tenfootpole.org

by Christopher Clark
Generic Fantasy Adventure
Levels 1-3

This is a little sandbox hex crawl in a wild forest on a scale not usually seen. The map is about six square miles with the individual hexes being 250 yards or so. This is quite a small scale but perhaps appropriate for beginning level characters. The frequency of wandering monsters is astounding: once every 100 yards something WILL show up. There’s about a 70% chance of encountering a game animal and a 30% chance of encountering a potentially hostile beasty. These are mostly animals as well, with a few excursions in to fantasy creature territory, such as Unicorns, Lycanthropes, Griffins, and Carnivorous Plants. There’s a distinct lack of humanoid creatures, which I prefer, and a handy dandy chart indicating how much food you can get from a game animal, how good it tastes, and how much its pelt is worth. This is a nice little aspect of play that is usually ignored and. as suggested by the module, provides a fine hook for getting the players involved as hunters/trappers looking to make their fortune.

The map only has about eight actual encounters. Again diverging from typical hex crawl behavior, each encounter generally takes from two to three pages. The encounters tend to be of the ongoing hook type. There’s a patrol on the roads that could give the party trouble if they are unknown, and a couple of trappers at a base camp for the party to interact with. There’s a spy lurking about with a pocket full of intrigues, as well as a group of Sasquatch who act as forest guardians. There are a couple of related cougar encounters, a demon haunted cave, and a dryad at her tree. Few if any of these encounters are straight up hacks. They can all potentially involve creative problem solving and social play by the characters in order to resolve the situations. My favorite is probably the Cave of Delights since it’s the most strange and fantasy-like, involving a she-demon frozen in rock and looking for release. The rest of the encounters tend toward the mundane and usual. Just how interesting can a cougar attack be? Enough to take up 2.5 pages of a module? Well … no. There’s a lot of … oh, let’s call it padding. Read aloud text, long stat blocks, and descriptions of things that don’t need descriptions. Clark is a good writer and his text is is clear but rather long. A guard patrol that takes up a page? This is mostly the usual fantasy trope. Yes, he includes a detail or two in each encounter that adds a bit, but probably not enough to justify things. They are probably best used as a kind of web of relationships, with the party gaining allies, neutral parties, and enemies that they encounter and work with or against as they explore the forest. If this wilderness area surrounded some other adventure, perhaps one that required a lot of travel or fetch quests in the region, then it would really reach its full potential, I suspect. The monsters are straight forward version of what we’ve all seen before but the mundane and magical treasures are much more interesting. Much of the mundane wealth is going to come from non-coin sources, such as pelts and the like, while the magical items tend to be a bit non-standard. This is because …

Lastly, I should comment that this module, like the other Edlritch Enterprises modules, use a generic stat system and is not based on any particular game. They provide a page to describe their stat system and then leave it up to you to convert them to your system. Power level of 5% equates roughly to 1HD and a defense of 50% equates to an AC0 (descending) or AC20 (ascending) at first level. Ive heard people complain and bitch but this is trivial to convert on the fly to any D&Dish system floating around.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100922/Forest-of-Deceit?affiliate_id=1892600

by Mike Stewart
for Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-5

Druids: Hack ’em on sight or kill them while they sleep? These amoral guys seem to be mainstays of wilderness adventures. Who can blame a DM for throwing a few in?! Just like a doppleganger, you never know when that ‘friendly’ druid is going to hack you down at night and claim that the ‘balance needed to be restored.’

This is a small wilderness adventure with 18 wilderness encounters and ten more in the druids tree. The hook is lame: a dryad shows up in town and begs for help, Seems the local druid in the nearby forest has gone mad after reading a book and is now ‘very bad to everyone.’ This being a typically ruled D&D town, the local lord doesn’t believe her and runs her out. Oh, well, until he calls on the party to go stop the druid because he’s too busy. Oh, the Dryad is being escorted out of town my four female guards, you know, just in case she tries to pull any of her dryad tricks. My problem here is the overuse of the usual tropes and the inclusion of the magical economy elements, namely, that the local lord has a contingent of female guards. This very much smacks of 2e and laziness in design. You have to be a do-gooder to want to go on this adventure. Then again, it’s only a hook and the DM can replace it.

The wilderness encounters are mostly an excuse for the party to mix it up with the typical sylvan creatures: pixies, nymphs, satyrs, treants, etc. The good and shy creatures are generally infected with something that makes them insane and evil. This turns what could be some very unusual motivations and interactions in to a straight hack fest. There are generally no allies to be found in the forest, the sylvan creatures being so insular that, even though they know the druid is evil they won’t do anything to help the party. Everything comes off as a little unoriginal and straight-forward. Move from place to place and hack the forest dweller until you find the tree. Then move around the tree from place to place killing people. There’s some graves to explore, and a shipwreck that can provide a little variety, however there’s a distinct lack of interesting things to explore or play with in the forest.

The magic items are of the typical boring book variety: +3 scimitar, Deck of Many Things, Liber Mortis, etc. Wait?!?! What??!?! Yup, there’s a Deck and an artifact level book. So, yeah, the mundane treasure is pretty boring, 200 sp and 50gp in a chest, for example. The magic treasure could be overpowering and a campaign-killer is the DM is not ready for it. There are a couple of new monsters in the back, lesser undead, bullywugs, and so on. Nothing too interesting.

The starting hamlet is the most interesting part of the booklet. There are eight or so places detailed and most of them have some quirky inhabitants or things associated with them. MARKOONNEN THE MIGHTY is the local wizard, who’s in to letting everyone know how mighty he is. The blacksmith has a habit of shoddy work and the tavern has a MILF/daughter love triangle waiting to happen, with a jealous and burly husband/father waiting to crack some heads when it does happen. It’s hard to justify the module based just on this.

This feels like a very basic adventure. The wilderness exploration element is going to put it above many other, linear, adventurers, however it doesn’t really offer much in the way of new and interesting content or ideas. It feels a lot like something that a you might throw together in a few hours the day before a game. Clearly, a lot of effort went in to it, but it doesn’t feel like polished or original effort.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20820/Castles–Crusades-U2-Verdant-Rage?affiliate_id=1892600

by Stephen Chenault
for Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
4-8 characters of levels 2-4

This is a VERY well done non-traditional module, at least for the OSR.

During a terrible downpour the party seeks shelter in a small village they come across. The village is locked up tight and refuses entry to the players, sending them to a small church nearby. There the players are met, fed, and bed down. While there they hear of a series of terrible killings that have plagued this area. Locals suspect a dreaded Charon Fiend is responsible. The local manor lord, once a hero, is now too feeble to do much more than sleep. The party, presumably, helps track down the killer. Uh … if they do if they want to go on an adventure tonight, anyway.

This module is a strange beast. It’s probably a mystery/investigation module, since the party has to track down what is killing the villagers and stop it. These sorts of adventures are VERY difficult to pull off at higher levels. Mid-level PC’s usually have access to spells that DESTROY secrets. Find traps, find the path, ESP, Augery, etc: it’s impossible to keep a secret from a mid-level party. This is on purpose of course; dungeons & tombs get much more deadly from their traps at this level of play and the party is expected to use spells to find them and get past them. Unfortunately this makes it VERY hard to get away with murder/your-dastardly-plot. Except of course when the party is low level and doesn’t yet have access to those spells. Thus in this module we get the layers investigating the murders of the villagers. Some night watches and tracking soon leads to a glimpse of the beast and it’s lair, where, it’s finally revealed that .. it’s actually an escaped lion still in his head stock with ropes attached. A stupid ass villager mistook it for the dreaded Charon Fiend. Hmmm, and hey, didn’t the party hear about an escaped lion from a local traveling circus they met beforehand?

That evening a band of humanoid raiders attack the villagers. Inspired by the parties heroics the villagers beat them back and the humanoids attack the tower of the decrepit manor lord. The players head off to lift the siege. Returning to their church lodgings they find their friend killed … The lion was not responsible for the killings, but rather some unquiet dead. The players hack them and, hopefully, put them to rest. Game over.

While there is a timeline and some misdirection I can’t really point to this as being a railroad. There are a great many things in the module which add to an overall atmosphere of dread and melancholy, combined with triumph and loss. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another module handle the issues so well. The party triumphs over the lion and the villagers, inspired, put up a hellacious defense when the raiders attack. This is a nice little bit; it makes the characters actions that day seem to have beyond the simple act of slaying an escaped circus lion. That’s the kind of thing that good campaigns are built upon. The humanoid raiders move on to the old mans tower, which is merely a diversion to allow the unquiet dead to kill the parties ‘friend’ back at the church. When the party returns the dead possess the statues of saints and even a figure from a stained glass window to attack the party. These dead are prisoners abandoned and left to die, unburied, and now can’t rest. Occasionally you’ll run in to a module where the dead rise and cause trouble because of their murder, or not being buried, but this module does a much better job at describing their plight that I’ve seen before. The people and monsters in this adventure act like real real people could, or a monster may, instead of just being random beings of destruction for the party to *hack* for gold and xp.

I do have a few suggestions if you should run this. First, there’s a traveling circus that starts the adventure. I HATE these things; they always seem out of place in D&D modules and there’s always a reason for them to be there. I suggest that, as a player, anytime you meet a circus you immediately state “I kill everyone in the circus.” No matter how much fuss it causes you can be certain that you’ve just saved yourself some trouble. In this instance the circus is innocent of the usual crimes against humanity, however they do provide a clue: that a lion has escaped. There are now two possible outcomes: the party will be clueless because they never pay attention to anything anyway, or, they will immediately chime, in chorus “it’s the lion” when confronted by the Charon Fiend story. MAYBE with a little prep work a few sessions before this one you can get the circus clue in, otherwise it’s too much of a risk of ruining the adventure, IMO. My wife is a MASTER of this kind of stuff when she runs a game. Clues are dropped weeks if not MONTHS in advance. If gives the campaign world a real sense of continuity; things seem to make sense when what’s happened before has meaning to whats currently going on.

Then there’s also the issue with the humanoids attacking the manor lords tower. I have issues with this on two points. First: Why humanoids? Why not just human bandits? You don’t have to have orcs and goblins in an adventure to make it a fantasy. Human bandits generally work just as well if not better. This way there’s a real sense of anxiety when the party meets actual ‘monsters.’ Don’t dilute the word by just tossing some throw-away humanoids at the party. Second, this is really just a diversion to get the party out of the church so the unquiet dead can make a kill. And by ‘make a kill’ I mean, of course, horrifically murder the monk they’ve made friends and bonded with. I know this is a classic technique but man, it gets old. The party ends up feeling like those guys in the WW2 movies: Nah replacement kid, I don’t wanna know your name, you’re just gonna get bumped off by the Jerry’s anyway. Relatives, wives, girlfriends, kindly innkeeps; anyone kind or memorable gets killed off. I don’t have a solution here. In that same vein, the characters investigate the murders because they are the Good Guys. That’s not the strongest hook but it is probably the most used one. You’ll have to come up with something else.

Finally, the DM is going to want to take a close look at the various people in the villages. They are not really described very well, so a little work to develop some NPC backgrounds, quirks and the like should go a long way in helping to being the villages and region to life. When the villagers make their heroic stand against the raiders it’s going to help if the party can put a name and face to them. This adventure s heavy on atmosphere so having the villagers be real people will go a long way to making it feel more real.

This is a quiet little adventure with a strange feel to it. It reminds me a lot of the same feeling I got from Bill Barsh/Pacesetter Games ‘The Thing in the Valley.’ … I’m not sure what that feeling is. A kind of slow burn? Pacing and atmosphere is probably more correct. It’s almost like the feeling I got from of the Ars Magica supplements, especially ‘A Winters Tale.’ A kind of melancholy perhaps. This adventure is not breaking any new ground, is a little wordy in places, has a boring hook, and needs more village/region data personality. It is also one of the best horror fantasy adventurers produced and is worth having.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/101009/Castles–Crusades-S4-A-Lion-in-the-Ropes?affiliate_id=1892600

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.