Pit of the Red Wyrm
Author: Jakob McFarland
System: Swords & Wizardry
Party Size: 4-6
Level Range: 5
The red dragon Nimgobar has stolen a banks (sic) strongbox and taken it to his lair, a deep hotspring in the rainforested mountains. In the ruined asylum above, insane dragon-worshipping berserkers grow the merciless insanity peppers of Quetzalemalan which begets them greater strength and insanity.
This adventure is written for Swords & Wizardry, an OD&D clone that includes all the supplemental material (if I understand correctly). I have no direct experience playing or running this particular version of D&D, but I found a lot of help online. I plead ignorance for any mistakes I make with rules assumptions, and I'll be happy to make edits if someone has a correction.
As we begin, the party is traveling through wooded mountains to someplace else when, suddenly, they spy a red dragon soar overhead clutching a golden chest in its claws. It descends below the treeline over in that direction.
Now there's a strong start for an adventure! Perfect, even. No messing around with elaborate job offers or village rumors. Rather: Look! There goes a dragon and he's carrying treasure! (chef's kiss, muah!)
I was happy to see a couple of dragons used in the previous submission, but they were injured and submissive. Here, we have a full-throated dragon appear right out of the gate. And a red one, at that—the great white shark of the dragon world. When the party sees that, it's quick-decision time—do we continue on, or do we go kill this thing right now? It's a thrilling moment for any group of players. As a DM, I'm already sold on this adventure within the first 75 words. Man, I hope the rest of it holds up this well.
There's an encounter table featuring a selection of creatures found within the dungeon (or at least well-enough associated with the setting for there to be a logical reason for the encounter). The key begins with locations on a topo map of the exterior valley, particularly the titular pit entrance at the top of the valley and a subterranean river outlet along the trail to the pit (where players can take a secondary river route into the lower level of the dungeon).
Stairs in the pit wall descend to a geyser pool where a set of heavy stone doors open into the dungeon. At this point, the party has already come under observation by berserker guards on a columned balcony across the geyser pool, who shoot crossbows at them through some concealing lichen. (Berserker crossbowmen?) These guys are "guarding" the entrance, but no order-of-battle is provided nor any indication that they raise an alarm. The rest of the place is written as though the berserkers have no idea the party is even here, so I suppose that's why.
The entry hall features primitive murals of a deific dragon (good, upfront signal that "this is the place") and a disease-tainted water basin containing hidden pearls. Two exits lead in opposite directions (good, early decision point). Heading east, the party finds itself at the top of a three-story atrium overlooking a dome of darkness below, from which protrudes the head of a marble lion statue. This room's single description carries across all three levels of the atrium.Vampire vines cover the floor, and if the darkness at the bottom is dispelled, the statue of a seated lion on a pedestal is revealed. A hidden compartment holds a magic candle and a valuable holy book with golden pages. There's a side shaft behind stuck double doors on each level that serves no purpose other than to trick players into forcing open the doors and probably falling in (no height or damage is indicated). A cheap DM trick, unfortunately.
To the west of the entry hall is an interior "patio" containing stone benches and tables. Two black curtains hang fully across both north and south walls (definitely not a trap) behind a pair of marble statues of dancing women who face each other. Surprise, you fools! It was a trap, as four ballistae (!) manned by blind grimlocks (?!) open fire. The grimlocks use their echolocation to target the party through the curtains. There's also an apparent map error here, which I discuss further below.
I looked up S&W grimlocks, but the only thing I could find was in a third-party supplement. In that book, the grimlocks are not explicitly blind (though they are immune to gaze attacks, illusions, and vision-based effects for some reason). They are also a good deal meaner than the stat blocks indicated in the adventure text. As a straight port from the Fiend Folio, the HD and the damage aren't quite right, and the AD&D grimlock's "blindsight" only has a 20' range, which would make them ineffective here. In both versions, they are described as primitive, which belies the idea that they could man (and reload) ballistae and fire them in alternating volleys. The whole encounter makes little sense, either. These creatures just sit here at the ready—all day, every day—waiting for that one moment when someone blunders into range of their brilliantly-conceived ambush? Nah.
A final room on the first (uppermost) level has a well shaft that drops 100' to level 2 (middle), which creates another major map error (which, again, I discuss further below). There's also a boisterous fight going on at the bottom of the well shaft, but no indication that the party hears any of that.
Both the atrium and patio chambers feature secret doors that lead into a large hall, part of which is open to the geyser pool but concealed by hanging lichen—this is the "balcony" from which the berserker crossbowmen fired upon the party at the entrance doors. Stairs at either end lead down to the second level, where the party can enter two separate areas of the dungeon connected in the middle by a lattice bridge suspended over the geyser pool—all a nice bit of dungeon design.
Found on this level are the middle tier of the atrium, which is attached to a hot spring bathing chamber filled with sedating incense smoke. The bath is occupied by a naiad who was forced from her subterranean grotto by the red dragon, and she tells an exaggerated tale of the wyrm's vast treasure hoard to manipulate the players into doing her dirty work. This is a well-done encounter that has greater meaning for the adventure site as a whole, and provides a nice boost to player motivation (albeit a slightly false one, but that's totally okay in this instance).
Across the lattice bridge is the berserker throne room. The dragon-worshippers hang out here flexing, fighting, and feasting on fiery peppers. The party arrives in media res, with the berserker chief in a fight to the death with a disloyal grimlock around a pit of glowing-red steam, while the rest of the berserkers and grimlocks cheer them on. The pit actually drops right into the dragon's lair, but no details are provided about the dragon hearing/being summoned to the fight with the party.
This would be a perfect opportunity for the dragon to make an initial appearance, maybe breathe on some folks, and then withdraw back into the pit. Then again, more berserkers and grimlocks are cooking up a pepper stew in an adjacent chamber, for a total of 18 berserkers, 16 grimlocks, and the 6 HD berserker chief in this area, so a dragon may be overkill here. Get your fight on, in any case; this is gonna be a big one.
The chief holds a "richly dressed" woman in a magic circle, along with the gilt strongbox the party saw in the dragon's clutches at the start of the adventure. She is actually a thief who the berserker leader is holding until she can get that lock open. She wants to steal the loot for herself, so she pretends to struggle to buy time and make a plan. The party is her opportunity to escape and abscond with it somehow. This is another good piece of interactivity that creates openings for further, player-driven development during the adventure. I feel like a berserker chief would probably just smash open the chest, gilding or no, but perhaps the dragon forbids it for some reason. Hand-waveable.
Also nearby, a shaft and staircase lead down to the third level, where the party can explore the atrium floor as described above. There is also a bizarre pump room in which the party can bottle low-strength fireball bombs or a weakened, black pudding-like ooze called rainbow algae. A room with algae tanks spawns a shambling mound, while in an adjacent room, the victim of a cursed ring sits at the bottom of a pool of water, unable to breathe air and working desperately to figure out how she can escape her predicament. There's also a second (secret) berserker barracks—where these idiots are playing raw insanity pepper roulette while they keep watch on the riverine approach to the site—and a hothouse in which they grow the peppers (I don't get how this is possible in an underground chamber without explicit use of magic, but okay).
From the hothouse, the party steps out into the bottom of the pit, the shore of a steaming geyser lake dotted with shallow hot spring pools. Traversing the slippery ground risks falling into the scalding pools. In the center of this area, a statuary pedestal is surrounded by four toppled statues, all depicting an identical woman. Three of them are gargoyles (?), which are winged creatures not constructs so how did they all come to look exactly like this maiden? And they just decided to lay here in ambush for someone to come along? This is the second instance of this type of poor encounter set-up which makes no organic sense. Returning the original (non-gargoyle) statue to the pedestal causes her lantern to glow (and may provide a benefit to mindful LG characters).
Below the surface of the geyser pool is a submerged tunnel that leads into the dragon's lair: A huge water-filled cavern with a rocky island in the middle, upon which a coiled dragon sleeps. In the boiling water around the island can be seen a glittering hoard of treasure. All the requisite dangers are there: The water burns flesh, the steam obscures vision, and the dragon may awaken. This seems like a suitably epic chamber to host a dragon fight, though the party is likely to be employing heat/fire resistance just to get to this point, significantly weakening the dragon's advantages in that regard. As a result, the environment may end up contributing little to the final fight, despite all the buildup of detail.
It would be nice if area 22 was more of a beach that looked into area 23, to provide an alternate site for the fight where the party could attempt to lure the dragon to them. The steaming pit in the throne room is another route to the dragon's cave, though exactly where it emerges isn't indicated on the level 3 map. If I've counted correctly, it comes out 10' to the east of the dragon's island, on the left-hand side of the dashed circle representing the underwater tunnel. In any case, it's unlikely that an unprotected party will be keen to enter a scalding lake or descend into a steam-filled, glowing-red shaft, which means there's a fair chance the party will miss the dragon completely.
Treasure in this site is mostly coins, gems, and valuable items (e.g., holy book, chalice, etc.)—with non-obvious treasures in the form of the marble lion statue (worth 5,000 gpv but weighing 5,000 lbs.), the dancing-girl statues (worth 500 gpv and weighing 1,000 lbs., though it's unclear if that's each or for the pair), and the philosopher statue in the dragon hoard (worth 2,000 gp and weighing 1,000 lbs.) Total haul amounts to around 25,000 gpv. Without knowing S&W's XP thresholds, it's hard to know whether or not that's a sufficient amount, but it seems paltry for 5th level.
Magic items include a Cloak of Red Dragon Scales that confers +2 AC and immunity (!) to heat damage, a Scimitar of Speed, a (cursed) Ring of Air as Water, a Wand of Lightning Bolts, a Luckstone, and a +2 Mirror Shield with a 10% chance to turn spells. Decent stuff, except for the ring, with a little something for each class. No consumables, other than the peppers and the bottled fireballs and rainbow algae.
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?)
The intro describes a "ruined asylum" and uses the word "insane/insanity" three times, all in the same sentence, so this is my starting point for examining the theme. Nothing about this space is representative of an asylum. Temple or fortification, maybe, but asylums don't typically feature throne rooms and bridges over geyser chasms. It's also not particularly ruined. What about the insanity part? Here the adventure is on a slightly better footing, as the men inhabiting the place are of the "berserker" type. I looked up an S&W berserker and these seem like standard versions, but the intro specifically says that these berserkers consume special peppers that give them "greater strength and insanity."
Later in the text we learn that these "insanity peppers," when cooked and eaten, cause vivid hallucinations and confer +2 to hit and damage, but also reduce one's AC by 2, for 2–12 TURNS! Eating one raw also causes 2–12 damage, which is appropriately lethal to a mere human and even to the berserkers who have 10 hp on average.
I like these peppers as a weirdo adventure gimmick and I appreciate the Simpsons reference, but the lore here becomes a bit cloudy. On the one hand, it sounds like the peppers are what has made these men into berserkers, but then the text seems to indicate that the berserkers gain additional bonuses as well as the penalty to AC. Their stat blocks never reflect this change, however. If the peppers are the source of the men's berserk state, then their stat blocks do not reflect the AC penalty. Maybe they have become immune to the negative effects, but the text doesn't say.
Moving on, the intro describes the berserkers as "dragon-worshipping," though there isn't anything that gets into the berserkers' motivations or their cultist activities, nor is there any explicit connection within the site that links the men and the dragon together other than maybe the primitive dragon murals at the entrance. They don't interact in any way except by virtue of being neighbors in this dungeon complex. At a minimum, the dragon's berserker thralls should be growing and harvesting the peppers because they're his favorite delicacy. But there's nothing.
The lion statue is a nice bit of cumbersome treasure that players probably won't think to haul away, but why a lion? What does that have to do with the expressed theme of either an asylum or a dragon cult? The incongruity isn't fatal to the adventure, and it would be fine as a rando "trick room" in a megadungeon setting, but you only get a few opportunities in a site like this to really nail a theme. Here's a big, prominent section of the dungeon and the author throws a thematic curveball into the mix that not only fails to reinforce either of the main themes, but also injects confusion with a new (and unrelated) element into the site's backstory.
This happens again with a motif introduced into the text on the third level, that of a "saintly maiden holding a lantern." She appears first in statue form (and is clearly associated with a Lawful Good alignment), and then again as a mosaic in the hothouse, where she also holds a watering can. It would have been cool if her lantern emitted light that allows the peppers to grow, but instead the lantern is just a button that opens a secret door. She appears a third and final time in a mosaic in the pump room, where she also holds a wrench. It would have been cool if the wrench reference meant or did something, but instead the lantern is just a button that opens a secret door. No details are given as to the identity or relevance of this illuminating maiden; she is just another random, unconnected element.
I like the concept of this adventure site, but the pieces need to be pulled together into a more coherent whole.SCORE (THEME) = 2 / 5
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2) MAP AND ART
(How complex/useful is the map and/or art? How easy is it to grok the layout?)
Another good example is the atrium (area 4) which is described as being "3 stories tall" (which means the adjacent pit trap shaft is, as well). Most stories of a structure are 15–20' high, so let's say the entire atrium is probably 60' high. If a character is standing on the third story, however, they are not at 60' elevation; they are at 40', standing atop the second story with the rest of the third story above their head.
This makes the pit shaft trap a 40' fall—potentially deadly, but not unreasonably so. If we take all the other textual references and stair sections into account, however, the floor of the atrium would be at a depth of 110' below level 1, which makes the pit trap fall even more nefarious. There are other such distance errors and impossible alignments between the map and the text.
This may all seem like pedantry, but the map is the party's interface with the DM's world. A smart party maps the dungeon carefully and refers back to their map often to plan routes of exploration, strategize avenues of attack, or figure out how to get the hell outta here. Abstract maps don't have to be precise, they simply have to show relationships between areas. But when you lay a map out on a scaled grid, you abandon the benefits of abstraction for the precision of simulated architecture. You have to get the basic geometry right, else a party who relies on mapping to navigate the environment will interpret the designer's errors as conflicts with their game-reality. Minor errors of this type may go unnoticed by players, but big errors will be spotted by a diligent mapper.
This creates confusion and undermines the party's trust in the information the map is supposed to be conferring. It also complicates the party's ability to plan effectively and navigate properly, and wastes valuable session time as the players try to sort out the misalignments.
The good news: A few textual changes and map clarifications fix everything.
SCORE (MAP/ART) = 2 / 5
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3) CLARITY
(How easy is the writeup to read/parse quickly? How well does the information flow?)
The text is written in a facsimile of the OSE house style: Short paragraphs of partial sentences or fragments, with bolding and follow-up arrow-points nested below. The margins are tight, with the text in two-column, left-aligned format. Within an individual location's description, there is no line spacing between the main text and its nested bullets, making the details difficult to parse at a quick glance. Just a few points of line spacing between bullets would do wonders for readability.
Important details sometimes show up late in the text, after the point where the info would have been relevant. For example, when the party reaches the entrance at area 2, the cave opening in area 7 is supposed to be "concealed by hanging lichen," but this detail isn't provided until the description for area 7. It would be easy for a DM to get this wrong during play, but less so if the note about the concealment was given in area 2 instead (and/or was indicated on the map).
Overall, the writeup's use of the format is on-point, resulting in an effective, if somewhat cold, presentation that is frequently redeemed by the author's choice of descriptive words. Monster stat blocks appear consistently at the end of each area's writeup, with decent line spacing separating them from the rest of the text and making them easier to locate quickly.
SCORE (CLARITY) = 3 / 5
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4) INTERACTIVITY/INNOVATION
(How well does the adventure use the rules to create interesting play?)
The adventure site consists of 23 locations on 3 levels, so there are enough things to mess with for a satisfying session or two of exploration. There are quite a few secret/hidden/concealed doors, though a few slip into repetitiveness in terms of opening them (i.e., find one using a particular method and you'll find all the others using the same method). Maybe that's an intentional design choice but it undermines their usefulness in the dungeon.
Pearls hide in the silt of a water-filled basin, but touching the water confers disease. The party can find a candle that glows darkness. One room features a magic well: Toss a coin in and listen as the clattering of it bouncing off the shaft walls tells you a secret about the dungeon (with a cumulative chance of a falsehood upon each successive coin toss). Neat idea and it's beautifully signaled by wall reliefs of "bathing women whispering in one another's ear" (lovely), but no list of sample secrets is provided so the DM will have to figure out what info he wants to provide (not as lovely).
The berserker chief's throne is evil and burns any non-evil character who touches it for 1–6 points of Constitution loss (!) Gah!! A button in the arm of the throne opens a secret door that leads to a tunnel down to level 3. The chief holds the thief captive in a magic circle which imprisons anyone inside it unless they wear a special amulet.
Some of the encounters feel a little forced, but a few provide great opportunities for parley and negotiation, and even possibly adding an NPC or two to the party. Environmental effects include steam, boiling hot water, narcotic incense, and concealing lichen. Pretty solid, baseline dungeon stuff but well deployed for the most part.
SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 3 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)
The writeup actually has its own section titled "Usage in Campaign," with some quick notes about where to locate the site and how to get PCs rolling immediately. That's extremely handy for the DM, a perfect addition to an adventure site. There may be some personal campaign limitations from the conceptual themes of the adventure (dragons, berserkers, insanity peppers, etc.), but not more so than many adventure sites require of a DM.
SCORE (MODULARITY) = 4 / 5
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6) USABILITY
(How much work will the referee have to do to run this adventure at the table tonight?)
Here's where my review gets tricky. >I< would definitely need to put in some work to fix my issues with this adventure, but I don't necessarily think a lot of work is required in order to have a great time running it for a party. It's got some nice content, with plenty of fun things to do and fight.
To repeat myself, I think these rooms would be well-suited as part of a bigger mega-dungeon setting where the pieces don't require as much connective tissue. For an adventure site with a focus, however, you'll probably want to create stronger relationships and develop more of an order of battle for what the occupants do as the party invades their domain. As written, things are pretty static.
My personal score for this category might be only a 2 or 3, but I think a lot of DMs could run this site at their table just fine, as written—especially after that bang-o intro—so I'm bumping it up a skooch.
SCORE (USABILITY) = 4 / 5
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7) OVERALL THOUGHTS
I know it's a common lament that dragons don't appear in adventures as much as they should, so I applaud the designer for making it so in this one. I had high hopes for this adventure that weren't quite met, but the flaws are not severe and I think the author could keep polishing the site to turn it into a really memorable dragon's lair.
FINAL SCORE = 3.0 / 5
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