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
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
In Dungeons & Dragons, there are dungeons. And in those dungeons are doors. Doors were tremendously important in Classic D&D (the term I’ll use to describe the original, B/X and AD&D versions of the game), and I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you about them, and how you can use them well. The basic purpose of a door is to divide … Continue reading D&D Procedures: Doors
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
In 1984, the writers of TSR UK were also writing adventures for the D&D Expert line. Drums on Fire Mountain is designed for a party of five to eight characters of levels 5-8, and… oh, my God! What’s up with the cover? Yes, they actually managed to misspell Graeme Morris’s name on it. And the back cover. It appeared as “Grame”. Oh wait, you meant … Continue reading D&D Adventure Review: Drums on Fire Mountain
Quest for the Heartstone, with an identification code of XL1, was published by TSR in 1984. It is an oddity – the only adventure written to support a couple of action figures. The action figures in question? Warduke and Strongheart (and some of their friends). Although I was active in the game around this time – and bought the adventure a few years later – … Continue reading AD&D Adventure Review: Quest for the Heartstone
X7 The War Rafts of Kron was released in 1984 as part of the “Expert” line of adventures; that is, wilderness-based adventures for the Dungeons & Dragons line rather than the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line. It is for characters of levels 9-12. In this adventure, the characters venture beneath the waves to save a princess from the tritons who have kidnapped her. However, the … Continue reading D&D Adventure Review: The War Rafts of Kron
TSR released the D&D game supplement AC2: Combat Shield and Mini-adventure in 1984. It contains a DM screen for the D&D Basic and Expert games, and a short, one-session adventure by David Cook for character levels 4-7. I do not own a printed copy of this adventure; I was only able to read the adventure after it was released on the DMs Guild website. In … Continue reading Basic D&D Adventure Review: The Treasure of the Hideous One
The D&D Companion set, released in 1984, was the first set of D&D rules that dealt with a matter mentioned in both the AD&D and original rules and never developed that much: the player characters as leaders of realms. Test of the Warlords was the first adventure released to supplement those rules, and it moves the setting northwards to the newly claimed realm of Norwold, … Continue reading D&D Adventure Review – CM1 Test of the Warlords
In the beginning, there was Chainmail. And, in Chainmail, characters were either alive or dead. A single hit was enough to kill most characters. However, this was a miniature game, and a single player controlled many characters. Well, figures or models. The more powerful characters, such as the Hero or the Superhero required several simultaneous hits to kill. A Hero required four regular men to … Continue reading Hit Points Through the Editions, part 1
