The Castle of the Mad Archmage

By Joseph Bloch
BRW Games
1e
Levels 1-12

But a few scant leagues from the walls of the bustling town of Greyheim lay the crumbling ruins known as the Castle of the Mad Archmage, Jophob Schlech, long shunned by the local townsfolk. Decades ago, a series of vast treasure hoards were discovered in the twisting mazes beneath the castle proper, along with hungry beasts and deadly traps aplenty. Legends were made in that time; the names of those early explorers will live on for centuries. Eventually, though, the dungeons lost their luster as the treasures became smaller and harder to win, the traps were dismantled, and the monsters slain; eventually only the desperate or jaded dared enter the dungeons beneath the castle. Recently, however, reports have surfaced of renewed stockpiles of wealth in the dank passages and chambers beneath the hillock upon which the stillruined castle rests. Regions once deemed devoid of monstrous habitation have been reported to teem with renewed activity. Traps both magical and mundane have once more brought explorers to their doom. Changes both subtle and gross have been noted in the very layout of the passages and chambers, rendering old maps and knowledge dangerously unreliable if not outright useless. Something is definitely afoot, and most honest folk in the nearby city find the prospect an unnerving one indeed. To the bold and daring, however, only one message needs to be heard. The castle and its dungeons are once more ripe for exploration, and new legends are ready to be made beneath The Castle of the Mad Archmage!

This 322 page adventure presents a megadungeon with about fourteen levels and at least a thousand rooms. A true example of the genre, it does a decent job mimicking what a classic era megadungeon may have looked like, combining large extensive level maps with a writing style and encounter mix that feels like it’s out 79-81. It’s also vaguely disconnected from itself, feeling more like a series of random rooms, in spite of having factions and zones and level themes. 

Bloch and BRW is interesting. I have, up to this point, not reviewed any of the various of Mad Archmage available. What I know Bloch from is some EXCELLENT marketing which seems to draw me in time and again to his products via the covers and the DriveThru pages. And then crushing disappointment as I see yet another what appears to be a low effort offering that makes little sense. The Castle of the Mad Archmage though is a little different. This version, I assume, is the one that hit kickstarter for something like $50k. The maps are exactly what one expect if you said large Gygaxian megadungeon level, perhaps without the “lines for walls” from the famous snippet. But, several hundred rooms per level and a complexity to them that is absolutely present. And encounters straight out of the classic era Gygax, without, though, the guiding vision of a level that results in these feeling disconnected from themselves and perhaps a little staid and/or generic. It’s a colossal effort, just not one that I would ever feel the desire to run because of the … aimlessness?

The adventure has a lot of elements straight out of early play. You will recall, in the G series, a brief sentence in the intro noting that if the party looks around they can find a cave, etc to home base out of, a camp to rest and rover in as they raid the dungeon. We can see in this one a small appeal to that as well. There are several small farmsteads in the area that the party could base out of. (This is in addition to several other areas in the surrounding lands, a fairy forest, etc, to add some play options as the party mucks about in the region through the extended and repeated forays in to the dungeon that a megadungeon would imply.) I note, as well, that these have something going on also, or at least something colorful to add. After all, if you’re going to base out of Farmer Browns farm then having a little bit to spice up play there, during your repeated visits, is a great addition. One farm houses two brothers and their families … who hate each other and will get angry if the party interact with the other half of the family. Ongoing fun! And then another has an old patriarch … and a son who just wishes the old man would die already so he can take over. “Paulus’s eldest son is Doran, who resents his father’s seemingly stubborn refusal to depart this world.” That’s a pretty simple sentence that is overloaded with opportunities for play. This is exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for in a homebase description: just a line, almost a throwaway, that can be used to riff off of. You get the idea immediately and can leverage the situation to spice some things up while the party rests. 

There are also a decent number of bandits and “caretakers” present in the dungeon and the environs. They will charge you to go in and down the stairs to the next levels. Or, others will hiit you on the way out, looking for easy marks loaded down with treasure, wounded and unable to dump fireballs at them. These are, again, classic examples from older play that have been included and bring in that more dynamic element of play. We so often see the journey to the dungeon, or back home, just hand waved, but these appeals to the older play add an extra elements to help bring alive what could be routine in a megadungeon: getting in and going out again.

Other classic elements are present as well. Notably, we see a large number of levels, fourteen. And a decent number of them sport those large and complex maps that we get glimpses of in Barrier Peaks or Mordenkainen. A hundred, a hundred and fifty rooms to a level Loops, complex mapping, small zones and interconnections. We get a side view of the entire dungeon and a diagram showing the various connections to the surface. (Although, I note that WHERE on the surface is not noted, a serious lapse.) This is all quite excellent and something seldom seen in dungeons. There is room to breathe here. The denizens can have zones or control, and there can be buffer zones between them. This is exactly what you want in large expansive dungeon levels. 

And it comes replete with The Greyhawk Construction Company. Err, the Greyheim Construction Company, I mean. Orcs and ogres in safety vests building the dungeon in a kind of pocket dimension. Orange cones. Blueprints. This was another classic element of play, a meta way for the DM to say “hey, that part of the dungeon? I haven’t finished mapping and stating it yet. Maybe ring again later?” Not quite a funhouse element, you’re not really interacting with them, ala “trap reset kobolds”, but more of a eta reference and acknowledgement to how the game, and its dungeons, developed. Although, I think two pages are devoted to it here … In any event, there are a lot of classical elements here that were oft present in earlier games and, in particular, megadungeon games. 

The various encounters could have been written and/or pulled from some of the earliest published adventures. They range from the minimal to the slightly more than minimal. There’s a mix of combat and what we might call Specials. The Fountain of Snakes stands out as one of thoseSpecial type encounters: “FOUNTAIN OF SNAKES. A fountain with a shallow basin dominates the middle of this room. A small, barred window looks into area #128, where two orc guards are always posted. The fountain itself is shaped like four intertwining snakes. Every round that someone is in this room, a snake will issue forth from this enchanted fountain, with  snakes coming out of a different mouth of the statue:” That’s a decent little special, and as a bonus it includes that small barred window. This sort of “see something from somewhere else” is something that Thracia did to great effect. Specials are one of the favorite things, when handled right. You need not too many of them and they need to written in a rather neutral way, a thing in the dungeon that the party could be impacted by or could leverage to their own ends if managed correctly. 

44. LAUGHING SKULL. If this room is entered, a human skull rises from the floor laughing hysterically for 1 minute. It then floats gently to the floor. The room is otherwise empty. The skull will lose its enchantment if removed from this room.

45. EMPTY ROOM. Table and 4 chairs.

46. SPIDER! A huge spider (AC(D) 6; AC(A) 14; MV 180’/min.; HD 2+2; 11 h.p. each; #AT 1; DAM 1-6; SA poison, leap 30’) dwells here, in the corpse of an unlucky elf from whence it will leap to attack. The elf’s corpse has 85 g.p.

That little run of rooms stood out to me. We see there as special, in the skull, an empty room, and then a creature encounter. This little selection stood out to me because I think it exemplifies the kind of things you’ll find in this megadungeon. The “special” there is nothing much, just something bizarre in the dungeon. And if we’re going to criticize the Dwimmermount chess players then this gets criticized as well. There are a fair number of these sorts of “empty specials” in the Mad Archmage. It’s just something weird pulled out and put in the dungeon. I suppose there’s the possibility of the party using it, but it’s just there and doesn’t seem t contribute much. There’s an entry in the ruins aboveground of a ghostly echo of horse hooves in the stable. To no end, but, you can exorcise it to get rid of it, the text tells us. But it’s nothing. It doesn’t really set a mood. It doesn’t have an impact on the party, It just feels too … disconnected from the rest of the adventure. Just as most of the specials do here. 

The empty room here is fine. Especially in a larger work you need some space. A buffer zone for monsters. A place for the party to spin their wheels or rest in. Every room stuffed full just doesn’t make sense in some of the larger dungeons. 

And the creature encounter here stands out. The spider is IN the corpse. I think perhaps I would have liked a bloated elf body or some such, something to add color to the description, but placing the creature in the body, and a spider at that, elevates this from a boring old “there’s a spider on the ceiling encounter.” Again, I think this little run of rooms is a good example of what you can find here, both good and bad. A little bland in the descriptions, overall terse, a little random and aimless, and perhaps the selected format could have been done a little differently given the way the spiders stat block, fully inline, detracts from the overall comprehension of the room when scanning it. 

And then there are the more straightforward funhouse rooms. “DUCK! There is a large (4’ tall at the head) bright yellow statue of a duck in the middle of this room. 1 minute after the room is entered, buzz saw blades will slice through the place at a height of 4’ 2”.” Or, perhaps the honeytrap room where a bunch of honey falls on someone. This is all classic funhouse dungeon. Something weird, meta, out of time, showing up in the dungeon. An explicit acknowledgement that we are all playing a game and the designer and DM can and will include anything. Tonally out of place in a more classic adventuring environment, but, we’re talking megadungeon here. You gonna need some things in there to mix things up. You’ve been in this dungeon for 196 gaming sessions and little fun in that environment is probably ok. And it makes more sense to me than, say, the isolated laughing skull or the horse hoof exorcism. 

I have compared this si the older adventures but there is something missing. It just doesn’t feel connected to itself the way older adventures do. G1 felt like a unified whole. The dinner party. The sleeping guards, the lothario, the orc servants both loyal and in revolt.  There was this overall theme that ran through it. Even in something MUCH larger, like S3, it all felt connected to itself. You could follow along. Things in one place meant something somewhere else. And it just doesn’t FEEL that way here. Yes, there are some factions on each level, and they have a zone of control, and there’s some space and some conflict. And levels have some overall theming. The barracks levels. The storage level. The arena level. But there’s not LIFE to much, if any, of it. I don’t mean creatures, there are plenty. Or weird shit going on. There’s that also. It just doesn’t feel like there’s a hiding hand here. Not quite random, but also not working together to paint a broader picture of the dungeon. I don’t really know how to describe this.  It has something to do, perhaps, with a combination of the tone and the vibe? Let us assume we were turning an Ikea in to a dungeon. Each of the little vignettes is their own room. (Rooms within rooms within rooms!) So, the theme here is Ikea rooms, and each of the rooms makes a direct appeal to that. But one is empty. And another is a fairy tea party. And another that ghastly abomination known as Tuscan Kitchen. Space aliens are in a room with kindergarten chairs and some suburban mom is picking out a plant in another, unaware of anything. They are all rooms, what are you complaining about? Is there some overriding theme that runs throughout? Ultimately, the theme is that the mad archmage, a stand in for the DM, is on the bottom level and jokes with you, gives you gifts, and then sends you to the other side off world. Why, the party asks, is this all here? ? “Well, how else would I have met you folks?! [the party]” I know that the adventure path and plot thing have scared us all, but this opposite effect is a little too meta for me. There is no theme. There is no interconnection. There is nothing going on that binds the adventure, or the levels together. There is barely very much to tie the levels to themselves, as standalones.  Ultimately this is just a big funhouse dungeon. The Duck encounter, with a tad more theming than, say, a bunch of isolated rooms floating in a void, each with a wildly different genre going on. Stonehell, with its level interconnections, level summaries, and interconnections was, for all of its minimalism, a hundred times better when it came to giving the things life and in making it feel like each component was a part of a whole. And, for all the funhouse nature of the rooms, there just doesn’t seem to be any joy present in the adventure. It feels quite a bit more like drudgery than joy or wonder. If we took the spirit of Grimtooth, without the sly winks, then perhaps that? I’m not suggesting there are deathtraps or rube goldbergs or anything like that. But a certain isolation combined with a routine … blandness and smallmindedness?

I can, also, mention the padding present. This is Bloch special. There is the long section at the start that tells you how to read a block and that AC means Armor Class, among other how to roleplay introductory text. I wonder what the set is of people who purchased this and don’t know what an RPG is? And then of course the entries are padded out. “Home to the Rory family, a pair of brothers and their families, with a total of eight people living here. Adam  (human F0; 7 h.p.; AC(D) 10; AC(A) 10; AL NG) and his wife Melissa (human F0; 4 h.p.; AC(D) 10; AC(A) 10; AL NG) and their twin teenage boys, Paulus and Renulf (human F0; 6 h.p. each; AC(D) 10; AC(A) 10; AL NG) live in one of the farmhouses on the land. John (human F0; 6 h.p.; AC(D) 10; AC(A) 10; AL CG) and his wife Regina (human F0; 4 h.p.; AC(D) 10; AC(A) 10; AL CG) live in the other house with their widowed daughter Trudy (human F0; 3 h.p.; AC(D) 10; AC(A) 10; AL LG) and her infant son Rex.” Not only do the inline stat blocks make the entry hard to read, they are all just zero level AC10 humans with nothing special going on. This calls to mind the trap of layout/publishing guidelines. They exist to add clarity, not to be followed rigidly in to the abyss. If the guidelines say to bold monster names, and you do so and it looks like that is MORE confusing, then don’t do that. Most of the padding comes up front, in the region and the text before the dungeon starts, so at least the keys are relatively free of that, 

“BLACKSMITH’S SHOP. This sagging cottage, built against the sturdy stone of the inner keep, was once the blacksmith’s shop. The long-disused forge is evident, but where the anvil and tools would be expected are only rusty stains (a rust monster had found the place years ago and gorged itself). The thatched roof is mostly intact.

ARMORY. This smallish room was used to store arrows for the use of archers who might use the balistraria in the adjacent hallway. The spiral staircase behind the secret door leads to area #108 on Level 1 Core: The Storage Rooms, while the secret passage leading through the wall ends in a one-way secret door that can only be opened from the inside. Its existence was one of the castle’s most closely guarded secrets. Today it holds empty barrels which contain a few broken arrows or forgotten arrowheads.”

Those two entries are excellent examples of how to not write entries. The Blacksmiths “was once’ and we get the rust monster backstory, that isn’t going to ever come up in play. The armory smacks of that Dungeon room, the worst one ever written. After a paragraph or two describing it ended with something like “but today the room is empty.” Focus your writing on the now, focus it on the party interacting with the room. Sure, you can throw in a random line of backstory or something to punch up the writing. Who doesn’t like those snide little DM aside comments that designers sometimes throw in? But, mostly, focus the writing on the interactivity you are enabling in the room for the party to explore, not a booklet from a small county historical society museum on the various uses of the living room in John Holmes palm beach home between 1962 and 1983. 

There are other rando bits. A decent number of weird saves, 8HD level monsters on level 2, which is kindof nice, A disturbing number of rooms fall in to the format “XNUMBER MONSTERTYPE are here.” Meh. it is what it is, I guess.

It is hard to regard this as more than a curiosity. The dedication to the early encounter style is interesting, but not so much that the lack of a feeling of interconnectedness, (or purpose?) … the aimlessness of the levels, even though there are factions and themes. It feels like a hollow effort to explore

This is $25 at DriveThru. There is no preview. SUCKER!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/462133/ma1-castle-of-the-mad-archmage-the-core-levels?1892600