{"id":2478,"date":"2014-07-13T09:11:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T13:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2478"},"modified":"2014-07-13T09:11:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T13:11:53","slug":"dungeon-magazine-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2478","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine #36"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"d36\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Asflag\u2019s Unintentional Emporium
\nBy Willie Walsh
\nAD&D
\nLevels 3-7<\/p>\n

Time to clean out the rats in the old woman\u2019s cellar, except this time the old woman is a dead wizard and the cellar is his tower in the middle of the city. I\u2019m not a fan of \u2018joke\u2019 adventures, although I do like humor in adventures and I LOVE the absurd, especially when it comes to wizards. Willie Walsh gets close on this one to delivering a fine adventure. His descriptions of the wizards tower and environs and history get REALLY close to that kind of OD&D non-standard wizard archetype that I adore. It\u2019s got a nice Discworld Unseen University vibe; this kind of mix of the academic and the absurd. He\u2019s got a decent environment but it comes off as very one note. Only one or two of the creatures in the tower will talk to you, and there are A LOT of creatures, so it devolves in to a monster hunt where you open a door, kill the monster, and move on. Further, while several of the monsters are nicely located (water weirds in fountains, cifal\u2019s in beehives, the brass snakes that make up the chandelier animate, the tools in the garden shed animate, etc) there\u2019s not a lot of THE FANTASTIC apart from this. The ability to explore and play with weird things and, for the most part, detect the garden tools early, is missing. I like Willie\u2019s background, and the NPC wizards, and many of the monster encounters \u2026 but it\u2019s just a monster hack-fest. In the Ed Greenwood adventure I reviewers awhile back (Eliminsters backdoor?) you got to go in to rooms and look at weird things but could not interact with anything, turning you in to a tourist. In this adventure you go in to rooms and a monster appropriate to the locale appears for you to kill. Neither capitalize on the wonder of a wizards tower and deliver it to the party. In this regard, S3 was a better Wizards\u2019s Tower adventure than these two.<\/p>\n

Troll Bridge
\nBy William S. Dean
\nAD&D
\nLevels 2-4<\/p>\n

This is a short little encounter. There\u2019s a bridge. It\u2019s got a troll under it. The troll is actually a renegade gnome thief\/illusionist. He makes the spectral forces troll retreat to a hidey hole and ambushes the party there. It\u2019s decent, I guess, but I can\u2019t help thinking that an actual troll under the bridge would have presented more interesting opportunities. Oh, look, a monster isn\u2019t actually a monster but something else \u2026 geee, haven\u2019t seen that in a D&D adventure before \u2026 <\/p>\n

Granite Mountain Prison
\nBy Roger Baker
\nAD&D
\nLevels 4-6<\/p>\n

This is a rescue caper. A fantasy prison is described and the party is given the mission to rescue one person. You come across some supposedly beautiful city, only to fine burnt out buildings and broken street barricades. The local government is totalitarian and the rebel leader just got tossed in jail. You get to go rescue him, because GOOD. The prison has 36 or so locations, and then the 365 cell blocks. It\u2019s well described for the type of adventure it is. Guard schedules, where major NPC\u2019s hang out, the routine of the prison, the response to attack, and so on. It\u2019s also a little boring. There\u2019s just not much to some featureless granite rooms. It\u2019s also got that Magic Ren Faire vibe that I dislike. Decanters of Endless Water as a water source, permanent heat and chill metal spells, a captured air elemental to provide air flow, and so on. It\u2019s need some extra zing to liven up its step. Some personalities for the dick guards, or maybe some random contents for the prisoners personal items, and\/or a quick list of the other prisoners (instead of the random prisoner generator, which IS provided.) There was a one-page dungeon in 2013 that also dealt with a totalitarian state. These might pair up well together, maybe in a Midnight game? Anyway, it does a decent job at describing a PLACE for the party to invade\/sneak through. I just wish Ir were more colorful. Yes, grey is a color, but cerulean is more interesting.<\/p>\n

The Sea of Sorrow
\nBy Steve Kurtz
\n!!SPELLJAMMER!!
\nLevels 7-9<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I can review this well, so it may turn out to be a description rather than a review. It\u2019s a dragon hunt, in space. While in a spaceport the party see a damaged hammership return to port. It had been in a part of space rumored to be cursed. The crew, however, discovered the truth: there\u2019s an OLD radiant dragon preying on ships. You\u2019re sent after it. There\u2019s a cutoff system full of places to explore, lots of derelict ships to explore, a ghost ship, dragon flybys \u2026 it seems jam packed. It seems \u2026 large? Expansive? And seems to fit a Spelljammer vibe well. Places to explore, NPC races to interact with, and a nice \u2026 I don\u2019t know, pirate vibe? Not pirate. But a kind of Wagon Train to the Stars vibe. It FEELS like you\u2019re doing a kind of fantasy exploration to a strange place. Travelling from point to point and exploring and interacting. Spelljammer catches this vibe better than any other genre I know. Combined with the weird monster races and their penchant for trade and talking I think it provides a solid base for a D&D game. This one could use a bit of gonzo\u2019ing up; it tries to provide some interesting situations but they come off as a bit mundane. The various locales could also use a few more hooks. You get some short little descriptions of various places but many of them could use a little more interactivity. This would be the difference between, say, Isle of the Unknown and Wilderlands. While Isle, and this adventure, provide just simple descriptive facts (there is a village here), Wilderlands would provide a hook (which is desperate for white buffalo hides.) This could use a little more Wilderlands hooks. Still, a great supplement if you\u2019re running a Spelljammer game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asflag\u2019s Unintentional Emporium By Willie Walsh AD&D Levels 3-7 Time to clean out the rats in the old woman\u2019s cellar, except this time the old woman is a dead wizard and the cellar is his tower in the middle of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeon-magazine","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/d36.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2479,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2478\/revisions\/2479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}