each of them separately.Editorial: Over the years, the Paizo adventure paths will develop a reputation for … working best with highly optimised characters, to put it politely. They’re all experts and if you’re not, you’ll find many of the fights they design tough going. On the plus side, that does mean if you put in a few extra side quests and they’re slightly overleveled it still won’t be a cakewalk when they get back to following the main plot, which’ll let the campaign run for longer. But that requires knowing about these tendencies in advance and preparing for them. If you don’t you may find yourself facing multiple party deaths or even a TPK. Which unsurprisingly is the topic of the editorial, telling us how their party handled the start of the shackled city, with many of them dying and Chris having to figure out how to introduce replacement characters and get the group back into the action. This is then used as an attempt to spark debate, asking you, the readers how you’ve handled situations like that in the past. Did you fudge the dice, make it easy for them to pick up the bodies and get resurrections after the fact, or force them to roll up new characters? Or just give up on the quest altogether and go try something a little less formidable looking. It’s important to learn how to deal with failure as well as success and at least in an RPG you have a little more leeway to learn from your mistakes. This is all pretty familiar stuff, with only the fact that they’re doing longer-running campaigns now changing the nature of the equation. More continuity means more headaches when characters die and you have to introduce new ones who don’t share in their history and motivations. Oh well, there’s always the old canard of a previously unmentioned relative here to avenge their fallen family. Then the emotional investment just gets stronger the more of them you lose. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Letters gets renamed to Prison Mail, showing that this issue has more shakeups in store beyond the basic switch to monthly. A very suitable name since their stock in trade is supposed to be dungeons. First letter is somewhat irritated by the decline in number of adventures per issue lately and also by Hollow Threats in particular. That problem is going to get much worse now the issues have returned to regular size, but are still having to share with Polyhedron. Second is the contrasting one, not entirely sure where they’re going with this adventure path idea, but excited by what they’ve seen so far and willing to trust that they know what they’re doing, given their previous record of high quality material. Third suggests rewarding players for journaling and other ways of keeping track of what happened between sessions. Even small amounts of XP can really increase their willingness to invest in their characters. Given how the 3e xp system works it’s not as if the lazier players will wind up more than a level behind either. Fourth is in favour of them getting vile and dark every now and then. It’s important not to be swayed by a loud minority pretending to be the moral majority. Fifth also thinks a bit of darkness is good as long as you expose kids to it in a controlled way. Better they learn about drugs and sex like that instead of stumbling across it at random on the internet, where they’re much more likely to come to the wrong conclusions about it.</blockquote>

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