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This is an adventure module for Castles & Crusades. It can be used with any pre-4.0 version of D&D. More on that at the end. It has a very very good set up that is spoiled by the verbosity of the material and brevity of the actual substance.

In ages past, the god known as the Dreaming Paladin was a mortal man. He sailed in to the Sea of Dreams leaving his wife behind. She died waiting for him to return and now rests uneasy in her tomb. This disruption in the force was noticed by a lieutenant-wizard of the Great Evil and used to ensnare and trap the Paladin god in a long winters nap.

This is a rather lengthy module, coming in at just over 40 pages. It also has a GREAT deal of exposition in it. I only counted six brief encounter areas in it, and most of those should not involve combat. I point this out because OH MY GOD there’s a great number of words present. The backstory is long and involved and comes much in the way of trivia, almost none of which is needed. A portion of it was kind of interesting. The Dreaming Paladin God is a nice concept, as is his ensnarement by the Sauron-like figure. The fleshing out of the family tree, and all of the other detail is superfluous to the adventure. I’m not sure why it’s there. Tolkien was great however every adventure module doesn’t need that much exposition. Be Terse. Get to the point. Leave some mystery. The first eleven pages has one encounter area, the hook. Anyway, I’ll get to that part later.

One day while our high-level adventuring party is walking about they stumble upon a windmill with a body outside. Inside they find a magic book, and a demon then appears who tries to take it from them. The book describes the lost tomb complex of the most famous royal family ever. A RICH one. Off go the PC’s to find the tomb and loot it. The hook is a bit silly. Besides the 11 pages it took to get to it, it doesn’t jive too well. There’s nothing special about the windmill, and the demon is a bit of an idiot, his charade wouldn’t last one round with a good group. He’s also not much of a challenge, seeing as he’s a lone warrior. He’s a bit of Lloth-like creature, decent AC, low HP, some immunities, and short life-span.

The party then gets to trek overland through a forest to find the tomb. There’s a nice little wandering monster chart with a lot of fey-like creature on it. There’s no detail to them though, so it’s the ‘ol hack /em to bits routine for the party. Stats are not included. There are a couple of other encounters available also: charcoal burners and the like. THAT’S what I want to see on a table; something unusual with a reason for wandering around other than ‘Kill PC.” Anyway, the party is about a day from the forest and the tomb is three days inside it.

On to the tomb. The party stumbles on to some worked stones in a stream in the forest, which is the clue that a man-made structure lies nearby. That’s the kind of stuff I’m looking for. It’s a nice evocative image. FInding the tomb the party gets to answer a series of riddles to get in. Oh Boy! I Love Riddles! And Players do also! Fortunately the author recognizes this and provides for several other means to enter the tomb besides answering the riddles. The tomb is going to be a let down. There IS some non-standard treasure available OUTSIDE the tomb, but inside the party isn’t going find anything. Well, anything besides the crypts of some great kings second cousin, twice removed. Oh, and a ghost. Hopefully the party doesn’t hack her to death. She tells them she wants her husbands ring back. Great, no treasure but a ghost fetch quest instead. Oh, and there’s a horn present. BTW: her husbands the dreaming paladin god.

If the party takes the horn to a monastery nearby then they can summon a dream ship to get to the dreaming paladin god who lives on the dream sea full of dreaming … ok you get the point. The Monastery has one of the worlds most confusing maps ever associated with it. I’ve read it over five times and I still can’t figure out what’s going on. There’s a small little encounter with a group of baddies in the compound. They are NOT going to be challenge for the party. Six 4HD creatures are nothing more than a gnat on the windshield. It’s not even a good resource-drainer since the time between encounters is so long the party can recover spells.

Traveling through the dream sea the party faces their worst nightmares. Yawn. They also come to an island of dreams that they may mistake for their destination. Across the Bridge of Apathy (how apropos …) it has a citadel with X number of dream warriors in it, where X is the number of party members. It also has some loot. Yeah! Treasure! Nine lives stealer, potion of +1 CHR, scroll of greater dispelling, arrow of dragon slaying … that’s some PHAT L00T!. The party then presumably moves on to the real island of dreaming dreams where the dream lord dreams a dream of … oops, sorry stuck again. The main island has four encounters on it. There’s an inn run by a very lonely god of carousing, who’s had no guests in a bajillion years and is now trying too hard. There’s a dragon guard, which WILL be a tough encounter, if the party is too stupid to parley. There are a few demons; 5HD and AC15 … those aren’t going to last long. Some flavor text and a couple of traps gets the party to the dreaming god, where the characters receive a +1 CON and +1 WIS award. Sauron never makes an appearance.

This thing has problems. There are some clear Tolkien influences, Earendil, Sauron, and the like. Maybe it’s a bit like the Heros Journey and they all look this way … I dunno. The set up is a good one,  I was very excited by it. Dreaming Paladin god, capture of a god, ghostly wife awaiting his return … good stuff. Its just swamped by the verbosity that is going on coupled with the brevity of the actual adventure. I don’t need a dungeon and I don’t need an endless line of things to hack but geez, there has to be SOME substance to what’s going on. I think there’s only one encounter that can’t be avoided. Yeah, I like alternative solutions, but if you’re only going to have six encounters in a 44 page adventure then maybe one or two should be memorable?

The whole thing is poorly organized as well. It looks like they are trying to use section headings to differentiate the various portions of the adventure. Unfortunately, the headings all come across as exactly the same. This leaves me feeling like I don’t know where one section begins and another ends. It’s not keyed in a traditional sense, which is ok in theory, but in practice the headings just confuse and obfuscate the layout. The lack of a traditional key, and perhaps some map translation issues, also greatly impact the monastery. I was totally confused over it’s layout, and still am. Most of the wandering encounters in the main forest are not very interesting, and none of them on the island of dreams are.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/87519/Castles–Crusades-S3-The-Malady-of-Kings?affiliate_id=1892600

This is an adventure for the Castles & Crusades system however it can be used for an pre-4E D&D like system. Conversion notes are at the end.

In ages past the dwarves built great cities under the mountain. They mighty empire stretched far and wide and deep. All things pass and soon the dwarves fell. All that is left now are ruins from their past glory. This module has three separate adventures that deal with dwarven ruins in the Smoking Giant mountain. This is located on the edge of the Darkenfold forest, the setting of C1, C2. Those, being set in the forest, had a dark fairy tale feel. This one feels like a generic adventure. Do any fantasy games feature dwarves at the height of their power, instead of ruined halls and fallen empires? I wonder what the meme there is?

The first adventure is set in and near a dwarven bathhouse. These were common locations on the great roads the dwarves in the high places of the world. There is a short overland adventure that is connected to the bathhouse. The idea, I believe, is that this is integrated in to another adventure the party is journeying to. They make there way up a small ravine or canyon in the mountains. There’s a short wandering monster tables provided with a few environmental hazards that I found interesting, as well as some animal and humanoid encounters. I don’t humanoids in adventures; they feel generic and showing up on a wandering table makes them feel even more generic. In addition, I like my wandering monsters to be doing something. Hunting, sleeping, moving, etc. I think a brief description adds a lot to the encounter and can encourage role-playing opportunities. There are a couple of fixed encounters on the way up also. Bloodthirsty sub-humans are a nice touch. THAT’S what I want to see instead of humanoids. There’s also an encounter with a murderous giant boulder. Yes, a giant boulder that’s possessed by an evil spirit. It essentially consists of a giant boulder rolling down a slope and then rolling around some more. I suspect it plays much much better than it reads. The bathhouse proper really only has two encounters in it, and only one of those has to be hostile. In fact, it’s not really clear to me why everything past the second encounter is present. There’s not really much in the trick/trap category, or wandering monster inside the smallish bathhouse complex. It is supposed to have nine keyed encounters, however there’s really not much present. It feels like looting one of those empty ruins in Fallout. Realistic … but not necessarily a good time.

The second adventure is more of a traditional dungeon crawl, although a short one, in an old dwarven home. This is a brief twelve room dungeon with a couple of loops. I like these more complicated maps since they allow for player freedom and lend a sense of exploration. This one has five or six encounters in it, all of which are interesting. There are some demons, fungi, and undead. What’s interesting is that they are all mostly non-standard. For example, there’s a group of skeletons that animate in a certain room. Except it’s not just the skeletons, it’s all the bones. So the party can end up destroying the skeletons and still have some bones rolling down hallways following the party until they are destroyed. That’s cool. There are a few other interesting encounters like this one, both combat and not, scattered throughout this small dwarf domicile.

The last adventure is in yet another dwarven domicile. This one is more straight-forward than the last, really just a few rooms. The map indicates 14, however it’s really quite compact with only about seven or eight rooms, the rest being corridors and things. There are a couple of traps present, and really only two encounters, including the concluding one. There is some clever non-standard treasure hidden about, however the entire place smacks of a little too much realism .. and by that I don’t mean interesting. There are couple of environmental issues to be overcome and at least one freaky thing, related to the final boss, but it just wasn’t enough to hold me.

The last two adventures don’t have wandering monsters, since they are sealed up environments. Some rats or carrion eaters might have been nice though. There are a few non-standard magic items, which I appreciated. I like it when new things, both monsters and magic items, show up. I like the uniqueness and mystery that imparts. To be sure, most of the items found are mundane magic items, “sword +1” and the like, but the three new ones do show an ability to create unique environments.

Monsters can be used as is either right out of the adventure or pulled from your systems monster manual. The C&C versions are close enough to the D&D versions that it doesn’t matter. The C&C AC is on an ascending scale, but otherwise all you’ll need to do is compute XP, such as out of the 1E DMG. Skill checks in C&C are rated on a Challenge Level scale. To convert to 3.0/3.5 just add the value to 15 to get the DC. For pre-3E versions just use the characters skill checks for tracking, opening locks, etc. Or don’t use checks and role-play it out, which is what I do.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/97137/Castles–Crusades-S2-Dwarven-Glory?affiliate_id=1892600

This is an adventure module for the Castles & Crusades system but it can be easily converted to any pre-4E D&D system. More on this at the end.

A small thorp near the town of Lead Hill has just has two of their children go missing in the middle of the night. Just recently, a ranger was found dead nearby and the residents are worried that it’s related to their driving a hag out of town a few years earlier. What we need here is a good stout band of adventurers to swoop down and save the day!

This module, like C1 & C2, is set in the Drakenfold forest. C1, and to a lesser degree C2, had a very strong dark fairy tale feel to it that I really enjoyed. This one … not so much … or at all. It starts in a little inn in the town of Lead Hill. The party overhears some locals huddled around another table discussing the disappearance of two children in a nearby thorpe. The party can spend some time questioning the locals and may come up with some interesting facts before they move on to the thorpe. There they can get some more information from the locals and investigate the house where the kids were taken from.

This is a good point to talk a little about investigations in adventures. This is a short adventure and the questioning at the inn and the investigation of the home are almost half of the adventure. The investigation at the home is composed of tracking skill checks. CSI: Borderlands is not going to go very well if the party doesn’t have a ranger. IF the ranger looks on the roof, and makes a skill check THEN tell the players X. If you don’t have a ranger and they look then you can tell them 1/8th of X. I was moderately surprised at this; I was expecting no information in a failed check and was prepared to rail against it. Generally these things are a railroad: if you fail the skill check or don’t ask the right question then the adventure can’t go on. In this case the party gets just enough information to proceed along with the adventure, even if they do fail. This is a nice way to handle things and makes the best of of a bad situation: skills. I can’t stand skill checks. I’d rather have the players role-play the outcome of something and allow everyone to track, open locks, etc. I want my players to try to do everything they can to NOT roll dice. Because that means they could fail. A tracking adventure? What if the party doesn’t have a ranger, or he doesn’t show that night?  Anyway, with a ranger and a successful tracking check then the party can get a little more information about the bad guys they are about to chase. Without those two get only know that the tracks lead north in to the forest.

The chase is going to take two full days and there’s a rather generic wandering monster table provided. It appears to just be a wandering table for ‘Forest’ pulled from a core rules booklet. As such there’s not any customization of it and it comes off as just another boring wandering table, albeit a big one. I find these multi-day journeys interesting. There was something similar in C1 and C2 and they threw me there just as they are throwing me here. Many of the older modules had an overland portion, some substantial, however they didn’t throw me the way these are. Maybe because there’s a chase involved and a multi-day chase seems alien to me. Clearly it happened to Aragorn & Co as they followed Merry & Pip, but it just feels strange here. I’m probably just unaccustomed to it.

There’s are two small combat encounters during the chase on the way to the big bad. Both of them have an interesting way of handling morale, which I don’t want to give away. I thought it was a very clever way of achieving a morale-like effect. The final encounter with the big bad is interesting also, and I don’t want to give anything away. The treasure wasn’t that interesting; I always want MORE from these. Some kind of strange & weird magic items customized for the world they are appearing in. Instead we get coin and some “sword +1” stuff. Yeah, that’s pretty standard fare and it’s difficult to say it’s a missed opportunity when that sort of thing seems to be norm in design.

Monster stats can be used as is, or just taken from your own games monster manual; they are very similar to each other. The only real conversion is the AC, which is ascending in C&C. I pull XP from the DMG 1E. Skill checks are taken by adding 15 to the C&C level for 3E games. So a C&C CL2 check would be 15+2=DC 17. For pre-3E games you can just use the characters skill checks, since there are not difficulty levels.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/64064/Castles–Crusades-S1-Lure-of-Delusion?affiliate_id=1892600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is available at DriveThru.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is available at Drivethru.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is available on DriveThru.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is available on DriveThru.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is available on DriveThru.

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