Realm of the Technomancer

Realm of the Technomancer is a double adventure. One side of the book has an adventure for Labyrinth Lord while the other side of the book has an adventure for Mutant Future. It just so happens that these are essentially the same adventure, re-stat’ed and re-described depending on which game the characters are in. In the Labyrinth Lord adventure the PC’s are contacted by villagers who are having some troubles with the (secret) underground portion of their village. This is essentially the same as the Mutant Future version: the underground complex associated with the village is having some trouble. Thing have gotten weird and the villagers want the party to investigate. The village depends on the machinery/magic in the tunnels and they need the party to succeed.

It should become obvious to the party that realities have become mixed. In the Labyrinth Lord version it turn out that a group of Morlocks from a post-apoc time stream have somehow mixed their homeland with that of the Labyrinth Lord villagers. Same set up in the Mutant Future version, except instead of post-apoc Morlocks we get fantasy/magic Morlocks. The two adventures have the same idea, the same basic map, and the same basic encounters with the same basic monsters. The Morlocks are given a little more flair: technoweapons in the LL version and Spears, crossbows, and magic in the MF version. In addition the room descriptions and trappings are localized for the game system, but otherwise the adventures are the same.

The adventure is pretty basic. The tunnel complex is pretty linear and their are only about nine keyed locations. There is a brief section regarding scaling the adventure which is always appreciated, especially since this one provides some non-obvious scaling tips. What would otherwise be a pretty standard ‘clean the tunnels’ adventure is added to by a couple of elements. The first is the Technomancy Mishap tables. Whenever technology and magic are used in the same place then there’s a pretty good chance that something bad will happen, and a slight chance that something disastrous will happen. This should provide a good amount of fun is taken the right light. Taking the PC’s toys away from them has some serious GM fiat issues, Most of the mishaps are not very serious, however there is a slight chance that something VERY BAD will happen. Like a magic item being drained of power of a number of them exploding. This is probably too much for me to drop on the party out of the blue; I like the ‘warn and suffer the consequences’ style of play.

The second interesting element is some of the dungeon dressing proper. Just about every room has something interesting in it for the players to screw with. Some of these are seriously creepy, like the rotting severed head of a gnome wrapped in wire and grafted to pipework who’s eyes continually roll in their sockets and whose mouth whispers nonsense. Others are more environmental, like a slippery & mud covered sloping tunnel. These elements really spice up the adventure and each one is well worth stealing to put in your own game if you’re not going to run the module.

The end of the adventure is interesting also. The Morlocks are trying to return themselves home and the final fight _probably_ has the party trying to prevent this. After all, any party worth it’s salt will usually try and stop anyone they attempting to complete a ritual. Unfortunately … the Morlocks completing the ritual is probably the best outcome. Yeah, things are bit harder for the villagers in the short-term, but live should return to normal. If the party causes the ritual to fail, well, things can get quite a bit worse for both the villagers and the party.

I should also mention that the module is chick full of new goodies. Several new monsters, new magic items, new technology items (with limited ammo that can’t be recreated.) This is always welcome in any module, as it keeps the party guessing, both about their adversaries and about the loot; the sense of wonder and the unknown is one of the most important parts of old style gaming.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/90120/Realm-of-the-Technomancer?affiliate_id=1892600