Quote from: 1989;689753Man, I would love to have a complete Dungeon collection.

So many worlds from so many imaginations.

I'd rather have the complete Dragon collection (well okay, not "complete", would not want the 3e ones) myself, but yeah. Lots of awesome stuff in Dungeon (and less awesome stuff, but hey the awesome makes it worth it).

Yeah, I don't have many issues of Dragon anymore, but I've got the Archive on CDs, and while Dragon has more cool stuff (for lack of a better word), I get way more use out of Dungeon at the table.

I found the early issues of Dungeon almost as useful as many of the classic modules for using bits and pieces here and there to the homebrew campaign stuff. It was a really great value back in the pre-internet days just for the ready made stablocks, maps, and other bits.

These days with so much usable content available via fansites and blogs, free of charge, the adventure content would need to be much higher to justify paying for it since tidbits & maps aren't so much scarce items anymore.

sweet! dungeon #23 has one of my fav adventures, vineyard vales by Randy Maxwell set in Soderfjord Jarldoms / GAZ#7 Northern Reaches.

this will be a fun ride. Lots of cool stuff in Dungeon

Nice Horne cover.

This is the first truly useless issue. The adventures have little to no redeeming qualities: nothing of academic interest, little to steal, and uninvolved. And all of this AFTER you read from the editor how tough it is to choose from all the great submissions. I'm still feeling my way in these older product reviews; I'm not quite sure what to focus on.This week it's: some kind of synopsis surrounded by bile.


Kingdom in the Swamp
by John Nephew
Levels 6-9

A little shit halfling thief/borrower wants the parties help in going back to a castle with a vampire in the swamps. His friends we're presumably captured when he fled the scene while the vampire attacked. There's a small swamp adventure followed by the worlds smallest & lamest ten room castle for a vampire to hang out in. The vampire is cursed by Orcus and can never leave the small island in the swamp that his castle sits on. The wandering monsters 'are up to the DMs discretion based on party strength' and the swamp encounters are mostly lame. There's a statue of Orcus that the vamp can see from his castle that would be cool if it played some role in the adventure: IE if there was a social element/break the curse/etc. The swamp does contain the one interesting encounter: an evocative little description about shallow graves full of rotting corpses ... zombies! It's a decent non-D&D-traditional zombies more in-line with how we traditionally think of them, in real life. The castle is small and uninteresting. But that doesn't stop it from being described in endless useless detail. 5 pages of triple-column text for ten rooms. Ouch! The treasure here is very light. 1E is gold=XP, right? There needs to be more build up, a spookier castle, a social element ... just SOMETHING to bring this thing to life. I'd stab the halfing in town and THEN go on the adventure so I didn't have to put up with his cute little thieving 'aw shucks, me?' attitude.



Escape from the Tower of Midnight
by Paul Kane
Levels 2-4 Thieves

This is a tournament module and it shows. Your 'all thief' party starts captured and is executed in 2 days if you can't escape. Getting out of your cell is easy, then you make your way through a 10 level tower. It's supposed to have a strong 'sneak by patrolling guards' element, but that's not well documented, or illustrated. It's just described and because of that you're going to have to put in a lot of work to run it. You get points for knocking people out instead of killing them, even though they are going to put you to death in two days and they've killed all of your friends AND they will your families if you ever tell them your name. It does have one of the few things ideas stealing. There's a running joke that they stole blind the palace of the King of Sark. There's treasure scattered all over the tower from the palace and I found the running joke/content amusing. It's a good reminder that continuity of that sort is a good addition to window dressing.



Fluffly Goes to Heck
by Rick Reid
Levels 3-5

A completely linear joke adventure ala Castle Greyhawk. I'm still bitter about having purchased that thing when it came out, so I'm bitter about this adventure. Recall the silliest Paranoia adventures ever written? Same thing.



Trouble at Grog's
by Grant & David Boucher
Level 1

A 'solve the mystery' adventure in a small village featuring ham-handed diversity lessons about 1/2 orcs and 1/2 ogres. The village is described in verbose detail that manages to convey nothing much of interest. The interactions between the villagers is almost exclusively limited to 'hate 1/2 breeds.' They are not even characitures, that would mean they had a personality. Way too much text and not enough interesting content. Like all mysteries it gimps the characters: if you capture someone hired to beat you up then Charm Person doesn't reveal who hired them ... because they are too scared. Uh huh. Why don't you just say 'I wrote a weak adventure.' There's other interesting choices as well: can't find the tracks? A friendly ranger helps you out! Can't find X? A friendly Deus Ex helps you out! I can't find a decent adventure. Who's gonna help me out? There's something like 23 pages of content here. There might be something like four pages of useful content. A half-ogre bar could be fun. Too bad they sucked the life out of it with the lesson they are teaching. What was that half-orc bar? Krom's Throat? Now THAT's an ethnic bar!

You seem to have skipped issue #3.

It is hard for me to separate the utility of Dungeon from nostalgia.  I was 14 or so when it first came out and subscribed immediately, from issue #1 to #150 (and converting the remaining money to Pathfinder's AP, which I'm still subscribed to 70-odd issues later).  I submitted a couple of ideas, all rejected, and still have the rejection letters from Roger Moore somewhere.  I finally got published in Dungeon with a letter in issue #150.  Ok, not an adventure, but life (college, marriage, and kids) got in the way and I had to lower the bar for my goal of appearing in Dungeon when WotC announced they were terminating it.  Shame, that.

Hey! I found issue #3 tucked inside a different issues cover! Yeah me! I think this is a pretty strong issue, overall. Many of the adventures seem to tie in to the Wilderness Survival Guide through the use of bullshit environmental rules for desert, sea, and snow. The last adventure is amusing to me because of its clear illustration of the Asshole DM problem. Players are’nt the only ones who try to win D&D!

I got a joke!
Baby seal runs in to a club!

Falcon’s Peak
by David Howery
Levels 1-3

This is the adventure that several others in the OSR wish they were. It’s a fairly ‘realistic’ exploration of a small bandit fortress thought to be abandoned and rumored to have an undiscovered treasure horde in it. It’s been occupied by a new group of bandits, does have a treasure horde in it, and while small is fairly well done. It feels more like a tactical assault on a real place. Here’s the keep, here’s the patrols, here’s the watches, and here’s an obvious hole in the bad guys plan. It ALMOST keeps to that formula but doesn’t beat the thing to death (unlike the points I make in reviews.) There are several good uses of elevation in the adventure: the keep is n a hill, entry is up a cleared slope with boulders on the top, there’s a cave system with a portion you have to “boost up” to access the rest, and a parapet with guards patrolling. The ‘hidden’ part of the fortress, with the old treasure, has a good reason for being hidden AND for the presence of other dead adventurers. It does all of this with a scarcity of words (for this era anyway) and without droning on and on. The mundane treasure is well described and interesting and there’s enough loot/coinage to make it seem like someone for once actually read the XP tables & level charts in the PHB. The wilderness component is small but compliments the main adventure, with the group maybe stumbling upon a patrol of bandits they can pump for information. There’s also a ‘consequences’ section where it points out some of the bandits/etc are not in the fortress and will arrive back in a few days time. This is a pretty good ‘gritty’ adventure. I tend to like my D&D a little more weird but Sp’pc Ops’ D&D can be fun also. With some more personalized magic items I’d say this would rate VERY highly in my book.

Blood on the Snow
by Thomas M Kane
Levels 3-7

Art by Jaquay and maps by Diesel! This is an arctic/sub-artic mystery adventure. The characters are hired to go on a seal hunt and find out who the traitor is. Mystery adventures don’t work in D&D. The characters cast a spell and the mystery is over in short order. This one tries though. The adventure is long, in game time. Training takes a month and the seal hunt is two weeks long. There’s a good timeline of events that will happen if the party doesn’t derail things. It’s mentioned that the party CAN derail things and that the DM will need to go with the flow once that happens. More advice in that arena would have been helpful. As is the adventure is going to take a LONG time to prep. The wilderness/frontier town is well detailed, the timeline is extensive but not pedantic, and the NPC’s/hunters on the hunt are well detailed with decent personalities and motivations. Overall this would be great adventure if it were not set in a land with Detect Alignment, Detect Lies, Augury, Commune, etc. It’s going to take time to prep it. A LOT of time. It’s unclear if the payoff/treasure is worth going on the adventure. Another strong viking adventure if you were doing DOgs of War/Northlands Saga type gaming and put the prep in.

The Deadly Sea
by Carol & Robert Pasnak
Levels 4-7

This is really a two-part adventure. The first part has the group assaulting a small thirty room keep. Bandits took it over and now the party is trying to take it back and find the people who once lived there. It starts with a HARD slog up a cliffside and an almost certain pitched-battle at the front of the keep. There are fewer options for the assault than the Falcon’s Peak adventure and fewer three dimensional notes, although, again, the first battle is up a cliffside path. Then again, the party is higher level and perhaps has access to invisibility and fly. The interior is not all that exciting and is further toned-down by a pseudo-dragon that tells the party where to go and what to do once they gain the entrance hall. Part two has the former family asking the group to to attack/explore an undersea triton lair to find the guys captured sea-elf wife. This part is slightly more interesting, as long as you take the view that the tritons are something like an 19th century english manorial estate. Except under the sea. There is little to no ‘sea’ feel from this, except maybe as window dressing. So as an adventure adventure for a more civilized time it’s interesting but as for having an undersea feel … not so much. I keep imaging that final scene with the mermaid king from the The Smashing Pumpkins video ‘Tonight.’ Except this adventure has a lot less flavor … but a weird civilized vibe that I kind of dig.

The Book With No End
by Richard W. Emerich
Levels 8-12

This was written by an asshole GM who thinks players have access to too many magic items. It starts with your 12th level character being offered 1,000 gp to go an adventure and fetch an artifact. Uh huh. Blah blah blah bullshit backstory. Oh hey, I forgot, you get a potion of Sweet Water if you the mission! The whole thing is full of advice on how to gimp the players. Don’t give the players an even break. Don’t let them use their divination magic. Don’t let them have fun. Blah Blah Blah. It seems that the gods don’t like talking to your 12th level clerics. Oh Well. Or, rather, maybe I god hasn’t figured out yet that his stats are in Deities & Demigods and I can shiv him the throat as easily as I can a kender NPC? The adventure map is a good one but the rooms are full of death traps, players gimping, and a whole lot of other junior high type adventure design. This includes a giant disembodied magical voice chiding the characters with things like “Naughty Naughty! Don’t ruin my fun!” Ooooo, a chess board puzzle! How original! There is also an excruciating amount of detail in certain rooms like the dining room and kitchen, for example, that has absolutely no effect on game play. Perhaps the only decent part of the adventure are the detailed notes at the end detailing the information that the characters can find in the various books in libraries prior to their journey. It reminds me of the stereotypical Call Of Cthulhu adventure where you go to the towns library, newspaper office, and historical society. The whole “heres what your research find. You need to put it together to find the dungeon.” is something that a lot of D&D adventures just assume and don’t show.

Highlight: The Kappa of Pachee Bridge

I still don't know what the purpose of these reviews is so I'm not sure what to highlight and what to complain about. I'm currently on a "synopsis & abstract with a couple of comments on why I'd never run it" kick. Seven adventures in this one. The one that appeals most is the OA adventure, although shiv'n Mylvin Wimbly should be fun also, but not in the way the author envisioned. The manic need for verbosity is InSaNe! The purpose of the text is not to create a rich world with fully flavored backgrounds for everyone and everything. The purpose of the text is to help the DM run the damn thing; aim the text and content at things that the players will interact with not a laundry list of the contents of my kitchen drawer.

The Rotting Willow
by Edward O, Bromley III
AD&D
Level 7-9

There's a village near a swamp and the villagers are weird in the way they treat dwarves, halflings, gnomes and other short people. Eventually you learn they are being terrorized by some bogarts. The party tries to kill them but the bogarts probably run away. The village is uninspiring and the adventure short but FAR too long for what it is. There's no reward "the DM should determine what treasure is in their lair." Thanks fuckwit. Maybe you forgot that I'm paying YOU for YOUR imagination. The bad guys live in an old treehouse in a swamp but are mostly found in the village: a missed opportunity for a decently described swamp hunt.

Lady of the Lake
by Laura Ferguson
AD&D
Level 1

The party stumbles upon a dying woman who requests they take her to a certain lake. Maybe the villagers nearby know where it is? Really really short adventure stretched out to many pages. It got an ... airy feel to it. Kind of fairy-like, although I don't recall there being any faeries. I think she does a decent job of communicating the wonder of D&D to n00bs, but its short in content, long in words, and the village needs a lot more help. There's a double wraith encounter which, while it helps with the airy feel, is a TPK at level 1 I'd guess. This is a really basic adventure but I dig the traditional pre-tolkein vibe.

The Stolen Power
by Robert Kelk
AD&D
Levels 1-3

Hitting on many crappy points: the party is sent after a book of infinite spells that was stolen by an evil cult. "Deerstalker", and NPC is sent with the party. As far as I can tell, there's no reason for the NPC to join up except to save the parties asses. He doesn't even meddle or have a personality worth listing. Lame.There's a decent number of wilderness encounters with unicorns, faerie dragons,, moondogs and the like which will parlay with the party, as well as flessing dmihumans. That part is actually nice and shows how both good and evil cratures can be integrated in to a wilderness/wanderers in a non-combat way. The core adventure, in the hideout, is smallish and full of detail that doesn't matter. This is a good example of text background and descriptions that don't help the DM get the 'core' of the room and provide trivia detail over content aimed at the players.

The Kappa of Pachee Bridge
by Jay Batista
AD&D-OA
Levels 2-5

My favorite in the issue ... but maybe because of the OA commoner/adventurer power fantasy. Villagers beg the party to help them; a kappa is eating their children. The creatures and people in this adventure are treated like they are real, with real personalities and motivations. The kappa comes off as more alien than evil, although it's a relatable alien. The whole thing FEELS right. It feels like a good OA adventure and the aspects of it that make it good also make 'normal' AD&D adventures good. You can relate to the villagers and the monsters and things talk to you and treasure is interesting and the environment is interesting. The villagers don't have much detail past a couple of the notables, but they are well done. 5 pages, once of which is a map, are better than everything else in this issue combined.

The Trouble with Mylvin Wimbly
by Andrew McCray
D&D
Levels 1-3

A mage hired a halfling bodyguard, recruited some orcs, and then the halfling had second thoughts when the orcs attacked some of his old adventuring party friends. He's on the run! Fucking halflings. Should side with the mage and hunt the bastard down. I fucking hate the rascally/innocent halfling meme. The core is kind of interesting with a mage hiring bodyguards and then recruiting orcs to help him in his plots, along with the moral crisis in the halflings old pals showing up and him having to pick sides. But the 'rascally halfling' thing ruins it. There's not much to this other than a brief chase through a very small forest and the three-room hideout of the mage.

The Eyes of Evil
by Tom Hickerson
AD&D
Level 10+

Manticores & men terrorizing a remote village. No real motivation except to be a hero. A very simple cave complex with only one interesting room: a chasm/vertical lava tube room. The rooms are just monster listing expanded to fill lots of space with no real content in them. The final room, right after the chasm, has a beholder, which may fit the vertical room well and turn in to an interesting tactical challenge for the level 10+ heroes. Lots of missed opportunities in this one, from cave environment to vile clerics, to things to talk to. Instead it's just rooms of stuff to kill and loot.

Hirward's Task
by Rich Stump
AD&D
Levels 4-7

The party is sent by an archmage to his headquarters to defeat a hostile air elemental. That drive him out. He abandoned all his followers/servants. You get 4,000 gp. If you take anything then the mage, who has eidetic memory, hunts you down and kills you. How much XP is a level 15 mage worth? The map layout is decent, over two levels, and there's a decent mix of people to talk to and interact with in the fortress, but they don't really offer anything. They have a description that concentrates on their history but not on things that help them interact with the party. Except the assholes who attack on sight or "are so frightened they attack", which happens all too regularly. There's some decent window-dressing, but it still doesn't feel too much like a wizards lair ... not like Many Gates of the Gann. There are one or two nice items; a wand of defoliation comes to mind, but of course you can't keep them. The map here is decent enough and even includes an intelligently designed outdoor area, although its small. The lack of interactivity in a mages lair and the victorian mania for cataloging rooms is disappointing.

There's a whole lot of 'set things up to screw the party over' stuff in this issue. L.A.M.E. The wilderness crawl the end is ok, as if the concept of the non-eucledian dungeon ... that's well worth stealing to do something of your own with. Please feel free to tell me I'm wrong about The Brothers.

After the Storm
by Nick Kopsiniss & Patrick Goshtigian
AD&D
Levels 8-10

This is a weird little adventure in a bay after a big storm. The party hears rumors about stuff washing up on shore that indicates a famous pirate and his ship have wrecked on some well-known reefs in the bay. Rumors of treasure abound! After a lot of overwrought introduction there's a nice little rumor table and a pretty brutal wandering monster table. Suffice it to say that leaving the rowboat is a REALLY bad idea ... but it's nice that the monsters respect the personal space of people in a boat and never attack folks in one. Weird. The bay/cove has a number of pretty standard encounters: giant octopus, giant oyster, a wreck, and the pirate ship. There are, of course, undead pirates in the wreck and the thing is stuffed FULL of magic weapons. There's a decent little were-shark encounter that kind of surrounds and touches many parts of the adventure, which is nice. There's also an old hermit that causes some trouble through false rumors, which is nice also. Otherwise .. pretty standard under the sea adventure with some nice wrapping that surrounds it.

White Death
by Randy Maxwell
AD&D
Levels 4-7

This is a short little four encounter dragons lair encounter with a short wilderness adventure that feels tacked on after the fact. A town council hires the party to deal with a white dragon. Not unheard of, if I think of the party as a group of german mercenaries during one of the big civil wars. They make their living off of fur traders, etc, and that's not happening because of the dragon. The journey is maybe 100 miles from the town to the dragons lair, with about 6 standard arctic wandering monsters in a table. The lair is a single room with a dragon on a big pile of gold. A dead dragon. The real dragon is hiding on a ledge and jumps the party. End of adventure. Five pages is short, but it should be A LOT shorter for what you are getting.

Bristanam's Cairn
by John Nephew
AD&D
Levels 8-12

A hermit and a cairn nearby on a stormy night. The hermit tries to rip down the cairn every night because he goes insane and then he builds it back every day when sane. Inside is a death knight. The smartest thing to do is to do just the hermit. Problem Solved! The BULLSHIT death knight has an Anything Sword that allows it to be any magical sword, from round to round. It has three charges. IE: Just enough to fuck the party over and keep them from having it. Lame. Any adventure in which someone wears an amulet guarantees it's proof against detection. PC's should kill all amulet wearers on sight, always, in every adventure they ever undertake.

House of the Brothers
by Mark S. Shipley
AD&D
Levels 6-10

The party stumbles over a cave with a couple of giant brothers in it. They are always aware. They sniff out rangers first. They are given magic items and as many set ups as possible to push everything possible in their favor. Their is D&D in "players vs. DM mode" which is completely lame D&D. There is some good treasure description here in the eight rooms of their lair. Enameled mail and the like. It's mixed in with boring mundane treasure but the adventure does have a nod here and there to more evocative descriptions.

Forbidden Mountain
by Larry Church
AD&
Levels 4-7

This is an adventure in a non-eucledian geometry dungeon. A lot of words go in to describing how this works and the effects on game play. That part is pretty cool. The dungeon has 12 room interconnected with a fair number of hallways that should provide a decent adventure with the non-eucledian element. The problem is that the room encounters proper are boring as hell. The monsters have some surface flavor text them. "blue giant porcupines" and "yellow-and-blue owlbears" but the creatures are nothing more than some color changes. There's nothing really going on in the rooms at all. There's a box with "do not open" on it and a "void room" similar to a sphere on annihilation. There's also a non-magic sword that can be made magical through the intervention of the gods. Those last two elements are relatively cool, as is the non-eucleudian part. The rest is devoid of interesting content.

Tortles of the Purple Sage – Part 1
by Merle & Jackie Rasmussen
D&D
Levels 4-10

This is a BIG wilderness journey through the Known World, around the Savage Coast area. The party is hired to escort a group of Tortles (bipedal turtles) to their ancient spawning grounds in the north. It's VERY general but has 18 programmed encounters that can show up in various regions of the LARGE map. Rare flowers/spices with 3′ long dragonsflys. A thundering herd of animals on a plain ... followed by a grass fire. Weird stuff on the beach. Weird falling stuff from the sky. (a rain of flesh & blood from the sky , one of the options, is cool!) It might be thought of as 'Isle of Dread, but on land." It's going to take a decent amount of DM work but this could serve as decent mini-campaign for your game if you put the work in to expand the ruined cities, NPC's, and so on.

issue #6 sounds terrible. I wonder how many issues it takes them to find their feet with good stories and adventures

151 issues?

A couple of potentially decent setting adventures in this issue. Several offer a more open-ended play style without railroading that makes them more interesting to me.. They are also going to take A LOT of work to turn in to something playable. There's also a circus adventure, as featured on the cover art. What is the fascination with the circus and carnival? I get the festivals are an important part of village life but no circus ever appeared in a D&D adventure that did not have something fishy going on. Smart players would just have their characters burn it down and put everyone to the sword summarily. It's called 'Risk Mitigation.'


Nightshade
by Nigel Findley
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This adventure has the party going to a wizards house in town to pick up a potion. It's short by Dungeon standards, just 5 pages. You meat an NPC and he pays you to go pick up a potion. You go to the wizards house and pick it up. You get attacked by some paid thugs on the way to deliver it. Adventure over. What it does well is hint at other uses, so it's more presenting several interesting NPCs and situations and then tacking on a pretext so as to call it an adventure. The NPC hook is a bit foppish, with plots and enemies. The wizards falls much more closely to the Reprobate side of the spectrum. That makes him, and his bizarro home, much more interesting than the vast majority of wizards TSR and WOTC ever published. There's really nothing new or unusual in his home (bizarre wizard stuff!), the wizard (he's a reprobate) the hook NPC (fop with plots) or the thugs (run away or get revenge.) What is unusual is that all of this useful detail was included in a Dungeon Magazine adventure; it's quite unusual to see. I've giving this a solid C+/B- for content you can steal and reuse for your game. It's not ground-breaking but it is decent. So, better than the vast majority of crap out there, old or new.


Tortles of the Purple Sage - Part 2
by Merle & Jackie Rasmussen
D&D
Levels 4-10

Part 2 of the exhaustive overview of the lands around the tortles. This is exhaustive in generic and useless detail, mostly of a trading post called Richland. I like the idea of a frontier trading post; it's a nice change from the little usual Keep on the Borderlands type frontier land holding. The problem is that this thing is exhaustive in generic detail. "Fuller: this textile worker processes cloth by shrinking & pressing it to increase its weight." And there are scores of examples of content like that. It add absolutely nothing to the site. No NPC's, no colorful content, no hooks. There are priestly societies call The Lawful Brotherhood and the Neutral Faction. It tries to add some flavor with Trader Jack, the guy in charge, but it's too little. It's too bad; the map of outpost doesn't suck too much (needs more surrounding/supporting lands to support all the tradesmen) and the concept of a frontier trading post is a good one. In general, trading posts and mining camps, towns, don't get enough D&D coverage.


The Matchmakers
by Patrician Nead Elrod
AD&D
Levels 1-3

This is an open-ended city adventure in which the characters are paid to help a young lady elope. Two merchant houses, both alike in stature, in fair Povero. You get a decent description of the city, the characters involved, her routine, details on the places she hangs out, a schedule for a couple of events to frame the action, and a couple of complications. Good complications like: oops, that guy was actually a jerk, or What do you mean you're not the chick we're after? The party is then on their own to hatch some crazy scheme or schemes to grab her and deliver her to the meeting point. That's the kind of adventure type I like most: a setting the party gets to run rampant in, be it city, dungeon, or wilderness. There's some decent detail about the town: press gang action on the docks and the like. There's too much extraneous detail in the various rooms described in the villas the party may venture in to; the penchant for Doomsday Book recording in this era is unfortunate and obfuscates the real content.With prep and notes you could salvage this in to a fairly routine adventure.


Samurai Steel
by Daniel Salas
AD&D OA
Levels 3-5

Yet another open-ended adventure, but this time the party is trapped in a village, having been warned that they will almost certainly be killed in a few days when they are sure to be accused of treason. They are supposed to investigate to gather evidence that they are being framed and that a certain someone close to the local lord is plotting against him. This is supposed to be open-ended like The Matchmakers was, a couple of events, some locations details, some NPC's to interact with, etc. The Matchmakers was ok but this falls short. There's just not enough extra detail about the village and the people that live thee to help the DM turn it in to some place real. There are maybe four interesting people in he village and one of them dies 10 minutes in to the adventure after warning the party they are sure to be accused in a couple of days time. The only details of the village are the two or three spots that contain clues and the only other people to be detailed are the traitors that the party has to discover. The rest of the content about the village isn't even really generic; it just doesn't exist. You get killed in a couple of days AND you almost certainly get killed if you try t leave the village early AND you get killed if you start stabbing NPC's in the throat (though they are commoners AND you get killed if ... you get the picture. This pretends to be open-ended but is a railroad. Do what the designer wants you to do or have your characters killed. Uncool.


The Jungling Mordo Circus
by Vic Broquard
AD&D
Levels 10+

I love seasonal activities. I run a meetup for them. I subscribe to the Indian Festival Calendar and try to hit a lot of the local corn/beet/cucumber/etc festivals in the small towns around Indiana. The year has pattern to it with seasonal activities, seasonal fruit & veg, and festivals. I get that and I love that. This yearly routine & cycle has always been a staple of life and I get the importance that festivals played, and still play, in life. BUT JESES H FUCKING CHRIST WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE OBSESSED WITH PUTTING EVIL CARNIVALS IN D&D? It doesn't work. It NEVER works. Unless you put festivals in routinely then the party will know something is up when the circus shows up. The smart thing to do is to just burn it down and kill everyone. Especially when you are level 10+, as in this adventure. Who is going to mess with your 10+ party? The local authorities? The party is probably the local law. The piece of shit adventure has a kidnapping ring run by a level 20 evil wizard. He's got the fucking Wish spell but he kidnaps people for money. And he DOES have the Wish spell. It's crazy .The place is thick with high-level assassins, wizards, ACs's in the -6 to -8 range, and the like. It's also on the up-and-up, generally, except for the kidnapping and has a hired security contingent made up of Lawful monks and good clerics. This thing is so forced as to be putrid. The ringmaster has AC -11 and is a level 15 illusionist. Why the fuck are these people here? Don't they have towers to build and experiments to conduct so the forces of good, led by a holy paladin, can invade and win the day only to have the paladin fall and be corrupted? There's no real adventure here, just an evil circus described so the DM can have someone kidnapped and the party can investigate. There's no hook or adventure at all other than what I just described, which is described to the reader in just about as many words.

Dungeon Magazine #8


It's weird; the OA entires in Dungeon seem much better than the normal content. Maybe the exotic environment appeals in a way that the mundane can not?

Mountain Sanctuary
By John Nephew
AD&D
Levels 1-3

The party trips over a dungeon entrance buried in rubble. Inside is a small thirteen room dungeon that's criss-crossed with small mite tunnels. The dungeon is full of giant rats, mites, and pesties, with the associated "big people fighting in small spaces" rules, etc. The non-standard treasure is ok, jeweled lamps, tapestries, etc. The entire point of the adventure seems to be getting the party surrounded by the beasties who attack the party in a coordinated manner. There's just nothing here ... 6 pages for what could have been a 1-page dungeon.

For a Lady's Honor
by Estes Hammons
AD&D
Levels 4-7

The party is sent to go get a blackmail item from a city councilor. There are ten or so city encounters for those that want to have some random fun, and then the councilors house is described. It's meant to be a sneak job so there's lots of "-15% to move silently this" and "-2% to hide in shadows that." The house is not that interesting and just has the usual enchanted armor, etc in it. But if you take the councilor, and his short write up and the villain, and the city encounters then you could have some content for a city game. The councilor would make a good recurring asshole and the city encounters are not terrible. Not all that original but decent enough for plain content. Laborers, pilgrims, city guards, merchant, unaffiliated street gangs ... just enough content to give you a great idea of what like if life in this city. It's better than most content.

In Defense of the Law
by Carl Sargent
AD&D
Levels 7-10

This is a three level dungeon with forty-three or so rooms. It tries to make itself interesting by introducing an NPC party of LE and LN NPC's who are also trying to accomplish the same goal as the (presumably) LG party. Thus the players get to see how a different sort of party operates and interact with them through the various encounters the groups may have together, if/when they meet and if/when they join up to. The chaotics are after the Lawful McGuffin and so it's off to the dungeon the party goes. The treasure is ok but the room entries get long and the creatures are stuffed in to the rooms in a somewhat haphazard manner. While many have names they don't really interact with others other than "Attack!" and there's no coordinated response by the occupants. There's a throw-away description or two but not enough to really matter in a response.

The Wounded Worm
by Thomas M. Kane
AD&D
Levels 4-8

This is a weird little adventure; a kind of cross between a wilderness area and an evil bad guy base. It reminds me of the older MERP supplements, and that's always a compliment. The whole idea os that there's an evil bad guy, a wounded dragon, that controls this region and he's got a whole host of creatures under his control, one way or another, to help hi towards his ends. There's a pretext adventure hook but I think the thing would be much better if you worked him in over the course of many adventures as the ringleader to a bunch of plots, maybe slowly introducing his minions and fleshing them out a bit more than what's given the adventure. This would give you a great build-up to a main villain and nice climax sort of adventure for a party. The dragons got some interesting minions, most of which have some sort of personality. It's the usual 'nightmare to sort out' descriptions but you'd have some nice story-arc material if you did.

The Flowers of Flame
by Jay Batista
AD&D OA
Levels 5-8

So, I apologize to everyone I silently maligned when they said "it takes me as long to absorb a prepared adventure as it does for me to make a new one!" I now understand what you mean. This adventure is THICK. The players are used as pawns in a political game, under the pretext of retrieving a a mythical burning flower. This is close to a OA hex crawl, but without as many encounters. You hire guides, meet other parties/government agents, climb the main mountain/glacier, etc. There's a good deal of improvisation available here for a decent DM as well as a good scattering of encounter type. The adventure is thick with ... adventure. More than that ... uh ... go on a journey to tibet and encounter weird stuff until you get the flowers at a monastery?

Dungeon Magazine #9

Dear Lord, why did I ever choose to do this?

The Lurkers in the Library
by Patricia Nead Elrod
AD&D Levels 1-3

Six pages that boil down to "a couple of orcs break in to a library." The library is exhaustively described to a degree where all of the words run together and you don't get a good picture of what it is. The party stumbles upon a scene In Media Res and are told a tentacle came through a wall and grabbed people. They are expected to look in to things and explore the library to eventually stumble upon the orcs. An effort is made to give the orcs and hostages personalities but its unclear if that's ever going to come up in play. I suspect that the orcs are just gonna be hacked down. In spite of the length this is, in reality, just the barest outline of an adventure.

The Crypt of Istaris
by Richard Fichera
AD&D
Levels 3-5

Oh boy, a full page of read-aloud! Soliloquy, HO! AND a page of useless background?!! And useless fresco's on the walls showing suffering?!?! Say it isn't so! A symmetrical star layout?!?! Hot diggity dirt! Ok, I'm being a bit unfair; it has some bad points but it is virtually chock full of interesting rooms. There's a nice statue trap/puzzle in room 3, a set piece with piercers in room 4, weird experimented on ogres ala Doc Frankenstein in room 6, weird nozzles and gas in room 7, and a strange ceiling in room 8 ... and so on. There's some bullshit "only 20% of the time" and the like nonsense. This is a tournament module, and so that explains a lot of the set piece type encounters, but it's also got some nice environments, descriptions, and the like, especially for the time in question. It's much closer to the positive aspects of C1-Hidden Shrine than it is the crapfests that usually appear in Dungeon.

The Djinni's Ring
by Vince Garcia
D&D Solo
3rd Level

This is a Choose Your Own Adventure solo adventure with an elf in an Arabian Nights type environment.

The Golden Bowl of Ashu H'san
by Rick Swan
AD&D-OA
Levels 2-4

This is a linear wilderness adventure. You're on a mission for a village, wander down a trail meeting people, and then end up at he adventure site where the thing finishes up. One of the things I like about the OA adventures in Dungeon, thus far, is how the spirits are much closer and integrated in to the life of the surrounding lands. This adventure is no different. A remote farming village is experiencing a drought and the old head man knows that someone has to go to their sacred site and see what's up with their protective spirit. As usual, no one in the village s brave enough to go. The party then has ten or so encounters in the wacky & wonderful world of Dungeon OA. There's a nice fairy tale feel here, with injured animals, old wells, haughty warriors blocking a shrine, and a forceful merchant. It's exactly the sort of content I like to see in an adventure: whimsical and fanciflul, appealing to some of the old historical tropes. There's a good mix of combat and role-playing. I approve.

The Ghostship Gambit
by Randy Maxwell
D&D
Levels 3-6

This isn't really an adventure but rather an encounter with a ghost ship. A port town is having trouble with many of the ships coming in being attacked by a ghost ship. The characters get hired to do something about it. That entails hiring a ship and sailing out, having no encounters, and meeting the ghost ship. Which is actually just some pirate aquatic elves. Eight of them. Adventure over. There's not really much here, in spite of the page count.

The Plight of Cirria
by Grant & David Boucher
AD&D
Levels 8-12

This is a tedious wilderness adventure followed by a tedious cloud castle adventure. A poly'd dragon hires you to find her mate and hands you a map. The map, a collection of symbols and directions, may be the best part of the adventure, although it's very simple. You then get to make 80 wandering monster checks over 20 days. This takes you past a number of mundane encounters that tend toward either the environmental or normal. You also pass two monster hideouts, which at least provide a speed bump. It never amazes me how something exotic and fantastic, like a cloud castle, can be made in to something boring. The descriptions are mundane and boring. In the end you kill a couple of demons and wizards. Joy. Boring. There's a convoluted trap room that you might be able to salvage, but not much else. It's just a flat and boring adventure with charm, depth, and very very little interesting and gameable material.