In the late 1970s, Lawrence Schick took the best bits of the dungeons he’d designed, stuck them all together, and gave the result to TSR as a sample document hoping to persuade them to hire him. It worked. His sample document was published as S2: White Plume Mountain without changing a word, much to his surprise.

It’s also one of my favourite adventures of the era. Looking back at the period, some commentators have discussed the concept of Gygaxian Naturalism, which is how Gygax designed AD&D and its modules to provide a more realistic world, where everything made sense and flowed from the assumptions of the setting. This is most obvious in adventures such as The Village of Hommlet and Keep on the Borderlands. The Caves of Chaos might have a few too many different monsters living in proximity, it’s not completely unbelievable. The idea of the border post with its soldiers, travelers, inn, guilds and suchlike is all based very much on a projection of the real world into the D&D world.

This is not White Plume Mountain.

With a collection of turnstiles, inverted ziggurats, cursed wishing rings and ogre magi, the world of White Plume Mountain doesn’t look that realistic.

However, the adventure is a lot of fun to run and play. Despite the deathtraps and difficult encounters, the adventure feels light-hearted. This is a long way from the approach of Tomb of Horrors.

The adventure begins with a simple hook: the wizard Keraptis has stolen three powerful weapons from their owners in the Free City of Greyhawk. The heroes need to travel to White Plume Mountain and reclaim them. It is notable that Keraptis is never seen in the adventure; the group deals exclusively with his traps, tricks and monsters.

The original printing is quite short: 27 encounter areas in 12 pages. It introduced the Kelpie (a malign, shapechanging form of seaweed) to the game. When it was reprinted with a colour cover, it was expanded to 16 pages by putting in more artwork. The artwork in the original printing is by Erol Otus, Darlene Pekul and Dave Sutherland. For the revised version, Jim Roslof, Jeff Dee, Davis LaForce and Jim Willingham add their skills. I really like the artwork in this adventure, which adds a lot to its charm.

However, despite its brevity, it is packed with incident. There are logic puzzles, riddles, strange environments, deception and rather deadly monsters. Fighting a giant crab in a bubble that if punctured will bring boiling hot water down on you? That’s unusual, rare and spectacular. I found Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan a bit cold and remote; that’s never the case with White Plume Mountain. It just wants you to have fun with it.

I ran part of White Plume Mountain on my 33rd birthday, and it was a memorable experience. This isn’t an adventure to obsess over how to integrate it into your campaign world. Instead, it exists to challenge your players and their characters, and to let everyone have a good time when doing so. You might not always be in the mood for an adventure like this one, but when you are, it delivers the goods.