Tomb of the Bull King

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

pic525042_md

by Carlos de la Cruz Morales
Freely distributed by Legendary Games Studio
Mazes & Minotaurs (D&D)
Level 3+

A sinister curse has fallen on the colony of Coristea. Ancient powers have awakened, forgotten secrets have been unearthed and dark monsters once again threaten the land of men. Will your heroes brave the dangers and mysteries of the Tomb of the Bull King?

Holy shit, how have I missed this? This is a large adventure with 245 keyed encounters described over 211 pages that takes place on a greek island. It has VERY strong roots in greek mythology. It’s for the Mazes & Minotaurs game. That game postulates what D&D would look like if Gygax developed the game around Greek myths instead of Tolkein. It’s close enough to D&D that you can it on it fly without too much trouble, but I suspect the core rules (also free) would add a lot to the experience of running this. It’s set in a floor-plan of what looks like the actual palace of King Minos of Crete aka: the original home of the original Minotaur!. It also looks like many of the rooms in the adventure are based on the actual rooms in the palace. The floor-plans, “greek-based D&D” and “actual rooms” are not gimmicks. They all work out really well. This is TOTALLY worth checking out. It ends with a bad ass EPIC mass battle. Sweet Adventure!

You need to go download this. NOW. Looks, I’m even going to give you the link. This is it: http://mazesandminotaurs.free.fr/TOMB.html Click on it. DO IT! DO IT NOW! It is TOTALLY worth it. This is the kind of thing you are looking for when cruising the Internet looking for content. This is the sort of awesome thing that is out there, hiding behind all of the other dreck. Yeah, it’s for a clone that you don’t know anything about. Macht Nichts. The clone is free and it’s close enough to D&D that you don’t need it. [And is one of the more interesting ones, I’d say, just from what I’ve learned about it from the module.] You’re looking at a full on D&D-like game, but based in greek mythology instead of the default Tolkein-land of standard D&D. What’s great about this is that it FEELS like what’s it trying to do, or at least the adventure does. I’m no scholar of greek myth and history. All I know is from pouring over mythology books as a kid and watching Harryhausen films. This FEELS like that. A little bit of the classic greek myth, a little bit of the silly monsters, and a test that communicates both.

The three page into/background feels like a greek myth. Kings with hubris. Brothers loving sisters. Betrayal. All of that great greek undercurrent, all of those classic tropes, presented in a brief little bit of history on the situation. I usually rail about longish intro stuff. Not this time. It moves fast and it does a great job of communicating some classic greek tropes without ever feeling heavy-handed or forced. The hooks try to follow this up but, perhaps, fall a little short. I’m torn here. One the one had they are classics but they seem … just a bit flat? Terse? I don’t know. Oracles, heralds, Hermes relaying a message from Zeus … they all have a bit of greek flavor to them, even though they are just two sentences long. This ‘greek tropes’ show up again on the island when the players reach the main city/town. There are three little flavor encounters presented, each just a couple of sentences long, that serve to set the mood for the palace encounter/meeting/job interview. A street fight between townies and immigrants, a grieving man wailing and shouting omens. Bloody symbols above doorways no one will talk about. This does an EXCELLENT job of creating a certain mood and acting as a build-up to the main event in the city, the job interview with a wounded king. You see, he was wounded by the demon minotaur and his sage says he needs the horns of the beast to be healed (Classic!) and the party is tasked to go get them. I don’t like job assignments in my D&D but this is GREEK D&D. If we ignore poor old Gil then this is the origin of much of our western hero. You get a pass on being stale when you create the trope. Besides, it’s well done. The king asks your names, your family history, to hear tales of your deeds. All of the usual stuff kings do in old stories. Sweet! If you gotta be a hero then you should be treated like one in a non-throw-away fashion, and this does that.

The main adventure is in an old ruined palace in the middle of the island. It’s a pretty sweet map! Probably because it’s THE REAL RIGGING MAP OF THE PALACE OF KING MINOR OF KNOSSOS! You know, of Mr Minotaur and Mr Maze claim to fame? It’s complex. REALLY complex. This one if going to take some time to explore. Several different ways in. Several areas open to the air as courtyards. Lots of hallways, lots of “sub-areas.” I suspect that the party can get to almost any section of the map quickly if they were to choose to. It’s a pretty decent open-concept setting style map. You might think of them as a large number of lair maps laid out and placed next to each other. Google the real floorplan, it’s the actual map used. Some areas have wanderers, some don’t. The wanderers are usually guards of the area you are in, the ‘Lair monsters’ out patrolling.

There’s a pretty strong diversity of encounters between traps, unusual stuff/tricks, and monsters. There are a METRIC FUCK TON of factions running around this place, each in their own little sub-section lair. The idea is that the group will travel around meeting them, interacting with them, killing them, allying with them, hunting them, getting hunted, and maybe going on a quest or two for them. There are prisoners to free, jewels to recover, tombs to find … a WHOLE lot is going on. It reminds me a bit of the Lost City of Gaxmoor … I haven’t read that but The Pretty Girl ran it for a few months and it seems very similar. There’s a pretty good feel that the place has a life of its own and the group is just coming in and getting in the middle of it. It’s a great location sandbox to have adventures in. The very end of the adventure, where the Bull King is met, is the only slightly railroady part. When fighting him the battle has two parts: a solo battle and a mass combat. Not every railroad is bad and this is a good example of a good one. After an EPIC long adventure in the ruins the adventure needs a climactic end and this happens. The Bull King summons his horde from the pits and then the parties allies that they’ve made show up to do battle. The bad guys can have ogres, boarmen, wolfmen, goatheaded demons, skeletons, ophion, harpies and The Beastlord (and his minions). Giant snakes, trog, wildmen, a dragon, griffens, cyclopes, and a bronze colossos can show up to help the party! All the while the shades of the undead erupt from the pit from the underworld and are joined in battle by brave ghostly warriors … While the Judge of he Underworld and The Queen watch the battle from a balcony overhead!That, kiddos, is a fucking payoff! You’ve been in this place for MONTHS of player time. You’ve killed tons of bad guys (which deplete their forces for the final battle) and maybe made some allies (or killed them) or done some deeds (like help a mage get some jewels so he can finish his statue work.) Then, at the end, it all pays off. You had very little idea but BAM! As a player that’s exactly the kind of payoff you want after a hard long game. This is the kind of shit that all of those railroady things try to do and fail at. That’s because there’s no investment in those things. In this the players have worked their asses off and gained some familiarity with the place. When the good ghosts show up that MEANS something to the players because they helped enable it and were not expecting it. Their actions had consequences. Your players are going to remember this for a LONG time to come. And did I mention that the wildmen can ride giant spiders?!?! This ain’t some boring old AD&D thing. This is just as bad ass as ASE1, but in a classical way.

I totally want to ditch my entire campaign now and run this. I’m not sure there is higher praise.

 

Oh, and you TOTALLY have to put AC/DC ‘Thunderstruck’ on repeat during that final battle!

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 5 Comments

The Slave Pits of Abhoth

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

a

by David Eynon
Freely Distributed by Prokopius Press
Labyrinth Lord
Levels

This is a reimaging of the A series of modules. It uses Realms of the Crawling Chaos to give it a different feel and carries over very little from the original series. Crawling Chaos does give a nice alien/weird/Kua Toa feel but the adventure is hampered by a lack of above-ground activity. It tries to be minimalist. It succeeds. Minimalism sucks and lacks flavor. This could be turned in to something very awesome if someone put some effort in to it. Like, say, You, Mr. Home GM.

I’m gonna say, right up front, I don’t know if this review is fair. The designer set out to do certain things. They did them. I disagree with some of the choices made. I don’t think they work.

The A-series of modules, Slavers, make a pretty good tournament module series and a pretty crappy series for anything OTHER than a tournament. Linear, non-sensical, and without a decent set up. G1 didn’t have a set up but it didn’t need it. A1 does. The designer has taken the core concepts of the A series and reworked them in to something that is completely different. Gone are the boring old A series slavers. They have been replaced with Deep Ones (and company) from the Realm of the Crawling Chaos Lovecraft supplement. This works and it works WELL. Gone is any moral ambiguity about saving people from slavers. Now we’ve abominations running about capturing people for breeding, selling them for slaves, melting them, and all sorts of other nefarious purposes. Deep Ones work perfectly, as does the Lovecraft mythos. This should come as no surprise since it worked so well in the original Innsmouth story.

One of the major flaws comes to the top immediately: the surface sucks. There is a very small amount of text, about a page, that describes four locations on e island. There is also about two pages describing a village on the island. The village, island, and a couple of other places, are completely unsatisfying. They lack anything that would allow a DM to run them as anything other than a hack. They are just a collection of place descriptions with monster descriptions in them. Buy this I mean they are in ‘Dungeon Format’ mode. “A small hovel with two halfbreeds in it.” and so on. The players are investigating a slave ring but all you get is ‘monster format.’ There’s no suggestion of conspiracy. There’s no list of personages to be found. I guess that once you get on the island you are just expected to start hacking until you reach the end. That’s a shame. Taking the emulation of Innsmouth a bit further could have resulted in a wonderful town/area setting with an underlying cult activity. Something like N1 maybe. Instead we get next to nothing useful. I know there’s a dichotomy between drop in material and depth but this takes the situation to an extreme. Given that this was a problem with the A series I wish it would have been included.

The dungeon is pretty big, 140 rooms or so. There are multiple entrances to it over the island but ultimately it is just a series of small lair dungeon tied together with linear sections. This is EXTREMELY disappointing. The maps are large and the maps are visually interesting but they remind me much much more of a 3e or 4e era map, the kind of small cramped sections, than it does a full on Old School design. I can understand connecting different section of the island via tunnels but the ‘area’ dungeons are just a collection of small lairs with simplistic design. This makes the description format vert easy: a small map of 5-8 rooms appears on one page and the descriptions appear on the facing page. Nice & neat. And lame. A couple of branches do little to remove the linearity of the original A series. Yes, you can go Right or Left for a bit, but the dead end of the branch looms large. The maps are cool. They look great. They have great detail. They just don’t provide the exploration element a decent map should provide.

The keying is minimal, and that’s by design. And that design fails. You can key minimally but the minimal key has to provide the seeds that allows the DM to run a great run. “The walls of this room are lined with shelves full of tools” is not a good minimal key. Nor is “the wall of this chamber are covered in iconography.” “The icons are in good condition and depict the lives of the followers of St Cuthbert on the Island.” You’ve got to work to pull out interesting things in these. The rooms, for the most part, feel static. ‘A’ had issues but it also had some nice encounters. This seems to lack those sorts of encounters. Just rooms with monsters in them. Cthulhu-esque monsters are nice but that doesn’t make up for the extra bits of fluff that are missing. There’s also a lot of ‘insert your own god here’ or ‘insert some prisoners here.’ I’d prefer to have had the designers in these sections. That would have added some much-needed fluff. I can always replace them on the fly, or planned, on my own while running the adventure. Without that though it seems … empty? It needs more detail to make the rooms come alive. I’m reminded of the ‘The Giants Kitchen’ thread on the therpgsite and how certain edits of that room, while seeming to keep detail, did away with the whimsical nature of the room. The same thing seems to be going on here. The … inspiration? behind each room is missing. That turns it in to just a collection of rooms, all of which run together after awhile. The cthuloid monsters are good, I love new monsters and what they can do to freak out players, and they fit perfectly in this. But, again, they seemingly lack inspiration. They just ARE, with no build up. The build up is missing. Likewise there could have been room for some truly interestnig cthuloid magic items but that doesn’t happen. The mundane treasure is mostly boring (6 gems, 2×50, 2×100, 2×200) and the magic, with a couple of exceptions, is just boring.

The whole thing feels like a bad hex crawl or collection of side-treks instead of a coherent whole. It’s still worth checking out, since it’s free, if only to steal the idea the designer reimagined.

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The Caves of Cormakir the Conjurer

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

b2

by Dave Eynon
Freely Distributed by Prokopius Press
Labyrinth Lord

Answering the question: What if the monsters in BASIC/Moldvay were from the Fiend Folio? What if B2 used those monsters?
Here’s a partial answer …

This is a crawl through a 100 room cave and dungeon complex. It is composed of many sublevels with each sublevel having several exits from it, kind of like Rappan Athuk is laid out. It has a strange vibe to it … it certainly brings the weird but it also seems to interweave the fantastic with the mundane quite a bit, in terms of room descriptions. There’s something interesting here but for the full experience a DM is going to have to spend some time thinking about it and working it up. It’s probably worth it. It is freely distributed so you can take a look for yourself.

THis is a strange little beast. The dungeon presented is clearly inspired by B2, and borrows several themes and general ideas from it, but it doesn’t COPY anything in that module. Completely different map and completely different implementation. Combined with the monsters from the Fiend Folio you get a strange view of how D&D could have started out in a parallel universe and the module that would have launched a bajillion campaigns. It’s NOT the dry old B2 implementation that we’ve all seen before but rather something with a much more Holmes/OD&D feel to it. Transformation pools and weird edible mushrooms, strange machinery and the like. This is a kind of feel that I strongly associate with OD&D and try very hard to incorporate in to my own Magenta games. The combination of those elements with the monsters from the Folio creates something interesting … in feel if not in execution.

There’s a page of background here that does a decent job laying out the core of the dungeon. About a third is recent dungeon history that the players might pick up in a town or settlement. Another third is the actual dungeon origins that can help the DM orient the various rooms. The final third explicitly calls out the themes in the dungeon and some guidelines on running it. Essentially, the dungeon is about greed and the climax will see the players being tested for their greed. The idea is that the group encounters several situations in which greed can take part. Choosing greed probably ends up having some bad consequences. At the end the party has learned, through the accumulation of these experiences, to not touch. I groaned a bit when I read it, but hey, whatever. At least there’s a method to the madness. I’m just not sure how strongly that message is communicated or if it can work at all in a BASIC game. It would seem to me that the PLAYERS have to learn over time how a campaign world works. The ‘rules of the world’ need to be consistent so the players can make well-formed decisions. If the dark always holds monsters then the group knows to be extra careful of the dark, etc. This adventure is meant to drop in but turns on its head one of the fundamental features of an older D&D style: Get the Treasure! As such it almost seems to have a style more at home in 2E or 3E games. I’m still not really clear on this though and I’m conjecturing a bit there.

The maps are pretty varied. Just as in B2 we get an initial outdoor map showing a ravine with five cave entrances, some nearer the floor and some higher up, some closer to the mouth and some closer to the back. Unlike B2 there are some hints, from the outside, of what you’ll find inside. Moist air, humid air, loud clanking sounds, low buzzing sounds, etc. The layout the maps remind me a lot of the Rappan Athuk style. By this I mean that each cave is broken down in to sections and each sections gets its own map. These sections tend to be small and have several entrances and exits from them, both like RA. I’m not sure this style works. I understand what they are trying to do but it feels … disconnected? somehow. I like the various entrances and exits and I like the concept of separate sub-areas: this is the fungus section, this is the Orgillion section, this is the wizards lab section, etc. Themed areas are great in a dungeon and I shouldn’t have to repeat myself again on why multiple entrances/exits are a good thing. I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem like the individual parts are a part of a whole. They clearly ARE, with some bleed over at the edges, but somehow I don’t get that impression. That could just be me? This … smallness? makes me think about the place as a small series of Lair Dungeons rather than as a whole … then again that’s what B2 was, Lair Dungeons, right? The wandering monster tables are just a list of Folio monsters that are found in that section of the dungeon or the nearby sections. It’s pretty bare bones and could use a little more work. Given the ‘this is how D&D could have been’ theme this would have been a good place to do a better job at presenting the wanderers. Giving them a purpose or guidelines on how to use them.

The encounters are … frustrating. A high percentage of them have things going on that are great. Another high percentage just have monster listings, boring descriptions, or a combination of the two. Appeals to a “but B2 …” line of reasoning will be ignored. Further, the ‘greed’ theme that is supposed to be going on doesn’t seem to apply anywhere other than a cursory fashion. “You can see gems on the far wall and 10 bugs in the room.” That’s the essence of the first ‘greed’ situation and meant to help inform on the others. This is pretty much the essence of older D&D: there’s a monster in the room and a treasure … what ya doing? If it’s a GREAT treasure and a POWERFUL monster then all the better … greed/xp motivates the players to think creatively. So … uh … how are these encounters different than those? I don’t think they are, for the most part [More on this topic in the treasure section.] There are goodies in the dungeon to play with. Machines that do things in the more dangerous sections. Different colored mushrooms to eat. Pools or water to get submerged in. Carvings and runes to read. At one point the party should be able to see a bridge over a chasm that has no obvious connection to where they are, strongly invoking Thracia hidden areas. This is all super great stuff and there’s a lot more of it. There are prisoners to free, slaves to revolt, and other things to take part in. There’s also a lot of boring old rooms that may have the addition of a boring monster description in it. “This room is dusty and has 3 Norkers.” or “This Sleeping Quarters has hay and straw in it and is messy and has 5 Norkers in it.” There’s a lot of this. A whole lot. I know that the mundane has to be there for the fantastic to have an impact but it feels like a bit much to me, although that could be personal taste. If the goal is an introductory/teaching module then I think some of the wrong lessons are being taught. There’s some save or die and some sections that I would probably give a hint or two about running … like the mushrooms or some of the wall carvings. The wall carvings are a great example. Some are worth looking at to get hints. Some are just flavor text. Some will do bad things to do. There’s generally no way to tell beforehand. I’m pretty sure the goal should be to reward interaction and examination. So while the goodies are present they could use a little more in the way of extra information to help run them. After all, the back and forth between a DM and player is what this kind of style is about. Maybe that’s meant to be implied but I got the impression this was supposed to be a ‘learning’ module. Anyway, there’s a lot of mundane detail that I was not happy with. This is, I think, the section that needs the most work. If I went through this a third time and worked out the hows and wherefores of the creatures in the dungeon and noted where they were on the map (for incursion response purposes) and did some work on adding some interesting detail then you’d have an REALLY excellent module. Something as good as Many Gates of the Gann, one of the classics and best of the new wave.

The monsters are Fiend Folio guys so you know they are good and unusual. They’ve been converted to BASIC style and are all included in the back. The treasures are likewise pretty good although there’s a strong Screw Job component to them. AKA: the greed theme being implemented. Who wants to take 330,000cp back to town?! Who wants to search the garbage room for 3000cp?! Who wants to remove the giant fossilized skull from wall for 10,000gp?! How about getting the ivory table out of the dungeon? Uh … The treasure is far between and massive when it comes up, all keeping with the greed theme. Of course, there’s a lot of monsters the characters are squishy and gold is the primary way to get XP … so the module is working against a core concept of the game. I like where it is going with its mundane treasure I’m just not sure it makes it there. The magic items are a disappointment in contrast. Just +1 swords and rings of blah and potions of boring book thing and so on. None of it is that interesting and thus more work needs to be done to make them, and the more portable mundane items, more interesting and exciting to the players. +1 swords are boring. AIDRU, SLAYER OF MEN is something to take note of.

I should mention also that there is an attempt at a new description style here. There’s no way I’m going to slam someone for trying something new so let’s consider this section more of an academic discussion and less review. The keyed encounters all have 3 columns. The first column has a sentence or so of a brief description. The second has a more in-depth description or details if the room is further examined. The third column has monster stats or perhaps a game effect. All of this is under a heading like “14: Sleeping Quarters.” I get what is trying to be accomplished here. Some combination of a replacement of read-aloud and “expanding depth” in descriptions along with keeping the game mechanics separated. I’m not sure it works. It limits the amount of encounters per page to five or six. It may also be the case that the format works but the examples all suck. 🙂 This gets back to the ‘boring description’ issue I mentioned up above. It’s not clear to me that this works better than a well-written traditional format (of which there are damn few.) I DO very much like having a room title in the number. That helps A LOT with orienting yourself to a room.

If you like making a dungeon your own then this is the product for you; it’s core is very solid. This is one of those products that I’m not sure of and need to think more about to come to a final conclusion on. They don’t happen often but when they do they usually have something interesting going on, just like this one does. Something Interesting Going On is enough to make my cut, especially when it’s free.

Posted in Level 1, No Regerts, Reviews | 1 Comment

WGH5 – Lords of the Howling Hills

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

wgh5

You have entered the Howling Hills at the behest of the barbarian warlords. You have overcome the humanoids in their fortress dungeon, and you have braved the undead terrors of the storied Tombs. Now, finally, before you is the last obstacle: the vaunted durance of the Lords of the Howling Hills. Will your party survive this final challenge, or will they perish like those before them?

This is a smallish two-level dungeoncrawl. The party is sent to kill a lieutenant of Iuz. It’s a pretty straight hack that will turn in to a pitched mass battle. There’s a book of infinite spells, a green dragon, and an 8th level wizard at the end. It’s the largest crawl in the series. It’s also the most combat heavy and the the most boring. It’s another ‘tournament module without a scoring system” design.

The party is finally nearing the end of their quest to save the cowardly Wolf Nomad barbarians. They are too busy/can’t handle things themselves and thus the party is sent to kill a lieutenant of Iuz, the titular Lord of the Howling Hills. In practice this means a two-level dungeon hack against a supposedly intelligent foe. That’s the first problem. The group is supposed to fighting the intelligent guards of a fortress but they don’t really act in a coordinated manner. It’s more like each room is its own little pocket dimension and everyone outside of it is unaware of what’s going on inside of it. There are a couple of throw-away statement in the (brief) introduction about the inhabitants reacting if they hear noises but that’s as far as it goes. It’s much more likely that “if they hear sounds they prepare for battle and await the intruders.” What kind of reaction is that? Everyone inside is supposedly well trained. The text says so. And yet a coordinated response if helping out the guys in the next room is mostly out of the question. An Order of Battle would have been a very welcome addition.

The two level maps are simple linear things with a couple of branches. There’s none of the complexity that would encourage exploration or creative play. This then is one of the major faults of the module. The ONLY way you can approach it is through a straight hack. Sneaking, disguising, etc, are not going to help because it’s just a straight up linear design. That’s quite disappointing. The dragons lair, on level two, has the standard “illusion covering a hole in the ceiling” design so the designer can put a dragon in the dungeon and not worry that room is 10×10. Lame. There are also these weird thick black lines on the map I never figured out. False walls maybe? I don’t know. The wandering monster chart for level one is just a collection of the ogrillions, kobolds, and orcs that make up the guards of the place. Level two is weird though … It’s got oozes, giant rate, centipedes, carrion crawlers and other vermin, as well as two guard patrols. What’s up with that? It doesn’t seem to make any sense.

The encounters are a combination of combats and traps in text that is WAY too long. Two lengthy paragraphs per room, in addition to the read-aloud paragraph, is pretty common. This is way too much detail. “They weapons they are most likely to grab are broadswords and short-swords at he DM’s discretion.” Uh … .thanks. They rooms make frequent mention of “authorization” but no examples are given that would allow a more creative play style. It’s just enter room, be bored by read-aloud, hunt for the room contexts in the text, enter combat, next room. The details offered in the rooms don’t add anything to the encounters. Telling me that the creatures will grab short-swords or broadswords does nothing. I can easily do that, or better. I’m looking for some spark of creativity, something interesting going on in the room, to liven things up for the players. I don’t need yet another collection of rooms with monsters in them. I need some inspiration seeds that is going to delight my players and excite me to run it. There are some weaponsmiths who use the still-hot weapons on the players and that’s about a close as this module gets to something interesting. Oh wait, you say you LIKE an endless amount of rooms full of 3HD orcs and kobolds to slay? Then have I got the adventure for you!

You know the drill. No new monsters to freak the players out. Just work-a-day hacking of older stuff. And not even interesting older stuff. Book magic items. Boring coins, gems and jewelry that are uninspired and have no detail. It’s like the module is just going through the motions.

These kinds of adventures make me bitter and angry. As if I was betrayed by the one I love. Fuck you AD&D! Sleeping around with rules lawyers and uninspired dreck! We had such a good thing going in 0E but oh, no, you had to have more! You had to have a regimented play style. Yeah?! You want your regimented style?! Well it leads to 2e bitch! Screw it, I’m going to go sleep with your mom, BASIC.

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

WGH4 – Tombs of the Howling Hills

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

wgh4

by Bill Silvey
Freely distributed by the Delvers Dungeon
AD&D
Levels 5-8

Deeper into the Howling Hills! Your party of adventurers has found that there is more to the invasion of the Wolf Nomads’ sacred burial grounds than simple bands of humanoids – the burial chambers themselves are overrun with unspeakable undead beings! But can you overcome the creatures in the Tombs of the Howling Hills, or will you join them in undeath?

This is a small dungeoncrawl in a small tomb complex that is also occupied by an Evil High Priest. Undead and Black Orcs abound, as well as a bit of vermin and quite a few traps. The map errors are very frustrating. There’s an interesting bit or two but nothing really to distinguish it.

The cowardly Wolf Nomads, the guys who have kept Iuz at bay all these years, are too wimpy to protect their own hallowed dead. The party gets sent in to clean ’em out. On the plus side this description, errr … a slightly different take on it, is presented in only half a column of text before the adventure jumps right in to the meat. Yeah! I LOATHE long and drawn out introductions. It could be tighter still, and while clearly a mostly-linear tournament module it has no scoring system and so it’s on on to the hack! Although … for all the text there’s no real mention of what the goal is. Clean it out? Looking for clues? No idea. Not an issue for a free-standing module but I don’t see how it could serve as a tournament module with some kind of goal?

The map for the tomb is one of the most confusing things I’ve ever seen. No, let me correct that. The map and the descriptions of the rooms don’t seem to go together at all, which makes the entire thing confusing. This begins at the very first room. There’s read-aloud text that describes a room. The floor sags in the middle at the far apex lies a metal container. There’s a skeleton slumped in a niche with some vessels. If you come within 60′ of the skeleton it does something. So far so good, right? The read-aloud describes an obvious trap and if triggered the middle 20×30 section of the floor collapses in to a chasm below. Ok, no problem. Oh, and the room is 10×10 on the map. WTF!?!?! It makes non sense at all. Room two is described in the text as a Meeting Room with stout wooden doors on either end and chairs, crates barrels, etc in the room. That’s CLEARLY no the room on the map, with one door, an alter, and some weird fire symbols on the map. There’s a collapsed corridor that doesn’t look collapsed. There’s a room full of pillars with throned undead people in between each one. They rise from their six thrones to attack … but there are eight according to the map. The last room is some kind of chasm that’s nigh impassable. Not really an issue except when you factor in the first room has that skeleton that kills any evil creature that passes through. That means there’s no way in or out of the tomb complex for the people that live there. Pits and platforms are described that don’t seem to appear anywhere on the map, in spite of the map rooms having a lot of internal detail like columns, pentagrams, alters, and so on. I can’t figure it out. There’s no wandering monster chart.

The encounters are pretty standard. Undead in tombs bursting forth, and orcs guarding rooms, etc. A couple stand out as being more interesting. That very first room, for example. It has a haunt which possesses a character until they find the dead skeletons holy symbol and return it to their body. That’s kind of a nifty little thing to give a player a little more freedom and/or a change of pace for the evening. A little mini-quest with an (obvious) short duration and not a longer-term screw job. I’m a sucker for the classics and the dungeon has a good one: a pile of stuff around a corner with Magic Aura cast on it … and a blade trap for those going around the corner. That whole ‘bodies on thrones rising to attack’ is a nice little thing also; like I said I’m a sucker for some classic elements. Those are standouts because they differ from the usual “bodies rise and attack” routine that is otherwise present in the dungeon. The EHP, Zarkon, gets no build up and so he’s just another raving cleric summoning a demon when the party runs in to him. That’s too bad; a little more work to rearrange things and some hints of his presence could have been dropped and tension built up for the Big Bad. There’s also a really bizarre encounter at the end with a group of escaped slave: wererats and kobolds, who each want to kill the other. There are 8 3HD wererats and 5 1/2HD kobolds. And the rats can summon a nearby rat horde to help. But they are afraid of the kobolds because they have silvered their weapons. Uh … Like I said, a lot of the module just doesn’t make sense.

There’s no real coinage/gems/jewelry to speak of, which is fine in a tourny module but not really acceptable in a game system that requires coins to advance. The magic items are all book items. That’s quite disappointing. How much effort does it really take to give some flavor text to a book item? It adds so much.

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WGH3 – Into the Howling Hills

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

wgh3

by Bill Silvey
Freely Distributed by the Delvers Dungeon
AD&D
Levels 4-7

The fearsome Howling Hills lie before you! At the behest of the mighty Wolf Nomads, your brave group of adventurers has journeyed forth into the legendary peaks and crevasses that lie between the domain of the Weguir and the evil overlord, Iuz to uncover and root out the source of humanoid raids into the sacred lands of the already over-stretched Nomad forces. What dark secrets lie before you as you journey…INTO THE HOWLING HILLS?

This is a pretty simply linear hack through a bugbear lair with roots in a tournament module. It has a notable feature in that you can get on the dungeon GREEN line from either room one or room 26. Otherwise it’s just a straight-up hack that turns in to a mass combat as the bugbears strike gongs and summon help.

This adventure has a pretty brief introduction, a change from the designers earlier works. All of the background and notes are contained on a single page. Yeah! It’s still full of things like “you should have four fighters and two wizards” that I find ridiculous. Anyway, in this installment, the first of three, the Wold Nomads have sent the characters in to Iuz-landia to destroy some stockades. They are “too weak” to do it themselves. *GROAN* This, people, is what comes from Being A Hero. Boring nonsense crap. I *LOVE* the concept of Iuz. I love everything about him. Unfortunately there’s nothing cool about Iuz in this. Not even his mortal enemies, the Wolf Nomads. No instead they get turned in to a bunch of idiots who have to turn to outsiders to free their sacred burial grounds from humanoids. Uh huh.

The map is linear. It’s also missing things. At least two rooms in the dungeon are missing: 11 & 15. 11 has the guards for the treasure room and it’s not obvious at all where it should be. Likewise 15; no clue where it should go. Rooms one through five are also missing from the map. Those are above-ground though so I thought maybe they were missing on purpose … at first. But the text makes it seems like there should be a map. It can’t be that there is just a page missing: the missing dungeon rooms have no where to be placed and there’s no rooms ‘missing’ numbers where they could go. The adventure is probably still serviceable; it’s nowhere near as bad a fuck-up as the Hollow Mountain adventure from Frog God.

The adventure states several times that a frontal assault is a bad idea but it then goes ahead and numbers the encounters from the front. Strange. The 26 or so rooms (plus or minus the missing ones) are stuffed full of bugbears. All of the bugbears will sound an alarm when intruders are found, so it’s going to turn in to an all-out mass combat pretty quickly. The rooms are all pretty boring with a single exception. They generally are either empty or have bugbears in it that raise an alarm. There’s a hidden door now and again but nothing unusual and the hidden doors/secret are just to little cubbies that contain treasure. The single exception is the rear entrance. You have to crawl up the latrine holes (with the required Otyugh underneath) in order to get in to the main lair. You come up in the latrine in plain view of about 25 bugbears. Ouch! Talk about a one/two back door entrance punch! The players are gonna get a real fisting!

No new monsters and while there’s lots of magic items it’s all pretty much book items. One exception is an intelligent spear with unusual abilities. That’s pretty much the only thing in the module that feels special and interesting. I wish the other magic items were more exciting, they just come across as throw-away magic items. Same with the mundane treasure. “4 gems worth 1500 gp” is the usual fare with a single “platinum & gold bracelet” serving as an example of the best the module has to offer.

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WGH2 – Temple of the Sun

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

wgh2

by Bill Silvey
Freely Distributed by The Delvers Dungeon
AD&D
Levels 7-10

Beneath the shifting sands of the Sea of Dust lies a fabled artifact of immense power! Your party has been commissioned to find the storied Golden Sphere of Xan Yae and return it to the Emirates of the far west. But beware! Vile creatures seek to thwart you in your efforts, for they too seek the power that is rumored to be bestowed upon he who possess the ‘sphere!

This is a small dungeoncrawl through a ruined temple. It has some roots in a tournament module although no scoring is present, and thus it’s more of a “Just Survive” module. It’s a very linear dungeon, as would be implied from it’s tournament history.

These are such weird little modules. They seem to try and follow TSR trade dress and yet they are clearly missing something. Content, maybe? This one is fourteen pages long and yet only three pages the core adventure. This would be fine if the other pages contained setting information, or sandbox, or some other style of content. It would be really terrible if those three pages were surrounded by trade dress bullshit boilerplate. Front cover, back cover, 2 pages of “maps”, two pages of pre-gens, a page of new monsters and magic. That’s nine of fourteen already. The other five are background, notes, a page of wilderness encounters, and a page of other area encounters.

The background and notes sections are the usual tedious stuff “read the module completely” and “you should have a cleric and thief in the party” kind of boilerplate. The hook is lame also “The Sultan hires you go bring back an artifact.” Too short, no flavor, and too vanilla. Zzzz…. The adventure is set in the Forgotten City in Greyhawk and there’s a special wandering monster chart for that hex. The encounters are not that bad. They each have a little backstory that doesn’t take up too much space, just a sentence or two, and provides a great dash of flavor-text to liven things up. You could probably take any one of them and build a complete adventure around them. At a minimum they do a decent job of building up a good picture of the area in which the adventure takes place. It just seems so out of place for an adventure with only three pages of dungeon as the main event. It would be different if this were kind of “setting”, or laid out like one, but it’s clearly not meant to be. It’s laid out like a standard dungeoncrawl “and here’s the wandering monster table for the area outside of the dungeon.” That’s a huge missed opportunity because the mythology around the wanderers is really good. A Dune Stalker who’s feared by all the other occupants. A Sandman who’s the ghost of a long-dead Suel mage. A Gambado nest. These are all great little encounters. There’s an attempt at a Red Dragon encounter that is only a little more than a throw-away, as well as a culture of firenewts that’s also done poorly and deserves to be expanded upon. The area around the city could have been done really well and I wish it had been.

The temple/dungeon proper is little linear bit. At the start you can go right or left. Left is a puzzle that gets you to the artifact. But you can only solve the puzzles by going right and, essentially, killing everything in sight. The encounters are little more than some read-aloud and a combat. There’s an attempt at a trap or two as well as a couple of tricks, but they are strong misses. The trick that comes to mind is the bricked-over alcove with a statue to the temple goddess in it. If you unbrick it, and are good, a feeling of well-being come over you. That’s it. Making an offering? Great! No effect. Steal the offering you just left? CURSE! Players should be rewarded for interacting with the environment, not be bored by it. There’s an encounter with Monster Zombies that’s a good example of what’s wrong with the encounters in this adventure. It’s a paragraph or so long and, after two sentences of “empty room with bars” read aloud it tell you why there are monster zombies in the room and stats them. That’s it. No description of them, no interesting things to do or see or interact with. Just four monster zombies. See Monster. Kill Monster. Next Room. That’s the mentality here. And it SUX. When I’m looking at an adventure I’m looking for ideas and text that inspire me as a DM. I wan something to trigger my own imagination so I can build on it and make it my own.

The new monsters are just 3 and 4HD humanoids. Nothing special there. They have moderately interesting backstories, but the lack of special abilities makes them pretty boring in anything other than a “full replacement” campaign setting. The new magic item is the artifact. It’s interesting enough, all all artifacts should be.

This adventure is little more than going through the motions.

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DD2 – Stealing the Night Away

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

dd2

by Bill Silvey
Delvers Dungeons
AD&D
One First Level Thief

This is a very short Breaking & Entering railroad thievery job for a single first level thief. The background is that the local tuffs catch you stealing and make you do an initiation, robbing the Lord Mayors home. It’s meant to teach someone how to play AD&D. It reminded me, in spite of my deep nostalgia, how bad AD&D is.

This is a super-short, with only about 10 keyed encounters over three pages. And they are not 1-page dungeon pages either; this precedes those ideas by quite a few years. The introduction is a bit railroady but I can live with that. It’s easy enough to change it and role play out the introduction in a less odious fashion than a couple of giant read-aloud chunks.

The home is a small house with walled in grounds and a small outbuilding out back. The idea is that the character will sneak around to it and find a secret door behind a bookcase, follow a tunnel to the root cellar, and then enter the house that way. There are no other options given; the house and grounds are not described enough to give the player free will over how they approach the problem. This stifling of player creativity, or rather writing the adventure in such a way, approaches criminal, especially when new players and DMs are concerned. These are not the lessons that n00b players and DMs should be learning. They should be learning sandboxes and creativity, exploration and imaginative play.

I don’t think the designer understands AD&D. He calls for numerous Move Silently rolls, one every round while sneaking around, or some guards will approach to investigate the noises. That’s like a 10% chance every round to Move Silently at first level, isn’t it? Oh, you can Hide in Shadows to avoid the guards if you blow the first roll. 15% isn’t it? Yeah … about being a thief … That happens all over the place in this adventure. It’s just setting the player up for failure and then coming down HARD when they do fail … the Lord Mayor is 7th level and the guards are numerous. Picking a lock? Better roll that Move Silently! Ug.

Then there are the monster encounters. The tunnel to house has 2 giant spiders with very weak poison, not so bad, but the garden house has something like seven giant rats in it, all of which are at least a powerful as the character. I’s a railroad, there’s only one way, and that one way has railroad fights full of monsters that the thief can’t possibly defeat. Sup with that?

There IS a nice treasure table for what the player finds in the parlor. Lots of unique little mundane treasure that the thief can pilfer. No way they are going to make it that far, but hey, nice treasure table none the less. I like mundane treasure that’s unusual and descriptive; it add a lot more flavor to the game than “jewelry, ring, 100gp.”

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The Maze of Nuromen

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

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by Justin Becker & Michael Thomas
Dreamscape Design
Holmes
1st Level

This is an introductory adventure for 1st level characters through a two level dungeon with many classic elements. The room descriptions wear at times and it’s a bit vanilla. Still, it’s better than most of the products released. As an introductory dungeon crawl it does a decent job and would be great for complete n00b players because of the relatable experiences. It could use a healthy dose of a little more exotic fare sprinkled in.

Over a page of background we learn of the wizard Nuroman and his wicked way, how he built his tower and and the evil town that supported it, and how it was all destroyed in a flash because of of Nuromans tampering with things best left alone. Pretty standard fare combined with the standard “elves leaving the world” and “goblins filling in” trope. Once upon a time in a hole in the ground there lived someone who thought this was fresh. But … it IS accessible. The elves leaving the world and the dark things filling in is something that almost anyone new to RPG’s would recognize. It grounds them in something they can recognize in order to then introduce them to stranger things. This is something that will repeated over and over again in this adventure … except the strange things never appear. The first encounter, in the wilderness, is another good example. The group meets a band of high elves on their way to leave the world. They tell the group of an elf prince killed in the maze, his crown lost, and how the elves would dearly like to see the crown retrieved. They give the party a token to allow them pass any elven guards present in the wilderness near the ruins, and retrieving the crown makes the party elf-friends. ABSURDLY classic. Nearly the platonic ideal, from the token of passage to the elf-friend tagline. And COMPLETELY accessible to someone who’s only knowledge of fantasy comes from the Lord of the Rings movies. It’s impact is heightened even more by the art and language used.

I don’t usually comment on the art and language in an product. It has to be exceptional, one way or another, for me to notice. I noticed it in this. The art is Harry Clarke and the language … i don’t know … airy, or unusually worded maybe? Maybe some slightly archaic sentence structure? The art and language marry well to the content of the introduction and give an immediate strong feeling to the DM. These are the sad elves of epics. I’m pretty sure Clarke, or an imitator, was used in Polaris and I seem to have transferred a great deal of that games feel to the introduction and this first wilderness encounter. I can’t remember if the Rankin-Bass LOTR had a scene with the hobbits seeing the elves on the journey home, in the forest. I confuse the introduction of The Hobbit, Fellowship, the books, the movies, and the cartoons … but IF you saw the passage of the elves in the forest in the RB style then you’d a further look in to the vibe present. It’s some strong imagery and should give the DM a lot to go on. And it pretty much never reaches this high again.

The dungeon maps contain some interesting elements but are essentially just some simply branching deigns with a couple of small self-contained loops. There are some fireplaces, same-level stairs, pools, and so on that appear and those are all nice elements that add variety to a map. There’s just only so much you can do with maps this small. Maybe fourteen keyed rooms on the first level and ten or eleven more on the second, with a few empty rooms thrown in also. There’s a decent attempt at mixing things up a bit: exits through chimneys, waterfalls to the second level, a blocked off section and so forth. That good; far too many dungeons are just two-dimensional affairs, but I want more More MORE! More complexity! The wandering monsters are a real disappointment. It’s just a pretty standard list. No words of explanation, no flavor text, just a list. This is a failing for a product that’s targeted as an introductory adventure. You want an impactful first adventure that the group will never forget, not a meat-grinder of flavorless encounters.

The encounters generally contain a classic element. A bottomless pit that stirge fly out of. A rushing underground river that can pull a character under and sweep them away. Skeletons sitting at table that animate when their gambling stakes are disturbed. A skeletal arm with a sword that animates. A giant centipede in a rotting carcass hanging in the kitchens. Statues that open secret doors when their are turned the correct direction. ‘Ghosts’ that appear and do strange things, dispelled by the characters actions. A secret door behind a bookcase. Magic mouths. The list goes on and on. The encounters are all extremely relatable to someone with no fantasy RPG experiences. Players like to recognize things. They like to feel like they have figured something out. There are a couple of Save or Die traps, which seems a little harsh in a first level dungeon. The keyed encounters are a bit wordy. They do a decent job of providing a certain vibe but it seems like they could be shorter and still retain their flavor. There is a LOT of text about rusty weapons and skeletons laying on the floor where they died.

The monsters are nothing special. Really just classic encounters: a zombie in an iron maiden. A hollow-voiced wraith and so on. The mundane treasure isn’t very interest either: a jeweled ring and that sort of thing. I like my monsters a little more non-standard and I like my treasure VERY descriptive, to the point that the players want to keep the ring for their characters. There’s not much of that here. The magical items are a mixed bag. There’s a fair amount of boring old book items, like a +1 dagger or a potion of flying. I’d prefer a jar of glowing flies that you swallow in order to fly. There’s a non-standard item or two but they feel more like ‘tricks’, the notable example is the elven crown in the introduction that provides a one-time bump to Charisma.

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Systema Tartarobasis

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Bryce Lynch

st

by Gabor Lux
Freely Self-published
Castles & Crusades
Levels 3-5

The adventure puts characters in unfamiliar environments and situations as they move deeper into the ruins of technologically advanced subsurface cities.

This is a crazy awesome setting/adventure from one of the best in the OSR, Melan. The players are transported to a strange Orwellian post-apoc cityscape where they must attempt to negotiate the thugs who run the place in order to find their way back home again. It has a strong technology element to it, or perhaps “fallen technology” would be a better description. It’s strong product with a heavy heavy open-ended adventure which could use more organization/layout.

People complain too much. For all the asshattery that the Internet brings it also exposes us to new ideas and things that we would not otherwise ever see. Gabor Lux/Melan is one of those things. He’s very very good at creating interesting ideas and this adventure is no exception. The players are transported to some kind of ruined undercity full of Moorlocks, except the Moorlocks are real people. You get the idea though. They are alone, in the dark, in a strange environment, most of their gear is gone, and contact with deities and refreshing magic are both not available. Trapped in a strange Orwellian city the group must get out. Or rather, they must first make it out of the complex they are in, then out of the wasteland and in to the commoners quarters, and then in to the main city, and then in to the grand techno-temple that contains a teleports to get them home again.

Quote a bit of the adventure is spent detailing the people and culture of the undercity and the social environment in which the adventure takes place. This adventure is, at its heart, a city adventure, and those revolve around the social interaction of the players and the people around them. The designer does a great job of laying out the Orwellian environment they find themselves in. It’s a bit like one of those Fascist episodes of Sliders. The group KIND of looks like regular citizens, but they can give themselves away easily and they are always being hunted by the government. Because they are outsiders AND because the government keeps a stranglehold on its citizenry. The designer lays this out quickly and briefly in only a few pages but does an EXCELLENT job of building up a picture of a paranoid fascist government that controls the people through fear, religion and force. Really excellent work. Many of the named NPC’s have agendas of their own, or at least have room for them or ones that are implicit, and this makes for excellent role-playing as the party try and orient themselves and find a way out. (“Oh No! The slider device is broken!”)

Most of the adventure describes general locations within the city. The outlands, the commoners quarters, and the upper city. These are laid out in broad strokes and clearly require quite a bit of DM improvisation in play. There’s generally more than enough detail to run the adventure in these sections and I didn’t really feel like things were missing. Several important buildings have their interiors mapped and keyed out, as does the initial ruin location the party arrives at. This first section, while not too terribly exciting, does serve to introduce the players to this new environment. Disney does something like this on their rides; the queue area is themed to get you in the mood before you end up on the actual ride. I assume this is the purpose of the ‘transport location ruin’ in this adventure. The net effect is something sort of like Vault of Drow. An environment that is minimally described with both more color, in the form of the culture and social interactions, and less because of the human-centric focus and the lack of the bizarro wandering tables from Vault. The treasure is lacking, consisting mostly of lazer pistols and little else in the form of wealth for the party, while the creatures are almost entirely just low-level fighter classes with a robot or two thrown in, as well as the terrible Ash-Men. I assume the treasure thing is some sort of Castles & Crusades thing and cash isn’t used in that system to advance?

The whole thing could use a few more section headings. It has some hand-drawn maps with numbers on it and then the numbers are expanded on in the keyed descriptions but the numbers don’t themselves have a heading. You have to read the text to find out what he location is, making is very difficult to scan during play to find a certain type of location. Just numbers may be fine in a dungeon crawl but in an open-world design you need to be able to quickly find something. “We’re looking for a brothel; is there one around here?” Uh …. let me quickly scan 12 pages of text guys … It’s nothing a printout and highlighter won’t solve, but annoying.

This is a very richly described environment and I encourage you check it out. It’s free and it’s author is probably the best designer currently active in the OSR.st

Posted in Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments