Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk is a 2023 campaign adventure published by Wizards of the Coast that takes characters from levels 1 through 12. It incorporates the excellent starter set adventure The Lost Mine of Phandelver, and then continues onwards for seven more levels of exciting adventure. Or at least, they hope you’ll find it exciting. The new material involves a plot by mind … Continue reading Review: The Shattered Obelisk
Have you heard of Tomb of Horrors? Designed by Gary Gygax for the original Dungeons & Dragons game (and based on an idea by Alan Lucien), it is infamous as a character and party-killer. It was designed to test the skills of D&D players and was the D&D tournament module at Origins I in 1975 – that’s only a year after Dungeons & Dragons itself … Continue reading Classic D&D Review: Tomb of Horrors
CM3 Sabre River was published in 1984 as a level 18-22 adventure for the Companion Set rules. Unlike the two previous adventures in the series, Sabre River does not use the dominion rules at all. Instead, it’s an adventure featuring a lot of dungeons. It is also it is a mostly linear, story-based adventure. The plot the adventure kicks off with a young boy reaching … Continue reading Classic D&D Review: Sabre River
I’m midway through reading a bunch of different RPG products at the moment, none of which I’ve really dived into enough to feel confident about writing a full review, but I thought I’d give you a few thoughts on a couple of products relating to wilderness play. Uncharted Journeys (Cubicle 7) I’ve written quite a bit about this already as I’ve been using it in … Continue reading RPG Products I’m Reading
The publication of Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits in 1980 was an important event. After about a two-year wait, we finally had the conclusion to the Giant and Drow series. However, the author of the adventure wasn’t Gary Gygax, who’d written the first six modules, but instead Dave Sutherland. Gygax explained the substitution in the adventure – he had written the first six modules over a … Continue reading Classic D&D Review: Queen of the Demonweb Pits
The second Companion Game adventure, CM2 Death’s Ride was released in 1984. Designed for level 15-20 adventurers, Garry Spiegle had a tough assignment. At this point, these were the highest levels of the game for which anyone had designed an adventure. Only Douglas Niles, with his level 15 and greater CM1 Test of the Warlords had written a similarly levelled adventure. And this was a … Continue reading Classic D&D Review: Death’s Ride
Set in the realm of Lamordia, one of the domains of Ravenloft, The God Engine is a horror-themed adventure for level 1-2 characters, with a suggested running time of four to six hours. There is a distinct steampunk vibe to the proceedings, and it contains adult concepts. The plot concerns a fossilized elder brain which gains control of a researcher and forces him to create … Continue reading D&D 5E Review – Lamordia: The God Engine
Dungeon Module D2: Shrine of the Kuo-Toa continues the 3-module “Drow” series. By this stage, the party has defeated the giants and is pursuing the drow deeper and deeper into the earth. The first adventure of this series, Descent into the Depths of the Earth introduced the party to the world that existed below; this adventure deals with the second part of their journey. The … Continue reading AD&D Review: Shrine of the Kuo-Toa
In 1984, TSR released a rather unusual product: 3-D Dragon Tiles featuring The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina. What’s a Dragon Tile? It’s a relatively thin cardboard tile printed with a colour design and used to create a 3-D dungeon map. For 1984, this was a product way ahead of its time. And the technology. What TSR did with the tiles was innovative and forward-thinking. For … Continue reading Basic D&D Review: The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina
Descent into the Depths of the Earth is the first of three modules in the “Descent” or “Drow” series, and the fourth of 7 modules in the special campaign series generally known as the GDQ series. First published in 1978, the adventure picks up after the end of the Giant series, with the adventurers pursuing the fleeing drow elves into a long tunnel deep under … Continue reading AD&D Review: Descent into the Depths of the Earth
