Posts Tagged D&D

22 results.
Oct07

Bonds of the Sequel

by Rindis on October 7, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

The sequel to SSI’s first D&D computer game was a little odd in that it was also a sequel to the novel Azure Bonds. On top of that, the TSR adaption of the game into a module carried the code “FRC2”, implying that the codeless Ruins of Adventure should have been FRC1. Ironically, while the SSI games continued, this was the last one TSR turned into a traditional adventure module, leaving Curse of the Azure Bonds the only module with a FRC code.

While physically similar to the previous module (a 96-page perfect-bound softcover), in many ways it is its opposite. Where Ruins felt messy and incomplete, this one is clear and well-presented. Where Ruins was confined to a small city, this one goes on the road with extensive travel. Where Ruins was a small campaign sandbox, this one is a railroaded plot-driven adventure. A small bit of discontinuity is that Ruins of Adventure implied that anything more with Tyranthraxus will happen up in the north of FR5 The Savage Frontier, while this adventure turns west and south to the Dales/Cormyr heart of the original boxed set (and focus of Azure Bonds), the first game product to return to the main area of Ed Greenwood’s campaigns.

Azure Bonds and Ruins of Adventure/Pool of Radiance are considered to have both happened around May/June 1358 DR, and this adventure starts in October. History (of the Realms) has not been kind to this adventure, with the 1358 DR portion of the timeline getting crowded. The Time of Troubles (Avatar trilogy) is supposed to happen from June to October 1358 DR (effectively wrapping up as this, published earlier, adventure starts). Later reworkings of the timeline apparently move Azure Bonds back to 1357 DR, while Pool of Radiance is now set in 1340, which pretty much destroys the setup for this adventure.

The module gives two general ways for things to begin: an ambush in which the party is defeated (the numbers, power, and tactics are good enough to make it likely if never guaranteed), or just skipping to waking up in Tilverton with about a month of memories missing. There are some disadvantages to that, as there are a couple of extra encounters meant to ‘prime the pump’ with some relevant information, but that can be provided a bit later.

There… has been a lot of ink/electrons spilled over the years about how bad an adventure start this can be. It can work, and can certainly be the natural fallout of the course of a campaign, but when forced like this, it shows that the adventure is a fairly heavy-handed railroad. Despite the fact that it is meant to feature the party from Ruins, this is an adventure that needs some real player buy-in and it may be best to run it by starting a new group waking in Tilverton. The good news is that the bulk of the characters’ gear and equipment is left to them, as the villains want capable adventurers for their plans. (Though as there are no pre-made characters provided, figuring out that gear for a new party will take a little effort.)

In fact, the adventurers could just go back to their previous business if it weren’t for these strange magical blue tattoos with five sigils they got somewhere….

The bulk of the module splits up into five sections, each one being a mini-adventure dealing with one of the organizations behind the ambush and tattoos. The first section happens in Tilverton, and picks up a couple threads of ‘current events’ from the original boxed set, while also paralleling part of the novel (poor Giogi does a repeat performance, but still doesn’t get any game stats, even though he gets kidnapped in the adventure, and would go on to be the main character of the novel The Wyvern’s Spur in about a year).

Once business is taken care of in Tilverton, the module opens up a bit. A quick, but informative, two page gazetteer of the area of the module outlines the area and an appendix has a collection of encounter tables for the region. The party should have some idea of what, and some of the who, they’re dealing with at this point, and have places to go. And if that isn’t enough… the module hits them over the head with an informative dream (with repeats after every section is finished). Of the four remaining problems for the party to deal with, three of them are legal targets at this point, with the last saved for the end fight.

With a bit better information management, the need for dreams (sendings from Elminster, that meddler) wouldn’t be necessary. Defining ‘hooks’ from each of the middle three groups to any others not yet handled isn’t hard. A bit tougher is saving the last for last without getting heavy handed. Veterans of Ruins of Adventure should recognize the fifth sigil that almost no one else knows of easily enough. As written, the module allows the players to know where he is fairly easily, but possibly too soon. It’s also a little vague, as the party could end up confronted with a (huge!) barrier with no immediate entrance if they approach from the wrong direction.

The final part of the adventure both works and doesn’t. It doesn’t necessarily feel climatic. Actually, it feels a lot more arbitrary than the other sections, which have a bit more life to them (somewhat literally, with the amount of undead around). On the other hand, this isn’t too hard to improve on: First, if the characters are veterans of Ruins of Adventure, the rematch against the villain should have a lot more punch for them. Otherwise, it mostly requires playing up how much he masterminded everything, and brought this entire plan together! Time to ham it up!

An appendix at the back of the book gives information on the prominent NPCs, repeating information on Alias, Dragonbait, Azoun IV, Akabar, Olive, and Elminster from FR7 Hall of Heroes nearly verbatim (if a bit edited). Fzoul Chembryl and Vangerdahast have extensively rewritten entries. A few new characters, plus the descriptions of a few magical items (/macguffins) are provided, though most of these should get killed off in the adventure. The only truly new bit of lore is a full entry for Alusair Nacasia (Azoun IV’s daughter and heir). On the other hand, the module has a lot more to say geographically. Tilverton (which only had a mention in the entry for Tilver’s Gap as a whole) is provided with a full-page map and some description. A full-page map is given of Voonlar… which isn’t all that important a location in the module. As well, most of the map of Shadowdale and the map of Myth Drannor are repeated from the original Cyclopedia.

Curse as the Azure Bonds is often described as just the game version of the novel Azure Bonds, instead of a sequel, which probably explains the re-use of almost all the primary and secondary characters of the original. But while the characters wake up in the same situation, and with much the same questions as Alias, the novel picks up a lot of weight as the questions start going into the actual nature of Alias herself. The use of plug-in characters for this adventure means there’s no opportunity for that, and the adventure sticks with the initial surface story of the novel with different villains all the way through. That is, in essence, the nature of many poor sequels.

Despite that, the different demands of a novel and RPG adventure allow this module to stand well on its own. Unlike the previous Ruins of Adventure, this is runable without a bunch of extra prep work. However, it also requires much more player buy-in. Beyond that, however, it comes down to whether the players would rather stay in one place and see it improve as their efforts pay off, or if they’d rather be more of a wandering band seeing the sights (and there are a lot of sights to see in the Forgotten Realms). In both cases, they are built around a fairly episodic structure with an overarching campaign behind them.

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Sep17

Hall of Extras

by Rindis on September 17, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

TSR’s seventh FR-series module went into unusual territory again. A 128-page perfect bound book, it was one of the first products to sport a 2nd Edition logo, though the interior stats are all still first edition (magic-user, not mage, etc.). Instead of the usual geographical supplement, it was an anthology of writeups of characters in the Forgotten Realms, drawn mostly (though not entirely) from the novel line.

At that point, the existing novels to draw from were the Moonshae trilogy, the first two books of the Icewind Dale trilogy, Azure Bonds, Spellfire, the upcoming Avatar trilogy, and a planned Kara-Tur novel (never released). The book is divided into three parts, with “Main Characters” getting one to four pages, “Minor Characters” (including some villains) generally getting a little under a page each, and two “Adventuring Brotherhoods” split about twenty pages between them. While each section presents them in alphabetical order, they can be broken up into distinct groups, not all of which are strongly associated with any novel:

Moonshae: The main couple of the trilogy, Tristan and Robyn, get main character listings, with Cyndre, Daryth, Finellen, Grunnarch, Hobarth, Kazgaroth (which repeats information from FR2 almost verbatim, including a note to see a ‘next section’ that doesn’t exist in this book), Genna Moonsinger, and Pawldo among the minor characters. The descriptions are mostly for after the end of the series (which means several of the characters are dead), but there’s also notes on the pre-trilogy islands presented in FR2.

Icewind Dale: The main three of the trilogy (Bruenor, Drizzt, and Wulfgar) get much larger writeups than had been in FR5 (and the characteristic scores generally go up here, though Wulfgar’s 17 INT gets trimmed back to 15), while Cattie-Brie, Dendybar, Artemis, Regis, and Sydney all get minor character writeups. There’s also some background given on the northern dwarves. All three main characters have high characteristics and extra ‘because he’s him’ combat abilities.

Azure Bonds: Naturally, Alias and Dragonbait get major character entries, while Akabar, Cassana, Mistinarperadnacles, Zrie Prakis, and Olive Ruskettle have minor character entries. I like the idea that Alias, as a created person, has all equal characteristics, but all 17s seems a bit much. The three villains are dead, but it is noted that they could all easily return in one form or another. There’s also some basic information about saurials and playing one that isn’t Dragonbait.

Spellfire: Along with Shandril, Narm also gets a major character writeup, and the dracolich Rauglothgar gets a minor character writeup (with a full description of the powers of a dracolich). Many other characters here appear in the novel, but I’ve separated them out as they are convenient for lore purposes outside the novel.

Avatar: The main characters of the Avatar trilogy, Adon, Cyric, Kelemvor, and Midnight all get major character writeups. As the trilogy was still upcoming, only the backgrounds are given, with no secondary characters or villains presented, though some new lycanthrope types are presented.

Kara-Tur: Only the presumed main character, Doin Sanehiro gets a main character writeup, with six others: Jinchin, Kuang, Masakado, Okotampe, Onoye, and The Wanderer getting minor character writeups. There’s enough to get the main plot, and potentially run this as a campaign, but naturally it’d need a lot more fleshing out.

Shadowdale: Elminster is a major character in Spellfire, and gets a three page entry, plus some new spells, info on his home and bolt-hole, and a discussion of sages in general with thumbnail descriptions of another seven prominent sages of the Realms. Lhaeo, Mourngrym, and Shaerl all get minor character writeups, while the Knights of Myth Drannor as a whole get thirteen pages. The history of the Knights only confirms their status as the characters of one of Ed Greenwood’s primary campaigns.

Waterdeep: Five of the Lords of Waterdeep, Khelben, Durnan, Mirt, Peirgeiron and Nymara, get entries expanded from FR1. As well, Kappiyan, Malchor, Maaril appeared in FR1 and have much-expanded entries here.

Zhentil Keep: Alzegund, Fzoul, Manshoon, Manxam, Orgauth, all have minor character writeups, and present both Zhentarim and anti-Zhentarim characters, with some very good notes on using Orgauth as a villain.

Cormyr: Azoun IV and his court mage, Vangerdahast get expanded writeups from the boxed set, while Dimswart, a minor character from Azure Bonds gets an entry as well.

Five Sisters: Later known as the seven sisters, who would get their own book, Alustriel, Storm Silverhand, The Simbul, and Sylune all get minor character entries here, with the the fifth, Dove Falconhand appearing with the Knights of Myth Drannor.

Tethyr: The final part of the book contains a much expanded description of the Company of Eight from FR3. It was obvious that they were meant to form the basis of an adventuring party, with character sheets, and a little over a half page of text. Here, the full background of the Company is given, and descriptions of the personalities involved in nine pages. The former version was an okay ‘blank slate’, but without any real hooks. This version would require player buy in, but has plenty of direction, goals, and potential hooks, including for how they relate to each other.

In general, the levels given for everyone seem fairly appropriate, and often fairly tame, occasionally moving up into the twenties for longer-lived characters as established in the boxed set. The primary characteristics however, tend to be especially high, especially in the Main Character section. Most have no characteristic under 12, and an average of around 15-16; it’s worth noting that the Avatar characters are much more down to earth.

If you want to run a campaign where the players meet (or even play as) the main characters of any of the early Forgotten Realms novels, this is a great supplement. However, I’m not aware of a great many people who want to do that. My own take was always that they’re out there, and the party will often hear tavern tales of them (most of their adventures are pretty high profile), but only if the party really gets involved in something of direct interest to one of these characters are their paths likely to cross.

That said, there’s a good amount of use to be had with the minor characters. There’s just enough shown of Zhentil Keep that introducing them as a villain is much easier. At the same time, the presentation of several personalites of Waterdeep makes running adventures in that city easier as well. As well, there’s a fair amount of lore scattered throughout the entries, especially for the Shadowdale characters.

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Sep05

Foundations of Adventure

by Rindis on September 5, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

In 1988 SSI released the first of their celebrated “Gold Box” games, Pool of Radiance. TSR cashed in on their new AD&D and Forgotten Realms tie-in with a novel… loosely… based on the game, and 96-page adventure module, Ruins of Adventure. While Pool of Radiance was pretty solidly focused on being a solid computer RPG using the AD&D rules and Forgotten Realms setting, Ruins of Adventure isn’t so focused.

Generally, it is a regular large adventure module, perfect bound, with no detached maps or anything. It also attempts to be a hint book for Pool of Radiance, which means it sticks to the format of that game more than is wise for a good adventure. The computer game required breaking up into 16×16 grid areas for the party to move around in, and many of the maps are taken directly from that, which helps on the ‘hint book’ end, but causes a lot of the maps to look very primitive, being a square grid with thin wall-lines.

The high concept is good for a moderate-sized campaign: Years ago, the city of Phan was overrun by various monsters, who seemed better organized than usual. Now, descendants of the leading citizens of the city are trying to reclaim it, and are hiring adventurers to clear it out for resettlement. In the computer game, the city is divided up into a bunch of ‘blocks’, and the party is given missions to clear portions of the city.

The module follows much the same format, with each block being a small chapter giving all the relevant details. Mostly. In some places there is a distinct lack of detail, with two sections being one-page ‘chapters’ consisting of the 16×16 map and a couple paragraphs, which include reference to the random encounter tables in the back. In fact, the random encounters is one of the more worked out areas, with 15 different tables, that reference each other.

The initial setup for the campaign is fairly nicely done, with an overview of the main plot, a bunch of NPCs for the party to hire, and a set of business for the party to interact with (including such things as a nice inn that’s the target of thieves, and a rough dive that all the thieves stay in, so possessions are relatively safe). After that, it starts coming apart. The theory is that the city council is posting rewards for getting certain things done, and one particular councilmember should take an early interest in the party, and use his patronage of their successes to improve his position. But while the introductory sections establish all this, it never gets any real attention.

An interesting bit is that SSI and TSR provided similar overview maps of the city, but the one in Ruins of Adventure is much nicer looking.

RoA-Phlan

When not dealing with the really bare-bones sections, there are some planned encounters. One area has the party deal with a bunch of orcs and goblins that have some fairly effective tactics outlined for them. Actually, that’s something of a repeating theme, there’s several places where the monsters have set up shop intelligently, and the players could easily have a rough time of it. Most of the areas feel very random in layout, and the descriptions don’t help, but there are a couple areas that got more attention. The absolute worst section is Valhingen Graveyard, where the map doesn’t even match the descriptions (large structures that don’t appear on the map).

The big bad and final confrontations are about halfway through the module. After that, there’s several short chapters dealing with things in the wilderness outside of Phlan. One of these is tied directly into the overall plot, and one other is tied directly to the main goal of restoring Phlan. The rest… are things the party may or may not stumble across, depending on if they get an itch to explore. They do help populate the region, and if this is run as more than just a ‘clear the city’ adventure, will help out. However, they do tend to be very combat heavy (fighting hundreds of monsters is a recurring theme here), with no negotiating options, though there is one that can be peaceful if the characters were smart in an earlier bit.

As a whole, there’s some really good ideas in this module… but they don’t get past the idea stage. In fact, the module feels like it needed a lot more room to be fleshed out in, and would have made a decent 128+ page supermodule, but is instead a poor 96-page one. Most of the sections have pretty concrete ideas of what’s there, and what the characters will be facing, but nowhere does the module say how many characters and what levels are expected (it is in fact unhelpfully hand-waved away in the text). The overall plot gets a good description, but there’s only occasional concrete hooks to it in the main part of the module. But, for a DM who wants to do a the additional work, the skeleton of a good campaign is here.

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Jul24

Off To See the Red Wizards

by Rindis on July 24, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

The sixth FR-series supplement headed east, extending the detail maps of the Forgotten Realms another panel to the east of the original boxed set ones (while jogging slightly south), and hit the eastern edge of the large map in the process. This centered the book on one of the peripheral villains of the setting, the Red Wizards of Thay. The Wizards themselves remain popular villains (including a 5e adventure series that echoes the title of this book), and the general area has been revisited in Spellbound and Unapproachable East.

The module returns to the normal layout: 64-page detached book in brown ink with faux-parchment background, one poster map, and no printing on the inside cover. The east edge of the map just barely shows some of the Sunrise Mountains, another convenient chain that defines the edge of the known lands of the Realms (there’s only a bit of hint of foothills on the boxed set’s 90 mi/in maps, meaning this map actually goes slightly off the edge of that map). While there’s some very nice Valerie Valusek illustrations, and a reproduction of the main map in the book, there’s no detail maps to be had (perhaps because the Red Wizards forbid any maps to be made of their cities…).

While Thay is actually only a part of the area covered, they are front and center in the book, even when they aren’t (the ‘History of Thay’ and ‘Geography of Thay’ sections actually cover a lot of things outside of Thay). Surrounding countries are largely defined by how prepared they are, or who they typically ally with, to fight off Thay when they inevitably invade. Make no mistake, Thay is an evil country; expansionist, power-hungry, and with an economy built on slave labor. It’s made clear that not everyone is evil (just like a ‘good’ country doesn’t have an entirely ‘good’ population), just everyone in charge is.

Overall, Thay is given a well-rounded presentation. There’s no ‘rule of law’, just tradition and pronouncements, no one system of taxation (merchants going through one city are effectively ‘taxed’ by the Thieves Guild…), but there is administration. The Tharchions handle the ordinary running of the country, and defer to the Zulkirs (the top Wizards) when they intervene. With a bunch of high-level magic-users in charge, one might wonder how Thay isn’t much bigger than it is, especially since most of its neighbors don’t have the ability to resist that sort of firepower. But the Zulkirs aren’t a united group, and often work against each other to prevent any one from becoming too powerful, moreover there are some who would rather research, and not deal with wars disrupting trade in rare spell ingredients. And the economy is changing, with an emerging middle-class that the powers that be are uncertain about.

Late-era 1e AD&D seems to have gotten an inclination to keep adding new spells to the system. Focused on a set of wizards, FR6 naturally spends ten pages on new spells more-or-less unique to the Red Wizards. This could have been great, if the spells had a bit more flavor, like many of the ones in FR4 had. Unfortunately, many of these actually borrow from existing Cleric and Druid spell lists, with minor changes (different levels, different component requirements, and slightly different effects), making it feel more like they are destroying the essential flavor of those classes instead of adding anything new. Also, the largest section is for Abjuration (protection) spells, the bulk of which are variations on the theme of ‘Protection From [Effect/Creature]’. This could allow a Red Wizard to be annoyingly difficult to deal with, if he knew which spells to memorize beforehand.

There is also an eight-page player’s guide to Thay. Instead of the well done in-world introductions of the Gazetteer series, the bulk of this is taken up by giving the available spells to learn if you’re a magic-user studying in Thay, or are from Thay. For a campaign visiting the mysterious country for the first time, half the player’s guide needs to be hidden away. But the first sections are a handy player-facing glossary, and a set of rumors. The latter are followed up in an adventuring section that gives further information and inspiration on what to do with them (this is much better than the usual approach that can leave you wondering what the author was thinking about). Thay is currently involved in two different wars, and a few other activities that adventurers could easily get involved in.

The big problem with Dreams of the Red Wizards is that Thay is a long way away from the usual adventuring grounds of the Forgotten Realms line, and the book wanders between presenting it as a possible campaign site, and trying to figure out how to draw existing adventurers from further west into range of the material presented. Furthermore, the power structure of Thay is primed to be rife with intrigue and deadly politics, but very little is really said about that, making an internal-view campaign difficult to set up. This isn’t as good as the highlights of the series (Waterdeep and the North and The Savage Frontier) as it doesn’t have the same ‘sufficient unto itself’ feel, but despite the problems, still presents a lot of material very well.

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Jul04

Out of the Pass

by Rindis on July 4, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

The Bloodstone adventure series came to a conclusion with H4 The Throne of Bloodstone in 1988. While nowhere near as elaborate a production as H1, with its thin box, BattleSystem counters and 3D-Adventure buildings, it was still more elaborate than the usual module with a 96 page book, and a poster-sized sheet with various maps, including a sprawling one of Orcus’ citadel in the Abyss. At this point, it went fully over to Forgotten Realms trade dress with the standard narrow frame around the cover, and the large gold-and-stone logo.

Taking ‘high level’ to new heights, the module advertises as being for levels 18-100, which brought it in for a fair amount of knee-jerk criticism. However, as an introductory section rightly points out, at least if you follow the AD&D rules as written, there’s just not a lot of difference between a level 100 character and a level-25 character as the various ‘to hit’ and saving throw tables shut down in the late teens to twenties, and past the level 29 limit of the spell tables, the only thing that continues to go up is hit points, at a somewhat modest +1 to +3 per level. Of course… that is assuming that the people playing games that have characters going that high didn’t just extend the various tables as they went. But as an official TSR product, the authors have the luxury of assuming use of the official AD&D rules without variants. There’s actually some good advice for high-level play that recommends paying attention to the rules for magic item destruction and the time for magic-types to recharge their spells (70 hours for a Magic-User to get all his spells back…). Also, several fights in the later parts of the module are actually scaled to the party’s levels.

The module begins right where H3 left off, with a war between Bloodstone and Vaasa that has stalemated at the Ford of Goliad. The Vaasan army is too big to fight (short of unexpected clever PC ideas… though that’s pretty well sledgehammered away) and can’t get past the ford (too far away from its base of power to keep all the undead going). So the DM is to present the players with the idea of sneaking into the citadel of the Witch-King Zhengyi to destroy his base of power. Since he is obviously backed by Orcus, this will also entail finding a way to confront and defeat Orcus as well.

(Warning: I keep descriptions very general, but if you wish to avoid knowing anything at all about the contents/plot of the module, skip down to the Conclusion.)

The Witch-King’s citadel is actually fairly small, and unusual in form. The DM is invited to show the players a full-page illustration of the citadel, but unfortunately it’s not very good as the artist didn’t get a description to go with the cutaway view of the citadel and drew it as the cutaway showed it (i.e., among other errors, it shows a pair of small towers to either side instead of a wall surrounding it). There’s only about 20 areas split across several levels (not the administrative hub of a large kingdom…), but is designed to present the party with a stiff mix of tough enemies (Zhengyi himself is a 30th level M-U Lich) and deadly puzzles. Once successfully negotiated, the party is confronted with a gate to the Abyss, which should look familiar after the end of H2, and a deus ex machina to egg them on to the Abyss to challenge Orcus and take and destroy the Wand of Orcus so that he will be unable to interfere with the Prime Material Plane for the next hundred years.

This  is where the module gets frustrating. The party gets dumped on the first layer of the Abyss, the realm of Pazuzu, “Palace of 1,001 Closets”. Or at least 665 of them, as there’s conduits to all the other layers of the Abyss scattered around, and the party is left to try them at random until they finally find their destination. So… Orcus is influencing the Realms through the gate the PCs just came through, and there’s no signs of traffic from his conduit to the gate? No trail? No command posts? No checkpoints on any of the conduits, letting things go through Pazuzu’s realm at will? Pretty close. Going through a conduit is somewhat difficult, and the party may encounter Pazuzu himself (along with random patrols of demons), but they’re mostly free to try things at random until getting it right. Worse, there’s no immediate way to know when they have reached Orcus’ realm (though the increased numbers of undead encountered should be a good clue).

Wandering around the Abyss and Orcus’ realm serve two purposes: exhausting the party, and challenging them with the trap of steady alignment change towards chaotic evil. There are some possibilities for a group to gather some allies (there’s a good number of demons who’d like to pull someone as powerful as Orcus down), but not nearly as many as might be thought, and they generally lead to the alignment change problem (there’s a certain amount of Lawful Stupid in force in the module).

The map of Orcus’ palace takes up the bulk of the poster sheet, making it inconvenient for the DM to lay out and refer to. However, much of what’s presented is visible to the outside, so there’s a pair of pages in the module designed to be overlayed on the map to present a full outside view to the players (not as good as could be hoped, but an interesting idea). Again, the design is inventive, and straight down the gonzo sensibilities of AD&D (hey, it’s the Abyss!), and does a nice job not telling players they can’t dodge obstacles, just that it’s tougher than it looks. I’d say inventive players will both be rewarded and suitably frustrated.

There is both more and less than might be expected after dealing with Orcus, including a pit arena fight against Tiamat, and then because two evils make a good, evil destroys evil, uh… well. The party gets to plant the White Tree of Gondor Bloodstone to protect the valley from Orcus even after he reforges his wand. There’s a very nice pair of pages at the end giving different ideas of where to go from here for further adventuring, including some that deal with native Forgotten Realms concerns, and one that concentrates on running the kingdom trough the D&D Companion Set rules.

Conclusion

The module has a lot to recommend it. The design of the various places the party goes to is inventive, major monsters/NPCs get ‘capsule’ descriptions that give the DM ‘hooks’ into running them, and if they aren’t utterly devoted to ending the PCs lives, describe how they might be negotiated with. I’ll also note that any reference I see to the module from people who played it is very positive. The climax of a high-level AD&D story deserves to be over the top, and the module not only delivers, but presents a nicely alien environment. Players who go through this should rightly feel they’ve done something special.

But I will note that despite being larger, it feels more confined than the previous modules. H1-H3 all feature a relatively straightforward story, but have sections where the players are free to find their own way to reach the goal. H1 has the players finding ways to gain the confidence of, and train as militia, the residents of Bloodstone Pass. The battles are more-or-less scheduled, but what the players meet them with is up to them. H2 is largely dungeon crawl, but turns the party loose a couple times to deal with life in the pass and explore the Underdark. H3 has a fairly scripted war, but with just a little effort, it can present them with rich options of maneuver. Better yet, that module starts out letting the players loose to solve the challenge of converting mined bloodstone into cash, and deciding what to do with this budget. Even H2, with it’s large dungeon crawl eating up much of the module, felt like it had a bit more going on than this.

The tendency of the H-series to highlight the latest major release continues here. This time, it is the Manual of the Planes. It is pointed out that demons are more powerful on their home plane, and that Orcus is much more powerful where he’s the Prime Power, and stats are noted as being adjusted to match. There’s a nice bit of using player knowledge as PC knowledge, where the DM is invited to let the players look through relevant sections of the Manual of the Planes during the initial briefing, and after that what the players remember is what the PCs know. BattleSystem does not even get mentioned in the blurb or introduction to the module, though it gets suddenly recommended to run a couple of the larger fights.

In all, it’s a good, if frustrating, end to a good, if frustrating, series. The original Bloodstone Pass is easily the highlight of the series with its attempt at doing something truly different. Throne of Bloodstone completes the series’ transition back to regular adventuring, running full-tilt away from the political realm of running the kingdom that is put together through the series, but H1 and H4 are the modules in the set that need the least playing around with to run well.

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Jun15

The Eastern Realms

by Rindis on June 15, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

In 1985 TSR released Oriental Adventures, a new AD&D hardcover geared towards adventuring outside the normal tropes of Western Medieval Fantasy. Unusually for TSR and AD&D, it also contained the outline of a setting, called Kara-Tur, instead of saying as little as possible about locales outside of specific products.

Some of this reticence about particular settings carried over, as it was still designed to be able to be dropped into any existing campaign, although it was assumed to belong at the far end of the continent featured in the World of Greyhawk. With the discovery of world-building as a new class of product line, a full boxed set was done on Kara-Tur in 1988, setting it in their new hot property, the Forgotten Realms.

In general, the contents resemble the Forgotten Realms boxed set, with two 96-page booklets, and four poster-size maps (with no grid, and the same clear plastic hex-grid sheets as in the former box set). Past the pure physical contents, it gets stranger. The books are purely a two volume guide to the lands of Kara-Tur, instead of being split between a general use guide and DM’s materials (in fact, the page numbering continues straight through both books). The four map sheets are double-sided, and much more scattershot than the systematic presentation the Realms were getting between the main set and the FR-series supplements. One sheet gave two overview maps of Kara-Tur, one political and one topographical, each at a scale of 580 miles per inch. (The two full-sheet 90-mi/in maps of the original set cover about 12 million square miles; the single Kara-Tur map covers roughly 125 million square miles, or more than 10 times the area.) From there, there are three 90-mi/in full sheet maps and one half-sheet one, a 30-mi/in full sheet map, a 30-mi/in 3/4 sheet map (the remaining quarter is used for a city map and some building plans), a half-sheet 30-mi/in map, a 30-mi/in inset map of an island, and a couple small 30-mi/in maps on the same sheet as several city maps and a couple of building plans. These maps generally do not connect to each other or (with a few exceptions) detail an area covered in larger scale, giving a somewhat disjointed sense of presentation.

Despite being in two physical parts, the books break down into three rough sections, with the beginning being Chinese-inspired countries, the end being Japanese-inspired countries, and the stuff in the middle being more of a variety of other Oriental influences. China and Japan have decided top billing here, with the middle chapters being shorter, much less detailed, and not as well written. Each chapter supposedly written by a different in-world personality describing the area to Elminster, and actually written by a different contributing author. As with any anthology, this leads to a variety of styles, presentation, and quality.

The first part of “China” is Shou Lung, a fantasy version of ancient China which gets a pretty good introduction in about forty pages, including a gazetteer of the provinces, a cultural guide, Chinese-style renamings of the largely Japanese-influenced classes from Oriental Adventures, secret societies, religion, history, sample NPCs, and some details on a typical example town, complete with social tensions. These forty pages are packed. Of course, since this is the country that takes up most of the overview map, there’s plenty of room for invention as well.

If Shou Lung is fantasy Lawful Good China, T’u Lung is its Chaotic Evil mirror, where the bureaucracy hinders every action, taxes go uncollected, many towns are ruined by unrestrained bandits, etc. This overstates the case, as neither country is full of people of a particular alignment, but it’s not a bad assessment of the character of the countries. Overall, this section gets a bit more lost in details, such as having even more NPCs than given in the longer Shou Lung chapter, but since this is the Southern Song to Shou Lung’s Imperial China, the cultural notes from both chapters can be of help for both countries.

Kara-Tur transitions from China with Tabot, a little too obvious fantasy Tibet. With only eight pages, if you already knew something of Tibetan history, this might be enough. For me at least, this is where the boxed set starts strongly saying, ‘there’s China, and then the rest of the world is boring’. There’s just not enough here to get a real feel of the place. Sure, there’s some history, and short bits about architecture, language, religion, etc. But it is all breezed through, there’s no touches like Tabotan-culture class names; nothing more than the barest overview.

This too-short treatment dogs the next several chapters, starting with The Plain of Horses, which is obviously the home of the fantasy Mongol/barbarian horde stand-ins before you even read the chapter. And… it’s pretty much a fastball straight down the center of those expectations. Almost everyone is a barbarian (in the class-mechanics sense), everyone rides, etc. That said, while there’s a number of different tribes that fight with each other, many of them have apparently permanent cities that serve as their central meeting spot, up to the largest, Li-Raz, that has a 15,000-man (barbarian) standing army. Still, this feels a little more like a place to flesh out and adventure in, rather than visit, than Tabot, though it probably comes down to relative existing knowledge for me.

The Northern Wastes (out past the Plain of Horses) is another sparsely-populated area with no central nation, and no overriding culture either, leaving the area undeveloped in text as well, a home of lone mysterious places, and a primary place to find non-humans (more on that later). The Jungle Lands to the south of T’u Lung with multiple nations are broadly-Indonesian in flavor, but this ten-page chapter is ill-served with pages of short city descriptions crowding out broader concerns of what the area is like, with the three peoples presented are given the barest outlines. The Island Kingdoms… yes, technically, there are kingdoms (multiple) here. But the chapter spends its time purely on the island of Bawa (too-obvious renaming—Java—strikes again). With such a tight focus, the island is actually fairly well developed, and this is one of the better places to have adventurers visit and interact with, but it’s hard to imagine a campaign starting here. I’d like to complain about ignoring the rest of the region the chapter should be about, but this product needs more focus like this.

Then Kara-Tur transitions to Japan with Koryo, or fantasy-Korea. While Korea has often suffered from being stuck between China and Japan, Koryo is much more influenced by Kozakura than Shou-Lung. The ‘narration’ of this chapter is schizophrenic, supposedly written by the author of the Shou-Lung chapter, but with parts also from a brother/sister pair. They offer nicely contrasting views in one part, and the entire chapter could have been much stronger with more use of the technique.

Kozakura is a chain of islands modeled after waring states Japan, with Wa being an adjacent set of islands modeled after the Tokugawa Shogunate (down to persecuted Chauntea cultists in place of Christian missionaries). Like the pair of ‘Chinas’ earlier, these chapters have a decent amount to offer each other in terms of crossover society and background. Thanks to the increased coverage, and the smaller geographical size, they’re probably the easiest to digest for adventuring in, pointed up by the fact that most of the OA-series adventures happen in these two countries. They also feature a lot of color by way of Japanese terms and titles. I’m happy with it, but I can easily see someone being severely overwhelmed by all the foreign names and terms, and having a lot of trouble with this section.

Conclusion

In many ways, the Kara-Tur boxed set is just crammed full of possibilities, and can serve as a great inspiration to a DM. But it also suffers from overreach. It would be easy to take any one part of this product and turn it into something deeper and more focused, and still be giving the barest outlines of world-building inspiration. However, the worst omission is actually the absence of any sort of timeline. There are history sections, and many parts refer to an event happening in ‘such-and-such a year’, but the current year is never stated, making all those references nearly useless (and they’re obviously not in Dale Reckoning, and probably are in different calendars in different countries).

For me, the boxed set lived entirely on its Forgotten Realms tie-in, and that is a place that it also runs into trouble. While Kara-Tur has plenty of high-power, high-fantasy elements that make it fit into AD&D well, it does not fit with the Realms so well. The Realms are an ancient land that have been dominated by dragons, dwarves, and elves in turn, where the human era is still getting going with the wreckage of former empires scattered about. Meanwhile Kara-Tur is a very human-oriented land. There’s no signs of this backstory here. No elves, and only peripherally dwarves (if you count korobokuru), and no great pre-human empires. It’s possible they just didn’t get out this far, but it clashes with the tone of the main Realms.

The fact that the regions and cultures are all closely modeled after Earth equivalents comes in for some criticism. I’m generally fine with it (I’m a fan of Mystara, which uses that technique for much of the world), but there is the problem that as alluded to before, they the ‘fantasy’ here is largely powered by the actual myths of these cultures, and not by the implications of AD&D style-magic and the like. For instance, Shou Lung has some very nicely Chinese ideas of a Celestial Empire and heavenly bureaucracy that is reflected in the mortal realm by Shou Lung itself… but this has no place in the ‘great wheel’ cosmology of AD&D that has such an influence on the Realms. It’s not even explained how it works in relation to the other countries in the boxed set.

All of this is probably why Kara-Tur remained almost unexplored in further products. There were a few more OA-series adventures released after this, and The Horde would tie the eastern and western parts of the continent together, but there were no KT-series modules to expand on the setting, and when WotC released a new Oriental Adventures for 3rd ed D&D, and included a setting in that book, it was Legend of the Five Rings‘ Rokugan, not D&D‘s Kara-Tur. It remains a good foundation for adventure settings, but is too much to just visit, and needs too much work to base a campaign in.

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Aug14

Back to War

by Rindis on August 14, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

Another year, another Bloodstone module. By 1987, the Forgotten Realms had become a TSR property, but the original box set was still a month away when H3 The Bloodstone Wars was printed, so the back cover got the soon-to-be-familiar gold and stone logo, while the front retained the usual AD&D trade dress. At this point, the entire arc had been set, and the end of the module positively talks about the upcoming conclusion in H4. Reverting to the usual practice of a detached tri-fold cover and 32-page book, H3 also included a poster-sized hex-map of the remnants of the Kingdom of Damara.

The module generally assumes that the players have been through the first two adventures and one of them is now the Baron of Bloodstone (the former Baron having retired at the end of H2). If not, there’s a section that talks about how to get them involved, and does a good job with working them into the first part of the adventure, but fails to discuss anything past that, and the party would not be in the position of authority assumed by the rest of the module.

It is now spring, and the module assumes that the players will, naturally, still be working on loose ends, and the maps of the main mines from H2 are repeated, though no key or description is given. The real concern here boils down to logistics. The mines are open, and producing plenty of valuable unfinished gemstone. Now they need to be converted into something more useful—cash, supplies, troops….

This module features another turn in focus. Whereas H2 had BattleSystem as an afterthought at best, going hard down the line of a tough dungeon, H3 returns to large-scale warfare (with a side-order of killer dungeon). This isn’t as lovingly presented as in H1, but there are proper BattleSystem stats for everything (but no pre-filled out forms), and a set of five scenarios outlined, with a general flow chart of how things should progress. This latter is the idea that I think might have gotten edited out of H2 as the Temple started dominating the entire module.

(Warning: I’m talking about plot, such as it is, from here on.)

At any rate, the module assumes that the party will end up escorting a caravan of bloodstones to the nearest major trade city, and the first part does a good job outlining how that should go, and anticipates possible player actions well (such various methods of flying out there). There’s some hints though this section that there’s warfare in the near future, but I think it might need to be a bit more heavy-handed after how it got blown off in the second module. There is enough build up afterwards that it shouldn’t take the party by surprise, but they can lose some valuable opportunities to prepare at this point.

The second major section of the module details the war. The various (now) independent duchies of southern Damara quickly become jealous of the wealth flowing into Bloodstone again, and threaten and attack. Mostly. There’s some detail given to the start of this process, with the nearest barony, Arcata, given some detail. After that, it kind of comes apart. Carmathan attacks… because. The smaller baronies near the old capital? Because. There’s no sense of the leaders involved, no discussion of attempts to negotiate. They mobilize and attack because Bloodstone is successful.

There is mention that while independent, these duchies and baronies are puppets of the Witch-King of Vasaa, who is unhappy at recent events. But that still doesn’t excuse the entire lack of discussion about the attitudes of the various leaders involved. As a pure miniatures campaign, it’s not bad, featuring a logical series of battles that get progressively tougher, that culminate in a battle that’s supposed to turn into a standoff. The hex map isn’t really needed to control the movement of armies, it can be done by feel and narration, but if the players are into it, it’s very handy for that—except for the fact that it clearly marks the secret location of the Grandfather of Assassin’s citadel. Now, the party will find out about it, and go there at some point (very possibly in the middle of all this), but that’s supposed to be a plot point.

Worse, the final part of the campaign makes no sense by the map. Bloodstone has always been known to be one of a pair of passes over the mountains separating Vasaa and Damara, and the less popular one at that. So having the Vasaan army gather a bit south of the other pass makes some sense. Having it head south to the heart of the old kingdom makes some sense, but going west towards Bloodstone might be more productive (okay, fine, the party’s forces should be in the heart of the old kingdom at this point). But, the Witch-King’s citadel isn’t that far from Bloodstone. There should be some fighting in there, even if the pass is easy to hold. No, nothing, no mention of it at all. What makes it especially odd, is the glacier placed between the two passes, and blocking the citadel from where the Vasaan army is. (Later maps do not have this bit of glacier. I recommend ignoring it if you use this module.)

Apart from all of that, the party’s lives are being complicated by repeated assassination attempts. The module has some kindness in that they are targeted on the PCs, and not hirelings and other lower-level targets. At first. During the war, the assassins start going after the various unit leaders, which will start having bad consequences for BattleSystem leadership if they succeed. Finally, an assassin is captured, and the PCs can use him to find the Grandfather of Assassins’ hidden citadel.

This is a trap of course, and the party will get forced to chase him down a deadly gauntlet where he knows all the traps. This is actually an adaptation of an Ed Greenwood adventure in Dragon #64, but where that was an obstacle course, with blunt arrows, this is full of damage-dealing traps and save-or-die poison (at -5). At this level, fighters and clerics can probably take that, but thieves and magic-users could be in big trouble, especially with things like 100 assassins firing poisoned arrows (okay, while there, the party shouldn’t need to face that, and 2nd level To Hit probabilities help). And when needing to force the PCs into something, the writers need something better than a wall of annihilation. The real problem is that the Grandfather of Assassins pops up at a couple points in this run, but there’s no schedule given of what exactly he does, and how long it takes him to do it. It’s just assumed that he always gets out of view of the party and gets to set up as he wants. Somewhat likely, but don’t count on players to not come up with something clever.

In the end, players who are in it for miniatures battles will get far more of what they want this time around, and players who’d rather just continue their adventuring career get something too. This is probably the best attempt at doing battles and adventure there’s been, but it still marks another frustrating change in direction from the previous module. There’s still frustrations this time, but the jarring inconsistencies of H2 are largely gone. The real problem is a lack of personal interaction. The Grandfather of Assassins just acts like an insane villain for the gauntlet run, destroys his citadel if the players succeed, to show he can be a load-bearing boss too, and the leaders of the opposing forces in the war are not fleshed out at all.

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Aug11

The Barbarian Frontier

by Rindis on August 11, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

The fifth FR-series book not only returned to the geography of the Realms, but returned to presenting an area that had already gotten a boost from the rest of the line. It was also a return to “The North” of FR1’s Waterdeep and the North. The latter had given some information on the region, but without proper maps, it hadn’t been very useful. Finally, The Crystal Shard had been a hit early Forgotten Realms novel, making this region supplement highly anticipated. It has continued to be a popular region, seeing more Drizzt novels, the Neverwinter games, and further supplements such as Volo’s Guide to the North and the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide.

The Savage Frontier is typical of the series as 64-page book with a faux parchment pattern on the pages, a detached trifold cover, and two poster-sized maps. The maps are in the usual 30 miles/inch ‘small’ scale, and join up north of the ones in the original campaign set, covering from a bit south of Waterdeep to the Spine of the World mountains (a somewhat convenient straight east-west mountain chain that defines the northern boundary of livable land), with the main map reaching from The Great Desert in the east to the coast in the west. The coast runs further west near the north, forcing a second map for the last four inches of land, leaving most of that map to be left to ocean, with some fairly major islands scattered about. One quarter of the map is used for insets, including a northern extension to the bit of land in the corner of this map, showing Icewind Dale, as well as a couple location maps. The cover includes a repeat of the main Waterdeep map, and five other locations, making this the first FR book to not leave at least one panel empty.

The book is supposedly written by an in-universe character, Amelior Amanitas of Secomber, though this is generally limited to humorous little intros and outros to chapters, and does not affect the main text. (It is also worth noting that he is originally from DQ1 The Shattered Statue, also by Paul Jaquays, which does happen in Cormyr, despite getting no Forgotten Realms logos.) It starts with a two page history, goes on to an overview talking of trade, climate, major factions, and the various peoples of the region. There is then six chapters of geographical description, broken up somewhat oddly. The first one is just cities and towns and the like, and is in a smaller font as well as based off of the similar chapter from FR1 (I don’t think any description is exactly the one from that book, but they’re often about 80% the same). There’s a separate chapter for ‘lost lands, strongholds, & ruins’, each with their own subchapter, then one on pure geographical features (mountains, rivers, etc.), and then a chapter just on the High Forest, which is something of a central focus of the book. And, towards the beginning of all this, is a chapter on the islands, folding all of their towns and geographical features together. So part of the description of the area is broken up by type of feature, and part of it by region. It’s obvious enough to not interfere with looking things up, but it is a bit grating, and presumably partly caused by the reuse of material from FR1.

Overall, a fair amount of attention is given to barbarians in this book. I’m not sure if it was seen as TSR’s best chance at showing how the backgrounds for that character class should work, or what, but there’s a lot here. In the section on the various peoples of the North, the Uthgardt barbarians get five pages, going into detail about various tribes, the broad outlines of society, special shaman powers, and the like. Also, the Northmen (more of the Norse-analogues from FR2, who can be barbarians) get two pages, while everything else (aarakocra, dwarves, orcs, trolls, etc… aaand the barbarians of Icewind Dale) gets two pages. And then there’s a three-page chapter on the ancestor mounds of the various Uthgardt tribes. Three of the location maps are actually of these, one showing ‘typical’ ones, one is an adventure one, and one is… atypical. What makes all this coverage work is that the barbarians are not all the same, and each has it’s own attitudes, from the extremely conservative, to tribes that are settling down and farming and becoming ‘civilized’, to one that is completely under the thumb of devils from Hellgate Keep.

The final chapter of the book is three pages outlining various prominent people, including, of course, the main trio from The Shattered Shard, and another refugee from a different Jaquays project, I12 The Egg of the Phoenix (which, no, is not a Forgotten Realms adventure, he’s been exiled here). And then there’s four appendices in the last four pages, with some new magic items (including a minor artifact), a new non-weapon proficiency, an expansion of one from the Wilderness Survival Guide (plant lore, including a handy table of medicinal plants of the region), a year’s worth of events and rumors (Year of Shadows/DR 1358, the year considered ‘just beginning’ in the original set), and six adventure ideas.

I consider this product one of the highlights of the the FR series, and certainly the best one to this point. Moonshae has mood without detail, Empires of the Sands lacks mood while providing detail. Waterdeep and the North suffers (just a bit) from the chapter on the North that is unusable thanks to the lack of maps. This is a well-rounded supplement that stands well on its own, and you could run games here without ever getting the main boxed set.

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Jul21

Forgotten Battle in the Mines

by Rindis on July 21, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

The year after Bloodstone Pass came out, H2 The Mines of Bloodstone came out. One thing had changed: This was a direct sequel to the former module, and there were definitely going to be more after this (whether they knew at this point it would be a four module series is not said).

Something else important changed: There’s no BattleSystem logo on this one. There’s one mention in the back blurb of “optional” BattleSystem scenarios. Which is entirely correct; any wargaming adventurers going through this one are in for a big let down. Instead, other newer, cooler, products are called out: the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide and the Wilderness Survival Guide. The adventure instead featured an extremely tough dungeon environment which allowed a reversion to the typical 32-page adventure book, though it is worth noting that (contrary to usual practice) the cover was stapled to the book. There’s several maps, many of which are in the isometric format introduced in the DSG.

At this point one could wonder if the H series was just a way to show off the latest new product, and convince people they really wanted to get them. In practice, there’s no crying need for either of the new hardbacks, and the need for the WSG is very minimal. The actual need for the DSG is also fairly minimal, but at the same time it was essential to writing the module. The DSG had discussed the idea of sprawling linked cavern complexes under the entire game world, called variously ‘deepearth’ and ‘underdark’, and this module, co-authored by the author of the DSG, featured a corner of what was explicitly just that.

This is still before the Forgotten Realms became a TSR property, and the setting is ‘anywhere you wish to drop in the countries involved’. However, the background became more concrete in this installment. Vaasa was ‘ruled by a Witch-King of incredible power’ in H1, but now this is expanded upon with Vaasa being a barren wilderness until the coming of Zhengyi a little more than 10 years ago. After that comes some quick notes on the module, and the lead ins for if the players have or have not been through H1.

And that’s where the inconsistencies begin.

(Caution: I’m headed into spoiler territory here.)

Thankfully, it’s never anything really game breaking, but there’s a handful of problems throughout the module. The first one is probably the biggest: The module starts with the basic rundown of the next couple months after the end of H1, as a harsh winter settles over the valley. Thanks to all the fighting, the harvest was delayed, and now heavy rains and an early freeze have ruined some of it before it can be brought in, leaving the village short of food for the winter. But wait, H1 had a nice schedule that explicitly said the harvest was completed right before the party arrives. After all, the bandits don’t come calling until the villagers have done all the work so they can take it from them, and fighting starts at that point.

So, the first thing the DM gets to do is figure out how to short the village of food. If part of the village got torched during the fighting (likely), that can explain it. Also, if the party hired troops to help out (possible), there’s extra mouths to feed. Otherwise….

Bloodstone Village only gets three pages of detailing this time, repeating the brief profiles and random villager tables, plus an updated map. The local dwarf, centaur, and halfling communities are each introduced in a little under a page each this time, including a map, important people, BattleSystem info, and a small encounter/adventure that could happen if/when the party visits.

The module purposely starts slow, with worries about the winter, wolves, and some minor annoyances before a night attack on the village attempts to jump-start the plot. It certainly provides a nice little mystery that might take a few (bloody) nights to solve. Intelligent players shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out Orcus is involved (they may not know what to make of what they’re finding, but the obvious questions will lead to answers). Making the jump to the abandoned mines (that may not have even been seen—though they are part of the background—in H1) seems tenuous to me. Okay, they were important, and they were abandoned when something evil was found in there, but does that really have anything to do with vampires and warg attacks? The fact that Bloodstone needs money, and reopening the mines would produce a lot of money, seems a safer bet to motivate the PCs to check them out, which will draw them into the rest of the adventure, but there’s no direct link.

The mines themselves are where the module gets going, but there’s minor consistency problems again. The box canyon the mine entrances are in is only mapped in H1, but that implies they’re on the north side (the compass rose is missing), but the entrances lead to the west here. Past that, there’s problems every time you go from one map to another, and the connections don’t match up right. They can all be explained easily enough, but feels like they were all written separately and then stuck together. There’s one passage that goes off-map and and off into the deepearth map in the DSG in here, but it has nothing to do with the current module, and there’s no good mechanism for steering the players straight if they divert down it (“if the PCs are still plodding along, have them meet a beholder”).

The general goal is to find the svirfneblin (gesundheit) kingdom in exile and get them to attack a duergar city in a massive diversion while the PCs sneak into the Temple of Orcus. This can be played out in BattleSystem, and stats are given, but there’s no particular need to, as the PCs are presumed off doing their high-level dungeon stuff instead of taking part.

After that, comes the main course: the Temple of Orcus. It’s big, it’s tough, it has magical protections to keep the players from short-circuiting things. (Which is generally fine; a big temple to a major demon lord should have magical protections in place. I just wish things like that were handled a bit more systematically for the world at large, instead of feeling like a band-aid.) And in classic fashion, the party arrives (one hopes) right as a ritual to summon Orcus into the world is starting! …And there’s no hint that this is about to happen in the rest of the module. I mean, what makes now special, as opposed to, oh, say, a month ago?

Okay, that’s a list of complaints and inconsistencies. In general, these are actually fairly minor to the flow of the module, but it means the module needs a bit of massaging before being truly ready to go. This is really just a bigger, badder dungeon module. It has some good pacing, with local problems escalating all the way up to a very bad, and immediate, problem. Of course, if you’re expecting something different from a high-level module (like H1), then this will be a disappointment.

Now, back above ground in the valley, the dwarves and centaurs got BattleSystem info, but the module pretty much states outright it’ll never be used. (The halflings also get BattleSystem info, but there is a small battle for them (only) to take part in.) There’s also a couple sample battle maps given for the underground that are part of the section on the big battle, but aren’t directly referenced in the text. One of them looks to be far inside the main cavern, away from any battle that would naturally get fought. I’m wondering if we’re seeing fragments of a much more complicated campaign to fight an army up to the temple so the party can get in and do their heroic thing, which got cut to make room for a really, really, big temple. The latter was probably a safer bet for the general TSR audience, but it means the module is nothing special.

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Jul17

More Magic Than You Can Shake a Wand At

by Rindis on July 17, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

After three modules, it seemed that the FR series was a set of geographical supplements filling out the further reaches of the Forgotten Realms in more detail. FR4 turned it into a more general series than that, as The Magister had no geographical lore at all. It also marked the return of Ed Greenwood to the series, and the book focused on one of his main interests: magic books and items. Greenwood had been contributing articles to Dragon magazine for years, many of them dealing with items and lore from the Realms. The best of these were collected together for this volume, and all-new material added.

The all-item focus of the book meant that the cover was stapled to the interior, and the inside front cover includes a modified version of the random magic item treasure table, so these new items could be randomly rolled for. The last few pages of the book have much expanded rules for a character creating a new magic item, with a chart of (new) modifiers for the final success roll stipulated in the DMG on the inside back cover.

About half the book is descriptions of a dozen spellbooks known to be wandering the Realms, giving their appearance, known history, and the spells they contain, which generally includes two or three new ones. At the end of this section is a couple of pages that lists all the new spells from here and the DM’s Sourcebook of the Realms, with their spell levels, what book they’re in, and where to find the description. I like the spellbook descriptions, and the vast bulk of the spells are inventive and look good (though there’s some really complicated potential interactions on many), but I think there’s some missed opportunities here. Some of these new spells are ‘unique’; they’re only found in the described book. Others are known to have been copied down a few times, and might be found elsewhere. This isn’t in the table. Furthermore, I think it could have been neat to come up with a basic ‘common-uncommon-rare-unique’ scheme and not only define these spells as rare and unique, but define how widely known the bulk of the ‘normal’ spells from the Players Handbook and Unearthed Arcana are. Most low-level spells should be ‘common’, but defining a few as ‘uncommon’, and then mixing it up more at higher levels could have some very interesting effects on a campaign. It would have taken up quite a bit of space however.

Instead, the second half of the book is taken up with about fifty magic items, with especial attention to shields, cloaks, harps, wands and swords. Again, these are generally well done, and if you need any sort of inspiration for magic items, this is a very good book. There’s a lot of potential complex interactions detailed again, which says something about the mess of different uncategorized effects AD&D had, but this also means that all these items have had some true thought given to them.

Just about all of these spell books and items have lore attached to them. The past history (as far as it is known) is given for almost all of these items (a couple are just mentioned as being relatively common). But these histories often don’t have a lot of detail. “Named for the legendary mage…”, but nothing about this person is given. How long ago? Why is he legendary? This is fine for a DM who is adapting these ideas to his own campaign, but considering that we are now dealing with a supplement for a particular setting, some more details would nice. And then there’s things like the Orb of Holiness, which has application outside of normal adventuring (“usually found at the heart of a temple, grove, or other holy place…”). It would be nice to have info like this show up someplace talking about places like that (though they are ‘rare’ even there, so having a temple without one isn’t a big problem). So, it’s a bunch of color, some not really linked to anything else known about the setting, some of it with potential wide-spread implications that I don’t think have ever been repeated elsewhere.

The title of the book is explained in about a third of a page in the introduction: the Magister is the goddess Mystra’s champion of magic. This was a subject that would be revisited in Secrets of the Magister.

Still, it’s a good collection of items. It makes a good source of inspiration for any high-magic fantasy setting, under any rules, though you’ll have to do a lot more mechanical work as you move away from 1e AD&D. And if you’re running a D&D-style campaign, the spellbooks should inspire you to think a lot more about the books the magic-user is always carrying around. I don’t recommend paying a lot for this, but it’s worth having, as there’s a lot of ideas in here.

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