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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shrine That Glittered
by Patrice Crespy

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

The Darkness Beneath – City of the Ancients
by Chris Robert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Thirst
by Gabor Lux
for 3rd level characters

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

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

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

Legend of the Dullahan
by Matthew Riedel

Boo!
Did I scare you? Awww, schucks. This little 12 location wilderness setting revolves around a Headless Horseman and aims to be super spooky. It’s got the traditional elements but the DM is the one who’s going to make or break the atmosphere. There’s a covered bridge for the horseman to ride across, along with some trolls under it. [Every bridge should have a troll under it. EVERY one.] There are murky moats and roads of bone dust, dead forests, howling wolves, and a creepy old dude in a hut. Stakes with heads on them and scarecrow corpses. That’s a lot of spooky elements. What’s missing here is some advice on running a spooky adventure. Horror is hard to run. Otherwise this is a straight-forward little exploration with a strong halloween theme. Nothing too remarkable about the monsters, the treasure, or anything else. Probably good for a halloween game break, or maybe some actual horror if you can swing it.
The Temple of the Sea Demon
by Gabor Lux
Level 3 characters

This is a nifty little adventure with maybe 20 encounters in it. The background is simple enough: there are places in the city that you can’t see normally. Only out of the corners of your eye or while dreaming can you find your way to the abandoned and lonely plaza which holds the Temple of the Sea Demon. I can’t help it; I’m a romantic at heart. Most of the temple is empty of priests and the like however almost every room has some bizarre little thing. Silvery mists that appear from bowls and then strange people, weird magical pools, strange magic items, fun things to steal (rare bath salts!) and so much more! I love the strangeness of the temple and its effects. There’s so much to see and do and get in to trouble with! This sort of interactivity is missing from a great many adventures these days; I wish more modern authors would include those exploration elements. I wish the adventure as a little longer, and it perhaps needs a few more adversaries scattered throughout. Hmmm, maybe the current priests could be beefed up so the party would have to sneak about more? Anyway, with only 9 2HD priests plus the high priest, things are likely to degenerate in to a pitched battle. That’s going to be hard to players to get out of, given the special environment of the temple. This is a great little adventure that could be popped in to Arduin, Tekumel, or some decently sized city in your own campaign. I just wish it were longer.
Song of Tranquility
by Jerry Stratton
Level 5 characters?

This is a quiet little weird fantasy adventure set in the frozen north. While seeking shelter the party is drawn towards a large grave marker, which further leads them to a ship frozen in a mountain. Seeking shelter the party encounters bizarre objects (but not too much!) and bones. There are really only two encounters: some 5HD monster zombies and an 8HD gibbering mouther-like creature. As such the adventure is quiet and slow, building over a couple of days to the attack by the mouther monster. It reminds me a lot of a mashup between The Thing and perhaps an expanded hex-crawl encounter. The strange objects in the ship will seem a bit familiar to party but strangely out of place. This would be a great addition to a weird fantasy game, or even a modern horror game. (As most weird fantasy is.)
Beware the Lord of Eyes
by Allan Grohe Jr.
Level 5 characters?

This is a small 9 encounter cave complex inhabited by a beholder. The given set up is that he’s new to this area of the underdark, having just arrived in the last couple of months. The characters are hired by some drow as expendable ambassadors to get the buy to lay off raiding their houses caravans. That’s all given in one small paragraph and is more of an example of how to use the caves than a real hook. The cave system map is pretty nice: lots of terraces and ledges, a sinkhole and river and so on. Sadly the adventure doesn’t really take advantage of any of it. A great opportunity was missed in making this a little more interesting. With gargoyles and their beholder master there could have been a lot of fun with very unusual obstacles. The rooms themselves don’t really have a whole lot going on. The sinkhole is nice primarily because of the rot grubs, but the other rooms don’t really have much interesting going on. The mundane treasures are very well described with interesting flair however this stands in marked contrast to the magical treasure: +2 dagger, +1 mace, and so on. This could server as an interesting diplomatic mission to a MUCH more powerful opponent, but the actual exploration is a bit of a let down. Oh, I don’t usually comment on art, but this adventure is FULL of beholder art work. It’s on every page and features a variety of beholder styles. Very Nice!
The Search for Lord Chürisan
by Krista Donnelly
A Tékumel adventure for 4th() level characters

The party has the honor of being the fourth expedition through a nexus point. Their goal, as well as the two previous groups, as to discover the fate of the first expedition and it’s noble leader, which has completely disappeared. The second expedition was massacred by parties unknown and the third impaled when they returned for not discovering the fate of the first. Joy! Thus is a wilderness adventure in Tékumel. The party gets to travel by tube car, poke around in a dusty desert, travel through a nexus point to an ice world, get ambushed by a party of enemy soldiers, and explore several other nexus points on the ice world; albeit briefly if they are smart. There are a couple of horrible predators in the barren areas, about 30 enemy soldiers in the ice world, and some uber-sorcerers that will kill the party outright if they don’t flee from their magics. The party needs to keep their mission in mind: discover what’s going on and report back. There’s almost three pages of background data on the adventure, mostly the history of the various expeditions and the political landscape. This is a bit much for me, but it does provide the required background needed for running what is, in essence, a mystery adventure. This one is less bizarre than most Tekumel adventures.
The Fane of Salicia
by Lee Barber
Level 6 characters

Last months level was one of the best dungeon levels I’ve ever seen in my life. Lee Barber gets to follow that act. Unlike many of the other levels The Fane has a major gimmick that will make of break the adventure: is your party full of idiots? Will they fall for a group of nubile young concubines in a temple deep under the earth? Or will they wade in till the temple floor flows red with blood? The Fane offers both options. Either the party gets charmed and does missions for The Fane on other levels or there’s a large pitched battle ear the entrance with most of The Fanes guardians. With only 16 rooms The Fane is a tad small compared to other levels. The map has a decent number of secret doors on it but its not really large enough to sustain true explorative play. Even if there’s a pitched battle the party is sure to run in to many other occupants of this level, from troll ‘artists’ to undead to, uh … weird things. There’s a might fine selection of unique items to find and a decent number of new creatures to keep the party busy guessing. Each room has something interesting going on in it, if only the lengthy text were edited down a bit. This feels more like a sub-level than a true megadungeon level.

I’m working my way through reviewing the adventures in FIght On! magazine. The magazine proper is a great resource that reminds me a lot of the early days of Dragon or White Dwarf; you know, before they started to suck. Of special note in this issue is a Mutant Future hex crawl around Slimy Lake, and a nice city and borderlands keep write up. If you haven’t checked it out you really should; it’s got great articles to get your imagination going.

As always, I hope you can learn enough about these adventures from my descriptions that you can decide if you want to use/purchase it. I have my own preferences, which I’m not shy in sharing, however the real goal here is describe the adventures enough so you can decide for your self if you’d like them or want to use them.

Hell-Grave of the Tveirbrodur
by Jason Morningstar
2nd level characters?

There seem to have been a proliferation of adventures in barrow mounds in the last couple of issues. This seems to be the last charge in to the valley of barrow mound death. What’s interesting about this one is the very strong historical feel to the barrow, along with the non-standard adventure layout. The adventure could almost be the product of one of those Iron DM contests. “Given these six words, creature an adventure.” The author here used those words as room descriptions/section headers. There is a small map of the barrow that it keyed off the room names, rather than a number or the more uncommon alphabet character. There are also a few section heading prior to the barrow description which fall in to the same vein. It took me a bit to get used to however it works out pretty well, especially for an adventure this short. The set up is interesting, at least to me. (But then again, I have a strong surface interest in barrow mounds, so you milage may vary.) Some kid in a dirt poor village has a treasure he should not have and a story to go with it. The villagers will be displeased if the party announce their plans to loot the mound, leading to a lack of shovels/picks/etc being available if they find out what the party is up to. The mound looks to me like it could have come out of some archeology journal. There is a longship in it, as well as more than a few bodies, all nice and fetel’d up on the map. The treasures here are all bronze armlets and electrum knives and so on, what little of it there is. They seem a whole lot like burial artifacts, … or at least they do to my In Search Of addeled-mind. There are a couple of traps, and a decent amount of undead in the simple tomb. In fact the undead may end up overwhelming the party, being crafty sorts and attacking en masse. The mundane treasures are all very well described however values are missing from many. Given the low loot count of the ones that are described, this stands out a little more than usual. This is a strange sort of adventure that seems to have a very Bronze Age, Runequest, or Harn feel to it. While not what I’m usually looking for, it does seem true to real mounds, which means it should have a great appeal. It’s not a bad adventure, but more a little short and … mundane? for my tastes. Not mundane in a bad way, but more very grounded in the historical.

The Tribe of Rorvash
by Erin Bisson
1st level characters?

Goblin Raiders! Oh No! This little five room minidungeon takes up two pages and feels like filler. Three rooms with goblins in it. A room with their human leader in it, and a treasure room. Oh, and the goblins have trained some giant mantis bugs. The mundane treasures are well described as if the single magic item of note, but that doesn’t really make up for lack of interesting things going on. This may be the least interesting adventure I’ve seen in Fight On. That still makes it better then 70% of all published adventures, despite its length.

Blocks of Quox
by Tony Rosten
Levels 3-5 characters

Puzzle Dungeon! Do you and your players like puzzles and traps? I tend to prefer them integrated in to my ‘normal’ dungeon levels however my tastes are not universal. This one is also pretty interesting. Essentially what we have is a wizards tomb/lab/workshop that one special feature: Giant stone blocks with rings set in them that are 9’9″ on a side (perfect 10′ hallways are noted as present.) These blocks are used in a variety of ways throughout the dungeon to bypass traps, open doors, kill players, etc. The blocks are the dungeons defining characteristic. Put the block on a pressure plate and a door opens. Turn it the correct way and stuff it in an alcove and a goody appears. Do the wrong thing with a block and something bad happens. The dungeon only has about 11 rooms and the layout is essentially linear. It reminds me a lot of Portal: you come in to an area and need to figure out what’s going on before you can leave. Repeat. There are no real riddles but several clues in the form of riddles or cryptic sayings. This is a plus for me; I can’t stand riddles and puzzle dungeons based on them. There are several interesting misdirections in the dungeon; once the players concentrate on the blocks they may ‘get in the groove’, so to speak, and turn off their normal dungeon paranoia. Those self-imposed blinders are what I mean by misdirection. That’s very neato mosquito. It’s interesting enough and I don’t see any real frustration setting in from the players. It would certainly make a nice sub-level to a dungeon, or a side-trek for a party needing something different. There’s a cute little twist at the end involving a deal with the devil … after all, the wizard Quox WAS an Illusionist.

The Darkness Beneath Level 5 – The Lower Caves
by David Bowman
Level 5 characters?

Holy Crap! The community megadungeon ‘The Darkness Beneath’ has turned out some very good levels thus far, with a single exception. I was expecting and looking forward to another pretty good dungeon level in this issue. I was wrong. Holy Crap! This thing is awesome! Even by the VERY high standards of Fight On and The Darkness Beneath, this level is crazy bad ass! The map has 70 or so keyed areas in it and has a pretty complex design: lots of loops, lots of ways in to and out of the level, lots of terrain features. It’s divided up in to five or areas each of which has a separate feel to it. The core is a kind of travelers inn in an old fey home. These two elements, the inn and the former fey, map up the bulk of what’s going on in this level. There are 40 or so named creatures, from goblins and humans to trolls and demihumans, that are scattered through the inn and the environments. Everyone has their own motivations and goals, which makes for fabulous play, in my experience. The party can interact with people, learn rumors, go on side quests, get information about deeper levels, explore the cave areas, and so on. There’s a richness and history to a lot of the areas; details like former bands of murder hobos to be found in various states of death through the level, and terrain features with a history behind them. These elements help bring the level alive. Many of the areas have so much going on that they feel like those ‘wilderness encounter’ pieces that sometimes show up in magazine and supplements. You know, two or three pages of someone you can meet in the wilderness? Those are EVERYWHERE on this level, and condensed in to a paragraph or two for the most part. This level is so rich and has so much going on that it feels a lot like a fully formed portion of one of those drow cities, like in Vault, if they were fully fleshed out and detailed. The entries are a little longer than I generally prefer, but that’s more than made up for by the rich content they provide. Not endless mind-numbing room descriptions but details about the occupants or the special things going on in that room. There’s a host of new magic items that are well detailed and unique which also contribute to the original feel of the level. There are also several pages of new monster entires that will keep the party on their toes. This is a fabulous effort and ranks right up there with the best products ever made: Thracia, Dark Tower, and so on. A really stellar example of what a good dungeon level can be.

I’m working my way through reviewing the adventures in Fight On! magazine. The magazine itself is great and is chock full of ideas that should your creative juices flowing. Check it out!
The Tomb of Ixtandraz
by Lee Barber
4th-6th Level Characters

This is an interesting little dungeon. It doesn’t have as much meat as I’d normally prefer, only 17 rooms or so. This is generally not enough to get something interesting going that can sustain play. This one though is a little different and appeals to me in an unusual way. It may be because it’s in a burial mound; I’m SUCH a sucker for those. It starts gimmicky enough: the tomb of the archmage Ixtandraz has been found and the party gets ahold of a map. In it’s swampy location the party comes upon a lizardmen village at the base of the mound. Inside is a wonderful assortment of oddity and an excellent selection of OSR elements. The map is … hard to categorize. Despite having only 17 rooms AND being a burial complex, it manages to be interesting. Lots of little features, corridors running over others, flooded sections, interesting secret doors, mini-tunnels, etc. I was pretty pleased with the variety the map presented. The rooms are nicely done as well. Statues that turn and open secret doors, clues in paintings, small environmental modifiers to combat from rubble & water and so on. There’s a goofy table of wine bottle effects which include things like ‘coated in blueberry jelly’ and ‘STR reduced by half for 2d10 rounds.’ I LOVE it when dungeon have things for the party to play with and the wine bottles more than satisfy. There’s also a goofy little ghost cat named Norbert that could become a hanger-on. Why don’t more published adventures have this originality? This is the kind of stuff that a campaign thrives on and I’m continually amazed more of it doesn’t show up in print. It doesn’t appear that any of the monsters, except maybe the lizardmen, are standard; everything has a little twist. I like this because it keeps the monsters scary; the players never know what to expect. The magic items are also an interesting allotment. They are all non-standard in some way, even if it’s just a little adjustment like “of returning” added on to a magic weapon. No generic crap in this dungeon! This would make an excellent little adventure for an evening of play or a con; it’s a great introduction to elements of the OSR.
Black Blood
by Gabor Lux
3rd level characters

RedRum! REDRUM!
This is a kind of investigatory adventure set in an old home that starts with an excellent hook. the party, having arrived at a major city by ship, is greeted by deserted streets. Well, except for a detachment of the city guard which informs them that all three of the city gods have issued the same omen: the strangers who arrive this evening will destroy the town and anyone who succors them. A bribe is exchanged and the ships captain anchors in the harbor … until getting second thoughts about “succor” and kicks the party off the ship. In the empty streets of the town they meet a strange woman covered in blood with a dagger and a wild look in her eyes. This leads to the Villa of Severius and it’s 42 or so rooms of adventure. The hook is excellent and will certainly lead to some great roleplaying opportunities. The villa is two stories with two basements and the maps interesting enough to sustain play. In the grandest tradition of Weird Fiction, the house proper is will be mostly an investigation as the party travels from room to room. This builds from emptiness, to clues, to gruesome body finds and finally to creatures and more gruesomeness as the party enters the basement levels. This would probably make a great Call of Cthulhu adventure and could be dropped in to almost any other game system or time. To me that means it works for what it’s trying to do: create a weird fantasy adventure. The only problem is perhaps that the NPC along for the ride, which adds so much flavor, is likely to get massacred or left behind early on by the party. The NPC is critical not only for raising tension but also for a single secret door. Without finding that door the party will be lost. There’s not a lot of magic items in this but what there is nicely done and fits the tone of the adventure. For example, a silver cross with a few charges that allows the holder to turn undead as a cleric. The creatures are either nicely weird or undead, both strange and new and good ol zombies. This would make an excellent halloween/christmas adventure and/or serve as a nice change of pace or interlude, although there’s a very real chance of death: the wizard behind things is mad an 9th level. Guile over brawn gang!

 
A Giant Dilemma
by Frank Farris
2nd-4th level characters

This isn’t really an adventure, but rather a brief encounter in the wilderness. The party is stopped by some orcs who plead with them to rescue their children. The kids were locked in their cave after a red giant came crashing in and kicked them out. The feverish fire giant s really the only opponent, and a smart party will attempt to ignore/bypass him. This tactic only has a 1 in 6 chance of failing, unless the party is full of idiots. The rest of the small seven room cave complex only has one surprise in it.

The Barrow of Therex
by Erin Bisson
1st level characters

This small five room barrow that is in the process of being looted by goblins. The portion they haven’t reached yet contain a few undead. There is some nice historical flavor to the barrow with enough fantasy to make it interesting, especially in the grave gifts category. The few magic items are both interesting, detailed, and non-standard. This is a nice little adventure for a 1st level hex-crawl encounter.
The Darkness Beneath Level 2 – Warrens of the Troglodytes
by Calithena and D. Bowman
Level 1-5 characters, depending on GM cruelty/kindness

I’ve loved two of the three previous levels of this community megadungeon and was happy to see the trogs finally get their level. These are caverns and the map that supports them is windy and full of natural features. While there are several small loops present there is not enough alternate passages for my tastes. I wish more were done with the multiple elevations that come from the numerous chasms, sinkholes, slopes, and terraces that are present. The 40 encounters are supplemented with two small sub-levels that add an additional eleven or so encounters to the mix. The core of the encounters on the this level are going to be with the trogs, in their various forms. And therein lies this levels largest fault: it feels RELENTLESSLY trog. It’s not, but it can feel that way. It’s actually a nice cavern system with some native inhabitants. Gas Spores. Giant Badgers, a Dragon, etc. There’s also a major ally to be found: the Mole Men! These guys are essentially co-inhabitants and are completely random in when they will appear. I LOVE the mole men, especially as potential, and very weak, allies. There’s a good assortment of ‘creatures in the pit’ and ‘fungus gods’ as well, but the whole ‘trogs everywhere’ feel is hard to escape. I also wish the magic items had some more detail. While there is some variety in them, there are also too many “+1 spear” and even one instance of “they all have +2 daggers”. The later is a travesty in my eyes. Overall a decent above-average level but not enough interesting things in the “not creatures” category. Of course, an above-average Fight On! adventure like this is also better than at least 80% of other modules, and it’s quite a bit better than the Mysterious Crystal Hemisphere in the last issue.

I’m working my way through the various issues of FIght On! magazine, reviewing the adventures. The rest of the magazine tends to be chock full of great thing from the OSR and feels a lot like the early Dragon & White Dwarf.

House of the Axe
by Calithena
4th-10th Level
Arduin!

This adventure details the ground and upper story of a ruined home of a dead wizard, along with the basement and dungeon level. There are about 65 or so encounters in all, with most being in the basement and ground floors. The adventure has that quirky and idiosyncratic feel that I’m looking for. All of the rooms contain a pretty lengthy description and a section of boxed text, neither of which I prefer, however nearly every room has something interesting going on. In this way it very much resembles Tegal Manor. There’s an old ghost who floats around with a random chance of screwing with the party. There are many and varied In Media Res rooms where the party stumbles upon a recently slain body (or bodies.) There’s a great assortment of new baddies to learn about that should keep the party on its toes. The magic items, and to a certain extent the mundane treasure, all have a pretty good description attached to them. In fact the most valuable item in the adventure will only be obvious to smart players, exactly the way things should be. This is a great adventure with perhaps three things that could be better. The textual items are a bit long for my tastes; I’ll need some strong highlighting to run this. The second floor is also a little too gimmicky for my tastes. The core gonzo element of the floor is a little too … direct? for my tastes. Finally there is not really enough interaction with the creatures, other than to hack them: the intelligent beings jump to attack immediately instead of some much more interesting party interaction. Otherwise the party is going to have a great time playing the various rooms and getting themselves killed over and over again, in the grand tradition of Tegal.

The Tower of Duvan’Ku
by James Edward Raggi IV
1st-2nd Level

This adventure also appears, somewhat revised, the Raggi module Death, Frost, Doom. Raggi does a good job of invoking a certain type of feel in his work. A kind of weird horror that not too many others, if any, have captured. They also tend to be linear deathtraps. This adventure is no exception. The party encounters a ruined tower in the middle of an idyllic glade. Properly preped, they know that tower holds something. There are just five levels to the tower, one room per level, and only four of them really come in to play, along with a special door and the doors guardian. The adventure is short, deadly, and has no treasure to speak of. It’s more of a lesson, and the author admits as much, that not every place the party explores is rewarding.
Arcane Vault of Isis
by Matthew Riedel
High to very-high level party

This is a linear dungeon with 18 or so encounters. The party hears of a strange stone structure that has been revealed by a recent sandstorm and plunges in to explore the depths underneath it. The dungeon is pretty relentlessly linear and presents several other tropes that I generally have problems with. The undisturbed tomb has living creatures in it. They don’t pop out of stasis, but it still strikes me as being out place. It’s full of constructs that attack relentlessly. What else can you put in a tomb except for undead? That’s why tomb explorations tend to be boring as hell. It’s all set piece traps and constructs and undead. It has an egyptian theme and a magnet trap, both of which are turn off for me but may work out better for you. The party ends up fighting a dragon and maybe a stasis wizard and maybe a band of priests that show up. I found the whole thing very unsatisfying, but then again I’m looking for a lot more whimsy in mu dungeons and VERY much don’t like linear tomb crawls.
Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer
by Geoffrey McKinney
Carcosa

This section of nine pages details some points of interest in hex 2005 of Carcosa map one. “Carcosa” is all you really need to know though. It’s wild, it’s wooly, it batshit crazy and it’s wonderful, although not quite the whimsical that I prefer. The hex has a scientific outpost for aliens, a group of barbarians that ride dinosaurs and hunt sorcerers, and assorted other strangeness. The core of the text is taken up by describing the 27 room cave system of the Bone Sorcerer. It’s a cave system with a map that adequate although without any real interesting features. The encounters, however, will be remembered for a long time to come for any players that stumble through here. A lake of green slime, caves of bones, giant fungus forests, chthonic beasties, and a certain moral ambiguity in its presentation should lead the party in to some interesting hijinks. You know, Gamma World has always suffered a bit from the lack of a campaign setting. ASE1 and Carcosa could be the setting GW needs.

The Darkness Beneath Level 4: The Mysterious Crystal Hemisphere
by James Maliszewski
Level 4 characters

This is level 4 of the community megadungeon, and by far the weakest. While the previous two entries have been stellar this one lies somewhere on the lower end of mediocre. The eleven pages describe 50 or so encounter areas, however the first two pages are full of background. That’s probably the first indication in any product that its going to be problematic for me. Only Stonhell comes to mind as a product that had a longish introduction and didn’t disappoint. Then again, it had 20 or so maps so it’s introduction size, relative to the product, was short. Two pages of introduction for one small dungeon level …. that’s not short. The idea is that a portion of an alien spaceship has materialized inside a larger set of caverns. This divides the level in to caverns, spaceship, and “stabilizing chambers” where the materialization is not quite complete. Nice idea. Different wandering monster tables are given for each area however they are all over the place. Trolls, dopplegangers, and owlbears in the stabilizing portions with giant ticks, cave bears and spiders in the caverns. The differentiation in creatures makes no sense; it just seems like it was randomly thrown together. The non-spaceship parts of the map are generally very simple, with a lot of linearity. It’s also confusing. Hand drawn is a nice touch but it needs shading to denote solid spaces from passages. The spaceship has a little more variety but again the lack of shading makes the map confusing. The chambers themselves are … well, boring. There’s just not much going on. The cavern creatures attack on sight, and viscously, with only a couple of exceptions. This in spite of their troubles with the spaceship. There’s not enough factions at play in this space, which is a lost opportunity. The players could be teaming up with the trogs or trolls or even the spaceship to work against the others or play both sides of the street. The room descriptions are more verbose than I would prefer and seem devoid of any sparks. Standard giant spider room. Standard beetle room. Standard collapsed chamber. Oh, there is a bad save or die trap that seems to come out of nowhere. It should have had some kind of warning, bodies or bones or something. The aliens in the ship are just mind flayers in uniforms, which brings to mind the Barrier Peaks illustration; perhaps that was the inspiration. The adventure is probably too high for a party of 4ths, given the frequency & high numbers of 6HD creatures sent against the party by the ship. This level is supposed to expand on the brain parasite found on Level 3 in the Crab Spawning Grounds, but it does a poor job. The mystery and bizarreness is removed. This feels too much like standard high fantasy “explanation” based exploring.

I’m working my way through Fight On! magazine reviewing the adventurers. I’m skipping over the rest of the magazine, and the hex crawlish sorts of things. The magazine in general is very good and compares well to the early days of Dragon and White Dwarf.  The general content is excellent. This issue also includes several regional/hex description sections and level 5 of Hell by the same author who presented the first four levels in the 1980 Judge’s Guild supplement Inferno.

The Darkness Beneath, Level3 – Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men

by David Bowman

Level 3 characters

This level won first prize in the Fight On! adventure contest and now seems to be expanding it’s reach. Level 1 appeared in issue #2 and Level 2 claims to be appearing in issue #4. This level has SO much going in it’s 13 or 14 pages that it’s going to be hard to mention how it all interacts. First there’s the Crab-Men. These are primitive cavemen who worship a demon crab and use this level for their bizarre rites. Ceremonies which turn them in to various crab monstrosities. A large part of the level is devoted to them and the various types of ‘real’ crabs which hang about as well. But wait, That’s not all! Also lurking about the crab section are an ‘insane’ crab monstrosity/humanoid named Crazy Clonk. He’s under guard by crab men who release him upon intruders, but only reluctantly because he’s a pain to get back in his pen. You see, he picked up a glowing-red sword which is now dominating him … Oh, and the giant crabs that roam around are really just animals and can turn on their crab-men handlers at any moment. DId I mention the elderly hill giant whose cave reeks of dead crabs and butter? He moved hear in order to enjoy his favorite food, hot buttery crab, in his retirement and offers a bounty for each the party brings to him. That’s the kind of quirky good natured fun that a lot of modern products are missing. Note also how various factions of the dungeon are presented. Not every encounter has to turn in to a fight: the party can talk to the giant, manipulate the giants crabs or the ego-dominated Clonk. All of that is just in one section of the dungeon. There are other sections with a crazed sorcerer and his Speci-Men, which could easily turn in to a great recurring villain because of his twist. That section has factions as well, with hive-minds, alien intelligences, and sympathetic ‘monsters’ who have their own goals and motivations. This wonderful environment is supported by an interesting map with 54 or so encounters that has several distinct feels to it, from caverns to seemingly inaccessible areas to standard dungeon halls. The wanderers generally support this same environment, with a variety of special events and encounters offered to make the journey more interesting, such as trog raiding parties, loose experiments, and battles in progress. The magic items and treasures fall in to either a mundane category or a Kick Ass Flavor category; it would have been nice to see more individualization in all of the treasures. The textual descriptions are a bit long, with eight or so rooms per page described each with a longish paragraph. This is a little longer then I’d like to see because I find that length hard to pick apart during play. It’s also nothing that a highlighter can’t fix. In the best tradition of module writing a great deal of the history and background of the level comes out in these descriptions which IS the correct way to present this information. This level fits in well with the overall megadungeon environment and is a rich and full flavored (buttery flavored?) place to adventure in. It’s one of the best efforts of the OSR and I strongly recommend it