U2: Danger at Dunwater is an ambitious adventure. The sequel to The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, the players investigate the threat of the lizardmen revealed in the first module. It’s likely the characters invade their lair and slaying many of the lizardfolk, until they realise that their foes aren’t actually a threat after all! They were actually buying arms to help protect against a sahuagin attack. The module ends with the party (probably) concluding an alliance with the lizardmen against the sharkmen.
Strangely enough, the greatest threat the adventure has from modern players is them wanting to negotiate first rather than fight! When I ran this adventure a few years ago, the group took a back way into the lair and then negotiated with the lizardmen guards, allowing them to bypass the entire adventure!
The most impressive aspect of this adventure is how seriously it treats the lizardfolk. They’re not just foes to be killed: they have their own culture, as do the other creatures of the water and swamplands, and they have their own internal power struggles.
The lizard men’s lair is well-detailed, with many furnishings and items described. It’s a challenging setting, which is pleasingly non-linear; the main plan is a ring with rooms and passages all branching off the main passage. This allows the lizard men to react to the party from both directions, and it’s one of the more pleasingly-designed maps in a D&D adventure. There are also a few ways into the lair, so the way the adventure proceeds is anything but predictable.
Boxed text is used liberally throughout the adventure, with even two sets of text for one of the areas that can be approached from either the outdoors or indoors. Some of the text makes a few assumptions of the character’s reactions and conclusions. For example, one passage starts “Your earlier suspicions are confirmed”, which hopes that the players had suspicions in the first place!
Artwork in the adventure is provided by Dave de Leuw, Jim Holloway, Harry Quinn and Tim Truman. The art is quite good, but Jim Holloway’s comedy artwork is completely out-of-place with the otherwise serious tone of the adventure. I’m really not a fan of Holloway’s D&D art; I much prefer him when he’s working on a game like Paranoia.
Even with the attention to detail and some very good descriptions, the adventure rather leaves me cold. It relies too much on its twist ending, and if the ending is revealed too soon (which is entirely possible), then you’re left with a really detailed setting that you won’t use. One interesting point is that the lizard men chief requires the players to return all the treasure they took from the lair. In typical AD&D, this would be a major problem, as characters gained most of their XP from looted treasure. The module suggests giving XP for the treasure despite its return. This isn’t the only AD&D rule that might need to be broken here: it is suggested that “the DM should feel free to waive the stricter requirements for gaining experience levels in the interests of the smooth flow of the adventure series.” This adventure, for all its flaws, is pointing towards the modern D&D experience, but it’s an uneasy fit in AD&D.
The players could well come out of the adventure with not enough experience to reach 3rd level – and thus major problems for the final adventure in the series, The Final Enemy, which, as we shall see, has problems of its own to negotiate.
In summary, Danger at Dunwater has a great concept behind it, but relies heavily on the DM keeping the players in the dark until exactly the right time. Yes, it can be great, but it’s a tightrope that makes for an uneasy journey.
The adventure is seeing a revised 5e version in the 2019 release, Ghosts of Saltmarsh. How many of the original flaws will be still apparent? How much new material will there be? We’ll see!