Review of Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits

David Sutherland III is well-known in Old School RPG circles. He contributed quite a few illustrations to first edition AD&D manuals and was the TSR cartographer for many of the early modules. Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits is his first and perhaps only credit as a module writer. And as a writer, well, he makes beautiful maps.

Q1 was supposed to be the conclusion to Gygax's great adventure cycle that begins with G1: The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. Gygax even makes a lame excuse in the intro to Q1 about why he couldn't finish this one last module even though he had notes and everything.

Whatever, dude.

Sutherland takes a big swing at a high-level adventure. He attempts to bring in the high weirdness of astral travel and marry that to the brooding evil that one would expect from a dungeon on one layer of infernal Abyssal Planes. Heck, there are even some prototypical steampunk elements in the form of Lolth's insane spider ship.

And then there's that EGG...

All these elements are inventive, I grant you. However, some poor slob has to run this weak mess for a players. Does the module stand on its own?

Let's ask some basic questions about this adventure's quality. Is this a location-based adventure that can be fairly free-form? Is it a railroading exposition? Is there a clear objective for the PCs? Is that objective interesting? Does the module make getting to the objective interesting?

Q1 cannot be considered a location-based adventure. The previous module, D3: Vault of the Drow, certainly can be played in a variety of ways. The PCs can even visit the Drow city regularly, should they wish. But, dropping in on the Spider Queen for tea can only be done once. She is a minor god after all.

Which brings us to a big problem. The module's main objective seems to be implicitly: kill Lolth. I don't really think there is room for negotiation (but perhaps there is room for capitulation). Killing gods really is problematic for adventure play. If gods are weak, they become little more than "end bosses" in a campaign. If gods cannot be killed, then PCs have no hope of challenging them or their will. Gods are probably better handled as mute, magical mechanisms for plot.

Plot. There is a lot of whimsy in Q1, but not a lot of coherent action. Players sort of swing from one crazy location to the next without a lot of connective tissue. Not only will the party travel through the "demonweb pits" (which are more like inter-woven corridors), but the PCs may also visit various parallel worlds that Lolth is attempting to conquer.

She's a busy lady.

Sure, there are the nasty spiders, but they are kind of boring. Tolkien knew how to make spiders vile and fearsome. There are demons who are, like the spiders, fairly bland in their presentation. There are quite a few bugbears and gnolls. That Lolth must have a great recruiter on her staff.

What exactly does Lolth want? She wants to enslave all humans everywhere and then...I don't really know. She's a demon after all. I mean, she's a god. Or a mad steampunk scientist. OK. I really can't tell you what Lolth is, what she stands for, or what she wants for Christmas. She is just a big ball of sexy spider-evil who likes to leave the keys to her realm where high-level PCs can find them to kill her.

I may have seen her profile on Match.com once.

As much as I find Q1 nearly unplayable as module, it is an amazing source for getting the flavor of D&D in the late seventies. It's a bit more gonzo than S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

If Sutherland failed to deliver a solid RPG adventure, he certainly crafted an iconic artifact for the hobby. I suppose that is exactly what we should expect from an artist.

TBG-B: The Evil of Witches Fen

My latest 1-page adventure is now available for free! It is a hex-crawl for levels 4-7 using Labyrinth Lord rules. Here's a taste.

"Completing your last mission brought you to Lankwick, a town best forgotten. You await the infrequent arrival of a ship to return you to civilized lands. In the meantime, danger, disease and even treasure can be found in the evil reaches of Witches Fen."

This is most certainly a location based adventure. You will need to bring a little something to the party to use this, but I hope you find the map evocative for an afternoon's play.

Enjoy!

Review: Gygax #1

It was with some relish that I unwrapped the first issue of the reborn TSR's Gygax magazine. Daniel Horne's cover immediately set the tone, harkening back to the glory days of The Dragon magazine, circa 1984. On my desk is Dragon #89 from that year. The similarities in layout and font are intentionally designed to grab the attention of us unfrozen cavemen dice chuckers. I am unsure how those new to the hobby would react.

It is great to see a printed magazine these days. It is even better that this magazine has content about a hobby I like. I did not have an expectations about the content, so I was very surprised to see an article by Old School legend Len Lakofka. This dude has been writing about the hobby before The Dragon was even published. Glad to see that he is alive and kicking. I hope Bruce Heard gets in on this action too. Heck, could Frank Mentzer be conned into an essay? We'll see.

This issue had the tried and true Dragon formula of opinion pieces, optional rules for various roleplaying systems, an "Ecology of" article, goofy ads and even a re-animated What's New by Phil Foglio. So many great artists got their start in Dragon, including Phil, that I am pleased he found time to contribute. He definitely has a lot more going on these days than he did in '84.

If Gygax can survive, it will certainly give rise to new RPG heroes and, let's be honest, arguments about bearded dwarf ladies.

But for this magazine to continue, it will need to not simply rehash the hobby's past. The original Dragon became a clearing house of ideas that affected future TSR publications. It brought together the community of D&D players. Gygax has to establish some leadership position in today's hobby to be successful. Clearly, it is aimed at the Old School Roleplaying revolution. Is this market durable enough? We will see.

Dragon was more or less the house organ of TSR and that gave the content focus. What should Gygax focus on? Labyrinth Lords? Tunnels and Trolls? OSRIC? Dungeon Crawl Classics? Should it only talk about "open game license" systems, so as not to appear biased toward particular vendors?

For the new TSR, this existential question will need to be resolved sooner than later. I certainly will enjoy watching its evolution. Perhaps I will even contribute to it (a review or adventure module, I think). I never did get a piece in The Dragon.

Review: G1-2-3 Against the Giants

Let's get this out of the way first: Against the Giants (ATG) is the archetypical AD&D adventure. The three adventures comprised in this collected work were written during the period when Gary Gygax was putting together the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide. Reading through the module now is like reading the UR-manuascript which informs all future TSR adventures. Niether the composing adventures nor the compilation are flawless. However, the criticism presented below benefits from 30 years of hindsight and exposure to many products born from this work.

ATG is a high-level adventure for around 9 characters of 9th level. Given the monstrous challenges found in the halls of the giants, players can expect some attrition in their numbers. The setup is simple: giants have been raiding nearby human settlements. The rulers of these settlements wish this to stop. The mission presented to the players is straight-forward: hunt down the giants and, if possible, discover the reason for their incursions.

This setup is clean, without a cluttered backstory and provides sufficient motivation for the players. However, I am an unfrozen caveman dice chucker. More modern players may find the lack of backstory off-putting and the absence of a personal connection to the lives of the player characters to be a fatal defect. A crafty DM should be able to manufacture custom story hooks for those players who need a more personal stake in the giant raids.

There are three giant rulers responsible for these raids: the hill giant Nosnra, the frost giant Grugnur and the fire giant Snorre Iron Belly. Each has his own fastness which the characters must assault (in the order given above). Again, modern RPG sensibilities might be put off by the abrupt way in which the PCs are dumped more or less in front of each fortress. There is no wilderness component provided for in the text. There is no nearby town for supplies. The PCs are own their own.

As each chief is conquered, clues to the identity of a third party pushing the giants appears. If you do not know who this is, STOP READING NOW.

SPOILERS AHOY

A crafty (and according to Gygax's own fiction, busty) drow elf named Eclavdra has pushed the giants to war with the humans. Perhaps my reading comprehension skills are failing, but I cannot understand her motivations for warring (other than she is eee-vil!). Perhaps the follow-on modules, D1-2 and Q1 explain this a bit more. In any case, that mystery is not explored in ATG.

I believe that ATG is the module series that introduced the drow elves, which is Gygax's take on the traditional "svartalf" of Norse mythology. Throughout ATG, Gygax leans heavy on traditional Norse folktales. He goes as far as to say that the fire giants lair is "in effect" Muspelheim. This isn't to suggest that the PCs are hopping around the Outer Planes -- that's a concept that had not yet been developed, I suspect. That the fire giant king is named Snorre must be a knowing wink to the author of the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturlurson.

As a creature, the drow elves would go on to feature prominently other modules through out many editions of D&D and associated fiction. While I have yet to play ATG, I did play Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits and so was introduced to the drow very early in my RPG career.

The monster challenges that appear in ATG could not be more iconic of D&D, starting right with the giants themselves. I believe the only type of giant that does not appear in the series is the very power storm giant. Dragons also make strong appearances, including the a Smaug-like red dragon sitting on the largest treasure trove I can recall seeing detailed in any TSR module.

I also enjoy that the kinds of monsters that plagued low-level PCs, like orcs, trolls and hell hounds, appear as almost slaves of the giants. That's a wonderful display of power differential that adds verisimilitude to the monsters.

The treasure, strewn about the various fortresses, is remarkable too. There are several intelligent magic swords, which ordinarily are rare finds. Could it be that Gygax wanted to make all magic swords unique creations? Possibly. This idea that all magic items should have a unique character is a popular meme in the current Old School Renaissance.

So much of the content of the adventure. There are some troubling production qualities to ATG that require some airing.

Firstly, the maps are not labeled. That is to say, at first glance, you do not know which of the three sets of maps is that of the hill giant's fortress. When these modules were separately published, this confusion did not appear. However, when the maps were collected into one unit, this user interface issue was overlooked. Each section retains the original introduction, which adds distracting redundancies. Finally, there is a short-hand used in the monster stats (just giving the HP for each) that requires that the DM have the Monster Manual on hand. I suppose most of us have all the rulebooks on hand anyway, but this requires additional lookups that are unwelcome.

Despite some production issues, ATG is a strong product and likely to provide hours of entertainment even to modern players.

Binders full of bad ideas

This full page, glossy ad appeared on the inside cover of Dragon #55 in 1981. Apparently, someone at TSR (probably not E. Gary Gygax) decided on a new product line to synergize with the raft of rules books already produced by the company.

And that product was: Three ring binders.

This is around the time that the Moldvay/Cook basic rulebooks appear which were produced with holes for binders. I have noted that I did not meet many people who tore apart their rulebooks to put them in binders, but obviously some marketing genius at TSR had a vision.

I know, you are probably kicking yourself for not thinking of this product sooner. Note that this issue is from November, so you can rule out April foolery.

I can't be sure if any of these actually were sold. I did not see any on eBay, nor does a google image search return anything like the binder pictured here.

Could that picture of the product be any smaller? Couldn't the shirtless guy be holding it? What do you suppose is in that chest anyway? He sure has a dumb grin on his face. He looks like a surfer.

What was I talking about? Oh, right: binders.

$5 (plus $1.25 S&H) will get you one binder with 28 sheets of graph paper. Using google's shop function, I can find binders for a little more than $1 today (with crazy S&H fees).

What test marketing did they do for this? Was salmon really the color to lead with?

The moral of this story, kids, is no product idea is too stupid not be tried by someone in a successful company (which TSR most certainly was in 1981).

Maybe I need to revamp this RPG-themed binder idea as a kickstarter.

Have you played a module from TaskboyGames?

If you have played or even read through Manse on Murder Hill or Under Fogbreath Peak, I would love to get an email from you.

In these modules, what worked for you. What didn't. What would you like to see more of? Less?

Be as eloquent or brief as you'd like. I won't spam you. Promise.

Together, there have been over 900 downloads of these modules this year. Is there anybody out there?

Update: You can email me directly at jjohn@tasbkoy.com.

Nota Bene on Under Fogbreath Peak

Obviously, there is little room for background material in one page adventures. And I didn't want to be too direct about this point in the module. However, the full background of the Ironbones is the following.

This is your personal SPOILER ALERT.

Ironbones is a Stone Giant who lived with a clan of 11 or so other giants in the natural cave complex inside Fogbreath Peak. Ironbones was one of the weaker males in the clan and was often ridiculed for it. Perhaps this is what drew him to seek out the company of bears, with whom he found mutual rapport.

One day, while sulkily foraging in a remote place, Ironbones came across the suppressed and evil tome The Triumph of Worms, which is part magical instruction and part inculcation into the worship of darker powers.

Over the course of many months, Ironbones read and re-read the book, becoming more reclusive from his clan. He showed a talent for dweomercraft, which is rare aptitude in any giant.

Setting his trap carefully, Ironbones caused many of the male members of his clan to be away from the caverns. He then viciously slaughtered all the females and few giantlings who remained behind. After the deed was accomplished, Ironbones quickly fortified the cavern with magic, ramparts and traps that severely weakened the returning males. With the help of his hireling, Joey the Orge, Ironbones slew all but the chieftain of his clan, who affected a reluctant escape.

All that was left was to build a new alchemical laboratory in the unused parts of the cavern, instruct his ogre to improve the security of the lair and unfold the remaining secrets of The Triumph of Worms in peace.

Until you meddling humans and demihumans showed up...