Posts from November 2009

HA! You thought all of these modules would either involve dungeons or dragons, didn’t you?

Well … think again.

Top Secret isn’t a great spy game (the criminally under-rated James Bond 007 RPG wins that particular honor), but it’s a very good one. I never played it all that much, at least not in comparison to D&D or some other games, but I enjoyed the hell out of it (along with Gamma World) when I first got into gaming. I first played Top Secret in an adventure that I think was called “Whiteout” that was published in Dragon Magazine … and then, later, I ran and played a few other modules, including one standout called “Operation: Rapidstrike!”.

The rules for Top Secret are a typical example of the TSR games published in the late 1970s and early 1980s – a mishmash of systems and subsystems, some related to one another, some not. Top Secret actually doesn’t hold much resemblance to D&D, apart from its loose usage of “classes” (player characters can belong to one of three espionage bureaus – Investigation, Confiscation, and Assassination). If anything, it’s reminiscent of a more complicated and detailed version of Boot Hill, with a reliance on lots of percentile-based rules, and with a pretty nasty and lethal combat system, especially when it comes to firearms.

The main rules and the early adventures didn’t provide much details for the campaign setting of Top Secret, but that was okay – like most of the games of that era, I think it was kind of expected that DMs (or Administrators, in the case of Top Secret) would be making up their own campaign worlds. About the only thing I found frustrating about the game, then and now, is the relative lack of technology. If you wanted a gadget-filled campaign that would make James Bond envious, Top Secret was not the spy game for you. (Said gadgets only came in later supplements, and only for the revised version of the game, Top Secret S.I.). It’s not necessarily a bad thing … it just means that choices are limited. Any Top Secret adventure is going to run more along the lines of the stripped down “Casino Royale” than the over-the-top “Moonraker”.

And speaking of adventure … this one was my favorite.

Besides being a module that’s just plain fun, “Operation: Rapidstrike!” is a shining example of one of my favorite tools when it comes to writing adventures: the Ticking Clock. Used sparingly, the Ticking Clock is a great way to nudge players in a certain direction without railroading them. It basically means that unless the players do something in a certain timeframe, dire consequences occur. (I also call it the “Or Else” method – you need to do this, or else …)

A badly written Ticking Clock is one that involves black-and-white consequences – do this, or die. Do this, or the bad guys get the atomic bomb and blow up the city. You never want to pin players back to something truly horrible if they fail, especially if the reason they fail is just plain bad luck. Rather, the Ticking Clock should mean that success makes future actions easier, and failure means things become tougher later on, but not impossible. As a tool for the DM/Administrator, the Ticking Clock provides a way to keep the adventure moving, and to keep the players from either preparing for every possible contingency, or from arguing over plans, details, and other minutia that in excess can detract from the adventure. (Don’t get me wrong – I love sitting behind the game master’s screen, watching the players concocting plans! – but when it takes an hour to decide something simple like what door to take, things need to be pushed along, and a Ticking Clock serves nicely for pushing.)

A spy adventure, of course, is a perfect place for a Ticking Clock – and “Operation: Rapidstrike!” features four of them running simultaneously. The players’ mission is to rescue a kidnapped scientist, Dr. Felix Fendelmann, who (of course) inadvertently created a deadly drug known as Zucor. The evil Mademoiselle Larreau abducted Fendelmann and forced him to create large supplies of Zucor on a secluded island. The players are expected to rescue Fendelmann, destroy the supplies of Zucor, learn about Mademoiselle Larreau’s evil plans (and possibly neutralize her), and also locate a mole on the island known only as “Gregor”, who has been supplying information to the player character’s agency. It's a tall order, but it's not impossible.

What makes things interesting is how the players choose to approach achieving these goals. Depending on what they choose to do first, later goals may become either easier or more difficult. It might be easier to rescue Fendelmann early on in the adventure, for example, but having to drag him along throughout the adventure might pose some problems, and might cause Larreau’s guards to up the security on the Zucor supply if news of Fendelmann’s rescue spreads across the island. Also, if the players take too long in accomplishing their goals, Larreau and some of her henchmen might leave the island with their supplies of Zucor, causing the players’ mission to end in failure.

There aren’t any particular “WOW!” moments that make the module truly stand out, and I suppose that’s my main complaint about the adventure – there’s no signature moment that’s particularly memorable. But it’s very good all the way through, and there aren’t any weak moments in the adventure, either. If anything, I think it’s a better version of “Keep on the Borderlands” in that it seems to be designed to show off the rules of the game and what they can do, so that players in the adventure can better learn how the game works. There’s plenty of fighting, plenty of investigation, plenty of roleplaying opportunities, and plenty of action … depending on what the players choose to do, there’s even a potential chase scene involving a helicopter, which is kind of cool. It might not be the best spy adventure ever written, but it’s action-packed and always fun.

Better yet, it’s solid. Like a lot of the other modules being covered in NaClaMoMo, it hits that great balance between being open-ended and covering all contingencies. The players are free to do a lot of things in “Operation: Rapidstrike!” and the module is written in such a way that the players can do all of them in many different ways, in many different sequences of order – there’s not a lot of railroading going on in the adventure. But it’s also not so open that it’s a total free-for-all, which might be a disaster for somebody new or inexperienced running the module. It's got goals and direction, just not a specific order in which they need to be accomplished. It’s got that nice balance of firm guidelines that are flexible enough to let players make a lot of choices, but still keep the adventure on track towards a grand finale. Not many modules hit that sort of balance, but “Operation: Rapidstrike!” nails it perfectly.

I picked up the boxed set of “Top Secret” about a year ago on eBay on a lark, mostly to see if the game was as good as I remembered, or if my fond memories of the game were colored with nostalgia. It wasn’t quite as good as I remembered … but it was still pretty good nonetheless. And so was “Operation: Rapidstrike!”

Both are great examples of a different age of gaming. Not better, not worse … just different. And fun.

I’d love to run “Operation: Rapidstrike!” at GenCon someday for some friends.

Maybe I’ll see you at the table.

Assuming, of course, you choose to accept the mission.

Put simply, “Drums on Fire Mountain” is probably one of the better adventure modules that you’ve never read, and probably one you might not even know. It's an oft-neglected little gem that deserves some attention.

My first forays into being a DM started with Basic & Expert set D&D. “Palace of the Silver Princess” and “The Lost City” were the first real modules that I successfully ran … and that led to running “Isle of Dread” and “Castle Amber”. All four of these modules ranged from “very good” to “outstanding” in terms of quality (with most headed towards the “outstanding” part of the range), and all were written exceptionally well for a newbie DM like myself. All provided enough guidance to help keep the adventure on track, but a little room for some creative experimenting and freelancing.

I didn’t really pay attention to who wrote each module back then (hey, I was barely a teenager!), so I just started assuming that anything from the “B” series or “X” series would be good. However, after finishing up “Castle Amber”, I moved on to my latest purchase, “Curse of Xanathon”, and found a genuine dud.

“X3: Curse of Xanathon” will not be getting the fullNaClaMoMo treatment, but suffice it to say that it’s a prime example of how not to write a module. It features a lot of heavy-handed, awkward railroading of the players throughout the adventure, and there’s a lot of strange things going on throughout the module that simply defy logic. (As examples, the module relies on players listening to the offhanded remarks of a drunken dwarf in a tavern to propel them towards saving the kingdom; players – who may be of Lawful alignment – are constantly put in situations where they have to kill Lawful town guards; and don’t forget the giant temple of Chaos being built in the center of town that no one seems to care about. And that’s just scratching the surface.) Part of this is due to the module being set first in a city, and then in the wilderness, which lends itself to being fairly open-ended … but how that module handles that open-ended nature is just appalling.

My experience running “Curse of Xanathon” led to the first real bad DMing experience of my time in gaming, as I stubbornly tried to stick to the awkward railroading, and my players tried stubbornly to get off of its ludicrous rails. We never actually finished that one … and after the debacle of “Xanathon”, I avoided the “X” series for awhile, and ran some AD&D modules instead.

It was probably a year or so later when I went to Tiny Tots and found this module.

The cover was what caught my eye (the title certainly didn’t) … and I’ll admit, the little flag in the upper left-hand corner intrigued me. What’s a British module like? I didn’t know, I was curious, so I bought it. And a few weeks later, I ran it.

“Drums on Fire Mountain” did everything right that “Curse of Xanathon” did wrong. Like “Xanathon”, “Drums on Fire Mountain” takes place in an open-ending setting – the entire adventure happens on the island of Teki-nuri-ria. The module starts with a slight amount of railroading, as the player characters are hired by merchants to hunt down and slay the devil-creature KalnaKaa, who has riled up the native kara-kara savages on the island. They are given two specific suggestions as to how to get to the dormant volcano Ni-malowa, where KalnaKaa is thought to be hiding … and then, from there, things get interesting.

The two suggestions for getting to Ni-malowa – using an underground slavers’ tunnel, or simply going overland to Ni-malowa from where the ship’s captain wants to land – are given the most detail in the adventure. However, the module’s writers (Graeme Morris & Tom Kirby) do an outstanding job of quickly fleshing out the entire island with a few set encounters and a well-written random encounter guide, in case the players decide to simply explore the island instead of tending to their mission, or decide to approach Ni-malowa in a more unconventional way. (“The slavers’ tunnel? It must be a trap! Let’s head to the northern reaches of the volcano instead, they’ll never expect that …”)

It’s an excellent example of adventure balance. Writers only have so many words with which to write an adventure, and in an open-ended setting like an island, it’s hard to balance out the encounters and the adventure against all the possibilities that the players might choose. Spend too many words on the “obvious” choices like the slavers’ tunnel, and the DM isn’t given much material to work with when the players choose to ignore the obvious courses of action. Spend too much time fleshing out details not particularly relevant to the main adventure, and more important adventure material and details get short shrift. It’s not an easy thing to balance, but “Drums on Fire Mountain” just about gets it perfect.

The NPCs of “Drums on Fire Mountain” are also well-written and memorable. The kara-kara (who are essentially “tough tribal orcs”) aren’t just mindless monsters – they have reasons for following KalnaKaa, but those reasons disappear if the players manage to accomplish certain things. KalnaKaa’s daughter Maerie makes an interesting foil in the adventure as well – she’s tough, she’s certainly loyal to her father, but she isn’t evil. As for KalnaKaa himself … while he’s a despicably evil sort, he’s more interested in survival than just trying to destroy the player characters, so that switches up some of the encounters in ways the players might not expect. As with some of the other modules covered in NaClaMoMo, “Drums on Fire Mountain” has an abundance of roleplaying opportunities for the player characters, if they choose to take them. The NPCs of “Fire Mountain” are certainly much more than sword fodder.

The module does possess one potentially big, fatal flaw, though. Halfway through the adventure, it’s expected that the player characters will encounter KalnaKaa for the first time, and that KalnaKaa will manage to get away from this encounter, setting up for a rematch and grand finale with him at the end of the module. If things work out that way, it makes for dramatic and awesome adventure … but I’ve learned never to bet against the players in my group. If they manage to take down KalnaKaa the first time around and prevent his escap, it makes for a pretty short adventure, and there’s no contingency plans in the module covering what to do in case the players happen to be a little too successful in combat.

Still, “Drums on Fire Mountain” does far more right than it does wrong. It’s got a lot of distinctive flavor and feel, and really evokes a haunting atmosphere of the strange and the savage. It has a terrific mix of roleplaying opportunities, combat, puzzles, and other sorts of challenges. And it has a lot of options – I doubt two groups would ever play the module the same way, which to me is a sign of a great adventure.

There were two old classics I always wanted to give the “Dungeon Crawl Classics” treatment (much as I gave “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” the “Dungeon Crawl Classics” treatment with “Talons of the Horned King”.) One was “Castle Amber”. The other was “Drums on Fire Mountain.” At this point, I don’t expect to ever get the chance to do so, but that doesn’t change this undeniable fact – both are exceptional adventures that to me exemplify the way all adventures should be written, whether old-school, new-school, or however the hell you want to classify them. Both have stood the test of time, and in my opinion, are just as good today as they were when they were first released.

But you’d probably heard of “Castle Amber” before, and knew that it was a classic.

“Drums on Fire Mountain” is definitely a classic as well.

And now you’ve heard of it as well.

I don't actually have an answer to this question ... yet. But I thought I'd toss the question out there.

Sci-fi RPGs comprised a lot of the games that I played when I was younger. Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Star Wars, Traveller, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Dr. Who, even Paranoia ... and, of course, RIFTS, which dominated a lot of my youth as a gamer. All very different games, but all very good.

The main difference between sci-fi and fantasy RPGs, I think, is that fantasy games are all basically the same at their core, while sci-fi games can be wildly different. Yes, D&D, Warhammer, and Ars Magica have many differences that make them very distinct from one another in terms of style and play ... but at the end of the end, they're all sword-and-sorcery games taking place in a pseudo-medieval world. The core of all these fantasy games share a lot of common ground.

Sci-fi games, on the other hand, can be wildly different. They can be set on just a single planet (Gamma World) or take place in an entire galaxy (Star Wars). They can feature the planet Earth, or not. The tech levels can be all over the place. The themes can be all over the place. All of the sci-fi RPGs listed above have some common elements, but a lot less so than fantasy games have with each other.

In short ... there's a lot of ways to build a sci-fi RPG.

It looks like I'm going to finally take the plunge and start developing a new sci-fi RPG, one I've been daydreaming about for close to twenty years. Seems as good a time as any to make the dream a reality.

So, for those few of you still reading this blog post, I'll simply ask this:

What makes a good sci-fi RPG?

What makes a bad one?

What haven't you seen yet in a sci-fi game that you'd love to see?

What's your favorite, and why?

To anyone who chooses to answer any or all of these questions ... thank you kindly.

I'm listening, and I appreciate the answers.

I would love to see a well-known “name” author write an adventure module in the style of “Vault of the Drow”, and have it published by one of the big guns in publishing.

I would bet almost any amount of money that it would be utterly murdered by critics, and by a lot of gamers, including a few purporting to be old-school grognards, and dismissed as something completely terrible.

Which is a shame … because “Vault of the Drow” is a terrific module.

It’s also an interesting glimpse into what TSR thought modules could be – and possibly should be – back in the earlier days of published adventures.

My own experience with “Vault of the Drow” goes back a long way. It was part of the first true campaign that I ever played in. That particular game, as I recall, started with “The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh”, continued through with “Danger at Dunwater” and “The Final Enemy”, went on to one or two other modules that I sadly can’t remember, and then went to the fabled big guns: the Giants series (G1-2-3), followed by D1-2 “Descent Into the Depths of the Earth”, D3 “Vault of the Drow”, and then got capped with “Queen of the Demonweb Pits”. It was epic, epic stuff. Taking lowly characters from humble beginnings in Saltmarsh to taking on the likes of Lolth was really cool, and left a mark on me as a young kid that probably changed me from “casual gamer” to “lifetime gamer”.

I remembered playing “Vault of the Drow” at that time quite specifically, as it was one of the high points of that campaign. Travelling through the Underdark to the sinister drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu, surviving as much due to our wits as due to our spells and our swords … it had a lot of memorable encounters, and was brutally tough. I think my sister Laura and I were the only two who made it through “Vault” without needing a resurrection spell in one form or another. Even at the time, though, I remembered looking at that thin module, which we played for what seemed like weeks on end, and thinking … “man, the module really contains that much adventure?”

When we finally finished the campaign, I dug my pastel-covered copy of “Vault” out of my collection – I’d deliberately not read it, since I acquired my fabled $5 box o’ treasure in the middle of this campaign – and finally read it. Yep, “Vault” did indeed contain that much adventure … but not in the way you might think.

“Vault of the Drow” is a prime example of a sandbox adventure. There’s not even much in terms of plot hooks to get players moving towards Erelhei-Cinlu and the mad, terrifying places surrounding the city. In theory, the drow were responsible for inciting the giant attacks in the “Against the Giants” modules (led by the drow priestess Eclavdra), so the player characters might be seeking vengeance, or more information about the drow plot … but basically, it boils down to “drow are evil, and evil must be punished”. There’s no real compelling reason for the characters to travel there, apart from they wish to seek treasure and adventure – and of those options, “Vault” has plenty of both.

Once the players are headed towards Erelhei-Cinlu, there’s a few set encounters that are really cool (particularly one involving a succubus and a drow vampire, which I paid tribute to in “Crypt of the Devil-Lich”), but most of the adventure is random encounters, and whatever the DM wants to throw at the players. Gary Gygax – who wrote “Vault” – provides a lot of suggestions as to what these encounters might be, and why the players would encounter a wide variety of horrible monsters, but ultimately leaves the final details in the DM’s hands. And stat blocks for these monsters, of which there are literally dozens? Fuhgeddaboudit. There are no stats blocks at all for those legions of umber hulks, trolls, ghouls, kuo-toa, bugbears, troglodytes, purple worms, and the like anywhere in the module. If there were stat blocks, they'd easily quadruple the size of the module. Be prepared to flip through a lot of Monster Manual pages and do a lot of prepping if you ever run this module. (And there’s plenty of encounters where drow warriors are led by a 6th-level drow priestess … think you can find stats for a 6th-level drow priestess anywhere in the adventure? Think again.)

Some might call this sloppy adventure design. It’s not, as far as I’m concerned. From reading “Vault”, it’s quite apparent that Gary Gygax believed that most modules should provide DMs with some tools for encounters, a basic plot for an adventure … and then, everything would be customized and tweaked by each individual DM running the module. Specifics of exactly how everything worked in the adventure didn’t matter, as Gary assumed the DM would take care of those specifics. As Gary himself wrote in the introduction to “Vault” …

This module is ideal for elaboration and extensive development by the Dungeon Master. The subject matter deserves this, and it should be done by you in order to put personality and finishing touches into a set-piece scenario which lacks the individuality particular to your campaign.

The city of Erelhei-Cinlu itself follows these same loose guidelines – there’s a few set encounters, including the finale of the module, but for the most part, it’s all suggestions, random encounters, some helpful suggestions as to the politics and Machiavellian plotting going on in the city … but again, it’s definitely not laid out in concrete fashion, and players aren’t expected to simply go from point A to point B. Part of this, I think, is just due to the inherent nature of the module – railroading the players through a hostile city filled with drow would border on the ludicrous – but part of this is again due to Gary Gygax’s expectation that the DM will be improvising during the adventure. Note that word: expectation. It’s not “well, the DM might improvise”, it’s “the DM will improvise”.

The module does contain some of the patented Gygax-penned idiosyncrasies of high-level adventures that I hate, where some arbitrary decisions get made for no good reason at all. For example, teleporting in Erelhei-Cinlu simply doesn’t work. Why? Presumably because it can fuck up the adventure and make the DMs’ life miserable. Also, if the player characters start a extended fight in the Black Tower that leads to the Vault, it’s specifically written in the module that enough drow reinforcements eventually show up to make the battle hopeless, and all the player characters die (finis, according to Gary). I happen to hate stuff like this – if I’ve played a magic-user since 1st-level and have earned the right to cast a teleport spell, I want to be able to cast the spell, and not just have the module handwave its use and dismiss it. And for “well, the characters will just lose the battle” … maybe Gary knew different players than I did, but I’d never bet against the guys in my gaming group, no matter how impossible the odds. I’d rather play something like that out and wind up with the Total Party Kill than simply make assumptions.

There’s also some weird game balance issues in the adventure. For example, one encounter has the player characters facing off against zombies … considering the characters are supposed to at minimum be 10th-level at the start of the adventure, it’s a pushover fight that serves no purpose. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the lower levels of the Fane of Lolth, which are just damn brutal, with 9th- and 10th-level drow sorceresses, warriors, and clerics loaded with powerful magic items wandering all over the place, providing some incredibly tough encounters even for a powerful adventuring party. These issues don’t very occur often during the adventure, but they do occur enough to have a DM scratching his or her head sometimes in bewilderment.

“Vault of the Drow” is actually much less of a pure adventure than it is a mini-campaign. I happen to really love the campaign aspects presented by Gary Gygax throughout the course of the module, and it’s here where “Vault” just shines. Erelhei-Cinlu is presented as a foul city filled with danger and decadence (I’m quite sure the Dreaming City of Immyr served as excellent inspiration for it), and quite a bit of the module is carefully dedicated to fleshing it out. In particular, the various drow houses and the intrigue involving those houses are developed nicely, making for a lot of excellent roleplaying opportunities. Yes … roleplaying opportunities. Like a lot of the early modules, the idea that “Vault” is simply a hackfest where all monsters are meant to be killed is something of a myth. It certainly can be played that way, but in the hands of the right DM and gaming group, it’s a fantastic adventure filled with enormous opportunities for pure roleplaying.

So … is it a good module?

I would say yes. In fact, I would venture to say it’s a great one … provided you’re a DM who likes to tinker with adventures, and who likes to improvise. But, to be honest, that’s always been my style of running adventures.

Modern modules, I think, took a cue from 3.5 and decided to explain how every last detail in an adventure could and should work. They’re largely written from the perspective of making sure a DM doesn’t ever need to improvise anything. They’re written instead with the idea that a DM certainly can improvise if he or she wants to … but that shouldn’t ever be a necessity. I certainly understand that sentiment – and can appreciate it, to some degree – but I think something gets lost when DMs don’t ever need to improvise on a large scale. Some of my better adventures came from improvising, and it’s a skill that gets better the more and more it gets used. When you never use it, you lose it as a tool in the proverbial storytelling arsenal.

Myself, I’d like to see more adventures head back in the direction of “Vault”, encouraging improvisation, and not mapping out every last bloody detail of an adventure to the nth degree. There’s no way you could write out a module like “Vault of the Drow” today in a modern style without it being some 256-page monstrosity with an additional 16 pages of maps, endless numbers of handouts, and an index from hell. It’s not a bad thing, mind you (I’d love to write that aforementioned 256-page monstrosity!), but it is different, and I’m not sure the way adventures are written in this modern style is necessarily “better” than the way modules like “Vault of the Drow” were written thirty-odd years ago.

Gary Gygax wrote a terrific, memorable module in just 28 pages.

It’s definitely worth a look, just to see a different gaming philosophy at work.

That … and drow – at least those penned by Gary Gygax – are awesomely evil.

That … and it’s just a damn good adventure.

“Keep on the Borderlands” and “The Village of Hommlet” are probably the two best-known introductory modules for the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Both are good, but for very different reasons.

“Keep on the Borderlands” is an outstanding introduction for novice players of the game, so they can learn exactly how the game works. By adventuring through the Caves of Chaos, players go through a trial by fire of how combat works, how magic works, how undead creatures may be turned, how secret doors may be found and how traps may be disarmed … it’s a veritable showcase of the assorted rules of the game. By the time the characters are busy slaughtering ogres or gnolls, even the newest player to the game should have a reasonable understanding of the rules of the game.

But while it teaches the rules in admirable fashion, “Keep on the Borderlands” is a very perfunctory adventure. The story’s simple and flat, and as a cohesive adventure - rather than a bunch of combat encounters strung loosely together - it doesn't really work. It showcases the rules, but little else. In short, while it helps players learn how to play the game, it rarely shows them what makes the game great, or what a roleplaying game has to offer above and beyond combat.

“Village of Hommlet” is the module that shows players – and DMs – why Dungeons & Dragons is a terrific game.

I originally picked up the pastel cover version of “Village of Hommlet” well over twenty years ago, in a great $5 acquisition coupe from Sears, of all places. A large cardboard box marked “CLEARANCE - $1” netted a large number of dust-covered pastel covered AD&D modules, including “Hommlet”, “Vault of the Drow”, and “The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan “, among others; the boxed sets of “Boot Hill” and “Gamma World”, and a giant load of AD&D character sheets that I still have somewhere in storage! (I think Sears had probably been trying to get rid of the box and its contents for years by the time I found it; some kindly sales associate saw me with my $5 bill agonizing over what to buy for the better part of an hour and just let me have the whole thing, which still ranks as uber-nice in my book, and still makes me think of Sears as a FLGS.)

I got a lot of use out of all the various games and adventures that were in that box – possibly the best $5 I ever spent, to be honest – but perhaps the one that gave me the most mileage out of everything it held was “Village of Hommlet”. That became the first adventure I ever ran as a DM, and I would go on to run it probably a dozen more times for various people over the following decade or so. It became the standard adventure that I used to introduced new players to D&D. It’s a short, sweet adventure that allows first-time gamers to get a great feel for the game – both in terms of understanding the rules, and in understanding what a roleplaying game can offer that other games can’t.

Clocking in at just about 16 pages (with an additional 4 pages of maps), “Village of Hommlet” actually doesn’t feature a whole lot of, well, dungeon. The first 12 pages of the adventure are specifically dedicated to the eponymous village itself, as well as its colorful inhabitants. While a sleepy sort of place, there’s certainly a lot to do there, and a lot to learn … particularly about the strange ruined moathouse just past the edge of the village. There’s quite a bit of intrigue going on as well – for example, the rising animosity between the followers of the Old Faith and the followers St. Cuthbert and the Old Faith – and depending on how much the players care to investigate the village, they might learn a fair bit about the forces of Elemental Evil returning to Hommlet. Gary Gygax, who wrote “Village of Hommlet”, manages to do this with a remarkable economy of words, adding plenty of optional layers to the adventure that can add a lot to a campaign if used, but aren’t a necessity in order to make the adventure playable. Do the player characters need to know that the herdsman Black Jay gets along with elves? (Not really.) Do they need to know that the wagon teamsters mistrust Rannos Davl, one of the local traders. (Again, not really, but if they do, it’ll actually be helpful). These sorts of little details can potentially make the adventure a lot more interesting without intruding too much on what the players choose to do.

Hommlet also has a lot of personality, which I really like. There’s places like the Inn of the Welcome Wench, where thirsty adventurers can purchase a pint of Sundish lilac wine for the princely sum of 5 electrum pieces. There’s Burne and Rufus, the adventurers that live in the tower. Basically, there’s lots of non-player characters and other hooks that can get the players involved in a whole bunch of intrigue and stories, some related to the moathouse, some not. This is where the adventure really shines, in my opinion, and to an extent, I think it shoots down the notion that Gray Gygax saw D&D more as a tactical game than as an opportunity to roleplay characters. “Village of Hommlet” is crammed full of roleplaying opportunities, all of them fun, and all of them terrific.

Eventually, though, the adventure winds its way to the aforementioned strange ruined moathouse – a former outpost for the Temple of Elemental Evil. There’s only four pages dedicated to adventuring in the moathouse, but they’re solid. It’s an organic dungeon – everything makes sense, nothing seems strangely out of place – and it’s damn deadly. Those unfamiliar with old-school D&D tactics would be surprised by how nasty some of the creatures are in the dungeon (the giant crayfish in particular!), especially considering that the adventure is designed for 1st-level characters. However, it fits the assumptions of how the game worked at the time it was written – players were expected to retreat at times, and even to head back towards Hommlet to get additional firepower in the form of henchmen and hirelings. All things considered, it’s great stuff.

I have only three major criticisms of the module. One, it’s short. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but depending on what the players’ characters choose to do in Hommlet, they will probably blow through the entire module in a single gaming session, and most definitely in two. Most modules – even those written back then! – provide a little more bang for the buck than that.

Two – well, once you get through the moathouse … then what? The adventure repeatedly refers to the “sequel” adventure – “T2: The Temple of Elemental Evil” – which, sadly, was never published. Quite a bit of the adventure is dedicated to setting up an adventure that would not arrive for quite some time, and then it would eventually come in the form of the bloated and inferior T1-4: The Temple of Elemental Evil. It even references NPCs and story elements that the DM might need, to the point that the adventure states that the DM should refer to the stats for the cleric Y’Dey in “T2: The Temple of Elemental Evil”! Unintentionally, it becomes a great campaign starter and an awesome sandbox in which to set that campaign – but considering that’s not the intent that’s presented, it’s more than a little odd.

(My understanding is that elements of Gary Gygax’s original concept for T2: The Temple of Elemental Evil got cannibalized and used in other modules like Queen of the Demonweb Pits, so by the time it came to finally write “Temple”, Gary wrote up a new outline and gave it to Frank Mentzer to properly flesh out.) Not a huge deal, but it required the DM to figure out where next to take the players and the adventure. Now, in 2009, I would consider this a plus, not a minus … but when I was a newbie DM in 1985 trying to run adventures for the first time, it was definitely a minus.

Three – the treasure’s a bit excessive. If the players successfully sweep through the moathouse, they can easily come up with close to 30,000 gp in treasure, plus some pretty decent magic items – that’s a hell of a lot for 1st-level characters! Were I to run it today, I’d definitely scale it down.

But overall, a terrific module, and definitely a classic.

Wizards of the Coast recently re-created a 4E version of “Village of Hommlet” as part of its DM Rewards program. I have to say, I’m kind of intrigued by this. The original “Village” presents Hommlet as a lonely outpost near a dangerous place, which is essentially the “points of light” philosophy advocated by 4E. It seems a good fit for many 4E concepts, and if I ever manage to get my hands on a copy of it, I’d love to run it.

For that matter, I’d love to run the original again, in all its glory. Re-reading it for this review was like running into an old friend.

And there’s no better way to spend time with a friend than rolling some dice and playing some games.

Take a visit to Hommlet. You’ll enjoy it, I promise.

From out of the archives (quite literally) …

I spent part of last night digging through some old stuff. I needed to get a recently-retired computer out of mothballs in order to get some files off of its hard drive, and I wanted to look for a couple of older game modules for some potential reviews.

While digging through the boxes, I found this.

“Demon Heart Falling”, featuring a cover drawn by my good friend Eric, was one of two sourcebooks I wrote for the RIFTS roleplaying game for Palladium Books. This was all part of my Stupid And Grand Plan nearly fifteen years ago to break into the roleplaying game industry … and arguably, it worked, although not nearly in the way I originally intended way back then.

Both “Demon Heart Falling” and “The Banwok Hunters”, which I wrote from beginning to end and then submitted to Palladium, originally got greenlighted, went through some considerable development for well over two years … and then, abruptly, got cancelled. It’s not worth rehashing the whole story again, but suffice it to say that it was a very disheartening experience, one that helped to take me out of gaming for a couple of years. My home-published original copies of “Demon Heart Falling” and “The Banwok Hunters” went into cardboard boxes, where they stayed and collected dust for a very long time. I threw away the original manuscripts, which I wrote by hand in a couple of notebooks, as well as the revised manuscripts (which were written in WordPerfect 5.1 and saved to 3.5” disks).

A couple of moves from parents' house to apartment to apartment to own house later, and I stumbled across “The Banwok Hunters” again a few years ago. Oddly enough, I didn’t find “Demon Heart Falling”, which I could’ve sworn was placed with its partner in crime. I’d originally printed maybe six copies of each book in the spring of 1995 at the University of Notre Dame copy center, and given them away to the folks in my gaming group. None of them had copies of either book anymore (as with me, time and moves had thinned quite a lot of gaming collections!), so I’d assumed that “Demon Heart Falling” was just a memory of the gaming table.

Well, not anymore.

I spent part of last evening skimming through it, reading over a couple of sections, particularly a few I’d completely forgotten about. I’ll be honest – it’s not that great. Parts of it don’t seem particularly original to me, parts are badly written, a couple of lines made me cringe, and there were one or two facepalm inducing-moments that made me go “… man, what were you thinking?”

That being said … I enjoyed “Demon Heart Falling” a bit more than I expected. At least to me, there’s a certain raw, unbridled enthusiasm running through its pages that I found surprisingly good. “Demon Heart Falling” has this jittery, unfocused energy that’s pretty decent … it just needs the polish and the focused discipline of a more experienced writer to become, well, good.

But the 36-year old writer reading the work of the 22-year old author envies the passion of his younger self. I remember writing those books in the wee hours of the morning at the Notre Dame computer labs, fueled on little more than caffeine and mad dreams. I still write because I love it so damn much, but I haven’t written anything with that much raw passion since … well, since then.

If I could recapture that energy, that excitement, that passion again … and then combine that with the experience and the focus I’ve developed over the years … well, that would be awesome indeed.

Need to work on that, and to figure out how to make that happen.

In the meantime, I also spent part of last night reviewing Palladium’s byzantine policy regarding online materials. After putting together a quick author’s note and compliance notice, I’ve scanned the original book – warts and all, no edits or touch-ups, despite how badly I’d love to change some things – and posted it for your perusal. You can download a PDF file of the book by clicking on the cover image on the lefthand side of your screen, or by just clicking: HERE. For those of you morbidly curious about such things, you can see what my writing (and gaming style) was like in my halcyon days of yore; if you’re a RIFTS fan stumbling across this, hopefully you can find a few decent ideas to pry out of its pages and incorporate into your own game.

So, enjoy.

Last note – after putting down my copy of “Demon Heart Falling” last night, I had the itch to run a game much like the ones I used to run again. Not necessarily RIFTS, per se … but something with that over-the-top enthusiasm with which I used to run my games. CthulhuTech, perhaps. Or Rogue Trader. Or … hell, yes, even RIFTS.

And that’s what a good gaming book should do. Make you want to play.

Maybe “Demon Heart Falling” isn’t quite that bad after all.

For no other reason apart from I Thought It Was A Good Idea, I am declaring November to be NaClaMoMo – National Classic Module Month. Time to take a good look at all those classic adventure modules that we remember fondly from days of yore, and to examine exactly what made them “classic” in the first place. Time to perhaps find a neglected gem or two that got lost in the shuffle of history … or, perhaps, to give adventures once thought “great” via the courtesy of nostalgic memories a more honest assessment. Regardless, I’ve always thought the best way to look towards the future is to first know where you’ve been, and looking back at old adventures has proven a phenomenal aid to me in writing new ones.

In the process of looking back at the old classics, I’m hoping to uncover exactly what made some adventures work, find reasons why others didn’t … and, perhaps more importantly, define the elements that made them “classic”. There’s some pervading assumptions about the classic adventures that, well, are just wrong. Such as:

1. Classic modules are all hack-and-slash meat grinder death traps. Not true. A few are, but most aren’t, including some of the more notorious adventures. That’s not to say that they aren’t deadly … but the high death tolls attributed to these adventures come down more to battles of wits, rather than battles with swords. “Tomb of Horrors”, for example, features just a handful of deadly monsters, and can easily be scaled down for lower-level characters. Most of its more vicious encounters are foiled easily enough if the players are both cautious and clever, and have little to do with how many hit points your character has.

The classics also feature an abundance of roleplaying opportunities. Many of the initial encounters in Castle Amber and Dwellers of the Forbidden City, for example, can be bypassed without combat, and actually encourage interaction with monsters and NPCs. Far from being “monsters just meant to be killed”, these encounters are intended to shift around the entire story of the adventures depending on how the characters interact with the denizens of these adventures. Can they be played in a simple hack-and-slash style? Absolutely. But most of the adventures are much more nuanced than that, and rarely receive the credit they deserve for having this depth.

2. Classic modules intend for characters to be heroes that save the day. Not true. In fact, it’s usually pretty rare for modules to push the player characters into doing anything, well, heroic. If they do, it’s usually a side plot that comes later in the adventure. Most classic modules work instead under the premise that the characters are either going to strange and wondrous places simply for the sake of adventure, or for the fortune and glory that awaits them. (A more cynical way of looking at it is to say the characters just want to loot the dungeon.)

Take all four of the S Series modules (Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth). If you examine the storylines of each of these modules, you find that while some dangerous evils lurk in each dungeon (and “Barrier Peaks” doesn’t even really have evil, just danger) … none of them pose a threat to anything in Greyhawk. They’re all akin to a rattlesnake sleeping on a rock. Walk past the snake, you’ll be fine. Poke it with a stick, though … and you’re playing with danger. And entering these dungeons is like poking them with a stick.

But the characters don’t save the world, or the kingdom, or even the princess at the end of these modules. Rather, they’ve usually got tales of some marvelous adventures and fights, some really cool treasure … and that’s it. The early classic modules owe a lot more to the “heroics” of Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser or Conan than to Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring. The idea of being a hero saving something is the exception rather than the rule of most early modules.

So, in this spirit of delving into the classics, I’ll be reviewing a few this month. The first of these will be “T1: Village of Hommlet”, which will be headed your way later this week, followed by “X8: Drums on Fire Mountain” … and then, to be honest, it’s kind of up to you, gentle reader.

There’s a few other modules I have in mind to review, and if no one offers any requests or suggestions, I’ll certainly go ahead with them. But if there’s something you’d like me to look at, feel free to offer a suggestion. My collection of classic modules is pretty extensive; if I’ve got a module you’d like reviewed on hand, I’ll take a look at it.

As a heads-up, the ones I definitely won’t be looking at for purposes of review are as follows: “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks”, "Dwellers of the Forbidden City", and “Castle Amber” (which I’ve talked about in bits and pieces over the years); “The Lost City” (which I’ve talked about a lot in recent months); and “Tomb of Horrors” (which Rick Maffei has already discussed on his blog far more eloquently than I could). Apart from that, pretty much anything is fair game. I’d planned on looking mostly at 1st edition AD&D and Basic/Expert set D&D adventures, but if there’s a 2nd Edition AD&D adventure you’d like to see discussed, or even something a little more off-kilter than that, go for it.

Let NaClaMoMo begin!