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A couple of potentially decent setting adventures in this issue. Several offer a more open-ended play style without railroading that makes them more interesting to me.. They are also going to take A LOT of work to turn in to something playable. There’s also a circus adventure, as featured on the cover art. What is the fascination with the circus and carnival? I get the festivals are an important part of village life but no circus ever appeared in a D&D adventure that did not have something fishy going on. Smart players would just have their characters burn it down and put everyone to the sword summarily. It’s called ‘Risk Mitigation.’

Nightshade
by Nigel Findley
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This adventure has the party going to a wizards house in town to pick up a potion. It’s short by Dungeon standards, just 5 pages. You meat an NPC and he pays you to go pick up a potion. You go to the wizards house and pick it up. You get attacked by some paid thugs on the way to deliver it. Adventure over. What it does well is hint at other uses, so it’s more presenting several interesting NPCs and situations and then tacking on a pretext so as to call it an adventure. The NPC hook is a bit foppish, with plots and enemies. The wizards falls much more closely to the Reprobate side of the spectrum. That makes him, and his bizarro home, much more interesting than the vast majority of wizards TSR and WOTC ever published. There’s really nothing new or unusual in his home (bizarre wizard stuff!), the wizard (he’s a reprobate) the hook NPC (fop with plots) or the thugs (run away or get revenge.) What is unusual is that all of this useful detail was included in a Dungeon Magazine adventure; it’s quite unusual to see. I’ve giving this a solid C+/B- for content you can steal and reuse for your game. It’s not ground-breaking but it is decent. So, better than the vast majority of crap out there, old or new.

Tortles of the Purple Sage – Part 2
by Merle & Jackie Rasmussen
D&D
Levels 4-10

Part 2 of the exhaustive overview of the lands around the tortles. This is exhaustive in generic and useless detail, mostly of a trading post called Richland. I like the idea of a frontier trading post; it’s a nice change from the little usual Keep on the Borderlands type frontier land holding. The problem is that this thing is exhaustive in generic detail. “Fuller: this textile worker processes cloth by shrinking & pressing it to increase its weight.” And there are scores of examples of content like that. It add absolutely nothing to the site. No NPC’s, no colorful content, no hooks. There are priestly societies call The Lawful Brotherhood and the Neutral Faction. It tries to add some flavor with Trader Jack, the guy in charge, but it’s too little. It’s too bad; the map of outpost doesn’t suck too much (needs more surrounding/supporting lands to support all the tradesmen) and the concept of a frontier trading post is a good one. In general, trading posts and mining camps, towns, don’t get enough D&D coverage.

The Matchmakers
by Patrician Nead Elrod
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This is an open-ended city adventure in which the characters are paid to help a young lady elope. Two merchant houses, both alike in stature, in fair Povero. You get a decent description of the city, the characters involved, her routine, details on the places she hangs out, a schedule for a couple of events to frame the action, and a couple of complications. Good complications like: oops, that guy was actually a jerk, or What do you mean you’re not the chick we’re after? The party is then on their own to hatch some crazy scheme or schemes to grab her and deliver her to the meeting point. That’s the kind of adventure type I like most: a setting the party gets to run rampant in, be it city, dungeon, or wilderness. There’s some decent detail about the town: press gang action on the docks and the like. There’s too much extraneous detail in the various rooms described in the villas the party may venture in to; the penchant for Doomsday Book recording in this era is unfortunate and obfuscates the real content.With prep and notes you could salvage this in to a fairly routine adventure.

Samurai Steel
by Daniel Salas
AD&D OA
Levels 3-5

Yet another open-ended adventure, but this time the party is trapped in a village, having been warned that they will almost certainly be killed in a few days when they are sure to be accused of treason. They are supposed to investigate to gather evidence that they are being framed and that a certain someone close to the local lord is plotting against him. This is supposed to be open-ended like The Matchmakers was, a couple of events, some locations details, some NPC’s to interact with, etc. The Matchmakers was ok but this falls short. There’s just not enough extra detail about the village and the people that live thee to help the DM turn it in to some place real. There are maybe four interesting people in he village and one of them dies 10 minutes in to the adventure after warning the party they are sure to be accused in a couple of days time. The only details of the village are the two or three spots that contain clues and the only other people to be detailed are the traitors that the party has to discover. The rest of the content about the village isn’t even really generic; it just doesn’t exist. You get killed in a couple of days AND you almost certainly get killed if you try t leave the village early AND you get killed if you start stabbing NPC’s in the throat (though they are commoners AND you get killed if … you get the picture. This pretends to be open-ended but is a railroad. Do what the designer wants you to do or have your characters killed. Uncool.

The Jungling Mordo Circus
by Vic Broquard
AD&D
Levels 10+

I love seasonal activities. I run a meetup for them. I subscribe to the Indian Festival Calendar and try to hit a lot of the local corn/beet/cucumber/etc festivals in the small towns around Indiana. The year has pattern to it with seasonal activities, seasonal fruit & veg, and festivals. I get that and I love that. This yearly routine & cycle has always been a staple of life and I get the importance that festivals played, and still play, in life. BUT JESES H FUCKING CHRIST WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE OBSESSED WITH PUTTING EVIL CARNIVALS IN D&D? It doesn’t work. It NEVER works. Unless you put festivals in routinely then the party will know something is up when the circus shows up. The smart thing to do is to just burn it down and kill everyone. Especially when you are level 10+, as in this adventure. Who is going to mess with your 10+ party? The local authorities? The party is probably the local law. The piece of shit adventure has a kidnapping ring run by a level 20 evil wizard. He’s got the fucking Wish spell but he kidnaps people for money. And he DOES have the Wish spell. It’s crazy .The place is thick with high-level assassins, wizards, ACs’s in the -6 to -8 range, and the like. It’s also on the up-and-up, generally, except for the kidnapping and has a hired security contingent made up of Lawful monks and good clerics. This thing is so forced as to be putrid. The ringmaster has AC -11 and is a level 15 illusionist. Why the fuck are these people here? Don’t they have towers to build and experiments to conduct so the forces of good, led by a holy paladin, can invade and win the day only to have the paladin fall and be corrupted? There’s no real adventure here, just an evil circus described so the DM can have someone kidnapped and the party can investigate. There’s no hook or adventure at all other than what I just described, which is described to the reader in just about as many words.

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.

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.

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.