tenfootpole.org

by Stephen Chenault

for Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
9th-11th level

This is the ninth module in a series. It has several suggestions on how to incorporate it in to your campaign if you are not using it as a part of the series. Here’s the background for those new: Mogoth has been defeated by his lieutenant Sauron has set up shop in Angband. Up near Angband is the tower of Sauramon. He used to serve Morgoth but it now allied with Sauron. Recently the players have run in to a guy named Tom Bombadil, who has mentioned that Goldberry has been captured by Sauramon. To get Tom’s help with something else the party has to go to Isengard and free Goldberry. This adventure is about the parties assault on Isengard to free Goldberry. Hmmm, I may have mixed things up a bit there, but you get the idea from the mash-up.

The module describes a keep that is a long-time fortress of evil. It has six levels, each with about seven rooms or keyed encounters. The maps mostly resemble those you’ve seen that detail houses or manors. Generally there a corridor or main room with several doors off of it that lead to others. The map is generally uninteresting, however it does have several interesting vertical features. There is a well shaft that runs through several levels, a stairway which skips a level, stairs on the outside of the keep (I think …), trapdoors, etc, all in addition to ‘normal’ stairs between levels. I like the variety, the level skipping, and so on, and the well is just BEGGING for someone to get thrown in it.

The various encounters how a decent amount of variety for only having 40 or so rooms present. You’ve got the keeps guards running around who are going to try and put on an organized defense if they can. These include a large group of 2HD uber-orcs and some devils in various parts of the tower. You also have some workers/hangers-on present. These range from drywall hangers on the Death Star to some vile 0-level NPC’s. Their presence allows for some interesting roleplaying to take place. I love this kind of stuff in modules since it provides a break from the *HACK* and adds a bit of depth to the gameplay. The DM can drop hints, plot, and perform other interactions that aren’t generally available in an all combat adventure. The last major group is he towers leadership. From the orc captain to the Chamberlain, to the master and his priests, these are done very well. They all have some type of unique personality and some kind of non-generic motivations. My favorite is probably the Chamberlain, a doppleganger who is more than the usual ‘kill party member and replace them’ variety. It’s an excellent encounter and NPC. My only complaint here is that the leadership could have used a bit more lead-in. Some foreshadowing or information about them would heighten the parties tension prior to actually encountering them. This would change the scene from “hmmm, that orc was a little tougher, and look! he had orange hair!” to “Oh shit! It’s Harangur Orange hair! Get him!” There are a few interesting magic items and more than a few book items. Frequent readers can testify for my love of the strange and idiosyncratic. I’m much more interesting in a circlet that allows a cleric to speak with dead then I am “sword, nine lives stealer.” The non-standard items are interesting and one, a barrel, is downright Cool As Hell. There are also several new monsters, with a strong devil bent. Just as with the non-standard magic items, I like non-standard monsters and appreciate seeing them. They always make the party wonder what it can and can’t do, and what it’s vulnerable and invulnerable to. Nothing strikes more fear in to a PC then not knowing if the monster has level drain or not. 🙂

This is a decent fortress of evil. It reminds me a lot of those towers and keeps in the old MERP products, both in mapping style and in the semi-realistic flavor of the core elements. The MERP products tended to be a bit generic, since they covered multiple ages, however this one is flesh out rather well. It needs a little work to build up the villains/leaders a bit more. It could also use a small section on the order of battle. Who responds and when when the alarm is sounded. This should generally be present for all intelligent monsters, especially if “stopping the alarm horn” is mentioned in the text. The editing and map is a little confusing; I had to reread the introductory section several times to get the feel for how the various doors, levels, stairs worked … and I’m still not sure I understand one of the stairs. I’ve noticed these sorts of editing/layout snafu’s from time to time with the Trolls. At $6.99 for a print version it’s hard to complain too much about not being spoon fed.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/96952/Castles–Crusades-A9-The-Helm-of-Night?affiliate_id=1892600

by Jeff Sparks
for Faster Monkey Games
Mutant Future

I like old school but D&D but it’s not my favorite game. Gamma World is … by a long shot. D&D has always been a mainstay but I think I’ve more fun with Gamma World than any other game system. Re-Enegerizers is an adventure module for Mutant Future, a gamma worldish clone.

The world presented here is a little different than most of the ones I’ve run, and maybe from many of the official GW modules I’ve seen. I got the distinct feeling that this took place a little closer to the apocalypse than many of those other settings. There’s a town, Xitnine (Get it! Get it?! Exit 9! Oh Gamma World, how I miss you …) that the party comes across while traveling. It has something many other town do not: some functioning defense bots stationed at the edges, watching the party as they approach. Once in the town the party is eventually approached by its boss who has a little job for them to do … he needs them to go down the road and find some new atomic batteries for his robots. The town is described in only pages two pages, large type pages at that, but you get a very good feel for how to run it. There’s really only three brief descriptions: getting in past the gate guards, the beergarden, and the talk with the boss, but just from those three I got a real strong vibe on how to run the place and what it was like. thugs running the town, but not necessarily evil thugs. A real marginal town out in the middle of nowhere. It reminds me a lot of those towns and bosses in those cheesy 80’s and 90’s post-apoc movies. There in lies the difference from this place and many of the others I’ve seen. I’m used to lower tech levels and greedier players. My players, upon being told to go get some batteries, would say “Sure”, go get them, and then fire up their fusion rifles and slag anything in their paths. Tech was always better than cash to my players. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this town or setting, but the vibe from it is quite a bit different then what I would have expected.

The robot factory, for that’s where the batteries are, has four primary encounters in it. There’s an automated defense turret at the door, some mutant dogs near a garage outside, spider goat creatures inside and some beetles in the basement. There’s a couple of laser pistols scattered about and, as required by Gamma World law, a BIG RED BUTTON. BIG RED BUTTONS come in many form in the mutated wastelands. They all have one thing in common: curiosity gets the better of the players and they get themselves killed. In this adventure it takes the form of a radiation area near a hole in the fence. It’s a hot zone and gets only hotter the close the players get to a shed back there. The players will know it: they were given a geiger counter. Do they press their luck to see what’s inside, or do they ignore it as a death trap? That’s the BIG RED BUTTON and this is a fine and classic one. A search turns up the batteries and a couple of interesting items for mini-puzzles; post-it note combination solutions and the like. The factories not huge, maybe four sites outside and five or so inside, basically a big factory floor with a one room warehouse basement and 4 or so offices. There’s only one encounter on the way to the factory but it’s a nice one with a good set-up involving a body in the brush. It’s yet another SHINY SHINY RED BUTTON … can the players resist their curiosity or do they poke their noses in with the hopes of finding PHAT LOOT? Risk/Reward at its finest, and hopefully a motivator for those wacky PC plans that always lead to so much fun. The end of the adventure has the boss NOT double-crossing the party for a change, well, not very much anyway.

This would make a good pick up and play adventure for a night of mutant mayhem. There’s nothing world shattering, it’s easy enough to follow without a full read through, is short enough for an evening of play that includes some fun in town, and is not too generous with the loot. Tech weapons are always a fine line in these games; there’s not too much here and what there is can be modified by the GM to lessen the impact, if need be.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/81265/ReEnergizers?affiliate_id=1892600

by Jeffrey Talanian
for North Wind Adventurers
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
4-6 characters of 4th-7th level

Fair Warning: I dislike AS&S, and the convention game I played in by the designer was the worst I’ve ever played in my life. I enjoyed a toon game run an 11YO girl who never said anything unless continually forced by her mother. I’ve enjoyed railroads of the worst type, and games in which the DM just ran everything and favored interacting with his wife/NPC over the paying players. I enjoy meetup games full of the dregs of gaming society with the worst odious personal habits. I even enjoyed 4E games … but not my AS&S game run by the designer. So .. yeah … maybe you’ll like this. Hopefully I’ll give you enough information to device for yourself, with a minimum of my usual hyperbole. BTW: if you want in on the AS&S kickstarter then let me know; I’ll let you have mine.

The world here is a strange mix of lovecraftian and Howard. At least that’s what I think it’s supposed to be. What it comes off as is one of those grand 2E societies that I dislike so much. Everything comes off as bit too rigid and a bit too explained. I’m not quite sure why that is, so I may be mixing up my con experience. I think what leads me to that is Talanian attempt at High Gygaxian. There’s a lot of the writing style that is a just a major turn off for me. It’s not the thesaurus but rather the kind of convoluted attempt to introduce the thesaurus. “if questioned about the corundrum” and ” he confirms that he paid out 2,000 gp to a trio of huntsmen …” and “it is assumed that the party will (in some fashion) utilize the intelligence provided by the boy, Brin.” It is this type of overly convoluted style that is a turn off. I’m not sure if this is an attempt at High Gygaxian or his own style, but I CAN’T STAND IT. I love the 1E DMG. I don’t have a problem with High Gygaxian, but this language is killing me. Worse, it doesn’t really do any good in painting an evocative environment; it just comes off as needlessly obtuse, almost like a search and replace was done.

It’s combined with an overly descriptive style. People are described as carrying an unshod staff and a falcata. The wandering monsters get tedious descriptions that add nothing to them: “Deer, Red: Deer with red (summer) or grey (winter) coat that stands three to four feet at the shoulder and weighs 250-350 pounds. They flee from most everything, though a cornered hart can butt with its antlers[stats].” That description adds almost nothing of value to the adventure. Rooms are worse. Every single rooms dimensions are described in its first paragraph, along with its old name, which is described. For example: “this 40 x 40 foot room with arched 25-foot ceiling was once a bedroom (a room in which people laid down to sleep at night, generally for 6-8 hours depending on the individual.)” Ok, that’s not totally a real example, but it is representative. If you’re gonna pull out your High Gygaxian to give us exact one word descriptions then why the hell are you also then giving us a definition of what that word means? This all feels like padding.

Why would padding be needed? That’s an easy one, because even though there are only 15 encounter areas, almost completely linearly, the module is 16 pages long. The only wandering monsters given are the wilderness ones which are innocent enough; animals, vermin and a giant, but the dungeon proper has no wandering monsters. And why would you need wandering monsters when all you have is a linear hack-fest? Each room has has an overly long and detailed description, generally with a monster in it that attacks immediately without mercy or quarter. That’s not an adventure but rather “rolling dice”. How about w do away with it and instead everyone just roll a d6. On a 1-5 you win the adventure on a 6 your character dies? The party will find no allies in the dungeon, and will find not interesting things to play with and explore. Oh, there is a detail or two: compressed krill bars, light panels, etc, but nothing truly weird or idiosyncratic. This is strange since the adventure involves a spaceship and the Great Race of Yith. There are marvelous opportunities with those elements to have some truly bizarre and interesting things go on. A few book magic items, a few gems, and a flashlight are all the party is likely to get out of this adventure. There’s only one new monster, the boss, that is in any way interesting.

The dungeon is linear and the text overly wordy. Despite this, the setting is not evocative and there is little of interest in the dungeon except hacking creatures. The Ronin Arts adventures are without a doubt the worst I have ever seen. This isn’t that bad but it’s not a whole let better. It feels forced and boring.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/101402/Taken-from-Dunwich?affiliate_id=1892600

I’m working my way through Fight On! magazine reviewing the adventures. Fight On is a great magazine that reminds me a lot of The Dragon or White Dwarf from their early days. It’s full of interesting little articles and tables to get your imagination going. I’m particularly fond of the adventures in this issue, as well as the Goblin Market tables. This is a great issue to pick up if you’re testing the waters.

The Mysterious Laboratory of Xoth-Ragar
by Alexey Fotinakes
Level 3 characters?

This is a two-level crawl in an old wizards home and laboratory with about 16 keyed encounters on the first level 13 or so keyed encounters on the second level. It seem ol Xoth-Rogar had a few strange theories about the nature of evil and set about confirming them … to the usual result. This leaves us with an adventure that in some ways resembles a cross between The Thing and Aliens. The wizards home is a bit of a mystery as the party stumbles upon clues to what he was up to, while dodging weird gooey organic matter and The Beautiful People. What’s interesting is, except for a single small encounter on the first level, The Beautiful People only show up as wandering monsters. The second level is much the same, sparsely populated with one ‘module theme’ encounter. The rest of level one and two is populated with a small variety of vermin and ooze and a trap or two. The entire place has a strange slightly otherworldly quality to it that I grooved on. There’s a puzzle/trap or two, which are very obvious so more puzzle than trap, and a decent variety of strange things for the party to encounter. Weird texts, magical pools, strange but harmless effects to trigger. Oh, and a giant cavern-sized abomination. That’s a good way to end the adventure, but it needs a bit more lead-up to be truly effective as a boss fight. There are some ‘module thee’ monsters on the second level, the DM would drop some hints with both them and The Beautiful People on level 1 that there’s a horrible boss somewhere. That kind of build-up help avoid the boss seemingly appearing out of nowhere. IE: The Lareth the Beautiful Problem. The treasure is mostly on level two and while the mundane treasure is great (even the pp get a good description) the magic treasure is straight out of the book. That’s disappointing; there’s a great opportunity here to include some unique items. This would be a great adventure for a weird fantasy campaign or for a night or two of fun. The bizarre circumstances and environment of the house (glowing particles in the air, weird organic sludge, etc) should make for a memorable adventure with the party either apprehensive as hell or scared out of their minds. Just the way they should be.
Slaughter in the Salt Pits
by Gabor Lux
Level 4 characters?

This little adventure covers ground that many other do however it does seems to do it in a more … realistic? fun? way. Orthil, and its salt mine, has been taken over by thugs. It’s now essentially a company town with a portion of the population pressed in to service. Oh, and the cemetery raided for bodies to animate. The coercion here is more subtle than in most adventures and perhaps that’s why it appeals. It’s a small little sandbox or village, mines, salt pit, and bad guy keep. There’s no hook presented in the background paragraph, it’s more of a setting in which the party can find themselves. The EHP asserts just enough control over the village to get what he wants: workers. He uses this to get other things he wants: money. The various encounter areas (maybe 35 in all throughout the four areas) mostly present a realistic view of guards and slaves. There are a few of the weird and idiosyncratic things I’ve come to associate with Lux: a crusty lake with a secret, idols to be avoided, and so forth. The mundane treasure is finely described (golden tableware, silk undergarments, etc) however the magical treasure is a bit of a disappointment. There is too much “mace +1” and “potion of healing” and not nearly enough “ivory rod that turns in to a snake when thrown” or other interesting magical items. The undead and human contingent again make this a fine weird fantasy adventure, or a great small sandbox place for the party. Perhaps they encounter the town again and again, and eventually do something about the EHP oppressing the villagers?
Fruiting Towers
by Patrick Wetmore
Level 5 characters?

I love a creepy and otherworldly location and this adventure delivers. Along an old highway is a hill of scaled stone with some small stone huts on it. Bandits usually take up residence in them to use as a base for raiding but soon disappear. More recently a wizard who has split himself in two (magical log-saw of longevity or some such …) has taken up residence and is now at almost at war with himself because a bunch of his loot has disappeared. The structures are, of course, part of a large creature that lives underground. There are 35 or so encounters scattered throughout two locations: the ‘village’ above on the hill and the structures in the belly of the beast. The party has a couple of factions to deal with: the two halves of the wizard don’t trust each other, there’s a prisoner, each wizard half has his own weird guards, and then there’s the minions of the giant space creature who roam around inside its body. Parasitic ringworms, flapping antibodies, mineral gatherers, plasmoid defenders … the party is in for their own Fantastic Voyage. The entire interior of the creature is a bizarre landscape full of bizarre creatures, some hostile and some which can be ignored. There’s a decent amount of ‘book’ treasure in the creature as well, most of it coming from the wizards stores that have disappeared. With location names like “South Digestive Tower” and “West Reproductive Tower” you know the party is going to in for a strange trip. The whole adventure is full of weird biological … things … for the party to explore and play with. “Gee, I wonder what happens when I hack up this nerve cluster?!?!” *hack *hack* *hack*. There’s even a great little section on the aftermath of the parties encounters. One outcome involves a giant stirge with a 50′ wide feeding tube. Ouch! Well worth looking in to and running.

Tale of an Egg
by Baz Blatt
Level 4 characters?

This adventure, for Stormbringer or D&D, could almost be written for an indie RPG. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not. It certainly has more atmosphere than the vast majority of dreck written for RPG’s. This has to be the Stormbringer influence. What’s a railroad to me & you may be called a scene in an indie rpg. The basic adventure plot is that the party is hired by an enigmatic wizard to go get some egg shell parts from a dragon turtle nesting ground. The party has to get there (sea voyage scene), gets delayed in a city (fun with foreign culture scene), trek overland to the beach (wilderness survival scene), deal with the Burning Man like scene on the beach (play nice with others scene) and then the actual egg hatching scene and its aftermath. There’s A LOT of latitude in those scenes though, so while it’s true the party has to be get to the location and do the job, the sites are really just a bunch of mini-sandboxes for the party to play in. The city and beach scenes are the ones that grab me the most. In both os these the party is interacting with a diverse and foreign set of cultures. The city get maybe one column of text in the adventure … and it paints one of the best portraits of a foreign city EVER. The culture is bizarre, the city inhabitants little more than thugs, and the couple of examples of encounters do a FABULOUS job of communicating the cities vibe. The beach scene is crazy. The party arrives to find something akin to a Burning Man festival set up for the eggs, after expecting no one to be present. There’s also a tribe of baboons nearby that are intelligent enough to interact with the party and that are, essentially, the mortal enemy of the festival goers. When the turtle shows up to lay its eggs an all out apocalyptic battle between the festival and the baboons starts up, with the wizard adding in his own thing. This thing is CRAZY in the way only Strombringer could be. And it’s simplicity itself to use it for D&D. Great adventure.

The Darkness Beneath Level 11 – Fungus Forest and Mold Falls
by Makofan
Level 11 characters?

This is another VERY strong level of the community megadungeon. I’m partial to mushrooms, slimes, and vermin in my adventures so be forewarned: I’m a fAnBoI of these elements. The adventure takes place in a cavern 100′-200′ high and is stuffed FULL of mushrooms. 60-70′ feet high and 5-10′ in diameter make up the mainline, with a canopy grown together. Then there’s a second line about half that height, and then another set waist high and more under foot. The place is STUFFED and they come in all different types and colors, some glowing, etc. There are great supplemental tables for the DM that list mushroom effects and color variety. For example, instead of brown you could say bole, umber, chocolate, tan, etc. That’s the kind of DM assistance table that I really appreciate. It provides assistance to me in helping flesh out the adventure and make it come alive. Besides The Canopy there are four other areas of the caverns, each of which has their own wandering table and maybe 15 general encounter areas in the caverns. The fungas gardens of the trolls, the plateau of the mantis folk, the mold falls or enclave of the fungents, etc. There’s a WIDE VARIETY of things going on down in this chamber and the place is stuffed full of factions for the party to interact with. Almost everything will talk to the party. And there’s beholders! A LOT of beholders make up one of the factions. This place is frigging wet dream for you if you like slimes, molds, and fungi. Hmmm, well, ok, maybe not … but it is a GREAT location. There’s a HUGE variety of new things to hack, almost four pages worth with 11 or so entries per page. This is indeed an alien & bizarre place! My only complaint is that it’s not 99 pages long and that the treasure could use a little touch-up. Most of the mundane treasure is of the “20 gems worth 10,000 gp” variety. I wish there was more detail and variety there, although I personally keep a notebook page or two at hand with pre-gen jewelry, gems, and goods to combat this. Most of the magic items are just plain and simple book items. There are a few exceptions: some gonzo items and, notably, a suit of chainmail that prevents you from being hit unless the DM rolls a 19 or 20, in which case you take triple damage. THAT’S the kind of magic items I like to see in adventures. There was also an opportunity lost by not including more slime, mold, and fungi based items. Overall though this is an environment your party will not soon forget and great addition to the megadungeon. They could play down here for MONTHS, or just make a quick trip over the slime falls to the next level. I’m a big fan of most of The Darkness Beneath’s levels, but this one ranks up there as one of my top 4 favorites.

I’m working my way through the various issues of Fight On! magazine, reviewing the adventurers. The non-adventures portion of the magazine is great. In this issue there’s an excellent science fiction space opera adventure, the rules for the RPG “Champions of Zed” which recreates Arnesons rules from the early 70’s (And is now in Kickstarter mode) as well as a host of other articles to get your imagination going and jump start your start your heart. Every DM should be able to find something in every issue to help their game be more imaginative and interesting.
The Darkness Beneath Level 8 – The Deep Caves
by Heron Prior, David Bowman, Calithena, & Simon Bull

WoW.

The Darkness Beneath is a megadungeon presented one level an issue in the magazine. Almost without exception the levels have been imaginative and have explored a wide variety of different areas under the earth. This one, uh … does the same, I guess. You see, out of nowhere the FO guys have given us a new Underdark setting. This issues level is actually a kind of gazetteer to this new Underdark, spread out over 25 glorious pages. This level is a cave system 72(!) miles across and filled to the brim with adventure seeds and locales that more than satisfy my desire to see the idiosyncratic and whimsical.

I was never big in to the world of 2E so my own views of the Underdark are essentially that of the D1, D2, D3 series along with a smattering of D&D pop culture references since then. My own perception of the published material has been of a Drow-centric environment with scattered pockets of other creatures: a beholder cave here, Kua Toa there, some Aboleth in that lake, and so on. The underlying message I picked up was: Drow as the main inhabitants and everything else just a sideline. It also wasn’t that strange. Other than a brief opportunity (lost?) with the Kua Toa and the wandering tables for the city in D3, is just wasn’t that weird. The Underdark presented in this issue ain’t NOTHING like the one I grew up knowing, and that’s a very good thing indeed.

This section is 72 miles wide, in 2-mile hexes, with about 26 different ‘things’ described out in five different areas. In this respect it’s much like a hex crawl in a fully developed region. There must be, I don’t know, like a dozen different factions present in just this section. That’s A LOT of social interaction and exploring for the party to take advantage of and experience. Dark Trolls, constructed ‘Puppets’, The Mourners, the Necromancers, nefarious temples to strange gods, goblins tribes, dragons with problems, and of course, a weird ass trading city full of strange things and people. The brief description of the city in D3, along with the wandering tables, was perhaps my favorite part of D3 and I’m happy to see that aspect carried on in this level. As for the rest … I’m not sure how to describe what’s going on here. Fungas forests, dinosaur wildlands, adventure seeds everywhere, wandering monster tables for each section, various other tables for exploring ruins and finding strange artifacts, this place is just cRaZy good.

Most of the encounter areas are just a paragraph or two that describe the general flavor of the area, in the grand tradition of most modern hex-crawls. Two are expanded upon as full fledged adventures: The Siren Temple and an adventure with the necromancers Bear & Toad. The Sirens Temple has the party digging in to a 26 room three-level temple structure being corrupted and slowly turned in to a kind of killing device. It’s full of things like giant white spiders, curtains of flies, and troll parts in jars. The adventure is a bit low on magic items and cash however the mundane treasures are interesting enough, even if the magical items amount to +2 arrows. The necromancer adventure is really just working for one against the other, or playing the two off against each other. Profit! There are quite a few interesting magical items in this one … most of which have strong characters and interesting stories, effects. This is exactly what I’m looking for in a magic item, the good with the bad and interesting enough that the players want to hang on to it and use it even when they get other items.

This one part level could sustain play for months of real time as the players move from place to place and the DM sandboxes his way to a ongoing story just within this cavern. It’s just as good as the best traditional level published, by David Bowman, but in a completely different way. Good Job gang! This alone is more than worth the price of the magazine it appears in.

I’m working my way through reviewing the adventures in Fight On! magazine. The magazine proper is a great resource to get your imaginative juices pumping. There are lots of articles to get you in to the right frame of mind to create imaginative adventures for your players.
The Barbarian King
by Gabor Lux
4th-5th level characters

Lux gives us a small wilderness areas is 17 or so encounter areas and then a 25 room dungeon tomb at the end of the wilderness. There is not really any hook; the party is looking for the fabled burial place of the last barbarian king. This brings them to the Valley of the Lost, the wilderness area to explore. While there are 17 or encounters in the valley, most are ’empty’, in one manner or another. There is a beast encounter, a village of morons, and … a set of symmetrical encounters. Let’s cover the good first: Even the ’empty’ encounters have something going on. There’s a great section with a cursed priest and lots of smashed ruins to look in to. The ruins generally have something to find that is interesting: a spell to learn, or something related to the history of the valley. The village is one after my own heart. I LOVE moronic villagers. Nothing gives me more pleasure then having a village of idiots doing stupid things when the party comes by. “Yup, we moved that glowing obelisk in to the center of the village to use as a maypole. Nope, don’t know why people are suddenly going missing.” That sort of thing makes my day, and this village is a good example of that. So cowed are the villagers by their former barbarian masters that they refuse to leave the village even today when their masters are long gong. On the down side, the wilderness section has some plain magic items (+2 shield, etc) that could use more personalization, something to make them memorable. Then there’s the symmetrical encounters. The barbarians venerated four animals and there are four shrines the party can visit to have an encounter/challenge. I hate this. I hate symmetrical temples, I hate symmetrical dungeons, I hate symmetrical encounters. Too much is forced and lost in same of the symmetry. I find them boring as hell. But, maybe you love them, in which case there are four in the wilderness section. Have at Thee!

The tomb complex of the last king is the last wilderness encounter. It has 25 encounter areas. The tombs layout isn’t terrible and nor is it particularly interesting. The encounters are mostly with undead and a couple of vermin like slimes or cubes. The tomb encounters are very nice and all generally have something out of the D&D ordinary going on. Loot the chamber? The corpses come to life. The various burial chambers are all enough different to keep the parties interest: a dais with a sarcophagus, coffins in the rear, etc. There’s also some nice things to play with. including a series of potions one of which has got to be one of the best I’ve seen yet: a great description of what amounts to a Ju Ju Zombie transformation. It’s even fair in a very old school fashion. This is a decent adventure; I was pretty happy with it.
Caverns of the Sea Hag
by David Coleman
for … 5th level characters?

This is a 34ish room three-level dungeon set in a sea cave. It bears some resemblance to the second half of module N1 – Against the Cult of the Reptile God: a water-logged dungeon with a mesmerizing she-beast at the bottom, past groups of charmed or loyal guards. The set up is very basic, consisting of just a few short sentences suggesting some hooks: shipwrecked, prisoner rescue, looting the dungeon. The location is neutral enough to support a wide variety of hooks to get the party involved. The map isn’t going to win any awards: three levels, a simple layout on each level, some portions submerged. Nothing too unusual or special there. A few more interesting features would have been nice, rather than just room after room branching off a corridor. The various encounters fit the same mold. The creatures all seem to have some relation or another to each other or some interesting tidbit: a one-armed ghoul, an honorable barbarian, bored guards, and so forth. Unfortunately there’s not much going on beyond this. The magic items fall in to the “+1 shield” category most of the time and just are not that interesting. The rooms don’t have much going on either. generally just a creature with some sort of quirk. There are a couple of exceptions, notably a statue for the players to explore, however for the most part this adventure seems to be a straight “go in and kill it” type of affair. As such, some Order of Battle would have been nice so the occupants could respond to strong incursions by a band of murder hobos. There are a few people inside for the party to interact with, however that’s unlikely IMHO. This is mostly a straight-up hack with named NPC’s to hack instead of nameless monsters.

The Darkness Beneath – The Palace of Eternal Illusion
by Matthew Riedel
5th or 6lv characters?

This level of The Darkness Beneath community megadungeon has one fatal flaw: it’s name. If the party finds out the place is called The Palace of Eternal Illusion then most of the tricks turn in to the mechanics of disbelieving instead freaking the party out. A There’s about 27 rooms in this level in a very basic layout. The best analogy is going to be a very simple manor home. We’re not talking Tegal, but rather the maps that accompany a small 10 room manor. Simple rooms adjacent to rooms, and hallways with doors of of them. The wandering monster table is strongly themed with shadow-type creatures, hounds, dragons, Shadows, nightmares, wraiths, etc. Nothing too interesting there other than the theme .. again a give-away that illusions are coming. The encounters on the level follow much the same pattern: shadow-themed creatures interspersed with phantasmal killers … real or imagined. There’s really only two very interesting things on the level: a set of bottles full of liquids to play with/drink and the lich who lives in the palace. I love dungeons with interactivity and the various bottles surely provide that. The illusionist lich (hmmmm, maybe he’s actually a butterfly?) is also an interesting fellow; he’s bored and wants to talk. That’s actually pretty interesting as a part of the larger dungeon. He can provide information, send them on missions, etc, if only the party can put up with him … and in a polite manner. The mundane treasure is a strange mix of interesting (a gold bar, he stand for a crystal ball, etc) and the uninteresting “gem worth 200gp” and the like. The magic treasure is almost all generic and straight out of a book, with one of two exceptions, like a gem that confers fire resistance and immunity to light-based attacks. THAT’S the kind of magic treasure I’m much more interesting in seeing in a module. There’s some potential with this level, but in the end I found it too … themed? straight-forward? and mundane to be exciting.

I’m working my way through reviewing all of the adventures in Fight On! magazine. It’s a great magazine that reminds me a lot of the early days of The Dragon or White Dwarf. There’s a lot of good material in each issue to get your imagination going. In particular, this issue has a large adventure setting called Lost Dragonia that’s very nice, although outside the scope of these reviews. .
Khosura – Part 2 – The Undercity
by Gabor Lux

I hesitate on reviewing this. It’s part of a series that describes a city with this portion describing the undercity. I don’t do settings, however this is close enough to a dungeon that I’m making an exception. It has a very Empire of the Petal Throne feel to it. It has … 140? keyed encounters in it spread over over … 9 maps? There are multiple ways on to and off of many of the levels as well as lots of room with nor encounters in them at all. The various encounters in the undercity range from crypts of former resident to cults and building basements. The encounters are all very well done with a lot of interesting things going on. Weak walled chambers that can flood an undercity level, a floating scepter glowing in a field of golden light, dead thieves, streams of sewage, secret arenas and, well, just about anything else you can imagine! The overall feel is a kind of undercity of Paris combined with some Tekumel. Catacombs, sewers, basements, and the like all mixed together. The create encounters range from undead to men to vermin, all highlighted in the text to make picking them out easier and many with unique properties. The magic items and mundane treasures are generally non-standard as well. I love this since it helps recreate that sense of wonder that can get jaded from always finding ‘Book’ items. This is an EXCELLENT resource for anyone planning on running a city game, either as a campaign or as a single adventure. The area is more than large enough to support repeated play and forays in to it. Build up the stories for players and they will soon dread their visits to the undercity.

The Shrine That Glittered
by Patrice Crespy

This is a strange little adventure. Either I don’t get what’s going on or the adventure sucks. It’s a little linear 19 room crawl with Morlocks, cavemen, and a medusa or two. Full monster stats in all their MULTILINE glory are present for each encounter. One state per line. That means about ten short lines of text per encounter. This seems like filler and I will never complain ever again about only seeing monster HP listed in an encounter description. It’s like some weird flash-forward to 3E or 4E stat blocks. The actual encounter rooms are generally nothing special. The mundane treasure is interesting in a primitive/bronze age kind of way, which fits well with the morlocks and cavemen. Skins, fungus, unprocessed gems and the like. One or two of the rooms and items have something interesting: an ESP skull hidden on a pillar of other skulls is a good example. I really don’t get what this adventure is trying to do. Full stat blocks for every creature but a maddening lack of detail in other areas … which the designer readily admits. It seems very uninteresting … I just don’t get it.mIt’s like the opposite of a sandbox: a linear crawl with creatures but no indication of why. It’s more like the base framework used for an adventure design contest

The Darkness Beneath – City of the Ancients
by Chris Robert

Awesomeness Alert: Carcosa was used in designing this level. The City of the Ancients level is a sandbox level in the overall sandbox megadungeon. This level is quite looser than the other level primarily because it describes a large open area, similar to a wilderness. This level is a GREAT cavern, five miles in diameter with a one mile diameter ruined city in the middle and the city surrounded by jungle. There are twenty or so set encounters within the cavern and one of them has a 40+ room complex attached to it. The other encounters are generally ‘routine’ for Carcosa: marauding war bots, space aliens, chthonic beasties etc, as well as a number of environmental hazards. he best part of this level, besides the general strangeness of it all, would have to be the factions. There are at least two major factions on the level and the adventure is ripe with suggestions on how the party can interact with the two major factions, generally to the detriment of the other faction. There’s also a very cool little scavenging table for when the party goes digging in the rubble for Goodies of the Ancients. The site locations are pretty memorable: a giant tower that extrudes effluent form the top, or a transdimensional anus that deposits refuse, sometimes still living, that a giant creature in another dimension has eaten. It’s gonzo and I LOVE gonzo. The party should have a whalloping good time fighting all the new Carcosa monsters, playing with the strange new ‘magic’ items, and getting in to trouble with the natives, which is exactly what they should be doing. On the down side: there’s a magic inhibitor in effect for a certain portion of the level, in various degrees. I’m not a real big fan of gimping the players. They earned their goodies, presumably, so they should get to use them. In this instance it’s really more a plot element rather than a crutch for poor design, but still, gimping players is not cool in my book.

I’m working my way through Fight On! magazine, reviewing the adventures. The magazine proper is a great resource in general, with many articles that will inspire you and lots of content for you to lift or to spark your own imagination.

The Hobgoblin God’s Crown
by James Quigley
character levels 3-5

This is a 31 encounter dungeon inside a temple/mountain inhabited by a hobgoblin cult. A local hobgoblin has parked his army outside and is getting anointed inside, which gives the party the chance to infiltrate, kill him, and steal a holy relic, titular crown. The lead in is good: the party gets to find a way around a giant army, past some guards, and in the open temple doors before they lock behind them. What follows is sure to be a large pitched battle with all of the hobgoblins inside. The guards will raise the alarm and everyone will come out of the woodwork to slay the party. An order of battle would have been nice, it generally is in these situations, but at least we get some notes in the room descriptions on who will respond with what. A little work by the DM should be able to conjure up the needed OOB. The room descriptions are quite a bit longer than I prefer, with space being taken up by a lot of mundane information about use and mundane decoration. It would have been nice to see more strange monster things. Th doppleganger ere are a couple of examples of this: the goblins secret cooking spices are a good example. Another would be the infiltrator of the temple; nice to see the monsters having trouble also. There’s quite a bit more ‘rational engineering’ though. By this I mean a kind of high fantasy rationalization of common elements, like the Gelatinous Cube garbage disposal and monkish monsters. This kind of rationalization is a real turn off for me. It smacks of trying to be realistic instead of trying to be fun. This isn’t the OSR I’m looking for.

Caverns of the Beast Mistress
by Tavis Allison
for 5th level characters?

FO9 is dedicated to Paul Jaquays and this dungeon is a tribute to Thracia/Walking Wet. It’s a 45 room level inhabited mostly by minotaur-kin and the like, with a heavy dose of nature & slime. While there’s no explicit order of battle for the inhabitants there is a system of variable wandering monster checks. Essentially, the more obvious the party makes their presence felt then the greater the chance of wandering monsters, the greater the chance they will be looking/seeking the party, and the more preparations the monsters will make to “meet & greet” with the party … up to and including using the ever-present vines to deliver some slime buckets over their heads. Thracia and Dark Tower had excellent maps and this adventure tries hard to capture the same feel. This level has multiple elevations on it, with several ladders, spiral stairs, passages crossing over others, etc. It’s complex enough to need the cross section diagram that’s provided. There are lots of natural caverns mixed with worked passages, statues, broken ruins and secret doors to keep things interesting. The encounters are a mix of the mundane and the whimsical. Many of the rooms, especially the early ones, tend to be rather mundane with a slight twist to them. A mushroom forest with metal detecting shriekers. A guard post with arrow-slits. Not gonzo but with enough mundane detail to make it just interesting. And, of course, the even-present vine and wandering monster response to the party. Each room does have a small event listed, one of the vines flowers opens, the party hears muffled voices, etc. This is clearly an attempt to bring the dungeon to life and make it more dynamic. The later half of the encounters get a bit more strange and are more my style. Idiot savant bulls, playing dress-up with mystical statues, and the slime monster. Both the magical and mundane treasure have a good amount of detail to them, adding that personalized touch that appeals to me so much, and the monsters are generally ones the party will not have encountered before. This is a solid adventure and worth your time to check out.
The Blasphemous Shrine of the Tentacled God
by Jeff Rients
The Darkness Below – Level 12

The Shrine level sits deep below the earth. Inside it’s 30 or so rooms are all sort os … villainy? While not quite a joke level, the Shrine does introduce a lot of sillier elements. Trolls eating two-headed circus bear, with $600 confederate and a unicycle as treasure. A high priest in disco robes. A Star Trek transporter with a note by M. Scott, and so on. None of that really bothers me at all, although I WOULD have like to have seen a wandering monster table. My biggest complaint of this level is that it doesn’t seem … coherent? The dungeon is launched right in to with a description for room 1. I’m not a big fan of long introductions however a short paragraph giving some layout/background would have been nice on this level. We’re left trying to construct a scenario ourselves on the whys and hows the various folks on this level interact with both themselves and their neighbors on the levels around them. The ladies in the Fane hit the tavern on six from time to time. The trolls ‘rule’ the dungeon, and so on for the other levels. This one though seems to come right out of left field with little to no ties to the other levels other than the entrances and exits. Now certainly it’s not a bad thing for a DM to have to add a bit to adventures, however I would have appreciated just a bit of context for this level. Again, not so much to justify the sillier elements but to help place it within the overall schema of The Darkness Beneath. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good level. Lots of weirdo elements, like a vivisection machine that instead grafts imps on to the victims body, and strange room elements like thousands of dolls hanging from strings in a room. The treasure and magic could use a little personalization; a bit more detail on the gems or more unusual mundane treasure livens things up IMO, and magical treasure certainly needs personalization in order to keep them wondrous. There’s not a lot in the way of monsters and most are plain old book creations. I did get a kick out of the Electroweak-force Elemental though (the last survivor of his race, most having perished 10^^-12 seconds after the Big Bang.) That’s typical of the dungeon; it’s a bit creative, a bit silly, a bit disjointed, and it looks like a lot of fun.

I’m working my way through Fight On! magazine, reviewing the adventures. The adventures are just a small part of the magazine; the rest of it is very very good. It’s similar to the early Dragon or White Dwarf; you know, when they were good. It contains A LOT of information to help get your imagination fired up.

I Thirst
by Gabor Lux
for 3rd level characters

What you will and what you won’t
What you do and what you don’t
What you can and what you can’t
This is a little adventure with a big gimmick. The party is stuck in the desert, in an area without water and in which water creation spells don’t work. One evening they are visited by an apparition in their campfire. It will give the party water in exchange for some blood … The party soon discovers a pillar covered with eyes. That can be scraped off. That turn in to killer frogs if they are scraped off. Which is beautifully illustrated. Listen up OSR: THAT’S what I want in my adventures. It’s a perfect example of the wild, wooly and weird style that is what D&D means to me. The rest of the adventure is a puzzle. It’s a straight shot linear push through eight locations that get more and more surreal … although not as good as the eye pillar. And therein is the gimmick: it’s not real. Confronting the creatures or situations with the strong belief that it’s not real will cause it to crumble, Inception-style. From the moment the apparition appeared the party has been in a mirage. This would make a cool little sub-level to a dungeon, however I caution people that I always feel ripped off, as a player, when this type of ‘its all a dream’ stuff comes up.
Badlands of the Bandit King
by Robert Lionheart
for 3rd-5th level characters

Robert has created a 3 level, 31 room dungeon entirely randomly using the EGG tables, from the 1E DMG I assume. What results is not absurdly bad. It’s at least on par with most modern dungeon maps, and better is most respects. What you have is three groups of creatures within the dungeon, vying with each other. There are some bandits who want to take things over but have gotten split up and in over their heads. There’s also a group of witches with their orc followers who are roaming around, and then there are the giant rats who are everywhere causing trouble. The map has some secrets on it and a couple of nice loops on the first level. Theres a nice rumor table and some suggestions for wandering monsters on the way to the location. These wilderness wandering monsters each have their own little story to tell, from rabid weasels to an ogre hunting party and a fugly sphinx. I appreciate the extra detail in these encounters; it helps spark the imagination of the DM and adds color. The dungeon has a wandering monster table also, much more normal: rats, bandits, beetles. The dungeon, while random, has been given order by the author. A random scarf is one room becomes the left behind/forgotten scarf of one of the witches. The spiked devil and gnome encounters, the first in the dungeon, are tied together WONDERFULLY, in a way that only the OSR seems like being able to do. Unfortunately the dungeon is a little mundane for my tastes; the random assortment of common objects is turned in to something nice, but I’m looking for the whimsical and idiosyncratic. I’d rate it above average compared to most d20/OSR products, and average for Fight On! quality.
The Darkness Beneath – Level 10: The Hall of Mirrors
by Calithena

The community megadungeon continues, this time with a small level. All of the walls, floor, and ceiling are perfectly smooth mirrors. There’s a robot with a laser gun who shoots are players who enter and who is surrounded by one kick ass force field. The challenge: find a creative solution past the level.That’s it. This is more of a stairway trap/puzzle disguised as an entire level. No solution is give, and in fact things are explained in such a way as to make the only possible solution one of those bizarre and weird PC ‘lets try this!’ that players often come up with. Again, this feels like a sub-level instead of a true level. I’m also not sure of its placement within the dungeon. As it is it guards one of the two entrances to the City of the Ancients, the bottom of the dungeon. Having it guard a level with just one entrance may have been better, especially if rumors of wealth & power about that level abound. That should motivate the players to explore the level more and attempt to solve the puzzle. I suspect the players would just leave the current Hall and move on to other areas.