Dungeon Magazine #82

The King is Dead. Long Live the King.
The tribulation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H 3e-era has begun.

Evil Unearthed
By Ed Stark
3E
Level 1

Oh, to yearn for the days of 2E adventures … A letter from a friend asking for help summons the party to a village where the friend can no longer be found. People are disappearing. Eventually a tunnel entrance is found at an old castle and a short ten room linear dungeon follows. Sixteen pages to do all of this is a long. The hook is hackneyed but handled well with the advice provided. The entire adventure is going to have to be a bit of a railroad; the ties are too tenuous and the clues too hidden, IMO, unless the DM really telegraphs where the party should go next with some REALLY obvious clues. Full page NPC stat blocks and descriptions and using 20 sentences where one sentence would do. It’s a pretty basic adventure. The highlight would be the rumors provided by the escaped travellers that appear on the wandering monster table for the woods. A little too fact based, but they still manage to convey a bit of the person underneath, of a conversation rather than a raw fact. The investigation could be a slow burn and a decent build up if more towny information were provided and A LOT less detail for each. The set up in this is really wasted on the dungeon underneath.

Playing With Fire
By Jeff Grubb
3E
Level 2

A found key leads to a wilderness inn which leads to an old sealed lair of a bandit king. The key lets you into a basic/simple twelve room dungeon where you face some grimlocks maybe a fire elemental, and a few other foes. Only ten pages tells you that Grubb stays focused. The inn is only briefly described, the read-aloud doesn’t drone on and, while not always interesting, is at least terse and not terrible. I’m fond of the two interesting parts of this adventure. First, there’s a shield in the inn that’s quite interesting, displayed upon a wall. The owner wants too much money for it. It has a special power, sending creatures from the plane of fire back there when they touch it. That’s quite a nice effect and the art showing the shield is nice. Second, while you are exploring the lair a group of Azers, trapped inside, (probably) sneak out. They go to the inn, burn it down to get to the shield, and then use it to get back home again. This is a nice “actions have consequences” thing without it being too punitive. The inn keeper lambasting the characters is just icing on the cake. Of course, if the party manage to get the shield before going in (paying 2000gp, of killing/threatening the innkeep) then the azers attack them instead. The wanderers are lame, the hook (you found a key!) is just found-treasure-mappy-and-investigate pretext. Nice “fire-lord/bandit-king” theming on some plate armor make it a treasure worth keeping. Not a terrible adventure, but not really an outstanding dungeon either. With a little work on the grimlocks in the lair then it could be an ok diversion.

Dark Times in Sherwood
By Ian Malcomson
3E
Level 3

This is so fucking weird. It’s a full on norman england Sherwood forest adventure, with some of the minor and none of the major characters showing up. It’s all wild boars and NPC men and then turns the corner with a necromancer baron and undead and, of course, the spellcasters in the party. I can’t figure out why something so specific showed up in Dungeon.

Bandits and asshat norman soldiers are tormenting the people of Sherwood. Investigating finds they are one and the same, with the bandits impersonating soldiers to discredit the sheriff. All under the control of an evil Baron who wants the sheriff’s job. The encounter locations are quite terse, generally, and the investigative elements point STRAIGHT at the bandit camp, over and over again. This is the ONLY way to run an investigation: provide an overwhelming number of clues … and this adventure does that. In contrast the pre-programmed events are lengthy and verbose compared to the encounter locations, with lots of long-ish read-aloud full of “Forsooths’ and “tis’s’” . The bandits all get personalities and unique stats, which seems weird since they are just gonna get killed. Everything takes a 180 when the bandits lead the investigation to the arons castle. After breaking in the dungeoncrawl with the undead and necromancer starts. It’s more like traditional D&D and less like “EVil cultist”, which again makes it seem out of place when compared to the rest of the adventure. Have fun fighting those 30 norman soldiers in the castle … and then a necromancer with undead? But he doesn’t feel like a norman necromancer, he/it feels like a “normal” D&D generic evil MU with undead. I don’t know. Weird. And the submission guidelines for adventures, in this issue, specifically calls out making them generic enough for everyone to use … unless TSR/WOTC is flogging a product launch?

Full named npcs bandits

Eye for an Eye
By Patrick W. Ross
3E
Level 3

Oh Dungeon, what a tool you are! You hide behind your words and your slavery to form is used well to hide the jewels underneath.

While walking down the road you see a beheading. This leads to a friendly wolf, which leads to a maniacal commoner planning on destroying an entire town. And then, maybe, a follow-up dungeon crawl! I’m not sure why, exactly, but there’s something appealing to me about this one, even though it’s too wordy and has a read-aloud villain monologue at the start of the final battle. I think maybe it’s the idea that Bob the commoner hates everyone and goes off by himself to build a way to destroy the town … and in the end he’s just a commoner, working his evil in quiet. It’s got a decent bit of overland, a nice little swamp, a cool little evil-INTJ reed hut set up, complete with floodgates and counterweights for him to use his nukes in the earth’s core …err. I mean, open the gates to flood a town. The first wandering monster encounter chart has some nice bits in it, and the forest encounters, before the main swamp section, have some charming little things going on. The little bit of dungeon, AFTER the climax, most likely, is a nice little bit also, the receding swamp revealing it’s secrets and so on. It’s hard to recommend, based on the length of the encounter text and wading through it to find what you need, but it undoubtedly has some decentness to it at its core. This is a photocopy and highlighter candidate for sure.