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An old pirate lair in sea saves. The map design, while making sense, is not very interesting, and there’s not enough strange to explore. The detail comes in all the wrong places. It’s a stocking exercise, similar to B1.

Arrrrrrr! Pirates! Treasure! Ghosts! Curses! All this and more awaits as you explore the rumors of The Pearl of Pirates’ Cove.

This module is arranged much in the same way that B1 – In Search of the Unknown was. Each chamber in a group of sea caves has a short description followed by a blank space to write in a monster and a treasure. A table in the back of the booklet provides a list of monsters and treasures for the aspiring DM to populate the rooms with. 15 treasures and 20 monsters are provided to populate the 39 rooms of the sea caves. But … I get ahead of myself.

The module starts with a two full  pages of background and introductions. The background in particular, at a full page, is a little longer than I would have liked to have seen. This being a sort of introductory work, a full page is given on stocking the dungeon with treasures and monsters, along with a few words of advice, such as noting that there are more rooms than monsters and treasures … on purpose. Not every room should have a monster, not every treasure should be guarded, and there should be a lot of nothing in dungeons, so I heartily approve. There’s a small ten entry rumor table, which I always appreciate seeing in a module, and the rumors are better than most. There’s a lot of half-truthes and a few truly useful entries.

The dungeon centers around a group of sea caves in a cove, once the abode of the dread pirate Sally Golightly. Like I said, there’s an longish backstory there …   The sea caves are a chore just to get to; the party will need to rope down from above or climb up from boats below. That’s very nice. It presents a nice challenge to even get to the caves, especially for a low-level party, and provides a reason why they still have not been looted. There are a couple of false cave complexes as well, one of four chambers and one of seven chambers, which should provide a note note of realism … not all dungeons have bright neon welcome signs pointing to the doors. The pirates caves on the upper level have a design that resembles a long corridor with chambers/rooms/doors branching off of it, with a couple of chambers having a second exit. The lower level, where the loot is hidden, is a linear affair of the ‘run the gauntlet’ type: room after room of traps & encounters until you reach the treasure chamber. That makes sense, even though it’s not the design looping and extensive map design I’m usually looking for. There’s a small wandering monster table of six entries which consist of vermin and animals. I like those types of encounters on a wandering table, however a certain Ghost, that of a pirate, is missing from it, which detracts a bit.

The various encounters are on the bland side. The rooms of the upper chambers especially so. Each room tends to be described by what use the pirates had for it and what went on in the room, sometimes with a suggestion of what sort of monster could be placed. “There are many nests apparent” and so on. This is, IMHO, the wrong way to describe a room. I don’t care about the normal contents of the bedroom, even _I_ can make that up. I want new, unusual, strange, and weird to be described. The upper chambers have nothing interesting going on. Nothing strange, unusual, or weird at all. The linear lower chambers are more interesting. A log over a rushing stream. A giant stone face with hollow eyes, several traps, from pits to a homage to the first sequence of the first Indiana Jones movie. I’m a sucker for giant rolling stones. There is a chessboard puzzle in the lower halls, which seems out of place. I would expect to see that in some kind of funhouse dungeon and not in something that is attempting to se a bit more serious. It is, however, a classic puzzle type.

The existence of the lower halls, and the traps, are alluded to in the upper caves by clues that party can find. I like that; the players are rewarded for exploring. I seem to recall that B1 had several rooms already populated by monsters & treasures, as an example for the DM prior to the DM stocking the rest of the dungeon. This module lacks that and could use it if it were aiming to be an introductory product.

A Pathfinder module that attempts to invoke an old school Sword & Sorcery feel. The kick ass cover and name are a bit let down by the contents.

What’s this … a Pathfinder module review?! Indeed gentle readers, but not just any old module …  a Xoth.Net module. These folks have a reputation, from this product and the Bride of the Spider-God book, for publishing old school adventures. Let’s see, shall we? It’s going to help if you imagine those cities and towns from the first Arnold Conan movie while reading the review.

This adventure has an egypt-like setting and centers around the attempts of a beast cult to bring their fallen religion back to the forefront by turning a group of their followers in to beast-men. This effort is being led by a group that has infiltrated the palace.

The module has a bit of a non-standard organization. It describes four separate areas and then describes how those areas can be used to run an adventure. This particular style tends to pop up most often in city adventures: you get the city described and then you get some plots with advice on running them in the city. This tends to create a very open-ended type of adventure and encourages sandbox-like play, which also means, of course, that the DM needs to put in no small amount of effort to flesh things out.

The first section described is the hook. While traveling the players run in to a slave caravan with some beautiful, and scantily clad, female slaves in tow. One of the slaves signals the characters to rescue her, with the implication that the party fight the caravan. This immediately triggered my anti-plot defense system. What if they don’t rescue her? They can’t buy her from the caravan? etc. My fears were largely unfounded though for in the rear of the module there is that nice little section on how to run the adventure. It goes in to a small amount of detail on how to proceed if the party ignores her; essentially reintroducing the adventure in the next city through slaver raids, rumors, and the like. This was a nice surprise; after expecting a railroad I instead found a helpful bus & taxi guide for day trips and further excursions.

The second section is an extremely brief description of the city the adventure takes place in. Seven locations in two pages is not much. Essentially it’s a brief description of the gates, the barracks, and the faceless sphinx … which none of the locals will talk about.

The third section is a description of the royal palace. The party will end up here either quickly if they rescued the slave girl, or slowly if they took the bus & taxi route. The king is old & tired, the advisors are corrupt and plotting, and the party gets to stay as ‘guests’ of the palace. During this stay the party should get a chance to interact with the various NPC’s in the palace and perhaps stumble upon the secret tunnels, as they explore or try to escape. The palace has about 40 or so keyed entries, but that’s not as important as the NPC’s. These sorts of things live or die by the NPC’s personalities, and these just don’t cut it. There’s not enough going on beyond the main plot to sustain things. Reference is made to the various courtiers being held in check by the subtle influences of the core villains, but we get no details of those those courtiers. This would have added an element of factions that could have provided quite a bit more role-playing opportunity. There are a couple of other notable things. First, there’s an absolutely wonderful table that describes what the courtier is up to in the courtiers lounge, if one is present. “Sleeping with jewelry on a nearby table”, “Beating a slave”, ” Counting money”, “make love to a female (75%) or male (25%) servant”, “Being blackmailed”, and so on. That kind of detail is GREAT and screams both ‘old school’ and ‘massive opportunity for roleplaying fun.’ Second, it displays the travesty that the thief class introduced in the Greyhawk supplement. Yes, that means skills. For example: If you make a DC 17 check in any Knowledge check then the Scribe regards you as an intellectual and will be friendly to you. GAH! ABOMINATION! ABOMINATION! I suppose roleplaying it out would be too much to ask? Then again, this IS a Pathfinder module, and that IS a part of the modern game. But it’s not old school, not in my mind.

The final section describes the cultist tunnels, entered through the Palace or the Sphinx. The map is small, with only 15 rooms, but it’s good for it’s size. About half the rooms have a second entrance, so it’s a bit of a looping map design, especially for it’s size. This is great since it allows the party to bypass some areas, set up ambushes, and be ambushed. There is not enough weirdness in it for my tastes, but there is a well done statue trap and one nice environmental issue to deal with. Otherwise it’s a bunch of mostly empty rooms with not much going on in them.

There’s a page that follows the offers advice on how to use the areas to run the adventure. I already went through the hook section advice that given, however there’s a lot of good, and terse, advice on how to run the adventure in the palace and how to run the climax of the adventure, a human sacrifice in the tunnel section. What’s missing here is a general timeline of events. There IS some sense conveyed in this last advice section, that there are events transpiring outside the involvement of the PC’s, however it could be much stronger.

So, it is old school? Maybe. 🙂 There’s a definite Swords & Serpent-men feel, it’s open-ended to a very large degree, and it has a random courtier activity table with a halfway decent, though small, tunnels map. It also has skill checks, standard magic items, and not much for the PC’s to poke/play with, like pools/statues. Given the title it was bit too bland in the atmosphere department. It tries for Swords & Sorcery, but need more cowbell to actually get there. It’s certainly not bad, but will take a lot of work to get a good run out of it. It does have a pretty cool cover though. 🙂

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114508/Legend-Song-of-the-BeastGods?affiliate_id=1892600

This module most closely resembles a small wilderness area adventure with significant opportunity for exploration underwater. As a framework, its generally missing the detail that accompanies a location-based encounter, and further work by the DM to expand it will probably be needed.

Legends and rumors whisper that somewhere, many days from the coast, lies a sunken city. Who built it and why are a mystery. The rumors conflict with each other, but all agree that a vast amount of wealth awaits under the waters for those bold enough to claim it!

This is a follow on adventure to module X1 – The Isle of Dread. Like that module this one involves a journey to a group of islands in search of treasure. The Kopra make an appearance as well, further tying the two modules together. Dread focused quite a bit on the journey to the island and then the exploration of the interior. This module glosses over the journey, and the island exploration portions are much smaller. It’s quite likely that the party will spend a significant amount of time underwater, and there are some rule clarifications to help the DM deal with that. There’s also an overly-long backstory.

The hook here is quite light, and rubs me a bit raw. It starts with rumors in a bar and an old man offering information. It also involves each character rolling the dice with the old man and almost certainly (14 chances out of 18) gaining a permanent boon to an attribute or the like. While I like that sort of mechanism in a dungeon I certainly don’t like it in the introduction. In the dungeon it feels like a reward for exploration and taking chances, like drinking from a magical pool. In the introduction it feels arbitrary and unearned. There are no details for the journey to the island, the DM being encouraged to consult the Expert rules if they want to play that portion out.

The primary adventure is played out on a sunken plateau with three mountain peaks/islands poking up, creating a triangle like area between them. The area in and around the peaks is quite shallow, particularly during low tide, from 2-4 feet. There are a variety of statues in the low-tide region as well, along with some geysers that can erupt. The geysers provide a small environmental hazard however the status play no part. The islands have some very small ruins on them and there are two Kopru caverns on them. The Kopru caverns greatly resemble those in Isle of Dread in form: terraces, mud pits, etc. The only wandering creatures will be giant sea life: crabs, barracuda, sharks, stingrays, eels, snakes, etc.

The set encounters generally involve fantastic sea life: hydras, an octopus, squid, sea dragon, etc. There are two or three potentially friendly encounters as well, at least one of which should provide some clues to the PC’s of the whereabouts of the sunken city (the second Kopru cavern.) The encounters are generally straight forward, with one or two showing the seeds of something interesting: mud-pits with creatures lurking in the bottom, statues with curses, etc. All in all though, the encounters are generally not greatly evocative or interesting. There are more than a few non-standard magic-items. These don’t fall in to the weird/unusual category, but they are are more than standard book items. A sword with a larger bonus to certain sea creature, a variety of rings with minor effects, etc. The most interesting is probably a magical helm of underwater action/breathing. This BEGS for weirding things up, but the opportunity is lost. The sunken city is largely not described and in ruins, with little detail provided.

Tales of a tropical paradise! Beautiful native women! Mountain full of precious stones! Rumors of being torn limb from limb by bestial guardians are but a minor worry when the rewards are so great!

This is an OD&D module and appears to be a designed for introducing new players to OD&D play. As such there’s a four page section at the beginning which describes OD&D to the players. It begins with “You are about to take a tip back in time. The machine that is going to allow this is your own mind and ability to imagine.” It then goes through something similar to describe the three core classes, with another similar section for the DM. The DM section does focus on the mechanically different systems in the Little Brown Books, as compared to newer games, where ‘new’ is define as everything that came later, including the Greyhawk supplement. This goes so far as to suggest the module NOT be adapted to other rules sets, in order to preserve the LBB experience. Or, rather, the authors LBB experiences …

The background and introduction are about a page long. This is right at the edge of what I prefer, and in fact it might be about right given the larger font used. The starting section is brief, noting that the players journeyed to the isle by boat, were rowed to shore, and dropped off by the crew. The section finishes up with a suggestive Betty Page-like beach illustration. This is the second time the author has included something suggestive in a product. I approved then and I approve now. There’s room for all types of art styles in an OSR product. I also thought the Book of Erotic Fantasy was quite tastefully and well done, so go figure. In any event, the 70’s are alive and well, thanks in part to the author.

What follows is a trip to a village of beautiful young women, with no male villagers present at all. Hmmm …. The party should pick up on the clues and after  talking get moving toward the Valley of the Bones and the titular Temple of the Ape. To get there they are going to have to run a gauntlet of wandering monsters. I count a minimum of a 46 hex journey, with a 33% change of a wandering creature in each hex. Wanderers include 1-2 trolls, 1-2 hydras, 1-2 wyvern or minotaurs. A cockatrice, basilisk, medusa, or 2-12 ghouls, among others. The table is suitably old school. The tables are SUPER deadly for a party of 1st-4th level characters. I generally approve of that, but there are SO many encounters likely that I’m not I’d run it as written. In all likelihood the party will meet 10 wanderers, and I don’t see a party surviving that, even if they choose to run away or hide each time. The replacement character boat ferry is going to have to be very strong, logistically. It should also be noted that a second village is located  on the way to the temple, one of young maidens, but it has no detail at all. It’s almost as if an entire section was accidentally left out.

The temple proper is a short twelve room affair. The map is interesting, aesthetically, however not in an exploratory fashion. It’s just too small to offer a full range of exploration options, with side hallways, ambush routes, and passes to cut people off at. There’s a magic pool or two for the players to drink from, and some new monsters, however otherwise the temple is pretty straightforward … with a lot of deadly opponents.

Is this a good example of LBB adventure? I started with Holmes in 79 so I don’t know. There are at least three elements here that seem to relate. First, the magic pools are a classic element of old style play. Exploring something that could kill you or give you a bonus is a class element. Secondly, encountering new creatures is a good example as well. In the beginning no one had yet memorized the monster manual so everything was new, and because of that every creature was scary. Third, the set up is a decent old school one. There is a certain bizarre nature to a tribe of beautiful native women, bettie page lookalikes, ‘protected’ by giant apes in a village without men. That sort of original thinking is something that I fondly remember from my early days, before dungeons and adventures became more standardized. It’s not a megadungeon, there are not non-standard magic items, the slime/ooze/vermin quotient is low for my tastes, and there’s not quite enough for the party to explore, all of which are qualities I attach to classic play style. It is, however, suitably different enough that I plan on keeping it and running it.

This is a small regional module that details a home base in the Ordan valley and five short adventurers in this borderlands area. A small wilderness map is provided, about 12 miles by 12 miles, along with a wandering monster table for the valley. It’s suitably old school, with a variety of encounters that will quickly overwhelm a low level party: Owlbear, werewolves as outliers with bandits, orcs, and kobolds being more common. I don’t like humanoids on my tables, I like my monsters to we doing something while wandering, and I like stats provided with my wanderers. This table strikes out on all three fronts and just comes of as bland. A word of advice to all publishers: everything in the module should contribute to it.

The home base is a small farming community in the valley, complete with fortified inn, temple, mage tower, and “druid” grove, where druid is defined as “cleric who likes animals and nature and cant turn undead anymore.” The mage buys magic items and trains. The temple provides healing and trains. The fighters in the inn provide training, etc. Most of this really just feels like a logistical exercise in providing for all that a party may need. As a home base the inn is mostly forgettable. There are a few NPC’s in it however most of them are rather bland. One of two of them show promise: a potentially murderous bar-maid who tries for revenge if the party wipes out the valley bandits, or a Baron Harkonin-like trade who puts a price on the bandits head with a bit extra if the killings are extra gruesome. Those two are really the standouts with most of the rest of the NPC’s not even coming close to their level of flavor text. I like strongly flavored NPCs with hooks, especially in a home base, and I wish there was more in this one.

The five adventurers are nothing too special. There’s some orcs camped out in an abandoned temple. There’s a bandit camp. There’s some trog caves. There’s a druid trying to get all of the above groups to attack the humans. Finally, there’s a forgotten tomb. Most of the areas have some leads to one or more of the others: letters from one party to another, maps in scroll tubes, etc. Each setting has about 15 or so keyed encounters. There’s not really much to distinguish the various encounter areas, other than to say they are generally a jumble of monsters with lots of animated statues and wood golems present. These are going to be tough adventurers for a 1st level party, but I like that. A few things rubbed me the wrong way. Doors in the tomb that can only be opened with a certain key and NOT a knock spell. That smacks of a computer RPG fetch quest, which I LOATHE. There are a couple of other issues related to known and unknown passwords, which are very difficult to discover at these levels. One of the maps, an old temple with orcs in it, has the beginnings of some decent maps. One of the levels has three separate areas that don’t connect, reached through different ways. That’s a good thing and should drive a party NUTS. There is some information provided on organized responses to incursions, which I appreciate.

This module could use more detail & customization. I’d like the magic items that appear to be more unque. There’s a single example, a magic sword that’s a mageslayer. I’d like to see more like that, and even more customization of the magic items than that. There’s not many weird things to poke around or play with; oh, there’s a corridor with some evil goo on it, however I’d have liked to see more in the way of weird and strange things, both environmental and things for the characters to play with, like pools, statues, etc. As it is many of the keyed locations in the same dungeon feel a bit disconnected from each other.

This is a small wilderness area adventure that can probably be completed in one session. It has several touches of whimsy and classic fantasy which I really enjoyed, although the core villain fell flat for me.

A river barge did not arrive as scheduled! The Baron had something on the barge that he wanted badly, so the party is sent to find out what happened and recover the box!

This is a small wilderness based adventure that could probably be played in a single session. I was more than a little thrown off by the background in this, much as I was in Jungle Ruins of Madaro-Shanti, by Frog God. In that case the module cover, a picture totally unrelated to the module, threw me for a loop and it took a LONG time for me to orient my self to the atmosphere. In this case the module background conjured forth some kind of mental image of a Mississippi river boat. THAT lead to magical economy thoughts, which I loathe, so I was very put off. I know it sounds silly, but there it is. Once I got that taste out of my mouth and started envisioning The African Queen, a P.O.S. boat, and small jungle trading posts, then I did a much better job of getting in the mood. I generally don’t care about art in products, however I must admit that it certainly does have it’s place in setting the mood or style, especially on the cover. Now that we all know I hate riverboats and it may have tainted this review, unjustly, let’s move on.

The maps is a pretty basic one of a river crossing. It fills an entire page with one inch equaling about 160′, or about 1,300′ by 1,700′ in total. Essentially, the east bank is forest on the north side and marsh on the south, split by a trail that leads to the river. The river is wide, has depth markings and a three small islands in the middle. The islands are connected by a marshy/waters/ low spot in the river. The west side of the bank has some hills. There are three wandering monster tables provided, a general one, one for the river, and one for the shoreline/bank. The author correctly notes that they are minimal. They are themed appropriately, but they have no detail and no stats. I like stats with my monsters, inline, and I like my wanderers to be doing something; looking for food, digging a new house, etc. The bank table does have a noble with a small backstory; that’s the sort of detail I’m looking for in a table. In addition, let’s beat the dead horse of ‘expectations’ once again. Buccaneers appear on the table. That word conjures up a certain image in my mind. “Dirty river bandits” conjures up a different image. There are a couple of supplemental maps for a small way station that appears on the island. It’s pretty straight-forward map of an inn, two stories and a basement, with it’s own vermin-filled wandering table. I don’t like to context shift. There are about 16 or so keyed wilderness encounters and another 16 or so in a small way station on the central island.

The encounters are rather straight-forward, with a few vignettes thrown in. There’s a series of four encounter areas that relate to a group of bugbears caught in the act. The creatures encountered contain a lot of wildlife with a few fantastic encounters thrown in. Those few contain the whimsy that I’m primarily looking for in module. Cyclops & Centaurs in love. Pegasi women (topless & hot!. I’ll let you decide where I come in on the “women in realistic armor” debate.) River hydra! A troll at a bridge-like thing! I love that kind of stuff. You know what I don’t love? Were-rats. I hate them. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like they are COMPLETELY overused. Were-WOLVES on the other hand are underused. I’m sure there’s some cognitive zeitgeist that dictates when to use a wold and when to use a rat. There’s a wolf here, but it feels like a rat. Hmmm, maybe it’s something like treachery/hiding vs raw violence? There’s a decent little backstory integrated in to the inn encounters and several of the wilderness encounters and the party should be able to piece what happened together. It’s nicely integrated, subtle enough to not be a slap in the face but obvious enough to make catch even the densest and inattentive parties eye.

This is a nice little adventure, probably suitable for one night or convention slot. I like the heavy use of vermin and wildlife and very much enjoyed the whimsy/fantasy aspects. The core plot was ok, and it probably could have been enhanced by focusing on the violence, as opposed to the treachery/hiding aspects that are instead used. The magic items are pretty much all book items, and I like mine more unique, tending toward the weird.

It’s a simple mission. Ogres are attacking civilized lands! Go stop them!

Simple maybe, however the introductory text takes almost two pages to deliver it. This is but one of several problems to an otherwise good homage to the G1, G2, G3 set of modules. The overly long backstory implies that there is a wilderness component to the adventure, and there is a wilderness area map provided, with both Letters (A, B, C) and numbers (1, 2, 3) keyed on it, however there is nothing in the text to indicate that this portion exists or what the map is for. Maybe it was accidentally left out, or meant for the DM to expand the adventure if they chose to?

The Ogre Overlord lives in a palisade fort with a couple of watchtowers. His minions live in common outbuildings inside the palisade and he lives in a ‘manor’ building with a small dungeon underneath. The style of the adventure is clearly similar to the Giants series, however it’s missing a few things. First, there are no wandering monster checks. This is because, I assume, of the open nature of the compound; it just doesn’t make sense. The open nature of the compound and the smaller map areas. There are 20 keyed encounters on the first level, with only five being in the palisade and the other 15 in the manor. There are another 20 on the dungeon level. Neither of these is large enough for a truly interesting map. There’s also a general lack of factions. There is a ‘guest’ in the manor, however that’s not really a faction. Factions can help turn a hack-fest in to a role-playing and hack-fest, so I always like to see them in these sorts of things.

There’s not really much to play with; bags to open, pools to drink from or statues to experiment with. The magic items are regrettably plain and monsters non-unique. I wish there were more to this. The palisade layout, while unique, just doesn’t leave enough room for an interesting upper map. From that starting point you also can’t really have wandering monsters. Most of the creatures are outside the main building in outbuildings, so that’s where the initial action is likely to be. Almost half of the bottom level is taken up with duplicate rooms of the upper level, for those creatures to retreat to, while almost half the map space is taken up with an area for the DM to expand in to. Again, this ends up constraining the map of the level with the result being a non-looping map, no wanderers, and without room them, no factions.

All in all, there is a definite lack of the sort of whimsy and weird found in some of the authors other modules. To be sure, this is a homage to the Giants series, and reads like such, however it may have followed a little too closely.

This is a short adventure. The intro/backstory is interesting however that’s not enough to overcome the brevity and plat nature of the adventure. Not by far.

Once upon a time there was a great bird who lived in the mountain, the Jub Jub bird, covered in golden treasue. One day it flew too close to the lake and a great fish leaped out and swallowed it. The fallen treasure is why is why the lake and fish sparkles. Or so goes the legends of the people who live by the lake. But now a great fish HAS surfaced, and has been swallowing fishermen! The villagers need help before they starve!

This is a very small adventure, about half plot based and half site based. The party will arrive in the village and speak to a retied adventurer (Ug! I HATE retired adventurers!) to get the low down. A giant fish is swallowing people and now a group of goblins are raiding it! A goblin raid then occurs, and the party hopefully tracks them back to their camp. A brief role-play later they find out about some caves the goblins were kicked out of, and have a six room adventure. That’s it.

Jub village isn’t really described. It only exists as a place to have a problem and for the old man to relay six of seven points to the characters. The goblin attack, by six wolf-riders, serves only as a plot point so the party can question one of them and track them back to their camp.There’s a nice little wilderness map, but no wandering monster charts. The goblin camp could be combat oriented or role-playing, but it really is just a place for the party to leave about the caves they need to go investigate, that the goblins were kicked out of by some dwarves.

The cave is a ‘star’ nap. One chamber with five others surrounding it. There’s not really much to it. Just some dwarves to kill, a giant spider, and that’s it. There are some prisoners, the captured fishermen, in a room near the Submarine/fish that captured them . Yes, a submarine fish. Yes, gnomes are involved. This touches on two more themes i don’t in modules: tinkers and tech. I loathe the whole ‘gnomes make clockwork/steam things’ meme in D&D. It was never interesting to begin with and now it’s completely overused, a crutch. The tech thing is absurd. Why make a submarine look like a fish, or even be a submarine? It could be  magic cloud, or a potato sack. Both of those are more interesting than D&D-world things that directly mimic technology. Interestingly, I don’t have a problem with the technology in Barrier Peaks, or ASE1, maybe because they are not trying to imitate something else. They own their background. Submarines do not, they imitate. Badly. I’ll take whimsy over tech any day of the week. Flying carpets? Cool. Riding giant wasps? Cooler. Flying machine that looks like a helicopter? LAME.

This is a VERY basic adventure without much imagination behind it. It essentially amounts to a map with a list of devil-themed monsters, set in a house that is not described.

Out in the wilderness sits a large house. It has no windows, but is otherwise unremarkable, except for it’s larger than normal size. It’s scores of leagues from the nearest settlement. What lies within?

A rather simple high-level adventure, that’s what. This is a simple site-based adventure. The house is described, however there is no real hook provided. The author has a couple of throw-away lines about there being rumors of artifacts present, or about a missing girl with a 10,000 gp reward, however those are not real hooks. It’s a place you can drop in to your own campaign world, without any lead up or wilderness component. The house proper is mildly extra-dimensional. Cleric spells above 2nd level can’t be recovered. The front door locks behind the party, and passwall/teleport don’t work. Further, all magic make a save vs disintegrate upon entering the house, and for EACH hour they spend in the house, or loose a plus/charge/be destroyed. This is going to be a rough one kids.

Oh, and the house is CHOCKED FULL of devils and the like. Spined devils, spiked devils, screaming devils, barbed deviled, bearded devils, Abishai, Pit Fiends, and Erynyes. Not to mention large number of hell hounds, shadows, hags, a lich, crypt thing, eye of fear & flame … I think you get the picture. Just about everyone from the Monster Manual, The MM2, and the Fiend Folio makes an appearance.  There are only 40 keyed rooms and the map, especially the frontal portions, is very linear. This means that the party is going to be meeting and greeting almost every monster the product as almost none of the rooms are empty. The rooms have no description, just a monster description and, invariably, no treasure. A brief section at the beginning has a list of possible room types and a list of possible room furnishings. The final encounter is with the daughter of THE Devil, and she has the Codex of Infinite Spells. That’s it. Most of the keyed descriptions describe the monster and “refer to the FF for more information” type statements. A couple of rooms have more information, however the vast majority are just a room description.

It almost feels like two different products. A few of the initial rooms have more details. One has an animal skin that provides AC3 and protects from poison. Yeah! That’s what I like to see! Nary a DMG magic item reference in sight! Unique! And also an exception. This soon peters out and all we’re left with is monster descriptions. “#15. Large Room. 4 Bearded Devils. [Monsters Stats]” Come on! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a product with as little flavor text. I must be missing something because this is NOT the kind of quality I expect from this author.