Due to various other events going on, only three players were able to participate in the final session of Castle Amber: Tait, playing his 5th level fighter, Callen, playing his 4th level dwarf fighter, and Shane, playing a 6th-level magic-user. (This is far, far weaker than the party that had gone through the rest of the adventure!) The group had found the three keys that … Continue reading Finale of Castle Amber #dnd
Idol of the Orcs is an adventure module for the Labyrinth Lords (or B/X D&D) system written by James C. Boney, who has also contributed a number of AD&D-themed adventures to Expeditious Retreat Press’s Advanced Adventures line. I’m quite fond of the B/X system, and I was interested to see what James had done with it.
Tom Moldvay’s B4: The Lost City is, much like the previous module I’ve reviewed, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, an adventure that works better the more the DM works at it. The basic plan of the adventure is simple: the novice adventurers discover an ancient, buried pyramid when out of food and water, and must survive the inhabitants whilst looking for supplies. What makes the … Continue reading Review of B4: The Lost City
The 1981 release of the second D&D Basic Set was a landmark in the history of D&D; the previous Basic Set, edited by Eric Holmes, had attempted to present the original D&D rules in an easier-to-learn version. The second set, edited by Tom Moldvay, went and rewrote the rules to create its own game which, although its roots in original D&D were apparent, fixed, clarified … Continue reading Review of D&D Basic (Moldvay)
B3: Palace of the Silver Princess is most commonly known in its green cover edition, credited to Tom Moldvay and Jean Wells. However, this wasn’t the original version: the original module was written by Jean Wells alone, but was recalled and destroyed by TSR management before it went into wide release. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast released the original module in PDF form, and … Continue reading Review of the original B3: Palace of the Silver Princess by Jean Wells
Castle Amber is an adventure module that is packed with entertainment. Within its slender 32-page count, there are 70 encounter areas, 17 new(ish) monsters, and an adventure that can be particularly deadly. It just doesn’t always make that much sense. Inspired by the Averoigne short-stories of Clark Ashton Smith, an early 20th century writer of horror, fantasy and science-fiction, Tom Moldvay has crafted an adventure … Continue reading Whimsical and Deadly – A Review of Castle Amber
Every so often, I get the desire to get a few more of the old AD&D and Basic D&D books and adventures that I still don’t own, and so onto ebay and online 2nd hand stores I wander… The results of my latest set of purchases is now sitting on my table, and includes such items as Dungeon Geomorphs – I actually owned a copy of … Continue reading A pile of old D&D books
The release of The World of Greyhawk in 1980 was an event that I didn’t mark. At that point, it was still a year before I would get my first introduction to Dungeons and Dragons. Eventually I was introduced to the World of Greyhawk through the first real AD&D campaign I played in the mid- to late-eighties, and that was using the later World of Greyhawk (2nd Edition) 1983 boxed setting. It … Continue reading The World of Greyhawk – 1980 folio edition
The third season of D&D Encounters began today, and so a few players gathered with me, my DM, as we played the first session of the newest version of The Keep on the Borderlands. I have very fond memories of Keep. It was one of the very first adventure modules I tried to DM (badly, I might add), and I used it again as the … Continue reading Back to the Keep on the Borderlands
For those who don’t know, my “Shackled City” campaign looks like it is on temporary hiatus due to both Daniel and Dave being unavailable to play in it. We’ll return to it once Daniel returns from classes. However, until then, I’m going to run an original D&D campaign. We had the first session last week, where we blundered our way through several encounters in my … Continue reading Original D&D
