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This is an adventure module for Castles & Crusades, but can be used easily with any pre-4E version of D&D. More details on this aspect at the end.

This module expands on areas first mentioned in C1 – The Mortality of Green. In that adventure it was mentioned that the small village of Alice had been thrice cursed and met a terrible fate causing it to be abandoned. This is expanded upon in this module, which presents four separate interlinked areas to explore. There’s the town of Alice, two small cave complexes, and a ruined monastery that all have some relationship to each other. In addition, there is an overland adventure to actually reach the town of Alice.

The adventure starts in a tavern with the party overhearing a conversation at another table. What follows is nearly a page of boxed text, with a lot of “as you know”‘s and the like thrown in. It started in a nice way, with a guy reminding another of a load of goods they took to Alice and how he used to money to buy some nice thing. It then turns in to an oral history of ALice, where things go south a bit and turn in to a soliloquy. I _really_ don’t like that sort thing. Boxed text tends to be an abomination in my eyes, detracting from the adventure. In addition, the same information is repeated two or three times: once in the GM’s notes and once in the boxed text. It would have been nice if just a brief synopsis was provided to the DM and then the boxed text could be left out, with just a few suggestions on how to get the conversation started. Another person in the tavern overhears, and hires the party to go to Alice and retrieve his hidden wedding rings. He’s a survivor of what happened there and is growing a bit nostalgic in his old age.

With that the party sets off for Alice. There’s an overgrown road and also a river that could be taken. The regional map is on quite a large scale, 1″=32 miles. This throws me every time I see the map, although I suspect it’s just a mental block I have. The journey is going to take quite some time, over a week on feet over an overgrown road or several days by river. There’s a humanoid encounter on the way, as well as a pretty extensive, and generic, wandering monster table. The monsters in C1 had a very strong FEY feeling and atmosphere, but the wandering table in this module just feels like it was pulled out of some generic wandering monster table for a fantasy forest. I much preferred C1’s fey approach. The humanoid encounter has an extensive write-upabout 1.5 pages, and a lot of their tactics are presented, as well as their reactions and morale implications to what the party does. I’m torn over this. The write-up on their tactics & morale is good and well thought out, however the length of the description is a turn off. In addition, the humanoids seem rather generic. It’s not clear to me why they are not human bandits instead. Humanoids in c1 had a pretty strong fey atmosphere but that didn’t come through at all with this group. In addition, it’s suggested that the DM move the encounter from the river to the road if the party takes the longer road route. This is a big no-no in my book; you don’t move an encounter because the PC’s avoided it earlier. Let them make choices and let the dice fall where they will.

There are a couple of other encounters on the river which were very nice. Banshees travel in the mists that frequent the river and we get a nice little backstory as to why. It has a strong fey element and is very evocative. It’s also not necessarily a hostile encounter; the party can avoid fighting them and instead just get freaked out why the wailing faces that appear in the mist ….   This is an excellent example of monsters having something to do besides eat PC’s. The banshees have their own agenda and are up to their own things; killing the PC’s doesn’t have to be a part of that. There’s also a nice encounter with a classic fantasy element. Again, it’s very well done and has a strong fey element to it. The strong fey feeling from C1/Mortality was one of my chief interests in it and I was happy to see portions of that show up again in module.

The regional scale map and the local maps didn’t make sense to me when compared to the text in the module. I couldn’t figure out very well how the areas related to each other, geographically, even though they are all on the maps and it’s written up in the text. The Text and the maps just don’t seem to sync up, or at least I couldn’t figure out how they did. This is really just a minor quibble, although it STILL has me bugged. The Lament of Alice has about eight keyed encounters in it. Only two involve monsters. One is a classic fey encounter, which should remind your players why everyone hate fairies. The other is a nice little encounter that is almost environmental in nature. It also ties back in to one of the three curses that fell on Alice. The tie in to the other three adventure areas is a loose one. There’s a path in the village, and if the party follows it for days then they’ll find another location. There’s also the well, alluded to in the tale in the tavern, which is another of the Alice curses. The party will have to follow the trail for days, blindly, or go in to the well.

The well location has a god in it. Yup, a full fledged god, although he’s down on his luck lately. The well leads to a nice little natural cavern complex with seven keyed locations. There have a variety of natural hazards associated with them, as well as the god and some vermin-type encounters. About half of the rooms have no creatures, as it should be. The old god should be a nice little role-playing encounter for the party, and can provide a nice swords & sorcery element and feel to the adventure. Frog Gods are cool. If the party pokes around they can find some nice treasure, and a passage that goes a mile till it comes up in an old Monastery; adventure location number 3.

The ruined monastery is mostly and exploration is crumbling rooms with about 20 keyed locations. There are some nice tricks and hidden locations and treasures located in the ruins. Again, there are only a couple of creature encounters. There’s a strong element of realism in the ruined sites presentation and encounters and some unguarded treasure can be obtained by a smart group. The site ALMOST introduces some elements of the weird, but never quite crosses over the line in to weird fantasy. It stays firmly in a ‘realistic depiction of a ruined monastery” mold, with a couple of fantasy elements thrown in. The site does show signs that it has been visited. Tracked back, the second small cavern complex, adventuring site four, is reached.

This is the small seven room cavern complex of a witch and her sons. They live in filth and have a couple of two-headed dogs (Nice) living with them. The complex has some natural elements, streams, and pools of water and such. They are holding someone hostage and are pretty much evil, through and through. This makes sense, since the witch is actually a hag! Module C1 did some things like this and I LOVED it, and I love it here also. Fantasy elements are presented as if they were just normal medieval elements, but then there is just a LITTLE more to them. The ugly barkeep woman is actually an ogre, or, in this case, the witch is actually a hag. It’s as if you’re in a VERY human-centric fairy tale and the line between fantasy and reality is just barely crossed. I thing that’s wonderful and gives lends to a strong fairy tale element to these two modules. It was much stronger in C1, but it is certainly present here also. Examples are the witch/hag and the ‘Old Gods’ such as the frog god the characters may meet, and the ruined monastery to the old gods. This is great and I wish were a lot more of it in this module. This second of caverns is more of a straight up fight, although there are a few weird elements and the hag is portrayed very realistically. IE: she doesn’t want to die, sacrifices her idiot sons to make sure she doesn’t and uses her powers to good effect.

When I run this I’ll have to make sure that the adventuring locales are tied together a little more. I may drop hints of the backstory as well, but not reveal it all; mystery and the unknown are powerful tools to evoke a sense of wonder. I wish the module had played up the few elements a little more, and I also wish the wandering table was a little more fey oriented and specific. While these are not dungeoncrawls, in my definition, the sandboxy like story they present is a very nice one.

I just use the C&C stats for the monsters in my D&D game, converting the AC on the fly since C&C AC ascends. You could also just the monster straight out of the D&D monster manual. There are a few places that call for skill checks. In a 3E game you just add the C&C Challenge Level to 15 to get the DC. In more old school D&D games you can just make a tracking check, bend bars check, or attribute check. I calculate monster XP from the DMG 1E tables.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/58560/Castles–Crusades-C2-Shades-of-Mist?affiliate_id=1892600

This is an adventure module for Castles & Crusades, although it can be used with any pre-4E D&D version. More conversion details near the end of the this review.

This adventure has a long history. It appears to have started like in 2000 as a d20 adventure with a generic version also available. The Castles & Crusades version came out in 2006. The history of the product shows. It is very much in the style of the d20 adventures of 2000, meaning that it’s a plot based adventure heavy on story. The story is not particularly unique: Evil tree in a dark forest directs minions to steal pure sapling. Party gives chase and confronts minions and tree. It does have a very strong aspect to it: the campaign setting.

The entire feel of this adventure is one of a dark, but realistic, fairy-tale. It is set in a dark forest environment, full of damp and with dense thickets and ancient trees cut through with bright glades and babbling brooks. The residents are fantastic but given a bit of depth and pulled back a bit to give then a realism. For example, there is a women in a small village tavern that is ugly and large, with hairy knuckles. Her description seems to indicate that while not attractive, she’s not necessarily outside of the human norm. Her stats list her as an ogre. The same village has a beautiful woman with a morose streak. Turns out she’s a dryad who’s tree was killed. There’s a potential encounter with a mad little gnome, of the more traditional fey variety, in an orange hat who eats fish and lives under a tree. Everything in this module has that same sort of feel. As if were set in a German forest and you stepped JUST over the line and crossed in to fantasy. A feeling of just barely fey. The cover art does a pretty good job of depicting this atmosphere. And yet there are fantastic elements. Horntooth the goblin bandit and Quagmore the Troll Lord are both clearly fantastic, although with a very strong fey leaning. This kind of setting appeals to me immensely and I found myself wanting more … so much so that I may break my long-standing pledge to only buy modules. This is one of this modules strongest points.

Although the module has 24 pages there are really only three encounters, with a few optional ones thrown in. There’s the kick-off/hook encounter, a decision point encounter that probably involves no fighting, and then the climax encounters, a set of three fights in three nearby locations. The rest of the module is filled with backstory, descriptions of locations, motivations, and so on. For example, the DM is encouraged to get the party to follow the marauders trail after the hook encounter. Something along the lines of “do everything reasonable to keep them from doing something other than following the trail.” There then follows a 5.5 page description of the town of Ends Meet, and a small adventure there, in case they continue on their journey. And if they do so then they essentially fail the adventure and will not find the other locations. Although there will be no immediate effect to the local environments for failing. It’s a very confused kind of thing. The side-trek and the village descriptions are very nice and extremely evocative, but seem very out of place.

The chase through the forest after the marauders is going to take DAYS, which is something many parties may not be accustomed to. There is a nice set of wandering monsters provided, with a check being performed six times a day and six times a night, with a 1 on 12 indicating an encounter. The creatures are nice for a dark forest: a hill giant, a Will-o-Wisp, wild animals, spiders, exotic fey creatures, and others. They all have a pretty good fey feeling, except perhaps for the orcs that are listed. The only reason I can accept goblins as fey is the strong write-up and cover art. Yes, I know they SHOULD be fey, but they’re used so much as sword-fodder that it’s easy to loose sight of their fey heritage. There are a couple of optional encounters. The village and side-trek adventure it contains would be one of them. There are two more, both of which _should_ be handled by diplomacy. They provide a very strong yet subtle fey feeling as well. The gnome fisherman I mentioned above is one of them, and the goblin bandits another.

This is, at it’s heart, a small little adventure. There is a significant amount of exposition in it that helps contribute to the atmosphere. Every small locale in the general area has a nice multi-paragraph, at least, write-up that is full of flavor and atmosphere. The creatures are either human stand-ins (orcs, goblins, etc) or are fey with their trickery-like powers. The magic items are fairly typical, with little in the way of customization. That’s not so great; I expected more in that area given the atmosphere of the module. The maps provided are regional level maps and perhaps a large area map or two. This is not a tactical module in any way.

This is available at Drivethru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/2954/Castles–Crusades-C1-Mortality-of-Green?affiliate_id=1892600

This is a module for Castles & Crusades but it can be easily used for any pre-4E version on D&D. More on that at the bottom.

This modules is centered around the home fortress/dungeon of a famous wizard. Not too long ago he built this place as a refuge before finally disappearing on one of his travels. An example wizard is given however the DM is encouraged to tailor the wizard to his own campaign. This would be akin to finding one of the old homes of Elminster or Bigby, I suppose. The backstory is very brief, only a column or so of text, and mainly deals with the travels and life of the example wizard. The product then launches right in with a paragraph on the dungeon entrance and room 1. This is by far the shortest introduction I’ve seen, and while I usually like a terse style this introduction could have been a bit longer. There’s no actual introduction to the dungeon at all or what is now going on inside. As such the introduction falls a little flat and is terse in the wrong way, describing trivia instead of current events. There’s no overland/wilderness portion.

The maps for this things are great. There are two primary levels and small third level. The first two are exactly the sort of map I like to see. They very nearly fill a full page each and are full of loops. This gives the party a great opportunity to explore, route around dangerous areas, get ambushed, and set up ambushes. They are on par with the map for the core ASE1, and possibly even better. We;re talking full on Mordenkainen’s Fantastic or Barrier Peaks goodness here. There are not really more than one way to get between levels, which is a bummer given maps this good, but other than that I can’t complain at all about the maps and indeed hold them up to high praise. There are about 45 or so keyed encounters on each of the two main levels.

The levels are essentially the household and lair of an ancient powerful wizard. Since he’s abandoned the facility a group of humanoids has wandered in and set up shop in a portion of the two levels. The humanoids are not densely populated on the two levels and there are a few encounters with undead and a dungeon vermin thrown in here and there. There are a LOT of rooms to explore, and many have some sort of puzzle or some kind of object for the PC’s to play with. Far too often these involve riddles. I’m not a big fan of riddles in my dungeons, especially at low levels when the players don’t have access to divination spells. There are a few areas where the old DMG 1E potion mixing table could come in to play, which I loved, especially since it was mixed in to a room that encourages the PC’s to Push the Big Red Button. The traps present are few and far between, mostly chest traps and scything blades in corridors/doors. Treasure is scattered around with a good mix; some in monster rooms, some unguarded, and so on. Generally a careful party should be able to great a great deal of GP/XP without fighting too much, which is perfect given the map layouts.

The great please for the PC’s in this adventure is going to be figuring out, room by room, who this complex belonged to and some of trivia associated with the wizard. Kind of like visiting an abandoned home and poking around in the drawers. Who is that in the picture? Why did they put that there. Ah! So that’s why, and so on. There’s no wandering monster tables and the boss fights are anti-climactic, the Lareth the Beautiful syndrome. “That dudes the big boss? Huh. Oh Well.” There’s no build up at all to the boss fights and no ‘Order of Battle’ should one room run to fetch help from another or raise the alarm.

Mechanically this dungeon was pretty much perfectly built. Large looping maps filled with rooms. A high number of empty numbers a smaller number of rooms with monsters. Unguarded treasure and guarded treasure. I could have used a few more tricks/traps, and as I said, I don’t like riddle rooms and there are a fair number of those present. I would have liked some more trick/red button rooms for the PC’s to poke, prod, and explore in. I generally like my magic items to be more unique than “Sword +1” and there are not too many of those to found here, if any, depending on your definition. I also like my monsters quite a bit less standardized; weird things freak out the party, especially if they don’t come out of a monster manual, and I find humanoids pretty boring opponents. The intelligent monsters could have used a bit more tie in for me though.

This would be a  pretty good modern replacement for B1 – In Search of the Unknown. The backstory has obvious similarities and the dungeoncrawl like elements are similar. If the DM did a little work ahead of time on a wandering table, noted on the map the rooms with monsters for response purposes, and personalized the magic a bit more then this would be a pretty solid introductory dungeon.

A bit about conversion. The monster stats in C&C can pretty much be used as is for D&D. AC is ascending, the exact way it is in 3E. Saves are linked to stats in C&C, which doesn’t matter, just use the same saves system you’re using in D&D. STR is Paralysis, Con is a Death Save, Breath Weapon is DEX, Wands are INT and Spells are WIS. If you are using skills, then a DC 16 check equates to a CL1 in C&C, a CL2 is DC 17, and so on. It’s really pretty trivial to convert, and can be done on the fly. I just pull the XP from the DMG 1E appendix.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/90312/Castles–Crusades-DA1-Dark-Journey?affiliate_id=1892600

Villagers and livestock have begun disappearing and strange shapes are being seen in the woods. Locals have tracked the creatures back to a cave where a stream enters it. It’s up to the party to stop this!

That’s the extent of the backstory for AA1, the first adventure in the Expeditious Retreat Press Advanced Adventures product line. I like my backstory short & sweet, so this is fine with me. Further details come out in the dungeon, when appropriate. I much prefer this style of exposition then a long introduction at the start of the product. More than a column or so and I loose interest. I don’t really care about your world-spanning epic novel, just tell me enough to get going and I can fill in the rest as need be.

The cavern complex has three levels and it’s suggested that the adventurers could start from either the first level, with expanded adventures on the third, or enter the caverns underground on the third level and have expanded adventurers on the surface world. The first level servers as a kind of outpost for the Shroom, and has several natural features that must be overcome. The second serves as the primary lair of the Shroom, while the third is a border area of the Shrooms domain and the greater underdark-like cavern complex that the DM could expand for further adventurers. The maps proper have one or two loops in them, but are not overly complex affairs. Each level has about 16 or so keyed encounters, and that’s just not large enough to support a large looping map with multiple level exits. The maps do a good job given their small size. They are interesting given that this is a natural cavern complex with a stream flowing it, with several height difference in some rooms, sloping corridors, and portcullis, grates in the floor, etc.

The first level is mostly a natural foyer to the Shrooms domain on the second. As such it is much more cave-like, with a fast flowing cave stream flowing through it, several waterfalls to be traversed, and other features of streams. The wandering monsters on this level are mostly vermin (3 out of 4) and each is given a motivation: patrolling, scavenging, hunting for rats, etc. I like this sort of thing in my wandering monster tables, it tends the make the environment a bit more naturalistic; a sense that life goes on even without the party showing up. This level has a few creatures on it placed by the Shroom as well as a vermin encounter. There are lots of interesting things for the party to poke and prod, some natural and some man-made, as well as a couple of freaky little side-items. I love this sort of mysterious & weird stuff in my modules, so I was a fan.

The second level is the domain of the Sinister Shroom proper. In this level the Shroom has his workrooms and labs were he grows his pod-people army. The central complex of worked rooms is surrounded by caverns with the stream flowing around the edges of the map, through the cavern rooms. There are far fewer ‘natural’ hazards on this levels, however there are hordes of pod-people hanging about. There’s a wandering patrol of pod-people, which encompass the wandering monster table. Once this is destroyed then the table is replaced by vermin who begin to venture out. That’s a nice element to show that the parties actions have ramifications. There are a few sets of prisoner/allies on this level, all of whom are found in some pretty freaky circumstances. This should provide the party with posers and allow them to creatively free the various groups of prisoners. the separate groups of which are made up of some pretty diverse creatures. In the absence of factions within a dungeon this can provide a nice element of living, breathing atmosphere as the party find new members to join them, along with the role-play opportunities that represents. Again, there’s a pretty good selection of things for the party to mess with: random potion bottles, a sinister chair, vats of goo. These are all the sorts of things I like to see in a module; things for the party to explore and invetigate, with both good & bad consequences from their actions.

The third level is where the Shrooms domain meets the underdark-like environment of the greater cavern system , which can expanded upon by the DM. This level quickly turns in to a natural cave system, with pools & crevices to be crossed, and an underground river. There’s a small group of renegade pod-people which is, sadly, only murderous in their intent. There’s also a group of goblins who have a small backstory associated with them which should be pretty humorous and interesting to watch play out; it’s one of the features of this level. The wandering monsters once again are composed of vermin & animals. (I just realized that when I say ‘vermin’ I mean bugs, oozes, fungi, and animals, in contrast to the 3E+ proper monster categories, in which vermin are only bugs.) There are two or three environmental hazards down on this levels, as well as some things for the party to poke/prod and get in to trouble with (Yeah storage rooms!)

We get four new monsters in this product, including the pod-people and the Shroom. They are sufficiently different to be interesting, and include a pretty deadly abomination-type creature that could be a pain for the party. The magic items are a mix of old standby’s and a few new weird ones, including an ever-rusting longsword which becomes non-magical when cleaned, until the rust comes back, and a nice little fungus staff. I like this sort of detail to my magic items. “Sword +1” is BORING.

There are some tough encounters in this module, and the lack of factions is going to make them harder. Such is life my little PC friends; poke your nose somewhere it doesn’t belong and it will be lopped off. The large number of interesting room dressing to play with, combined with the new creatures and the environmental hazards make this little thing a keeper. It’s playful in a way that some of the original TSR modules were, yet still retains a serious tone overall. It’s not quite the second coming that some reviewers indicate, but it is a VERY solid OSR product and well above average for the newer OSR products.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/13709/Advanced-Adventures-1-The-PodCaverns-of-the-Sinister-Shroom?affiliate_id=1892600

After a long period of peace the baronial patrols are encountering groups of undead near their borders. Recently an entire gnomish community was wiped out by hordes of undead commanded by ominous knights. The Baron has charged the party with wiping out this menace, which he believes issues forth from an ancient site known as The Red Mausoleum.

Well, that’s a pretty good to make if I were a betting sage. How many times do I have to say it: if there’s an unknown/evil structure in your lands then you need to build a proper road to it and maintain an effective watch. It’s called insurance, look it up Mr Baron. Hmm, maybe my words of warning are having trouble since Im reviewing these in the opposite order they were released. That would explain a lot.

Snarky comments aside, there’s a brief rumor table presented, which should be standard for all OSR product. Rumor tables are good, they provide a nice little role-playing opportunity and provide the party with some things to think and worry about. Any kind of build-up leads to much more heightened tension during play, which is a good thing. There’s a small overland trek involved to reach the adventuring site, which is set in some moors. The trek might be 15 miles long; no wilderness map is provided and the location of the site is not really explained other than the fact it is in the moors. A map isn’t really needed, this isn’t a hex crawl, but more specific location information seems to have been left out, I assume during the editing/layout process. A nice little wandering monster table for the moors is presented. It’s heavy on the animals/vermin side, which I tend to prefer, and has a few undead thrown in as well as a possibility of 1-30 orcs. Those are really the only humanoids on a 20 creature list, which is exactly how I like things. An environmental encounter or two might have been nice to see, but the list does have … Brain Moles! Sweet! I love it when under-usedcreatures appear. As the mausoleum site is approached the surround flora begins to show a red tint. The site proper is marked by four large statues and a small tomb.

The mausoleum has three levels with about 15 encounters on the first level, and eight or so on each of the two other levels. The maps for the first two levels are simple hub-based affairs, with corridors & rooms radiating out from a central location, in figurative sense. The last levels is more of a linear affair with a couple of brances. The entire place is CRAWLING with undead. Skeletons, zombies, ghouls, weights, wraths, shadows, and others roam the halls in large numbers. This being a burial complex there are plenty of tombs to explore, nearly all of which are trapped in some way. We’re looking at heavy emphasis on intelligent undead, although usually only encountered in ones or two’s. There is a main burial chamber which is protected by …. the infamous creatures in stasis. I hate stasis. It’s a cheap and unimaginative way to use normal monsters in an environment where the usually should not be. This particular room is beefed up a bit by having them drop out of stasis every 3 rounds, meaning the party will be encountering waves of creatures coming at them. There are 20 or so different groups of creatures, and they will interact and fight with each other. The ensuing chaos should be fun to watch and interact with, so perhaps this use of stasis can be excused.

There is a lot of thinking involved in certain areas of the complex. The players will need to figure a few things out to move on to the lower levels. I mean that statement in the most open-ended sense; they could puzzle out the ‘correct’ way to reach the other levels, or use teleport/rock to mud magic, or use divination magic to obtain the ‘correct’ solutions. I like this sort of open-ended element. This is a high-level module and the party should be ready to face situations like this; Divination magic is on the spell lists for a reason. Use it! It’s not just level transitions where this sort of thing occurs, there are several other areas where a thinking mans/creative play style will prove to be very useful. Unfortunately, this makes the room descriptions a bit longer than I would prefer; that’s probably unavoidable in a high-level module.

The final encounter is with a 21/19 Cleric/MU lich. It has a suggested spell use order, however I still have my concerns. Single monster encounters don’t tend to last too long with a group of high-level PC’s. He’s going to summon some help, but I feel like that aspect could have emphasized a little more.  I quite enjoyed the ‘high-level party fights hordes of the undead’ aspect to the adventure, however the environment proper felt flat to me. The evocative environments that the author usually invokes tend to be missing for the large part from this module. Then again, I AM working backwards and this is his first module in the AA line; his follow-up modules are much more to my liking. The environments are more evocative, the villains more complex/interesting, and the magic more weird.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/15835/Advanced-Adventures-2-The-Red-Mausoleum?affiliate_id=1892600

In a time long ago a local noble family rose to power through the use of an evil artifact: The Witch’s Head. Eventually a good member of the line came to power and buried the head in a dungeon, protecting it with traps. Recently that same family is now being threatened: send money and your teenage daughter or the bad guy will turn loose the power of the head once more! The party is summoned and sent to root out the evildoers. Oh yeah … a local contingent of the lords troops, as well as two other adventuring parties ,have not returned from the same quest …

This module starts out strong in two ways. First, we have an immediate gruesome artifact in play, the Witch Head. It’s an actual head with evil powers. That’s a pretty cool item. Second, we get a good dose of foreshadowing: the last three attempts have failed. There’s no overland adventure however there is another good piece of foreshadowing right outside the dungeon: 23 bodies crucified on oak X’s surrounding Witcheed Hill. Not only does this further build tension, but we also get a little dose of name evolution in the hills name. I like both of these elements, it gives a sense of continuity to the adventure; things have happened in the past and the party is seeing the results right now. The build-up to the villains could be a little stronger, but it’s much better than poor old Lareth in T1. For a villain to be truly effective you need some build up to him, and the intro to this scenario does this more than a little.

The dungeon proper is interesting. While it was once a real dungeon to house and protect the head, it’s been broken in to by our villain and partially cleared and is now where he’s operating out of. Thus we get some aspects of the dungeon in their native form, some with the new villain, and some that are a mix as the new guys beef up or leave traces of their coming & goings. Again, this presents the dungeon in a living and breathing manner, rather than as a static location where things never change. There are only about 20 keyed encounters on the map. It has a couple of loops on it, however it’s too small to be a truly interesting map. There are lots of weird shaped rooms and a lake though, and I still found it’s layout interesting.

There are several very nice tricks and traps. Braziers that can be lit for effects, a desecrated temple where good & evil vie with each other, crumbling floors, and so on. I really enjoyed how these were presented. The old ‘desecrated temple’ bit is presented nicely: the room impacts both good & evil characters in strange ways, and a boon is gained if the temple is cleansed of the desecration. There are a couple of other interesting traps also: the crumbling floor for example, and a Wand of Illumination/Magic Mouth/prism room trap that I found interesting. The creatures are a good selection, a few new undead, a few old undead, constructs, and an NPC party of bad guys. There are a few vermin & such around the lake also. I found the monster population made sense, especially in the context of the new guys moving in and setting up shop.

Several new magic items are presented, in addition to the Witch Head relic. The Staff of Screams has a great name and effect, and the Dust of Distortion is a nice new item also. They both lend to the feeling of weird fantasy that I like in my games. Staff of Soundburst? Screw That, I want a Staff of Screams! We also get about three pages of new monsters. I like new monsters in my adventures; the party never knows what to expect when they encounter one and it scares the daylights out of them!

The module is short. Only about five pages describe the dungeon, with the second half be given over to the new monsters, magic items, and NPC party (which should hound the party throughout their crawl.) It packs a lot in to those pages though, and would be a great little adventure to run for an evening or two. I approve.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55328/Advanced-Adventures-3-The-Curse-of-the-Witch-Head?affiliate_id=1892600

Different strokes for different folks.

In ages long past a backstory was prepared. Through careful cunning the author outlined much trivia that is no longer relevant and not needed for play. Cleverly, major portions of the backstory were interspersed throughout the module, providing a duplicate of much of trivia presented. Verily, the backstory was mighty detailed and contained two separate plot lines, held together through tenuous strands. And thus the lovers of terseness were driven mad. In their despair they turned to the mighty warlock Synopsis, who spoke thus: “The party is sent somewhere to find out what happened to the last party.”

The party is transported to a barren desert like wilderness to look for The Last Guys. A small hex map is provided along with a small wandering table. Most of this is not needed, since the planned events lie on a nearby road the party is told to look out for AND there’s an immediate encounter with nomads who will direct the party to the appropriate places. There is a brief description of overland travel rates, which I always appreciate in wilderness adventures since I’m always forgetting how many miles a party can move. I’m serious, movement rate to hex scale conversion always seem to throw me for a loop. A couple of the wandering encounters are environmental, and one if with a potentially friendly band of clerics, but most are of the “they fight to the death” variety, with very simple motivations. Actually, Motivation, singular. They fight to the death trying to eat the party. I prefer a tad more variety.

The planned encounters consist of a briefly detailed, but not mapped, ruined city full of undead (with a crap load of ghosts, of the Monster Manual variety.) There’s also a ruined palace, a ruined tomb, and a ruined temple before reaching the prison complex.  These could all be bypassed by a smart party, but it’s likely they will be investigated as the players try to look for The Last Guys. The ruined capitol is nothing more than a chance to roll a 4-in-10 wandering monster check every 30 minutes, with ‘Undead’ being the result. The ruined capitol has still more undead, of every variety, including another Ghost. It also has the first moment of “Ug! Not again.” for me, a permanent illusion that can’t be detected along with a non-detection spell. It also triggered in me a final realization of why I have a problem with many of these modules.

Too much backstory! I don’t care why the permanent illusion was created. In fact, by offering me an explanation you are forcing me to therefore question, and in many cases ridicule, the explanation. This sort of ‘why the room is the way it is’ drives me nuts. I don’t care! It doesn’t need an explanation! By reading it I must then analyze the reason given, which certainly then makes me mock it. Magic is magic and weird shit happens. Nuff said. There! I could have made the module 15 pages shorter.

The ruined palace has about six keys and is full of undead. Another Ghost appears.

The ruined tomb starts out wrong, in my eyes. There’s a poison on the door which has a save or die effect. Fair enough. But it also says something to effect that even if you are wearing gloves you must save or die. Ug! Counterproductive! I wore the damn gloves so I WOULDN’T be impacted by contact poison! That sort of jerking control out of the hands of the party is a big no-no in my book. The ruined tomb with the impassible door has trolls, sandmen, a bodak, a mimic, and a trapper all waiting around for someone to come by. The additional backstory provided indicates that the tomb was built 3000 years ago, so those creatures have been here a LONG time. Wonder what they were eating? Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m being a killjoy pointing this out. I’m not too much of a stickler for this sort of thing, but this jumped out at me. DId I mention the ice elemental and magma elemental princes sitting alone in their throne rooms, just waiting around for the party to come by? Oops, I think I left my naturalism out … This portion, like the palace, is just a hackfest. There’s also another Ghost. Better read up on Magic Jar. The map is purely linear, with 15 keys.

The temple isn’t too bad. It starts out ok, and has a decent little mini-plot going on. It’s short, just just six or so rooms. Yes, the inhabitants want to kill the party. This little section ALMOST gets things right, with a nice little sub-plot of a captured demon and it’s lamia lover. It squandered by the hackfest though.

The prison proper is the final location and touches on just about everything I don’t care for. The walls are warded against teleportation/passwall, etc. I don’t like this sort of thing because of the lack of options it presents the PC’s with. It smacks of the designer wanting the party to solve the dungeon their way, rather than letting the party come up with their own solution to problems. This is further exacerbated by the ANOTHER magical ward, which prevents all extra-planer contact. There’s will be no Communes, Auguries, Contact Other Plane, or other magical knowledge gathering in this place; you solve the puzzles the way the designer wanted or die guessing. And you’ll do much guessing and therefore much digging of graves for fellow party members. There are five linear paths through the dungeon and each must be explored to get the parts of the key which solves the riddle of the complex. You don’t need to do this; The Last Guys are in the beginning of one of the linear sections. Find’em, heal them, and sending them on their way solves the module. Of course, the parties going to want to ‘explore’, and I use that term lightly. Each of the paths is set up for one of the four core classes, with the fifth being full of puzzles. I don’t like this sort of thing. First, the linear levels preclude actual exploration. It’s just a railroad. Second, the rooms are set up to force the PC’s to do certain things. One of the thief rooms forces them climb a wall. Fly, etc don’t work here. ARG! No creative play for you! Suck it and do what the designer wanted you to do! There’s lots of save of die situations, lots of traps, lots of hacking up monsters, which are released from stasis as soon as the party opens the door. Lame. The entire prison is just a series of puzzle rooms, with varying definitions of the word puzzle. A mini-arena with an announcer that the fighter must enter, etc. There’s a PC Mirror of Opposition at the end of most of these, and members of the ‘wrong’ classes must save or be petrified. I loathed the puzzles because there was a correct answer and no way to shortcut them, thanks to the teleport/commune ban. It’s just trial and error for the most part, if you’re not thinking the way the designer wanted you to, with each ‘Error’ resulting in lots of damage/death. For example, a riddle. Guess the correct answer or take damage. There’s too many doors slamming shit behind people and doors appearing when you kill the last creature. It all feels like a fake set up.

I did not enjoy this.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/55549/Advanced-Adventures-4-Prison-of-Meneptah?affiliate_id=1892600

The Lord Admiral of a local seaport town has disappeared, and now the flaming footprints of a long-dead pirate known as Firebeard have started reappearing in the streets of the town. The party is sent to an abandoned pirate-lair on a distant island to investigate the return of Firebeard and the missing Lord Admiral.

Thus begins the terse introduction of AA5. This background introduction is two short paragraphs long and is all there is is prior to a description of the island lair. Now, I’m a man that prefers a terse description, so I didn’t have any problem at all with this. It was very refreshing to not have to read a three page primer of evil lord Douche-bag, featuring what he had for dinner and his personal ‘evacuation’ schedule.  Short, sweet and to the point. I can fill in the details with something from my own mind on the fly.

The module is presented as a kind of Isle of Dread style island adventure with four short mini-dungeons. The overland portion on the island is not too long, the island is only about 10 miles in diameter. There are day and night wandering monster charts presented. They are heavy on the vermin, which I prefer, and have a couple of ‘special events’ located on them as well. These special events are very cool little set pieces, and quite evocative and interesting. One involves the site of an age-old massacre (Dead Marshes anyone?) and another an interesting little environmental hazard with a couple of undead crocs thrown in for good measure. Almost all of the monsters are given a little note on their motivation or what they are doing out, and not all of them have to end with the PC’s hacking the encounter to pieces. I liked the wandering table quite a bit, although I was a little sad to see native goblins thrown in. I like my humanoids Human and my undead with a purpose, your milage may vary.

There are three little mini-dungeons on the island, all linked together. The first is the old pirate caverns. The map for this has a few interesting features, like the dock and the tide lines, but it is essentially a very small branching map with a couple of alternate paths; not quite a looping map. There are about eleven keyed encounters, and the caverns are full of vermin and a couple of undead, the result of the town wiping out the pirates long ago. There are a few tricks and traps in this section, most of which center on the pirates trapping some kind of chest to catch/kill looters. They fit in with the theme of this section and are nice little details. On an academic level it’s hard for to criticize, however I’ve just about had it with pirate lairs, so it left me a little flat. It is probably a very good example though of what would happen if the citizenry of Saltmarsh wiped out their smuggler problem in a more organized fashion.

The second little dungeon is a portion of a gnome compound and is linked to the pirate caverns via a tunnel. It has eleven keyed encounters in a short little branching map. I found this section a little more interesting than the last. It has vermin in it and a couple of undead, just like the last section did. It does have more of a weird fantasy element to it. There’s an erie poltergeist, a crawling hand in a jar that could end up being a familiar (Cool!), and a casket to be looted while the final scene from Indiana Jones plays out. These are all very cool little details and encounters which add a lot of atmosphere. There’s also the remains, sometimes literally, of a previous adventuring party that came in through the pirate lair to explore. They’ve come upon hard times though, with a few dead and few captured by beasties To Serve Man. This is a nice little element that many products could do more with: what actually has happened to all of those other groups that went down down to goblin town? Seeing their remains scattered about tells a little story and gives the dungeons that lived-in feel that players and DM’s love.

Linked to the gnome gncompond is the lair of the Wax Wizard. There are eight keyed encounters here on a small little branching map. It’s essentially the home and lab of the Wax Wizard. Unfortunately he’s run in to some trouble lately, as wizards in lair modules are wont to do. He specializes in wax creations and one of his creations has run amok and developed an answer to the ‘Am I butterfly or a man?’ question. It’s run the wizard out and taken over. This section has two or three wax golem/construct type encounters as well as a couple of vermin encounters. There’s a trap or two, one of which can be looted for it’s ammunition, which is a nice touch of realism. Notes found in this section lead the party to a lizard man encampment where the wizard can be found. It seems they have a taste for human flesh as well, and are fattening up the wizard for a feast. Defeating the lizard men and freeing the wizard could earn the party a new wax construct buddy, if they return the wizards spell book to him … which would NOT be a given if I was playing, it has 5th level spells in it! It also turns out that the wizard has the pirates old flaming boots, which is where the the footprints in town are coming from.

There are several new monsters presented, two of the wax construct variety and two of a humanoid abomination variety. There are also several new magic items. Sling stones that turn in to boulders, rings of exploration, lesser swords of sharpness, and a ships figurehead are all interesting new treasures. I prefer my items a little more weird (like that hand familiar!) and a little more unique in description, however I do appreciate the attempt made to introduce new items. The module has quite a few book items as well; ring of regeneration, wands, and so on. Overall, it feels like a series of episodic dungeons with some tenuous ties. It’s seems to _almost_ be touching on some weird fantasy elements in places but never quite makes it over the edge in to the strange & unknown that I prefer.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/57095/Advanced-Adventures-5-The-Flaming-Footprints-of-Jilanth?affiliate_id=1892600