Dungeon Magazine #6

Posted on October 5, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d6
There’s a whole lot of ‘set things up to screw the party over’ stuff in this issue. L.A.M.E. The wilderness crawl the end is ok, as if the concept of the non-eucledian dungeon … that’s well worth stealing to do something of your own with.

After the Storm
by Nick Kopsiniss & Patrick Goshtigian
AD&D
Levels 8-10

This is a weird little adventure in a bay after a big storm. The party hears rumors about stuff washing up on shore that indicates a famous pirate and his ship have wrecked on some well-known reefs in the bay. Rumors of treasure abound! After a lot of overwrought introduction there’s a nice little rumor table and a pretty brutal wandering monster table. Suffice it to say that leaving the rowboat is a REALLY bad idea … but it’s nice that the monsters respect the personal space of people in a boat and never attack folks in one. Weird. The bay/cove has a number of pretty standard encounters: giant octopus, giant oyster, a wreck, and the pirate ship. There are, of course, undead pirates in the wreck and the thing is stuffed FULL of magic weapons. There’s a decent little were-shark encounter that kind of surrounds and touches many parts of the adventure, which is nice. There’s also an old hermit that causes some trouble through false rumors, which is nice also. Otherwise .. pretty standard under the sea adventure with some nice wrapping that surrounds it.

White Death
by Randy Maxwell
AD&D
Levels 4-7

This is a short little four encounter dragons lair encounter with a short wilderness adventure that feels tacked on after the fact. A town council hires the party to deal with a white dragon. Not unheard of, if I think of the party as a group of german mercenaries during one of the big civil wars. They make their living off of fur traders, etc, and that’s not happening because of the dragon. The journey is maybe 100 miles from the town to the dragons lair, with about 6 standard arctic wandering monsters in a table. The lair is a single room with a dragon on a big pile of gold. A dead dragon. The real dragon is hiding on a ledge and jumps the party. End of adventure. Five pages is short, but it should be A LOT shorter for what you are getting.

Bristanam’s Cairn
by John Nephew
AD&D
Levels 8-12

A hermit and a cairn nearby on a stormy night. The hermit tries to rip down the cairn every night because he goes insane and then he builds it back every day when sane. Inside is a death knight. The smartest thing to do is to do just the hermit. Problem Solved! The BULLSHIT death knight has an Anything Sword that allows it to be any magical sword, from round to round. It has three charges. IE: Just enough to fuck the party over and keep them from having it. Lame. Any adventure in which someone wears an amulet guarantees it’s proof against detection. PC’s should kill all amulet wearers on sight, always, in every adventure they ever undertake.

House of the Brothers
by Mark S. Shipley
AD&D
Levels 6-10

The party stumbles over a cave with a couple of giant brothers in it. They are always aware. They sniff out rangers first. They are given magic items and as many set ups as possible to push everything possible in their favor. Their is D&D in “players vs. DM mode” which is completely lame D&D. There is some good treasure description here in the eight rooms of their lair. Enameled mail and the like. It’s mixed in with boring mundane treasure but the adventure does have a nod here and there to more evocative descriptions.

Forbidden Mountain
by Larry Church
AD&
Levels 4-7

This is an adventure in a non-eucledian geometry dungeon. A lot of words go in to describing how this works and the effects on game play. That part is pretty cool. The dungeon has 12 room interconnected with a fair number of hallways that should provide a decent adventure with the non-eucledian element. The problem is that the room encounters proper are boring as hell. The monsters have some surface flavor text them. “blue giant porcupines” and “yellow-and-blue owlbears” but the creatures are nothing more than some color changes. There’s nothing really going on in the rooms at all. There’s a box with “do not open” on it and a “void room” similar to a sphere on annihilation. There’s also a non-magic sword that can be made magical through the intervention of the gods. Those last two elements are relatively cool, as is the non-eucleudian part. The rest is devoid of interesting content.

Tortles of the Purple Sage – Part 1
by Merle & Jackie Rasmussen
D&D
Levels 4-10

This is a BIG wilderness journey through the Known World, around the Savage Coast area. The party is hired to escort a group of Tortles (bipedal turtles) to their ancient spawning grounds in the north. It’s VERY general but has 18 programmed encounters that can show up in various regions of the LARGE map. Rare flowers/spices with 3′ long dragonsflys. A thundering herd of animals on a plain … followed by a grass fire. Weird stuff on the beach. Weird falling stuff from the sky. (a rain of flesh & blood from the sky , one of the options, is cool!) It might be thought of as ‘Isle of Dread, but on land.” It’s going to take a decent amount of DM work but this could serve as decent mini-campaign for your game if you put the work in to expand the ruined cities, NPC’s, and so on.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 6 Comments

V5 – Castle Blood

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

pal

by Bill Barsh
Pacesetter Games
AD&D
Level 1

The story of the Vampire Queen is as enigmatic as the woman herself. Her palace, the dungeons beneath a ruined castle beckon those who would seek to end her reign of terror. But before the dungeons can be entered, the Castle Blood must be cleansed. Palace of the Vampire Queen: Castle Blood is an adventure for first level characters that are destined to meet the most powerful vampire under the crescent moon.

This is a kind of prequel to Palace of the Vampire queen, taking place in the ruined castle above the dungeons. It’s got a great map and some good encounters and personalities. The designer has really stepped up his game with this one and it hits a lot of high points.

Palace of the Vampire Queen is full of dungeons. This adventure takes place in the ruined castle ABOVE the dungeons. This is a little bit of story-based introduction, a page or so, but then the goodness starts with some great hooks. Rather than the entire adventure being focused around a single goal instead it’s been laid out more like a location. There are certain things at the location that could get the party involved. Someone could pay them to burn down/destroy The Black Arch which is found inside the castle. Or maybe they are involved as a rescue mission to save the daughter of a merchant which is held captive in the castle. From the very beginning then you get the feel that this is just a place that exists outside of the characters involvement in it, and that carries over in to many of the encounters. I think that gives the adventure a uch more natural feel and its therefore much easier for the players to suspend disbelief.

The map for the castle is kind of cool. I’m not sure if its a creation of the designer or if he’s lifted it from a historical reference, but it’s nifty. It looks like the layout of a real castle. It’s on a hill with a drawbridge over a ravine and a barbican that backs up to a courtyard with the castle behind it. Portions of the castle (what’s the difference between a castle and a keep?) are ruined and its three-ish levels high, with ruined rooftops, flat rooftops, collapsed towers and room sections. It’s a pretty nice environment to have an adventure in. The 3d/vertical nature of the environment could have been emphasized more, maybe with additional ways between levels, or weakened floors or specifically calling out a summary of various level entrances. It IS a really nice map though.

Encounters are much more interesting than many OSR products, at least with respect to monster interactions. These guys are not just hanging around waiting to be killed and they usually have some indication of being willing to interact. There are some kobolds at the barbican gates that can be paid to extend some planks over so the party can cross. There’s a group of evil dwarves in the barbican that are smiths/armorers and while its stated they ambush there’s also enough information to build something more social out of it. There are orcs, kobolds, and gnolls in the castle proper that all have a reason for being there, a set of motivations, and potentially a reason to work with the party. I think this is MUCH more interesting than a bare room description or a simple “they are guards and attack!” description. Yeah, maybe they DO just attack, but at least this way there are other options as well. There’s a lot of sparseness to the rooms; the castle is not packed full of enemies. There’s a thing or two to interact with and some unique magic items scattered in with the normal book items. There’s also an encounter with The Vampire Queen herself. Taken by itself it seems out of place. But if you think of this as the prequel to the Palace of the Vampire Queen then its a great introduction and foreshadowing of the main villain, as are the various npc/monster social encounters. They can all be used to build up the Vampier Queen in the players minds to something more than ‘Just Another Monster’. I love that.

The map design seems much more real and taken alongside the more ‘social’ encounters with monsters, or at least the possibility thereof, it really hits on things I like seeing. I could quibble with more but it would be backseat designing.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/264077/V5-Palace-of-the-Vampire-Queen-Castle-Blood?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments

DCC #75 – The Sea Queen Escapes

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

sq

by Michael Curtis
Goodman Games
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG
Level 3

Evil lurks beneath the ocean! For years it has slumbered, but now it rises once again, threatening to wash over the surface world like a monstrous wave. Only a handful of stalwarts stand between the nefarious schemes of the deep and a world drowned in sorrows, but first they must navigate a wizard’s sanctum, a magical prison, and the most unusual dungeon they’ve ever faced! Can they stem the tide in time or will they lose themselves forever to the Sea Change curse?

This is a small collection of set-piece encounters themed around the sea without actually being underwater. It has the usual DCC emphasis on unique monsters and treasures and the locations are decently evocative … if a bit predictable. A decent journeyman effort in a field full of beginners.

DCC’s Might Deeds seem to encourage a kind of set-piece play in a non-forced way. When the modules and DM supports that play style by putting lots of stuff to interact with in the rooms then they are doing a good job. At some point there’s a line between encouraging the play style and designing set-piece encounters. Swinging from flaming chains to get across a room is cool. It’s less cool though when its clear that the DM has put the flaming chains there so the group will swing across them and more cool when somehow the party does something to put chains across the room. Hmm, a better way to describe it may be an appeal to open-ended problems. The group comes across a 50′ span they need to cross. If the DM puts chains across it from the ceiling then its clear what the party is supposed to do … and less fun in my opinion. If the party tosses a couple of ropes over rocks on the ceiling or builds a rickety bridge or gets a giant to toss them or a dragon to put its tail across it or uses a spell to create a rainbow or some such then I think its more fun. But there has to be wood planks, a giant, dragon, or rocks on the ceiling to throw ropes across. Some linear adventures have generally felt like a collection of set pieces to me and I find those less interesting. Funhouse and tournament style dungeons like C1 and C2 are a good example. Where’s the line between the DM putting in a slick wooden bridge over a lava pit and NOT putting a bridge over a lava pit? I don’t know. Both are fun, but, maybe, only fun when used in moderation. I’m probably being too harsh and compounding it by spending so much time on it. The rooms here are full of stuff: eggs, dead fish on rusty hooks from the ceiling, a jumping across a big chasm on stepping stones room, slime (the normal kind), tar (both kinds) and the like. There’s something going on in just about every room … sometimes in a good wy and sometimes in that forced 4e way.

Pontificating over. The party finds a trinket in a different horde and they start getting dreams from a sea princess who needs rescued from the jail an evil mage put her in. You go get a horn on a cool place. The horn lets you summon a dragon turtle dungeon that gets you a key that lets you get entrance to a third site that has the princess. Who then eats your face off. Yeah, you knew it was coming and so did the party. The locations themselves are pretty cool. A sea cave reached by an arcing stone bridge, and a dungeon on top of a giant turtle. The turtle dungeon, in particular, is cool because of the kind of ‘just drained’ aspect of the dungeon: all of the water has just flowed out of it so you get this kind of ‘walking across the bay after the water has gone out’ kind of feel. Or, in Indiana: walking across the old reservoir after the damn was allowed to drain it. It’s like a vision of an alien world and is done much better here, dry, than any undersea descriptions I’ve even seen in another module. I’m sure this harkens back to some Mythic Underworld theory or some such, but, it’s clear, the party is Someplace Different. The other aspect I like here is the journey to get the dungeon. Find the horn which summons the dungeon which gets you the key to the prison on an island. This is the kind of quest/journey thing which was always alluded to in the DMG, especially as I think back to the Artifact Destruction section. It was never simple, it was always a journey. It is totally present in this module but the module could have done a bit better in reinforcing that aspect … You journey to different places to do different things. The travel is glossed over, which is fair especially when you have page count to worry about, but a column or so of ideas and concepts would have been nice.

The monsters are treasure are of the good ‘New DCC’ style. Meaning they have A LOT more in common with OD&D than with any version after that. It’s all magical and mysterious and new, exactly the way a monster or magic item should be. Players should be afraid of monsters. Who knows what the fuck that thing does? You can only once discover that a troll is killed with fire/acid. A Lamprey-man?!? WTF that does that thing do??!!? That’s what I want my players thinking and that’s what the DCC RPG, and this module, deliver. Treasure too. A bit of coral you hold in your mouth to breath underwater. A intricate rope bracelet (like summer camp!) that gives you a bonus to underwater activities. These are cool items. Unique items. Not out of a book. Players hang on to the cool and unique and sell crappy generic “Sword, +1” items.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/113323/Dungeon-Crawl-Classics-75-The-Sea-Queen-Escapes?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Dungeon Magazine #5

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d5

Highlight: The Kappa of Pachee Bridge

I still don’t know what the purpose of these reviews is so I’m not sure what to highlight and what to complain about. I’m currently on a “synopsis & abstract with a couple of comments on why I’d never run it” kick. Seven adventures in this one. The one that appeals most is the OA adventure, although shiv’n Mylvin Wimbly should be fun also, but not in the way the author envisioned. The manic need for verbosity is InSaNe! The purpose of the text is not to create a rich world with fully flavored backgrounds for everyone and everything. The purpose of the text is to help the DM run the damn thing; aim the text and content at things that the players will interact with not a laundry list of the contents of my kitchen drawer.

The Rotting Willow
by Edward O, Bromley III
AD&D
Level 7-9

There’s a village near a swamp and the villagers are weird in the way they treat dwarves, halflings, gnomes and other short people. Eventually you learn they are being terrorized by some bogarts. The party tries to kill them but the bogarts probably run away. The village is uninspiring and the adventure short but FAR too long for what it is. There’s no reward “the DM should determine what treasure is in their lair.” Thanks fuckwit. Maybe you forgot that I’m paying YOU for YOUR imagination. The bad guys live in an old treehouse in a swamp but are mostly found in the village: a missed opportunity for a decently described swamp hunt.

Lady of the Lake
by Laura Ferguson
AD&D
Level 1

The party stumbles upon a dying woman who requests they take her to a certain lake. Maybe the villagers nearby know where it is? Really really short adventure stretched out to many pages. It got an … airy feel to it. Kind of fairy-like, although I don’t recall there being any faeries. I think she does a decent job of communicating the wonder of D&D to n00bs, but its short in content, long in words, and the village needs a lot more help. There’s a double wraith encounter which, while it helps with the airy feel, is a TPK at level 1 I’d guess. This is a really basic adventure but I dig the traditional pre-tolkein vibe.

The Stolen Power
by Robert Kelk
AD&D
Levels 1-3

Hitting on many crappy points: the party is sent after a book of infinite spells that was stolen by an evil cult. “Deerstalker”, and NPC is sent with the party. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason for the NPC to join up except to save the parties asses. He doesn’t even meddle or have a personality worth listing. Lame.There’s a decent number of wilderness encounters with unicorns, faerie dragons,, moondogs and the like which will parlay with the party, as well as flessing dmihumans. That part is actually nice and shows how both good and evil cratures can be integrated in to a wilderness/wanderers in a non-combat way. The core adventure, in the hideout, is smallish and full of detail that doesn’t matter. This is a good example of text background and descriptions that don’t help the DM get the ‘core’ of the room and provide trivia detail over content aimed at the players.

The Kappa of Pachee Bridge
by Jay Batista
AD&D-OA
Levels 2-5

My favorite in the issue … but maybe because of the OA commoner/adventurer power fantasy. Villagers beg the party to help them; a kappa is eating their children. The creatures and people in this adventure are treated like they are real, with real personalities and motivations. The kappa comes off as more alien than evil, although it’s a relatable alien. The whole thing FEELS right. It feels like a good OA adventure and the aspects of it that make it good also make ‘normal’ AD&D adventures good. You can relate to the villagers and the monsters and things talk to you and treasure is interesting and the environment is interesting. The villagers don’t have much detail past a couple of the notables, but they are well done. 5 pages, once of which is a map, are better than everything else in this issue combined.

The Trouble with Mylvin Wimbly
by Andrew McCray
D&D
Levels 1-3

A mage hired a halfling bodyguard, recruited some orcs, and then the halfling had second thoughts when the orcs attacked some of his old adventuring party friends. He’s on the run! Fucking halflings. Should side with the mage and hunt the bastard down. I fucking hate the rascally/innocent halfling meme. The core is kind of interesting with a mage hiring bodyguards and then recruiting orcs to help him in his plots, along with the moral crisis in the halflings old pals showing up and him having to pick sides. But the ‘rascally halfling’ thing ruins it. There’s not much to this other than a brief chase through a very small forest and the three-room hideout of the mage.

The Eyes of Evil
by Tom Hickerson
AD&D
Level 10+

Manticores & men terrorizing a remote village. No real motivation except to be a hero. A very simple cave complex with only one interesting room: a chasm/vertical lava tube room. The rooms are just monster listing expanded to fill lots of space with no real content in them. The final room, right after the chasm, has a beholder, which may fit the vertical room well and turn in to an interesting tactical challenge for the level 10+ heroes. Lots of missed opportunities in this one, from cave environment to vile clerics, to things to talk to. Instead it’s just rooms of stuff to kill and loot.

Hirward’s Task
by Rich Stump
AD&D
Levels 4-7

The party is sent by an archmage to his headquarters to defeat a hostile air elemental. That drive him out. He abandoned all his followers/servants. You get 4,000 gp. If you take anything then the mage, who has eidetic memory, hunts you down and kills you. How much XP is a level 15 mage worth? The map layout is decent, over two levels, and there’s a decent mix of people to talk to and interact with in the fortress, but they don’t really offer anything. They have a description that concentrates on their history but not on things that help them interact with the party. Except the assholes who attack on sight or “are so frightened they attack”, which happens all too regularly. There’s some decent window-dressing, but it still doesn’t feel too much like a wizards lair … not like Many Gates of the Gann. There are one or two nice items; a wand of defoliation comes to mind, but of course you can’t keep them. The map here is decent enough and even includes an intelligently designed outdoor area, although its small. The lack of interactivity in a mages lair and the victorian mania for cataloging rooms is disappointing.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 4 Comments

ONS4 – Dread Saecaroth

Posted on September 25, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

ons4

 

by James C. Boney
Frog God Games
Swords & Wizardry
Level 1-3

Saecaroth! That most infamous den of wickedness and hatred… a tower stretching up in defiance toward the gods themselves… where the priests of the unholy Three committed acts of such evil that the gods themselves lay the tower low. Now hardly a stone stands upon a stone where the tower once brooded; the priests and minions of the Three were driven into the passages and tunnels beneath the surface where they were hunted like rats by those powerful enough to destroy them. Two centuries have passed, and the grass has grown over the site of the obscenity which once dominated the countryside. Those with wisdom may find the entrances to the dungeons underneath, and those with strength may wrest the treasures still rumored to lie in its most hidden depths, but beware! Legends whisper that some of the priests of the Three still dwell deep below… performing unspeakable rites to their alien gods and always seeking fresh and powerful sacrifices… Now you and your comrades have learned the location and the history of this foul and forgotten place. Will you plumb its depths and bring forward the forgotten secrets and treasures that lie deep within, or will you become yet more corpses at uneasy rest in the corners of this terrible place?

These are the first two levels of a new megadungeon, Saecaroth. The encounters are suitably varied with some fine monsters, especially on level 2. Terse introduction, good room variety, nice monsters, lots of mundane loot and not much coinage. These are good dungeon levels and yu should pick this up if you have any interest in megadungeons or dungeons in general.

This is a pretty tight little package. It fits two dungeonlevels, each with about 27 rooms, in to just thirteen pages. There’s a page of pre-gens and magic items to round things out, but what you are essentially getting are a couple of very focused levels. The introduction is about a page and half long and about a half page of that is wandering monsters for the wilderness. The DM is given a couple of paragraphs about history, some words about the surrounding landscape (hence the wilderness wanderers) and then it’s GO TIME! That’s quite nice.

The two dungeon levels have some interesting maps. The maps feel both roomy and not constrained while also being laid out in in a kind of expansive way. It doesn’t feel cramped at all. There are a couple of entrances and the maps have loops, lots of same-level stairs, varied room dimensions (octagons, triangles, etc. They are really pretty nice. Maybe they could use a bit more detail in them but otherwise good. The wanderers on the first level are pretty typical but the second level brings the noise with Clawed Fiends, Sorcery Leeches, Zombie Elves and Zombie Bugbears, Fossilized Skeletons and the like. A nice variety that compliments the weird monsters on level two.

The encounters are good ones with a decent amount of variety. There’s a pit trap straight out of Grimtooth but unlike Grimtooth it doesn’t seem unfair, just wicked and fair. There’s murky pools in rooms, iron grates in the floors, weird fog, teleporters, statues to push, pull, move, sacrifice to, Bandits have sealed room doors with timbers and there are weird fountains with waters to drink and play with. There’s a minotaur which comes back to life after killed, eternally cursed. There are sumatrain rat ghouls and burning zombies and brain eating zombies and a jackel of darkness. The rooms are full of mundane treasures to haul out and sell. There does seem to be a dearth of coinage and gems/jewelry, and an abundance of magic items present. Most of the magic items are just boring old book pieces but there’s also The Flesh Mask of Ikir … Cool! There’s just not enough of cool/non-standard magi items and the mundane gems/jewelry could use more more descriptions. Except for magic the place does seem a little light on the coinage/gems/jewelry that is so critical for characters to level.

Overall a good showing. If this was the baseline quality level of our hobby then I’d be a very happy man. It’s a good place.

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 2 Comments

Quondam Fount

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

qf

by Frank Mentzer
Eldritch Enterprises
Generic
Levels 3-5

The farmer’s son had found an oddity indeed… a rare Ice Gem, of mysterious origin. It came from the old well on the farm, the Quondam Fount. Something might be Down There. And since you’re famous adventurers, he wants you to check it out.

This is a small adventure in the bottom of an old well full of freezing conditions and other planar creatures. Twenty-eight pages about thirteen encounters with a lot of repeat information. Its gonna be a hard slog for the DM. The core idea is decent.

A farmer has found big jewel and tells the party where to find more if they agree to give him a split. That’s a decent enough hook as is the dungeon location: at the bottom of an old well behind some loose stones. The core element of the adventure is a journey through ice tunnels. The tunnels and rooms are all completely sealed off and the party needs to break through the walls to move from hallway to hallway and room to room while dealing with very cold conditions. This is complimented by the Ice Trolls; a race of water elemental creatures who can liquify and invade an orifice. You now have the vast majority of the interesting portions of the adventure. A stream here, a “roof tunnel” there and a rotating ice block and you have the rest.

The rest of the pages are mostly very long drawn-out examples and expository text and multiple read-alouds that depend on the actions the characters take. The information about ice diamonds and ice trolls must be repeated at least three times each. The adventure is so very frustrating because interesting things are buried inside of the terrible formatting. There’s a very good exploratory/caving vibe going on. Breaking through walls, avoiding ice streams, tunnels high up on walls/ceilings, mining for ice diamond treasure. The core monster(s) are also nice; with multiple forms and combinations.

This reminds me of the very early days of modules: you knew there was something cool in there but had to struggle mightily to try and tease it out.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108387/Quondam-Fount?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dungeon Magazine #3

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d3

Hey! I found issue #3 tucked inside a different issues cover! Yeah me! I think this is a pretty strong issue, overall. Many of the adventures seem to tie in to the Wilderness Survival Guide through the use of bullshit environmental rules for desert, sea, and snow. The last adventure is amusing to me because of its clear illustration of the Asshole DM problem. Players are’nt the only ones who try to win D&D!

I got a joke!
Baby seal runs in to a club!

Falcon’s Peak
by David Howery
Levels 1-3

This is the adventure that several others in the OSR wish they were. It’s a fairly ‘realistic’ exploration of a small bandit fortress thought to be abandoned and rumored to have an undiscovered treasure horde in it. It’s been occupied by a new group of bandits, does have a treasure horde in it, and while small is fairly well done. It feels more like a tactical assault on a real place. Here’s the keep, here’s the patrols, here’s the watches, and here’s an obvious hole in the bad guys plan. It ALMOST keeps to that formula but doesn’t beat the thing to death (unlike the points I make in reviews.) There are several good uses of elevation in the adventure: the keep is n a hill, entry is up a cleared slope with boulders on the top, there’s a cave system with a portion you have to “boost up” to access the rest, and a parapet with guards patrolling. The ‘hidden’ part of the fortress, with the old treasure, has a good reason for being hidden AND for the presence of other dead adventurers. It does all of this with a scarcity of words (for this era anyway) and without droning on and on. The mundane treasure is well described and interesting and there’s enough loot/coinage to make it seem like someone for once actually read the XP tables & level charts in the PHB. The wilderness component is small but compliments the main adventure, with the group maybe stumbling upon a patrol of bandits they can pump for information. There’s also a ‘consequences’ section where it points out some of the bandits/etc are not in the fortress and will arrive back in a few days time. This is a pretty good ‘gritty’ adventure. I tend to like my D&D a little more weird but Sp’pc Ops’ D&D can be fun also. With some more personalized magic items I’d say this would rate VERY highly in my book.

Blood on the Snow
by Thomas M Kane
Levels 3-7

Art by Jaquay and maps by Diesel! This is an arctic/sub-artic mystery adventure. The characters are hired to go on a seal hunt and find out who the traitor is. Mystery adventures don’t work in D&D. The characters cast a spell and the mystery is over in short order. This one tries though. The adventure is long, in game time. Training takes a month and the seal hunt is two weeks long. There’s a good timeline of events that will happen if the party doesn’t derail things. It’s mentioned that the party CAN derail things and that the DM will need to go with the flow once that happens. More advice in that arena would have been helpful. As is the adventure is going to take a LONG time to prep. The wilderness/frontier town is well detailed, the timeline is extensive but not pedantic, and the NPC’s/hunters on the hunt are well detailed with decent personalities and motivations. Overall this would be great adventure if it were not set in a land with Detect Alignment, Detect Lies, Augury, Commune, etc. It’s going to take time to prep it. A LOT of time. It’s unclear if the payoff/treasure is worth going on the adventure. Another strong viking adventure if you were doing DOgs of War/Northlands Saga type gaming and put the prep in.

The Deadly Sea
by Carol & Robert Pasnak
Levels 4-7

This is really a two-part adventure. The first part has the group assaulting a small thirty room keep. Bandits took it over and now the party is trying to take it back and find the people who once lived there. It starts with a HARD slog up a cliffside and an almost certain pitched-battle at the front of the keep. There are fewer options for the assault than the Falcon’s Peak adventure and fewer three dimensional notes, although, again, the first battle is up a cliffside path. Then again, the party is higher level and perhaps has access to invisibility and fly. The interior is not all that exciting and is further toned-down by a pseudo-dragon that tells the party where to go and what to do once they gain the entrance hall. Part two has the former family asking the group to to attack/explore an undersea triton lair to find the guys captured sea-elf wife. This part is slightly more interesting, as long as you take the view that the tritons are something like an 19th century english manorial estate. Except under the sea. There is little to no ‘sea’ feel from this, except maybe as window dressing. So as an adventure adventure for a more civilized time it’s interesting but as for having an undersea feel … not so much. I keep imaging that final scene with the mermaid king from the The Smashing Pumpkins video ‘Tonight.’ Except this adventure has a lot less flavor … but a weird civilized vibe that I kind of dig.

The Book With No End
by Richard W. Emerich
Levels 8-12

This was written by an asshole GM who thinks players have access to too many magic items. It starts with your 12th level character being offered 1,000 gp to go an adventure and fetch an artifact. Uh huh. Blah blah blah bullshit backstory. Oh hey, I forgot, you get a potion of Sweet Water if you the mission! The whole thing is full of advice on how to gimp the players. Don’t give the players an even break. Don’t let them use their divination magic. Don’t let them have fun. Blah Blah Blah. It seems that the gods don’t like talking to your 12th level clerics. Oh Well. Or, rather, maybe I god hasn’t figured out yet that his stats are in Deities & Demigods and I can shiv him the throat as easily as I can a kender NPC? The adventure map is a good one but the rooms are full of death traps, players gimping, and a whole lot of other junior high type adventure design. This includes a giant disembodied magical voice chiding the characters with things like “Naughty Naughty! Don’t ruin my fun!” Ooooo, a chess board puzzle! How original! There is also an excruciating amount of detail in certain rooms like the dining room and kitchen, for example, that has absolutely no effect on game play. Perhaps the only decent part of the adventure are the detailed notes at the end detailing the information that the characters can find in the various books in libraries prior to their journey. It reminds me of the stereotypical Call Of Cthulhu adventure where you go to the towns library, newspaper office, and historical society. The whole “heres what your research find. You need to put it together to find the dungeon.” is something that a lot of D&D adventures just assume and don’t show.

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 5 Comments

GG2 – Palace of Shadows

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

gg2

by Chris Rutkowsky
for Goodman Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-6

The Prince has hired you to find his father, gone these past twenty years, his soul trapped in a gem atop a tower. You must venture across a vast swamp, find your way into the tower, and retrieve the gem from the Palace of Shadows. But a twisted menagerie of fell beasts and foul magics await you inside….

This is a longish fun-house type adventure in a wizards tower. You adventure through demi-plane room/areas until you collect the five keys and can then enter the tower proper. There’s a decent mix of puzzle, trap, and creature encounters with no everything being hostile. It’s one of the better fun-house/fetch-quest style adventures that contains little to no silliness.

There is some kind of weirdly long backstory to the adventure. There’s a king, evil wizard, pretty pretty princess, brother princes, a wizards curse of darkness, civil wars and captured kings. What is absolutely astounding to me is that it’s relevant to the adventure. You could totally work this backstory in your campaign at low-level play, reveal it to the players little by little as the drama unfolds, maybe have the hard-working groom-now-king become a patron, and then spring a little surprise on the party when the evil prince in hiding summons them to do a job for him.You’d have an excellent opportunity for follow-up play also, as the patron switches to the prince and hooks aplenty pop out of the woodwork. In short: Evil wizard wants to marry princess, king says no, wizards curses kingdom to have no sun, wizard captures king, princes rules kingdom, princes engage in civil war. good wizard shows up and saves the day and marries princess, wizard manages to remove darkness curse, princess runs away to traitorous prince brother, brother hires party to go get old king from wizards tower. That’s good stuff: no epic in scope but realistic and approachable and would be very cool if the group watched the events as they unfolded during their rise from levels one to six, maybe with some of the actors mixing with the characters from time to time. Making the princess kindly and the prince a snively little shit should add to the fun also. Anyway, you get some good opportunities for a The Long Game and for introducing an evil wizard as a major villain for the game.

The adventure proper is a tough one. There are 43 or so encounters and the adventure kicks off with a 12HD dragon. This thing is pretty relentless in throwing enemies at the party and it’s not real clear to me that retreat and rest are options that are available. The adventure probably could have use a little more guidance in that area. The thing isn’t necessarily linear so it’s not like the party will be facing all 44 encounters, but the setup doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a repeated forays mindset. It’s also not the case that everyone is an enemy. Some encounters are with neutral or friendly creatures and some of the ones with evil creatures don’t have to result in combat … maybe. There is certainly a decent amount of variety. That mostly stems from the demi-plane nature of the adventure There are five extra-dimensional spaces to explore with a key to win/discover in each. Only by getting them all do you get to enter the tower proper and then go find the king. Don’t worry friends: the required Garden and Water levels are here! The “levels” proper have a decent number and variety of encounter available and many of them are quite clever without being gimmicky. One that comes to mind is a maze in the garden. There’s a terrible stink … coming from a dead minotaur with a glowing red battleaxe stuck in his forehead. I shan’t ruin the rest but there are other fun little things like this scattered throughout the adventure. Three IS a decent amount of combat … a more than decent amount. There are a lot of “they attack immediately encounters and a lot of words to the effect of “they automatically surprise the party” in many of the encounters. The magic items are generally top notch though! Glass slippers, a spinning wheel, a picnic basket … that axe of human detection (DUH! That’s why its glowing red when the group finds it!) There’s a decent amount of ‘normal’ magic items as well … I wish the designer had kept up the unique stuff.

I’m not sure what to call an adventure like this; I’m using the words “fun house.” It’s longer than those, and more involved and generally better and more ‘realistic’ than I think of with funhouses. But there is still the “i hid the keys” nonsense and the wizard building a gauntlet stuff … maybe that’s it … a gauntlet/challenge. It’s a decent one. If I were looking for a gauntlet I would turn to this one.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/12222/Castles–Crusades-Palace-of-Shadows?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

GC2 – They Lurk Below

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

gc2

by Bill Barsh
Pacesetter Games & Simulation
AD&D
Level 2

A young mother begs for help. Her daughter has been kidnapped by a group of foul men who have fled into the sewers. One of the kidnappers scowled as he fled, “This one is the perfect sacrifice!”

This is an adventure through an old Trog temple to rescue a kidnapped little girl. It mentions sewers a lot but that’s not really a part of the adventure. The basic premise is not bad but the entire thing needs more evocative text and flavor to bring it to life.

I think I must have a soft spot for rescuing kids. The adventure starts with the party witnessing the kidnapping of a little girl. I really, really don’t like ‘be a HERO’ adventures, but this sort of hook strikes me as being different for some reason. In both this adventure and Johnny Rook Watchtower on the Hill adventure, which I also liked, there are children that go missing and the party is involved in a hasty rescue. In Watchtower the party is drinking when someone bursts in to the bar to tell everyone about little Timmy falling in to the well. In this one The party is drinking when they hear the screams of the girls mother as the kidnapping is going down and perhaps hear one of the kidnappers say something about human sacrifice. Both of these scenarios seem much more natural, realistic, and more accessible than Saving the World or Saving our Village sorts of hero adventures. There’s a time element and an immediacy that I think bring this hook home. It also plays a bit with the whole mob mentality. The party is frequently on the other end of it but in these two adventures they get to BE the mob and I think that in the back of the players mind that kind of civic responsibility play out. Subconsciously they are in a position to do something NOW. This is the kind of element I love seeing incorporated in to play; elements that the players can immediately relate to on an almost subconscious level because they are integrated in to their upbringing or cultural heritage.

Next comes the part I feel could be better: the actual adventure. The adventure starts in a chase through the sewers but that’s not really important. It’s short and the sewers don’t really impact the game much other than there being an encounter with sewer crocs. The adventure immediately transitions to exploring an old trog temple. This is where things get interesting. Wait, did I say interesting? I meant ‘Generic’. This is where things get generic. This is a trog temple from the ancient past. It should FEEL like a trog temple temple from the ancient past, This sort of evocative description style is not easy but I think it’s absolutely critical to a my definition of a successful product. I’m looking for something to spark me and to fire my imagination. Something that quickly communicates the flavor of an area to me and inspires so I can then pass that off to the players. I want it terse and I want it evocative. I’m drawing comparisons in my mind between this adventure and David Bowman’s/Sham’s Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men in issue #3 of Fight On! magazine. That adventure delivers on an environment that FEELS like it’s a crab-god place. The descriptions are terse and they communicate the feel of the rooms in a very visceral way. This adventure in contrast feels like a bunch of empty rooms with maybe a trog statue in a couple of them. The trog god is not even named. ‘The trog gods name is carved at the base of the statue’ or ‘saying the name of the trog god bypasses the room traps.’ Well, what’s the trog gods name? What sort of alien ancient subhuman trog stuff is present? Some trogs have come out stasis in this adventure. I don’t like stasis in general, but lets run with that. Instead of generic trog descriptions they could have been enhanced by making them emaciated or weakened, since they were trapped in the temple a long time before being put in to stasis. These little trow-away details are important to built up a bigger picture collectively of an interesting environment. Another example may be the temple condition proper. This is supposed to be the ruins of an ancient city that collapsed and now a newer city has been built on top of it. But not much of that at all, if any, comes through in the rooms or the environment. I’m reminded of that great ruined city in DL1 and how the map even helped communicate the environment you were in. I want THAT, not just another generic, and long, room description.

This is available on DriveThru, as a part of a bundle.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/167997/GC12-From-Below?affiliate_id=1892600

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Dungeon Magazine #4

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

d4

Nice Horne cover.

This is the first truly useless issue. The adventures have little to no redeeming qualities: nothing of academic interest, little to steal, and uninvolved. And all of this AFTER you read from the editor how tough it is to choose from all the great submissions. I’m still feeling my way in these older product reviews; I’m not quite sure what to focus on.This week it’s: some kind of synopsis surrounded by bile.
Kingdom in the Swamp
by John Nephew
Levels 6-9

A little shit halfling thief/borrower wants the parties help in going back to a castle with a vampire in the swamps. His friends we’re presumably captured when he fled the scene while the vampire attacked. There’s a small swamp adventure followed by the worlds smallest & lamest ten room castle for a vampire to hang out in. The vampire is cursed by Orcus and can never leave the small island in the swamp that his castle sits on. The wandering monsters ‘are up to the DMs discretion based on party strength’ and the swamp encounters are mostly lame. There’s a statue of Orcus that the vamp can see from his castle that would be cool if it played some role in the adventure: IE if there was a social element/break the curse/etc. The swamp does contain the one interesting encounter: an evocative little description about shallow graves full of rotting corpses … zombies! It’s a decent non-D&D-traditional zombies more in-line with how we traditionally think of them, in real life. The castle is small and uninteresting. But that doesn’t stop it from being described in endless useless detail. 5 pages of triple-column text for ten rooms. Ouch! The treasure here is very light. 1E is gold=XP, right? There needs to be more build up, a spookier castle, a social element … just SOMETHING to bring this thing to life. I’d stab the halfing in town and THEN go on the adventure so I didn’t have to put up with his cute little thieving ‘aw shucks, me?’ attitude.

 

Escape from the Tower of Midnight
by Paul Kane
Levels 2-4 Thieves

This is a tournament module and it shows. Your ‘all thief’ party starts captured and is executed in 2 days if you can’t escape. Getting out of your cell is easy, then you make your way through a 10 level tower. It’s supposed to have a strong ‘sneak by patrolling guards’ element, but that’s not well documented, or illustrated. It’s just described and because of that you’re going to have to put in a lot of work to run it. You get points for knocking people out instead of killing them, even though they are going to put you to death in two days and they’ve killed all of your friends AND they will your families if you ever tell them your name. It does have one of the few things ideas stealing. There’s a running joke that they stole blind the palace of the King of Sark. There’s treasure scattered all over the tower from the palace and I found the running joke/content amusing. It’s a good reminder that continuity of that sort is a good addition to window dressing.

 

Fluffly Goes to Heck
by Rick Reid
Levels 3-5

A completely linear joke adventure ala Castle Greyhawk. I’m still bitter about having purchased that thing when it came out, so I’m bitter about this adventure. Recall the silliest Paranoia adventures ever written? Same thing.

 

Trouble at Grog’s
by Grant & David Boucher
Level 1

A ‘solve the mystery’ adventure in a small village featuring ham-handed diversity lessons about 1/2 orcs and 1/2 ogres. The village is described in verbose detail that manages to convey nothing much of interest. The interactions between the villagers is almost exclusively limited to ‘hate 1/2 breeds.’ They are not even characitures, that would mean they had a personality. Way too much text and not enough interesting content. Like all mysteries it gimps the characters: if you capture someone hired to beat you up then Charm Person doesn’t reveal who hired them … because they are too scared. Uh huh. Why don’t you just say ‘I wrote a weak adventure.’ There’s other interesting choices as well: can’t find the tracks? A friendly ranger helps you out! Can’t find X? A friendly Deus Ex helps you out! I can’t find a decent adventure. Who’s gonna help me out? There’s something like 23 pages of content here. There might be something like four pages of useful content. A half-ogre bar could be fun. Too bad they sucked the life out of it with the lesson they are teaching. What was that half-orc bar? Krom’s Throat? Now THAT’s an ethnic bar!

Posted in Dungeon Magazine, Reviews | 8 Comments