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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9428526" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon/Polyhedron Issue 100/159: July 2003part 10/10The Invasion of Pharagos: The final couple of pages on the world of Pharagos and the plans to invade it are once again way too short to really do it justice. The continent level overview of its geography isn’t even as detailed as the intro to the Known World in X1. There is a good reason why the githyanki would choose to invade it though, as it was the original planet that the gith revolt got started on, and the ancient ruins hold the corpse of a dead god that the lich-queen plans to drain as part of her own attempts at divine ascension. Can her minions find it while keeping their objectives secret? Do they have the power to conquer the civilisations of the world, or at least keep them deadlocked and distracted enough to accomplish her real objectives using only a fraction of her forces? If you want the campaign to span the full range of levels, it’s not going to be a pushover in either direction, with the natives showing greater unity than expected and turning things into an extended guerrilla war despite the gith’s technological superiority. A tale familiar from many real world invasions such as Vietnam or Afghanistan, giving you plenty of sources to draw from. But while there’s a decent number of ideas here, implementing them mechanically is entirely up to you. So despite having got more than 100 pages of material over the course of both magazines, I can easily see how this could have been longer and I’m left wanting more. Maybe this should have been an adventure path. At least capping things at 16th level would avoid having to think about the game-breaking exploits players can pull with 9th level spells. Downer tries to resign, but unsurprisingly finds that Manglecramps the beholder is not the kind of employer who’ll just let you collect what you’re owed and waltz out the door. As with its counterpart in Dragon, the big Githyanki double feature is easily the best part of this issue, adding new lore and pushing at the limits of what the magazine can do, unlike the far less ambitious sequel adventures that fill the first half. Putting the parts together, this magazine probably isn’t going to be making the top ten in terms of quality, but it’s still pretty interesting and stands out from its neighbours. Still plenty more to go and hopefully some of them will continue to set new records. Let’s see if we can get to issue 200 in a little less time than the previous set.</blockquote>

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