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)
Dwellers of the Forbidden City is the adventure that introduced us to several classic D&D monsters: the yuan-ti, the aboleth, the mongrelmen, the bullywugs and the tasloi first see their adventure debut in this module. Any module that manages to have so many monsters that capture the imagination is going to be worth looking at, surely? However, Dwellers is not without its problems, and seems … Continue reading Review of I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City
I ran three sessions of the first public playtest packet before abandoning it in disgust. There were good ideas in it, but the mathematics of the game was so horrible, badly wrong that there was no point in continuing the experiment. As a result, I was somewhat sceptical of the second packet. Would it be any better? Well, one hopes so – the object of … Continue reading Playtesting #dndnext – You’re in the Army Now!
We had six players for the second session of Castle Amber (and I’ve lost count of how many session we’ve had of the AD&D campaign in general; it’s over 30 now). The group was: Dave, the C4/F4/M3 Tait, the henchman fighter 4 (as his main character died last session) Shane, the Magic-User 5 Jesse, the Magic-User 7, with his Cleric 4 henchmen Rich, the Thief … Continue reading Magic Jars and Buried Alive – more Castle Amber
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
Len Lakofka first came to my attention through his articles in Dragon magazine, many of which appeared in the ongoing column “Leomund’s Tiny Hut”. One of the traits that runs through his articles is a great attention to detail. There’s a real feeling of striving for “realism” and “simulation” in his articles, and thus it’s not much of a surprise that the adventure modules he … Continue reading Review of L1: The Secret of Bone Hill
B3: Palace of the Silver Princess is an unusual beast, as the version of the module that is most commonly known does not have the original text; indeed, the “Orange” cover version of the module got only a very limited release before being recalled and destroyed, due to the objections of senior members of TSR’s staff TSR due to what they considered ‘inappropriate content’. (as … Continue reading Review of B3: Palace of the Silver Princess
Yesterday was rather frustrating: I was unable to access the Internet from my laptop. I’ve no idea what happened, and I spent a lot of time trying to fix things. And, of course, wishing I had the internet so I could get ideas on what to do. Meanwhile, the other computer in the house was working fine. I was dreadfully afraid that it was a … Continue reading Relief! The internet works again!
The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is one of the true classics of AD&D adventures. Published in 1981, it was the first adventure released by UK designers – the “U” series code standing for United Kingdom. A short while later, we’d actually get a series of “UK” designated adventures, but this was back in the days of single letter series codes. Written by Dave J. Browne … Continue reading Review of U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
I wrote a review of Castle Amber last week, then followed it up by running the adventure as part of my regular AD&D game on the weekend. Is that the wrong order to do it in? I haven’t written much about my AD&D campaign for the past few months. Basically, the campaign ran as (mostly) weekly for the first six months of 2012, and has … Continue reading Running X2: Castle Amber
