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.
Looking at I2: Tomb of the Lizard King after having spent quite a bit of time looking at the pre-1982 adventures, I can see a change coming over the AD&D adventure landscape. We’d got a hint of it with U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, but Tomb of the Lizard King is particularly noteworthy. It starts with three event-based encounters where the players meet the … Continue reading Review of I2: Tomb of the Lizard King
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)
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
