By Ian Hickey
Gravity Realms
2e
Levels 1-2
Do you dare venture into the Stronghold of the Mad Dwarf? Its dark corridors and forgotten halls hold horrors beyond your mind’s comprehension. For centuries the Tome of Many Verses has been locked away, along with the horrors it has created.
This 44 page adventure uses 22 pages to describe four small dungeon levels and one larger one, the larger one having about 23 rooms. It is padded out and tries to theme areas, to no great advantage, but has several classic elements to it that help it rise above the typical dreck. Its heart is in the right place, even though it doesn’t succeed very well.
This one falls in to the “classic dungeon” category. There’s a small outside area, a small antechamber level, a larger “main” dungeon of 23 rooms, a couple of very small levels under that, and then a map in the classic megadungeon side-view noting other are levels yet to be detailed/left for the DM. The main theme here is an old dwarf complex, dug too far, and the main treasure being a book of demon summoning guarded by a kind of gibbering mouther made of dwarf parts. The vibe here is classic dungeon, with spiders, mad dwarves, and a few oddball creatures in a mix of “empty” dungeon rooms and some larger spaces with more interesting things going on. It’s also “kill based” XP, as it’s 2e Not gold=xp here, with coinage limited as a result. We’re going to ignore the hooks as well since they are just the usual “you’re hired” couple of lines and this is, in the end, a site based adventure in the classic dungeon style.
There’s a small outside area right in front of the doors, which you can think of a much smaller version of the Stonehell outside. A few ruins and a couple of monsters. You’ll get to a small antechamber level of a couple of rooms, and then down in to the core dungeon of 23 rooms. Under that is a small cavern level of a few rooms and the dwarf spider pens level.
The entry in to the core dungeon is the lift shaft. The platform having failed a long time ago, you’re faced with a pit, 180 feet deep, to navigate your way down. No solution is give, nor should there one be! The adventurers are left to tie those ropes together and go in through thepit, classic style. The dungeon does this sort of classic element stuff in a few places, with another standing out being a locked door with an open window grate in it. The key is in the keyhole on the other side. That’s it, nothing else suggested. Again, the adventurers are left to their own solution, as they should be. I love these sort of classic obstacles, without spoon feeding the DM on solutions. When the adventure is doing this is channeling those classic dungeons of old; twelve in one blow!
There are, at times, some decent room descriptions as well. “The roof to the common room has collapsed and is blocking the entrance. Inside chunks of broken furniture, tables and chairs are half buried in rubble.” Another environmental obstacle! Rubble, half buried furniture, all turning an otherwise empty room in to something a little more interesting. When the adventure is hitting on all cylinders it does a pretty decent job. That main room you descend in to from the pit has sixteen pillars and a 15 foot vaulted ceiling, with rubble under the pit from the platform and mechanism which has collapsed from above. And a floor covered in guano. Ought oh! 1-100 bats! Hope you’re not making a lot of noise! In another large cavern we’ve got the classic flowstone and mite/tite situation, along with a giant cave clam blending in surrounded by treasure it has coughed up. Does it make sense? No. But it sure recalls those classic D&D exploration of caverns illustrations.
Let us not get attached though. The padding is hard with this one. Not to an excessive degree, but it is present in nearly every passage. This room once served as. The main entryway is open for business. This used to be. These phrases do nothing for the adventure and clog up the DMs ability to scan the text to find the entries they actually need. “The locked door at which the adventurers stand is the old entrance to the stronghold before the new additions were added above.” That is a perfect example. It is irrelevant. It is trivia. It adds nothing.
It also gets weird about the creatures in places. In one room there is a small amount of read aloud that describes one of the mad dwarves attacking. Another room has a full on room description and no description of occupants, except it then stat blocks two of the ad dwarves. Elsewhere the adventure “might” encounter a giant rat nest in this room. The spider pens level simply notes, at the beginning, that there are 3-30 spiders on the level, with no further mention of them. This is maddening. There CAN be a place for creatures sometimes being present, or for a level having a total number of creatures on it, but this is not how you do that. Boxed text is not present everywhere, which is fine either way, but it can get long in places, causing the players to lose interest and pull out phones.
And then there are the mad dwarves. Not undead, just maddened. And when you’re close to them you need to make a save vs spalls or be paralyzed for 1d6 rounds. Ouch. Area attack. Multiple dwarves in an encounter. OSR. Run away. But, also, i feel like Fear and Paralysis are some HEFTY shit to be throwing at a party at level one. I remember several near TPKs from level four to six parties who fear’d away or got paralyzed. Those are some BAD. ASS. EFFECTS. I’m not sure about this in a level one, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
The adventure is a little slow. Some of the rooms are memorable, and there’s a decent number of things to poke and prod at, but it feels a little drab. The descriptions could be better, more consistent, and the environment feels quite static. But, other than the padding, it’s not really doing much wrong. I just don’t think that the classic elements, when they appear, are enough to carry it.
This is $13 at DriveThru. There is no preview. How are you gonna have your pudding if you don’t have a preview?! Put in a preview, show some rooms, let us get an idea of the content we are purchasing before we push the buy button.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/572215/stronghold-of-the-mad-dwarf-ad-d-2e-version?1892600