By Anthony Huso
Self Published
1e
Levels 2-3
Sages assume Shodredh Dhachod, the Gringling Lich who conceived and constructed Zjelwyin Fall, must rest inside, dreaming his sidereal dream. But Dhachod’s wards are such that knowledge of the Fall’s location and trajectory are forgotten before they can be put to paper; so it hurtles unwatched, a spindle of otherworldly beauty, a ruby comet tracing the limits of the Astral Plane.
This 52 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe seven set piece puzzle rooms in a Lich lair on the astral plane. It manages a fine level 2-3 dungeon in a non-traditional environment and shows, I would assert, the power of 1e done right by someone who understand it.
Mr Lich has devised a lair on the astral plane in which only folks less than 4HD can enter. This is a rather interesting way to construct something otherworldly … it’s an astral dungeon! Not only do you get the exoticism of the location, but it also places limits on the infinite ingenuity that a well seasoned group of players can bring to a puzzle dungeon. Husoo remarks that the origins are his experienced players needing something from the liches lair, but, unable to enter, use some low levels to go get it for them, outfitting them with a few magic items and gear Nystul’d up to survive the astral transition. There’s no real reason why this has to be on the astral plane, magic being magic, but it makes a lot of sense in that context.
This is a puzzle dungeon. After a “short” astral journey (DM makes up to 24 wandering monster checks … that, thankfully, Huso has provided some set creature encounters for) the party ends up in room two of a puzzle dungeon. Solve the puzzle in each of six rooms and you get to room seven, the lichs lair, where he lies dreaming. You’ve got a few rounds to grab all the loot you can while avoiding falling to Pandemonium, until you decide to dump out floor trapdoor. Unless you wake the lich, in which case, game over.
Puzzle dungeon isn’t quite right and my characterization of it as such is not quite fair. Set piece dungeon might be better, but, also, that implies centerpiece combats, which tis doesn’t have. You enter a room, do a thing to get to the exit, or fail at it and go back outside to enter again. Set piece dungeons feel like combats to me. Puzzle dungeons to me imply the environment of those boring old challenge dungeons with blank grey walls and a potion on a pedestal. These, however, are complex and well integrated rooms, with a theming of time and sometimes space. It all feels right to me.
You’re going to be a glass dome like room. Outside the dome is chaos. Inside is usually some form of red sand, blowing, drifting or some such. You must do something, frequently trying to get somewhere in the dome, avoiding some obvious sand issue (blowing sand area, sand falling through hourglass hole area, etc) and facing some creature obstacle, either as a matter of course or as a local fail state. It feels like a complete picture.
“PCs arrive in a staggering glass dome. They are ranged (at positions A) around a gleaming silver ledge that encircles and overlooks an expanse of red sand some ten feet below. The dunes in this crimson pit transition to blue at the center, where they collapse into a horrifying central funnel. The glass dome keeps a churning but beautiful storm of red cosmic dust at bay.” Red generally signifying bad/go backwards and blue success/go forward to the next room. In this case you’ve got some Migo hanging out in some pods on the ledge opposite the party and a dune walker running about inside the sands. There’s also a little bit of treasure on a dead b ody on a ledge. Dump your ass in to the blue sand hole. Avoid waking the migo. There’s treasure on the balcony, at a nearby spot, and a dune walker almost directly under it. Thus going to the obvious treasure gets you it, and a clue, but then immediately jumping to the sand from there gets you the dune walker. Surveying your environment may walk you over the hanging migo, thus waking them. This is a well constructed room. They all are.
Husos descriptions are a little oblique, with a baroque kind of structuring of the phrasing. Generally fine but perhaps not the most readily received by the cortex. “A platinum knife with skull pommel and diamond settings” or “jeweled footmans flail” being typical treasure descriptions. One of the astra encounters is solid enough that I’ll use it as an example “A slender man with ash-white flesh floats in lotus position. Gray robes curl kelp-like around his body while a pale gemstone flashes, blue facets gathering light at the center of his forehead. His pupiless eyes are set on the elusive Astral brilliance.” A Gith! A GREAT description of a Gith. It’s a dude. It plays up the aesthetic thing. A monster description that stays grounded. I love a good zombie description that portrays it as a person, the horror of the walking dead, instead of just something to stab. Anyway, descriptions are fine, if a bit tortured and/or cumbersome.
The text overall though is a bit strained. Huso has done wonders, it would seem, in keeping things in check from what I REMEMBER of Night Wolf. Things FEEL tighter here, even though the rooms run longer. (Three pages for one of them.) Decent formatting keeps things together though, with easily located sections in a general logical order. He is a little too explainy for my tastes, even beyond the necessary greater length that rooms like this must dictate. And there are certainly places in the text where another pass through would help tighten things up, both literally and figuratively. The migo presence gets tacked on to almost the end of that sand room. “Their worrisome forms can be seen from the ledge’s northern circuit but they will only take flight if molested or if the ledge directly above them (at M) is walked on” Seems like that is something to mention in the initial description of the room. And that kind of “dump in pertinent information at a far later place” is not uncommon here. He also gets a bit conversations a bit too frequently with phrasing like “Oh course the lich …” and so on, padding things out in places in which they should be tightened up.
There is the issue of a split party, which can happen in several places. Going down the funnel one at a time will almost certainly be a disaster, at least for the poor DM trying to run an engaging game. And there are places where I could NOT figure things out. “PCs who re-enter the sand take more dmg and go again to location A.” I don’t think they do? I can’t find any reference to that?
The rooms here are well constructed. These are not throw away puzzles. This is the epitome of a dungeon for experienced PLAYERS, at low levels. I wish things were different here and there, making more sense, a little tighter, descriptions a little less cumbersomely evocative. Seven rooms? With an overland? Huso claims three sessions out of this, and I believe him. But it’s a GREAT work. Made all the better by what is by far the best of Daniele Valeriani art on the cover, which for some reason reminds me of Klimt.
The PDF is $18, with hardcopies also available through Lulu. I don’t see previews anywhere. I do like a good preview that helps me make a purchasing decision where $18 PDF’s are concerned.
PDF for $18 ???
Paper Back $29 ???
Too rich for my blood.
Amen.
I was interested in the book and was ready to click the link to buy a pdf as I was reading the review. Then I saw 18 for pdf. 52 pages… I wonder what can justify this ridiculous price.
The price is one thing. The theme is another. Not my cup of tea at all. Then again, I’m not a fan of puzzle dungeons. I hear great stuff about Huso but none of it really tugs at me for some reason.
That captures my feeling as well. I respect the inspiration. It almost sounds more like an imaginative novel than an adventure (not to diminish the value of the adventure itself). My family provides all the puzzles I can stand. Credit again for the inspiration.
Sounds like we will always be stuck with 5-room goblin/kobold dungeons, stock art, and AI art….because that is all we are willing to pay for.
Sounds incredibly creative. I love the reason why a lower-level party is needed.
For those balking at the price, wouldn’t B2 be priced around $29 if it came out today? Glad to see another Best in a while.
I’m more of a Moldvay guy, but in 1983 you could get The Basic Red Box set for $9 or $27.50 today
http://www.wishbookweb.com/FB/1983_Sears_Wishbook/files/assets/basic-html/page-588.html
32 page modules were about $6 on their own which gets close to $20 today. A 50% larger module should have a current printed price of close to $30.
Boxed sets were priced at a roughly break even $12 in the hopes of getting purchases of support products. $9 in the Wishbook may either mean TSR was losing money or Sears was willing to accept modest margins.
Prices everywhere have risen….and yet, most in the hobby want adventure modules to stay the same price since the 1970s…Depending on what you are doing, publishing can get pretty spendy….Art is expensive….paying for an editor…mapmaker? I spent $500 on a cover art piece once–which is not unheard of. There is a reason why most go the Kickstarter route because it’s a safer bet for breaking even when you are making dozens of nickels as a profit on Drivethru.
Where I live, a movie ticket for one costs $18.19 for 1.5 to 2.5 hours of entertainment. How long can an adventure module last you and for how many people are you entertaining with just one purchase? 4-5 people for 2-4 hours?
$18 for a movie ticket?
That’s bananas. $10.00 here.
I think some of the disconnect comes from the fact that, for the most part, the OSR has been a DYI movement. Although professional publishers have obviously sought out the audience, there is a real resistance toward paying Barnes & Noble prices for items people have put together on their home computer.I know I, for one, am not a huge fan of PDFs. I certainly wouldn’t pay much more than $10 for any given PDF. I know I, for one, I’m not a huge fan of PDFs. I certainly wouldn’t pay much more than $10 for any given PTF. For an actual printed book that I can hold in my hands and read at my leisure, I would be willing to pay a fair amount more, to a limit. Quite frankly, the $18 I
Paid for this is the most I’ve ever paid for an RPG item, apart from buying the rares to complete my collection back in the early 2000s. I do recognize that art cost work, I have published myself (although I’ve never had to pay $500 for art), But anyone looking to sell their work does have to know their audience and their audience’s price tolerances. There is simply a clot of RPG material out there, so much of it for free, that I really don’t know a working model exists for any items that are more expensive than movie tickets.
I don’t know how to assess a PDF price except by how much value I put on the use I expect to get from it. (I can also guess that expectation of piracy might inflate the price.)
However, with a printed book I can account for my old-timer’s sticker price shock by using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI inflation calculator and the price of something back in the late 1970s or early ‘80s.
Huso has an evidently well earned reputation for quality in a market that, as Bryce’s perhaps masochistic endeavor keeps reminding us, makes that a rarity. With that in mind, I think the price is in a decent ballpark.
There’s the issue that one is probably not going to get as many hours of use from it as from a rulebook. On the other side of the scale, though, is how much one values saving the hours it would take to “home brew” the equivalent (if one even reckons oneself capable of producing something comparable).
It’s not as if Huso makes enough from this to quit his day job. At some low rate of return, he might decide not to go to the trouble of preparing material for publication. Having a smaller market than the latest thing WotC or Paizo has cranked out means the purchasers per capita may need to be ready to pay a bit of premium for what amounts to a prestige product rather than a common commodity.
The primary thing we’re buying is not paper and ink (and there’s no such thing as artisanal kilobytes); it’s communication of thought, as the traditional formula goes 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration in refining the Muses’ benison of ore.
A great planar adventure site, I wish there were more like these.
A new review on Christmas Day??! You’re a national treasure!
Yea verily! Looking forward to New Years’ Day! 😉
I did buy it some time ago. I have not had an opportunity to run it, not even as a one-off. I’m quite sure how I feel about, still conflicted. I don’t mind the conceit of limiting the level of the PCs that can access the Lich’s Lair. It’s a clever conceit and, as I’ve exhorted numerous times, hooks don’t matter.
However, once on the Astral … I’m not really sure how the PCs survive any of the random encounters, particularly the one with the githyanki. There’s nowhere to hide, can’t outrun them, there’s no clever guidance as to why the gith (being “variable but always evil” aligned) wouldn’t pounce on such easy prey. All for extraplanar adventures, but levels 2-3 … not level-appropriate.
Once inside, it’s puzzles, which will eternally have a place on D&D. The very last part, a quick treasure-grab before the lich awakes is actually the best part.
I need to run it to see how it goes. My concerns might easily evaporate at the gaming table.
I was thinking the same thing. How is it that a low level party can navigate through the Astral plane and survive to get to the lich’s treasure lair?
I feel the same way. Planar things are my favorite dnd situations. But I always felt they don’t fit a low level situation. In my long 3e, 5e campaigns, the party always ended up visiting the planes, because I loved running for planar stuff. But not before level 7 or so. Can I scale the gith party to be full of HD 1/2 warriors.. yes of course. But it makes no sense thematically for me.
A question that arises, from someone who loves the planes but never run planescape as a campaign setting… how do they deal with it there? Low level city quests in sigil and outlands and then off to the outer planes? Or what?
I significantly boosted the chances for random encounters when I ran ZF (see https://grodog.blogspot.com/2022/09/astral-adventures-in-greyhawk.html If you’re curious), and still felt the Astral was a lot of dead space. When we played, I had the players rolled the checks each day.
Even with my “making githyanki even more common in the Astral” encounter tables, the PCs didn’t meet any or see any signs of them in my run-through. They did meet some faster Astral creatures, but were able to role play and negotiate through encounters with an evil Greek Titan/gigante,m and an astral deva that would have slain them more easily than gith
I enjoyed ZF a lot, and it’s had some significant impacts to our campaign based on events in the module (the OCs mission was successful in their recovery of an ancient prophecy from ZF, and one of the PCs recovered a drowic lesser tentacle rod there and drow are an unknown in the campaign…).
Allan.
That is good stuff! Thanks!
I have prepared this for a campaign, using Huso’s hook of some important treasure in room 7; PCs will go there soon. Excited about this one. After the ‘usual’ tomb and tower and village in trouble, this is fresh! It feels epic and exotic, with its own logic.
Since he moved all the digital versions of his modules to Gumroad, Huso has raised the price of his modules a fair amount; I recall them being about $10 a piece back on Lulu. Can’t hold it against him too much; he needs to eat, his wife has medical issues, and this is his main source of income. Plus, they’re pretty damn good and once sold them for a buck a piece during the pandemic.
I do hope you one day get a chance to check out Castle of the Silver Prince, Bryce. It may be the first of these “mega-modules” you give The Best to.
Even though I’ve been binging the Blue Bard’s website, it took me a bit to realize that this was Anthony Huso, the Blue Bard.
That helped me understand the “understands 1e” and the overall quality implied.
Only with that extra context do I understand the price and the quality.
https://www.thebluebard.com/
Inflation takes getting use to. It’s the cost of half a tank of gas or a pizza. Well worth it if you are going to use it for even one night of fun with family or friends, but silly and sad (like all habitual consumption/collecting) if it just sits on your hard-drive or shelf after a quick browse.
Huso makes quality products. Were I playing more frequently, I’d be tempted to try and wedge it into the campaign world. For the time being at least, I’m able to write fast enough to keep up with my players’ demand.
Heck. Writing your own adventurers is a blast. I can’t deny it’s half the fun.
Regarding low-level figures on the Astral and other planes: I think it’s reasonable that beings that could destroy them nigh as easily as a human swats a fly might not care to expend the effort; indeed, might not give them any notice without extraordinary cause for interest.
Even chaotic evil alignment doesn’t necessarily imply to me utterly indiscriminate petty cruelty; to a sufficient intelligence, some things are just too boring. Githyanki on the Astral presumably are about some business of importance from their own perspective.
Tend to agree. That’s what reaction rolls tell me.
Hostile- yeah they might have the time & inclination to take you hostage and ransom / use in some scheme just as likely as to kill you.
But there’s a more likely range of other reactions to riff 0ff. Maybe they need something you’ve got and are more inclined to trade to keep their powder dry for their other gig? Maybe they misjudge the party as more badasss than they really are and are merely cautious/ suspicious etc.
There’s something to be said for bespoke encounters – between your comment here about getting the right reaction rolls, and grodog’s comment above about not encountering any githyanki in the Astral Plane (due to not rolling them on random encounters), I’m becoming more and more inclined to not leave these things to random chance in my own games. It might diminish a little of the “neutral simulationism” of the game, but I think any loss in that regard would be more than made up for with encounters that are awesome and make logical sense.
That was my point, perhaps I missed it, but there was no guidance as to how the DM handles the overwhelming encounters. Not saying a DM shouldn’t think of something before running it (which is precisely why I raise it), but I noted it was discordant to the remainder of the module.
Anthony Hugo’s adventures are beautifully done and very fun to play. They are definitely worth the money. I own hard copies of everything he’s released with zero regrets. He is arguably the best creator of 1e material out there!
So I went ahead and bought this one. Run it yesterday with my heavily homebrew/modified 5e group. All in all, the players found it interesting, dangerous and appealing. But it was not easy to run. The idea behind it is easy, but I had some trouble in a couple of rooms (5, 6, to an extent 7) understanding how they look and what’s expected from me and the players. Perhaps that English is not my first language played a role here, although I have no trouble understanding Patrick Stewart’s rooms.
All in all I’d recommend it for people searching good planar adventures. They are rare.