tenfootpole.org

by Jason Sholtis
Knockspell Magazine
Swords & Wizardry
Level 1

This is an adventure by Jason Sholtis. That’s all you need to know. End of Review.

What? You want more?! Geeezzz… I already said it was by Mr. Dungeon Dozen, my FAVORITE blog on the net. Hmmm, it occurs to me that my Favorites generally get ignored on my review blog. That’s too bad. People like Sham, Melan, and Jason have a shit-ton of talent and I should review more of their stuff. Anyway, back to this one by Jason.

The very first two words of this adventure are “Gonzo Alert!”, and gonzo it is indeed, although somewhat less than ASE1 and more weird than ASE1. It’s an adventure in a small section of the Mythic Underworld featuring super-deadly monsters, rival parties, and a metric ton of weird and unique stuff. Exactly what you would expect from the guy who writes Dungeon Dozen.

There’s a page and a half of background material presented. Wonderful background material full of things like The Null-Rod and The Worm Sultan. It boils down to the Prince stealing a McGuffin and the party being after it/him. The usual issues with a plotline like this are addressed: the Captain was sent after him with a sizable warband. Which attracted too much attention and were slaughtered, according to the one half-insane survivor right “before rescinding his citizenship and disappearing in to the night.” Now THAT’S something to work with! It provides an excellent picture of the survivors state AND does a great job communicating the danger of the mission to the party. The adventure is meant to be a one-shot so we can ignore the usual list of issues I have with parties being sent on missions. It’s also possible that the story has slipped out and the party hears of it in a tavern and seek the riches on their own … which is a great way to introduce this without the straightjacket of the mission. There is a GREAT selection of NPC hirelings offered. They have exactly one line of flavor text each and that one line does wonders for a DM wanting to run them and give them character. Chuthok (another ex-Zao warrior, mystified by much in the world outside of the scope of his tribal culture): Phlonx (son of a local settler, nervous and likely to bolt under duress): Q’tang (a steady bowman currently dedicated to staying drunk when off duty): Oothu (brave and loyal expatriate warrior of the Zao people, a tribe of hill barbarians): That is a GREAT batch of guys to take on an adventure. There’s more enough in those four sentences to perk up any lull time in the dungeon. That is the perfect amount and type of detail needed.

What follows this introduction is a bit strange. Seven and a half pages of text describing the environment of the dungeon and other referee notes. The first page or so is the actually background information. Some of it is advice, some of it is an explanation of the Mythic Underworld, some details about the McGuffin, some advice about character deaths and so on. It’s full of good advice but much of it feels extraneous to me. Perhaps as an introductory adventure to S&W style it’s appropriate. There’s more good stuff here, a variety of petty gods in Sholtis S&W style. The invisible giant that eats soldiers and evidentially poops out undead is a nice touch, as is the floating glowing giant ball of snakes. This ain’t 2E Dorothy. The dungeon entrance proper is in a cavern at the base of a tall cliff, with a hole in the ground and an iron ladder descending 1000 feet. This is common in Mythic Underworld settings. The barrier to be crossed from the real world to the dungeon is a clear one, there’s no mistaking it at all and every PLAYER knows adventure is RIGHT THERE.

The rest of the background is devoted to random encounters, random events, and competing adventuring parties. Sudden blackouts, weird whirlwinds, seismic gas, cave lightning and the Procession of Skulls compete to freak out the players. This, alone, makes the adventure. Again, THIS IS A DIFFERENT PLACE is clearly communicated. These are all great encounters, especially the skulls. But wait, that’s not all! There’s also the competing parties! How about Professor Zabon Gormontine, the Robot Master? He’s got a death ray and a couple of terminator-like robots with him. And is from 3000 years in the future. And his goal is the total destruction of all organic life. Uh … I said Gonzo, right? There’s also Dr. Thontorius, the bear man. He’s also from the future. He was the professors office-mate. And then there’s Solgum the Resplendent, an arch-mage sorcerer on the rise, along with his newt-men. Oh, and the snake-thingy petty-god, Thrantrix the Ineffable, who may recruit the party to it’s cause. That’s a lot. But that’s not even the wandering monsters! Mind-bats, fibre-bomb beetles, flaming hounds, martian ape, Hrrk and Krrg, Twin Princes of the Magmen! Psychotic Cyclops, Chaos flies hauling carrion! Did you go buy Knockspell #5 yet? No? You’re an idiot. This is one is GREAT and I haven’t even gotten to the encounters yet!

How about some of those encounters, eh? How about the googolpede, a seemingly endless giant centipede coming out of a hole in one wall and going in to another across the tunnel. Gotta jump it to get by! Or maybe you’d be interested in the trail of dead underworld horrors left by the Prince and the Captains warband? You SHOULD be following those. I especially like the maggots crawling the skin and the inrush of giant centipedes to feed on them if the adventurers free the maggots from one of the corpses. Sweet! Anyone want to tranport to the future and deal with the paparazzi in the broom closet of the office the Professor and Dr left from? Or explore a space ship? Or maybe have a friendly chat with two fungus-men gossiping with their Mantis-Devil buddy? With only 15 encounters this place is packed FULL of stuff to mess with and explore. It’s insane how much is packed in to here. The actual adventure shouldn’t be too hard as long as the party remembers what they are in the dungeon for. There’s a LOT of 20 HD dudes running around … messing with them is a 1-way ticket to the Procession of Skulls. But they are really just a big red button/trap. Everyone knows you shouldn’t mess with that stuff and since they aren’t immediately hostile they are more like traps than combat encounters.

The monsters are, as previously described, almost all unique. Those guys that memorize the monster manual are going to have their heads explore. I LOVE new monsters, especially in a setting like this, since they do a great job further communicating the unknown and bizarre nature of the environment the party is in. The magic items, and the place is thick with them, are a great disappointment. +2 battleaxe. +1 chainmail. +2 shield. Ug. This is one of the few areas in which the adventure could be improved. Tossing in normal magic items after all the group has seen is SUCH a let down. I’m not sure what happened here … it’s almost like they were thrown in as an afterthought.

This is available on DriveThru. AND there’s another, standalone version as well, that augments and expands what’s presented in the Knockspell version.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88793/Knockspell-5?affiliate_id=1892600

by Bill Silvey
Knockspell Magazine
0/1e, S&W
Levels 7-9

This seems like ‘just another lair assault’ adventure but has some interesting possibilities if work were put in to it. And if you can ignore the bizarre way the lair was populated.Uh … so … if you can take the core concept and work up a different implementation then you could have something decent to play.

The local village priests have converted to a new god that hangs out in a temple ruin nearby. The new god demands tribute and human sacrifices (but the priests are’t evil … uh, yeah, right …) Most of the villagers are ok with this, such is the price of freedom! What the FUCK is wrong with villagers these days? They don’t move? No, far fucking better to hand over your kids as human sacrifices than run? There’s some throw-away text about the town militia ejecting meddlers from the town. Here lies the central issue with the adventure. The town is actually a decent little set up but it needs to be expanded on. Converted priests, dejected villagers, villagers who have hired the mercenaries, people hiding their kids, abandoning town, this is all great stuff, it just needs to be expanded on with some personalities and more descriptive faction write up. Without it then the DM has ALL of the work to create it. That’s not exactly what I’m looking for in an adventure.

The actual adventure is … I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s like someone took a random map off of the internet and took an adventure and put it on the map. The map is just a branching corridor design. Rooms and hallways branch off of other hallways and rooms. That means there is only one way to get to the Mountain God. And it’s behind a concealed door. WHich has a room with Doppleganger invaders. Beyond which are three submerged rooms full of green slime. Behind which is a guard room with four giants. There’s a secret door in that room that they use to get to their sleeping chambers. Past which is the Mountain King, another giant. That seems like a pretty rough gauntlet to run, even for giants. That’s the bizarre part and the seemingly random part. Other places are kind of like that also. The temple has a pet owl bear, but to get to it to feed the guards have to go past a mean troll not aligned with the temple. Huh? Guards and guys live behind very secret doors … it just makes no sense in many places.

The ideas behind some of the encounters are not that bad. You’ve got human bandits who are now guards. You’ve got orc guards. You’ve got ogres. You’ve got guard captains. You’ve got minor priests and major priests. Most of them some some comment about them. The former bandits are there for loot. Some of the ogres don’t like it here. Some of them do. The whole place is just screaming out for a little more details and some factions. Expand the personalities JUST a bit and expand the storyline just a bit as well: set them up as raiders and slowly taing over a couple of villagers and throw in a raid or two for the party to experience and get a taste of the factions and some foreshadowing of the main villains. That would all be pretty cool. But it ain’t here. Parts of the complex have some decent encounters. A statue that kills/gives wishes is nice, as is the sunken temple area. But there’s not enough weird stuff to save it and the treasure, both mundane and magic, is pretty boring standard affairs. “3 gems worth 1500go each” and the like.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88793/Knockspell-5?affiliate_id=1892600

by Jeffrey P. Talanian
Knockspell Magazine
AS&S
Levels 1-3

Fair Warning: Talanian has a writing & DM style that annoys the hell out of me. He also let me out of my Kickstarter pledge for AS&S, so this is more a case of clashing style preferences than “he’s a jerk.” (Besides, it should be obvious by now that _I’M_ the jerk in any pairing that includes me.) I should also mention that I played this adventure at GaryCon and left halfway through because I way having a miserable time. (See Above.)

Oh boy, we get to clean the basemen out of giant rats! How exciting! Maybe there’s a way to make this cool. Maybe this adventure does it. Either way “giant rats in the basement” is an impossibly hard sell. This one has slightly more background data than the others. You can go investigate the widow’s err … taverns, upper floor and first floor. There you’ll find … giant rats! Oh, there’s holes in the walls, and there’s a bloody crib, there’s a crate of silverware worth 100gp and there’s a whole lot of nothing that is wrapped in Talanian text. Yes, it’s only about 3/4 of a page of text, but for some reason it annoys me. It’s detail added for the sake of detail without any game impact. Thanks, but I can do that. I’m looking for inspiration to help me add that detail. These descriptions relate former uses of rooms and descriptions of the past that SERIOUSLY make me think someone would rather be a published author. I feel like I’m having a thesaurus shoved down my throat for no good reason. I feel cheated.

The basement has … Giant Rats! It also has a big fucking No-No. There’s a secret door in the basement behind which the adventure is. There’s no clue. There’s just a secret door. There’s no reason it should be there. There are no hints. It’s well hidden. Without finding it the adventure is over.

Past that secret door are … more rats! Oh, and 6 skeletons. And a 5HD rat. And wonderful flavor text like telling me that the skeletons wear capes made of homespun cloth. It’s almost like every single description has to have several modifiers in front of every noun and verb in the hopes that some of it will stick and be cool. There are two decent encounters in the basement: a demon rat and a demon skeleton. Those are nice classic endings to a giant rat adventure in the basement. Redeemed! Well, maybe not. Most of the adventure is a lame slog except for those two images.

The treasure is a weird mix of good and bad. All of that extraneous adjective/adverb insertion does an ok job with the mundane treasure at points. A golden statue of Cthulhu, or a book of sacrificial rites or a set of gowns inlaid with jewels in a constellation pattern. Not bad. The magic items though almost certainly suffer. +1 silver dagger. +1 halbred. Hey, how about some descriptive language there? There’s great non-standard effects that happen with statues and curses but that doesn’t get extended to the magic items at all; they are all book. That’s quite disappointing.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/93700/Knockspell-4?affiliate_id=1892600

by Matt Finch
Knockspell Magazine
Swords & Wizardry
Levels 2-4

Knockspell #3 is quite the little guy. Three great adventures AND a city from Gabor Lux. Sweet Issue!

I apologize in advance; I’m back from a three martini lunch. This is an adventure in a two-level wizards tower. There’s lots of weird wizard stuff to play with in the rooms. It’s not one of the designers strongest, but a sucky Ai Weiwei is still an Ai Weiwei.

Ought oh! There’s been no activity at the wizards tower for a week, since that weird earthquake … Time to loot it! Woo Hoo!

Hmmm, what to say, what to say … this little work-a-day adventure is sprinkled with two or three types of rooms. As the characters explore they will encounter rooms with weird wizard stuff and rooms with clues as to what happened in the tower. The clues are really necessary to playing the adventure, they probably just assist a bit in the finale room and provide the players ‘stuff to figure out.’ That’s not a bad thing, at all. Players LUV to figure out what is going on. They love to feel like they are getting one over on the DM and that they’ve figured out the internal logic of the adventure. Any decent party is going to come out of this adventure with a pretty good idea of what happened in the tower, and why, as well as figuring out, maybe, a way to use the tower to their advantage. This is often interwoven with the weird wizard stuff rooms and, in at least one case, an open-ended puzzle. You see, the tower is actually four level but the upper two levels are full of corrosive gas. If the players can clear it out they can explore it, or maybe take it over as their home base. Except it’s in the middle of town and clearing it out probably means flooding parts of the town with corrosive poison gas. Just the kind of stuff that encourages players to come up with crazy schemes and leads to other adventure ideas in town, from tax issues to poison gas fallout. Locating this tower in town open ALL sorts of possibilities for further play and I love to see that. It’s not just “ye old corridor that leads to the DM’s own dungeon” but the whole host of town possibilities and the fun fun fun social work that goes along with it. Levels 2-4 may be a little low to give the players a home base, but it also gives them a reason to keep looking for loot.

The weird wizard stuff is nice & weird, although sometimes … inconsistent? There are spider bots in one room with mechanical legs and bodies made up of glass globes with sloshing greenish liquid. That’s a GREAT monster, very evocative. It instantly communicates DANGER, in much the way big fangs dripping with ichor does, but somehow in more terrifying way (to me anyway.) When the adventure is doing things like that then it’s wonderful. Half stone raving lunatics with independent sides are another example of a great monster that brings to pain. Goofy lab rats with weird mutations work well also. Up against this the more mundane monsters, stone dogs and stirges, seem tame by comparison. There are pipes and gasses to play with, broken traps to scare the shit out of the layers, and a giant tentacle beast with a name right out of Iron Maiden: Gorthorog. There are alchemical vats with potions in them, and weird magical sediment., and spell books galore. There’s a nice samovar to loot, mundane good to take home, lab gear to sell, and a statue to pluck the jeweled eyes out of.

You could easily insert this in the way Death Love Doom worked its hook, but without all of the shock-value viscera of that adventure.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88794/Knockspell-Magazine-3?affiliate_id=1892600

 

by R. Lawrence Blake
Knockspell Magazine
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-5

A decent little romp through a pyramid ‘labyrinth’ dungeon, complete with minotaurs. It’s got a heavy trick/trap ratio, shit that don’t make sense, and is a wonderful little place to adventure for an evening or two. It’s doesn’t have a weird or OD&D vibe but it does bring the BASIC nostalgia.

Bullshit backstory bullshit backstory bullshit backstory bullshit backstory bullshit backstory bullshit backstory bullshit backstory. There’s a giant pyramid in the wilderness with a set of stairs going up the side. Who wants to check it out? That’s all you really know about the place. The bullshit talks about wizards, keys, hybrids, blah blah blah blah. There’s a fricking giant pyramid in the wilderness with a set of stairs going up one side. THAT’S a hook. Tarvin, no self-respecting murder hobo could avoid climbing those stairs and going inside after stumbling across it while out and about. MYSTERY! IMPLIED PHAT L00T! What ho my jolly fellows; Forward! To Adventure!

The map is sufficiently complex to screw with the players. Generally two exits from rooms, dead end hallways, branching hallways, teleporters, etc. The map LOOKS like a labyrinth without looking like a FORCED labyrinth map, if that makes sense. I have no idea how that translates in to play but I’d guess it’s reasonable to assume that the players will get the labyrinth vibe. There’s a small amount of other features on the map also. Mini-pyramids, giant pits, small pits, statues, rubble, cobwebs … it helps break up the monotony of a map. I mentioned above that there are things that don’t make sense. I’m going to complain about that exactly once and then let it go. The inhabitants are a pain in the ass. Minotaur guards, dopplegangers, and shadows. WTF are they all doing living in harmony down there? How do the minotaurs get in a& out and why do the undead not kill them? Makes no sense. Ok, bitching complete. I shall now ignore it and/or place it in the ‘nostalgic charm’ category. Still, with wanderers showing up every hour with a 60% chance, there are a lot of the bastards running around the place.

The encounters are pretty much all some derivation of the classics. A giant bronze ball rolling back and forth in a hallway. A room with a sunken floor covered by fire and a small ledge around the pit, with a statue at the far end. A pit with a jeweled scepter in it; pulling it causes a stone block to drop in to the pit. A room with a well in it and skeletons manacled up to a wall. CLASSICS. I LUV the classics. At nine or ten encounters to the page they provide a decent amount of detail without going totally overboard on descriptive text, which is just about how I like it. I’m not sure how to describe the feel of the place. It’s almost like a funhouse dungeon but it doesn’t go over the top the way, say, Inverness does. But there’s still a lot of strange shit all thrown together down here just because it would be fun to play through. Oh, and it’s got a torch in a sconce that, once removed, opens a secret door. BAD ASS. It’s not a joke dungeon and the actual rooms don’t feel all that forced.

The treasure is mostly plain old stuff: ring of regeneration, 10 pieces of jewelry worth 100gp each, wand of cold, etc. All book, all boring, all generic. I like my treasure with more descriptions and more non-standard. This is the most disappointing part of the adventure for me. Instead of boring old coinage there could have been small bull-headed idols made of ivory and gold, or maybe even some kind of … Golden Calf? That would have been good for a laugh. If I found a golden calf in D&D I’d mount it on top of my house and place guards around it to show it off. Now THAT would have been cool treasure. Mosaics of jewels on the walls, or maybe silver plate to salvage, all of that would have been cool. Similarly, portions that grow minotaur horns, or horns of minotaur summoning, or iffy-phalus idols, those could have been cool magic items. Instead we get “1 gem worth 150gp” and “wand of cold.” SAD FACE

I like the encounters here. Maybe it’s just nostalgia or charm, but this seems like a great little thing to pull out and just play D&D.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88794/Knockspell-Magazine-3?affiliate_id=1892600

by Joseph Pallai
Freely Distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 12-14

It’s the Tomb of Horrors. Do you like the Tomb of Horrors? If you do then you’ll like this. If you think the Tomb is a pain in the ass and not much fun then you won’t like this. Oh, and the intro states that S1 is Gygax’s masterpiece. BZZZZ. Thanks for playing.

This Tomb is meant to be played prior to the real one. It has several clues to the location of the real Tomb of Horrors and some misleading encounters that will help the party get the full Tomb of Horrors experiences once they make it there. For example, there’s a green devil face whose mouth can be climbed in to and searched. This would tend to encourage players to do the same in the real Tomb, to predictable results. There are several encounters like this and several themes repeated, such as the hunt for triple keys to unlock things, etc. The triple entrance seems to be favorite of Tomb of Horrors clones and it makes an appearance once again here.

I find it super interesting that Acererak would leave real treasure in his false tomb, as well as clues to his real tomb. What’s the point of that buddy? A throne set with giant expensive rubies? What, are you just tossing those out, they aren’t worth putting in your main tomb? And why do you have that Mist of Miracles in your tomb? To give robbers wishes and experience levels? I think not. Weird.

As for the rest, you know the deal. Save or Die. Touch it and take damage. Demons materialize in. Die with no save. Go blind with no save. Generic treasure. Generic magic items Generic monsters. Yeah, it’s s super deadly tomb and the room entries are long, just like in S1. Yeah, there’s a lot set pieces and a lot of stuff that has to be used in just the right way and a lot of pixel-bitching traps and secrets and the like. It’s the Tomb. That’s what the Tomb is.

Want a Tomb of Horrors? Go get this. Or The Howling Hills. Or anything by Alphonso Warden. Those all think The Tomb is a Gygax masterpiece also. If you think the Tomb of Horrors did real damage to D&D by teaching the wrong lessons, like, say, “it’s Gygax’s masterpiece!” then this ain’t for you. Or me.

(Although … using Howling Hills and this adventure just before the actual Tomb could be cool. A kind of trail with some practice runs. If you and you players are masochists.)

by Brian Wells
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 2-4

This is a short little assault/infiltration of a bandit lair that it set in to a cliffside. Decent loot and an attempt at a decent location differentiate this one. The mini-note map formats at the end of the adventure are in an interesting format.

Caravan attacked, bandits, daughter taken hostage .. the usual crew starts this adventure off. It is distinguished by a couple of extra lines in the descriptions to help the DM kick things off. The caravan survivors gather around a wagon and prepare for attack when the party approaches. The bandits leave people behind at their turn-off to watch their rear. Those are among the sorts of little extra details that distinguish this adventure from many others that use these same elements. Those sorts of detail are not much and they tend to be buried in a lot of extra text, but the do provide that extra bit of zip for the DM to work with.

The bandit lair is more of the same, both good and bad.The lair sits on a edge on a cliff ledge with some ruined buildings that have been recent rebuilt and refortified. A corral full of horses and livestock sits outside. An outcropping of jade is nearby in the cliffside. The ‘fort’ has arrow slits. With 24 or so defenders this is going to be a tough nut for the party to crack. I like these sorts of set ups; just a fortification with guards and some brief guard descriptions and a kind of ‘mission impossible’ base assault type feel. That’s usually the type of thing that spawns crazy PC plans that always end with major amounts of fun.

The interior rooms, about nine or so, are nothing special. There’s a great deal of text, several long paragraphs in most cases, that describes the rooms. These are generally of not much use. Just detailed descriptions of the minutia that makes up the rooms, some geographic information and a little bit of “70% chance of 1d2 bandits during the daytime” type of information. There’s little in the room descriptions to assist a DM in running an exciting or interesting room, just the minutia of everyday life.

The treasure IS interesting through. I already mentioned the jade deposit in the cliffside. The reward from the merchant for his daughter is 200# of raw silver ore. Pearl earrings, animal pelts like beaver, min and fox, bolts of fine cloth, and other trade goods abound as treasure. The magic items are not stellar; while there is a Rod of Pass Without Trace the rest of the items are just book magic: +1 swords and bows and arrows and boring old potions. I wish as much effort had gone in to the magic items as went in to the mundane treasure; it would have added wonderfully to the adventure.

The maps are interesting. There are three at the end and they contain most of the key information for the adventure. The rough notes, the key monsters stats and the like. I’m not sure if this is the ‘original adventure’ that the more detailed write up was based off of or if it’s just a play aid. Either way it is a great way to summarize the adventure for the DM and is PROBABLY the only thing a decent DM needs to run the adventure. This sort of consideration for Actual Play is something I wish more adventures would do.

by Brian Wells
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This is a short adventure through a small haunted roadside inn. It has a couple of decent elements but devolves in to “find and figure out the one clue we need to get the treasure.” It suffers from text bloat.

While traveling as caravan guards the party hears a story one night of a nearby inn that’s haunted, and rumored to be full of coin. They can pop over during the night and explore the inn, getting back in the morning to continue their service. While the read-aloud backstory is insufferable the whole concept is a good one. You’re caravan guards/travelers and each night the other guys tell stories and the like to pass the time. One night after a particularly gruesome story one of the guards says “Don’t take my road for it; there’s the road that leads to the inn” That’s a pretty decent little set up. It’ takes a page and half to get there but the seed of it is good because it’s a classic. Telling stories, daring your buddies, and taking a detour while at work? Great pretext.

The inn has two levels, a burned down smithy, a ruined stable that a tree has fallen on, and, inexplicably, a jailers cage out front. Herein lies the second cool feature of the adventure. The boney rags in the cage rise up to reveal an undead who pleads for freedom so it can avenge its death. Woah! That’s a different sort of undead. It doesn’t just kill the party? It’s not just a mindless automaton that exists to get slaughtered? It’s actually undead for a reason and asks the group for help?! That’s a nice touch and the group that helps it will find the inn adventure just a little easier since he summons the souls of the other dead inn ghosts, those that want to be avenged. Undead dude gathering unjustly killed other undead dudes to seek vengeance? Another classic and well worth a tip of the hap. This is the sort of thing I’d love to see more of in D&D. Not just something to hack down but creatures with a motivation that the party can take advantage of. It’s a puzzle! It’s a social encounter! It’s a monster! No, it’s all three! Yeah! ANd it’s SOOOOO much more interesting than just having the undead rise up and betray the party or attack them. Where are they going? Who are they avenging? Who screwed them over? Those are the kind of mysteries that fester in the back of the players mind, their unconscious minds working to build up imagery and stories to explain them away. Score!

The rest of the adventure is a bit of a let-down, but those two beginning things are hard to follow. Just some empty inn rooms with overly-long description, a couple of carrion crawlers and some giant bats. At best the party will find a clue to a secret treasure room. That’s good, it rewards careful play and players LOVE it when they can figure something out; like the clue to find the treasure room. There’s another good bit where the skeleton/bodies on the first floor animate and attack as the players enter the cellar, the party hearing them drag themselves across the floor on the first and approaching the stairs down. That’s a nice bit of build-up.

The mundane treasure is great; trade goods, spices, tools, etc. It’s bulky, hard to haul away, and obviously worth cash. That creates the kind of complications I like. What about your job on the caravan? How are you going to haul it all away to sell? Not so much a screw job as an interesting complication. The only magic item is a simple +1 dagger. Straight out of the book but at least it glows in the dark. There’s a decent little follow-up to the adventure where the party hears of a large group of undead that attacked a certain keep and killed it’s owner before collapsing in to dust … another great reminder that the parties actions have consequences. And, parties LOVE to hear their exploits. 🙂

The inn proper can be a bit boring, and perhaps needs some fast play to move through parts of it. It’s surrounded by a surprisingly decent amount of good material

by Thulsa
Freely distributed by Dragonsfoot
AD&D
Levels 4-6

The shimmering shaft of the tower rose frostily in the stars. In the sunlight it shone so dazzlingly that few could bear its glare, and men said it was built of silver. It was round, a slim perfect cylinder, a hundred and fifty feet in height, and its rim glittered in the starlight with the great jewels which crusted it. The tower stood among the waving exotic trees of a garden raised high above the general level of the city. Robert E. Howard: “The Tower of the Elephant”

As the blurb suggests, this is an homage to a Conan story and involves a raid on a wizards tower. A bit wordy but it mimics the style of the Conan stories well: human guards, vile sorcerers, strange beasts, all wrapped up in a tower shell. It’s best when it emulates the source material and the worst when it tries to provide detail on things missing from the Howard. But that’s a guess based on not having read the Howard story behind the adventure.

The temple district of Arenjun, the notorious City of Thieves, houses a strange tower said to have erected overnight by sorcerer Yara. Three hundred years old and possessor of the fabled Heart of the Elephant jewel, no thief dares an attempt to steal it. If that sound cool it should. It’s from a Howard story and so forms the basis of our hobby; very close to the platonic forms of D&D. Therein is the strength and weakness of this adventure. When true to Howard it has some VERY inspiring language attached to it. When going beyond that it is lacking. Further, it’s not clear to me that the iconic imagery can be communicated to the players and bring them in to the fold.

There’s just a tower in a named city; the background here is very spartan. I suspect that reading the story would help some but you do get enough of a sense of the city: its every city in every Conan story you’ve ever seen ripped off, from the books to the movies to every Conan adventure and RPG. There’s a rumor table with seven entries that bring the Conan also: Even the king of Zamora fears Yara’s power. The king drinks heavily to dampen his fears. Together the rumors build up a fearsome reputation; I sincerely hope that any group of players in this adventure hang out A LOT in taverns. The rumors, taken as a whole, are just too good to leave sitting in the adventure.

The tower is surrounded by a double wall with human guards during the day and lions at night patrolling the grounds. SILENT lions at that. That’s pretty cool; I always dig human-centric adventurers and tossing in some lions only makes the Conan elements seem to spring to life more. The maps are just a a tower map, a couple of stairs on each level and a balcony that can be the target of a grappling hook are the extent of the clever mapping. The interior descriptions range from very good mimicry of Howard to poor padding. “The stairs lead down to 5-1” or “the stairs lead up to 3-2” is not inspiring text. Nor is a listing of the contents the mundane things in the armory. Bronze doors, floors of lapis and green forgotten doors of bronze do much better job of communicating the flavor.There’s a spider-god temple and a strange elephant man, the mad sorcerer and a blobish zombie to temper the mundane and weird it up. These elements al feel right at home; presumably because they were in the Howard story.

What’s not at home at the bullshit D&D elements. IE: Deviations from the Howard are weaker elements. Giving all the human guards +3 leather and magic swords helps the designer explain, mechanically, why they have a lower AC. It’s also a huge pain in the ass to deal with the consequences, hard to explain, and doesn’t fit with the Howard. How about … giving the guards a +1 to hit or 1 more HD or just giving them a lower AC? “But! Bt! But that’s not kosher with the rules for AD&D!” Fuck the rules. You’re the DM, you can do anything you want. It’s magic, you ain’t gotta explain shit. In fact, NOT explaining helps communicate a weird and wonderful setting better than explaining. There’s gotta be mystery for the players minds, and the DMs, to fill in. Wonder & Whimsy are not derived from 18 identical sets of +3 leather and +1 swords. FUCK. THE. RULES. This problem extends to the magic items. They are boring. Portion of healing. Potion of heroism. Necklace of prayer beads. Ring of protection. +3 dagger. B.O.R.I.N.G. Dude is supposed to be some kind of reprobate sorcerer, give him some reprobate sorcerer shit. not a bunch of book items. The mundane treasure is better, and from the Howard I’d guess. Gold from the mines of Ophir and file silks from far-off Kjitai mixed with Kothian silver … now that’s the kind of flavor-text loot I can dig!