The Grand Retreat of the Great Sage Tellah
Author: thanateros777
System: BX
Party Size: ?
Level Range: ? ("mid-level")
Beneath a ruined resort is an underground complex created by a bygone sage for his personal amusement and examination, accessible only by a small outbuilding long overgrown and ruined. Deep inside may be fortunes and perils alike, as the Great Sage was an eccentric, if not abnormal man. What mysteries and riches may the eccentric wizard’s sanctum hold?
So when I opened this PDF, I was nearly blinded by the Moiré pattern on the page—a font so compressed as to remove all but a sliver of white between the characters. Waves of interference made my brain shut down for a second time in this contest. See for yourself...
After looking away and reorienting my vision, I suspected what I had glimpsed was the result of an attempt at character compression that somehow went screwy in the conversion to PDF. I used a bit of condensed font settings in my own submission to buy myself a few lines of copy, but these letters were just squashed together. Surely no one could read this in a productive way, and certainly the author didn't expect others to respond well to this bizarre format, so I can only assume a glitchy PDF. Why the author still submitted it in this condition is a mystery.
I first tried creating a transcript by copy-and-pasting the PDF from Acrobat Reader into Notepad, which usually works, but something in the compression screwed up the text when pasting. I had to open the PDF in a browser to get it to copy correctly. I then copy-and-pasted the text transcript into a Word doc with top and bottom margins of 0.5" and side margins of 0.2", duplicating the original PDF layout as closely as I could.
I set the font at the minimum of 10-point Arial, set line spacing to single, and established a 6-point paragraph space. Even with that minimal formatting, the document still rolled over onto a fourth page—a violation of the contest's guidelines. I considered disqualifying this submission on those grounds, but the author submitted a 3-page writeup per the contest guidelines, despite being almost unreadable. The scores will have to serve to levy any penalties, and the extra work I had to do just to make the document legible has already knocked a few points off.
Alright, let's hope this is a kickass adventure worth all the trouble.
The transcript states right off the bat that this is a "mid-level drop-in funhouse adventure." I'm guessing mid-level comprises 4th to 7th, maybe? I know funhouse dungeons have a bad reputation among a lot of DMs, but I'm okay with them. Usually they take the form of a wizard's test, a challenge of the gods, or some such. The party's skills are tested in a gantlet of weird rooms, dangerous monsters, and head-scratching puzzles: All great elements of D&D.
This one is a beneath a ruined wizard's house. Classic. I'm a fan. The party has a 20 year-old coin with gnomish writing, inviting the bearer to visit the "pleasure-sanctum of a mage known as The Great Sage Tellah” and claim its great riches. Meanwhile, an evil cult has been trying to enter the place, but they need the party's magic coin to finally get in so they can get their evil hands on all the booty.
The retreat—a ruined edifice of glass, stone, and steel (!)—stands among forested mountains, at the end of a cliffside path. A stair among the ruins descends to a foyer hall, where five entrance doors "are all Wizard Locked and require the party's coin to act as a key." (Knock spells don't work?) Cult members disguised as pilgrims—actually a team of 1st-level illusionists, each armed with a single, different spell—ambushes the party here. (Hey, no need to go to all that trouble. There's a spell called Knock...just hire a 3rd level magic-user already.)
The cultists' order-of-battle and suggested spell effects are nice, but here we run into a big conflict with the system of choice. Not only are illusionists not a BX class, most of the listed spells (Glamour, Auditory Illusion, Hypnotism, Color Spray, and Spook) are not BX spells. The one that is (Phantasmal Force), is a 2nd-level magic-user/elf spell.
After defeating the "illusionists," the party may swipe their coin in a slot to open any of the entrance doors. One opens into a stairway down that is filled with rubble. There are several of these collapsed descending stairways, as well as another clear stairway and elevator "down to the (unwritten) second level of the dungeon." I guess I don't mind providing a prospective DM with room for expansion, but I also know that too much funhouse dungeon becomes tiresome. Throw out a dozen or so challenges and then wrap it up.
The other foyer doors enter different sections of the dungeon proper. The map provides basic details about the dungeon, including that it has 12' ceilings, and doors may be locked on a '12' rolled on 2d6. (So, hardly ever...why not just indicate which doors are locked and which aren't?) Doors are called out as "heavy security doors with recessed 'european-style' (sic) hinges," though what that means mechanically isn't specified.
Each route takes the party through a series of passages and rooms, many of which interconnect with other routes (the old loopy-doopiness). Most of these rooms have something of interest to investigate or interact with. In one room, a diorama of a grassy savannah features six gnolls trapped in stasis by "a gem-tipped protrusion" (some further description and the location of said protrusion would be helpful). Messing with it causes the gnolls to animate and attack, but otherwise the party can look around and learn some "facts" about their race, including that they are "a stone-age (sic) species," which conflicts with the BX description of gnolls as "the result of a magical combination of a gnome and a troll by an evil magic-user."
Gnolls are given the taxonomy "Homo Hyunidae," which means "human-economy car" (I'm kidding of course, but hyenas belong to the Hyaenidae family of classification). Some of the other gnoll factoids are a little too on-the-nose in terms of coding them to racial stereotypes. I think they're meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not a big fan of injecting social and political commentary into my fun pastime. As a news junkie, I'm inundated with that crap all day long, so I want to leave the real world behind when I'm ready to sling dice. I don't find it offensive, necessarily, I just don't want to deal with it in my hobby.
There are twenty puzzle rooms like this, so I don't want the review to simply restate all twenty locations. I'll just touch on a few of my favorites and maybe some others where I have issues.
One chamber is decorated with a lightning/blue dragon motif, with a sapphire-encrusted silver statuette of a blue dragon resting on a pedestal in the center. The piece is electrified and if grabbed without "proper precautions" (such as?), it paralyzes the toucher and continues zapping them until dead (or knocked free). It's an obvious trap, but I like the design and the room is evocatively described.
In another room—described as a "BDSM sex dungeon"—a caged and tortured leprechaun pleads for release. Over many years, he has been subjected to "the Sage’s unsavory whims" and survives with the aid of an Jug of Alchemy (I hate to imagine what a steady diet of honey, mayonnaise, and beer does to a body, even a magical one).
Now, leprechauns are not a BX creature, so I have no idea what it's intended powers or abilities are and no stat block is provided. When released, he runs away and is "quite fast." (How fast? Who knows, as no movement speed is indicated. Leprechauns in AD&D move 15", so maybe that fast?) If the party can catch him, he will give up the jug and maybe a hatful of gold. The sex dungeon and abuse details are completely superfluous, so why even mention them? A desperate, caged leprechaun is the only thing the puzzle room needs to function as written. All the lurid details do is establish the "Great Sage Tellah" as an evil, perverted old gnome. (Maybe that's the intent?)
Some other "highlights" include: A troll fashion show; a billiards room/bowling alley; a disposal pit trap containing a gelatinous cube which has a "Ring of Acidic Exhilaration" floating inside it that makes the wearer not only immune to acid damage, but also healed by it. One room description suddenly shifts from third-person objective sense into second-person tense (i.e., "You see/hear/feel ____," basically boxed text but without warning or a box).
The final room in the key allows players to choose from two levers: One marked "Fame," the other "Fortune." Yanking the fame lever curses the puller with blue skin and long beard/hair. Pulling the fortune lever causes 10,000 gold pieces to crash on the puller's head doing 2–16 damage. Pulling it a second time causes the same thing, but this time the coins are lead wrapped in foil. Ha-ha!
Other BX monsters found within the dungeon include blink dogs, displacer beasts, a gray ooze, rust monsters, and an ochre jelly. In addition to the leprechaun, other non-BX monsters make appearances: A necrophidius, something called a clockroach, a guardian familiar, something else called a shocker lizard, giant ants (though maybe driver ants are intended), an assassin vine, a water weird, and something called a mycelian. No stats are provided for any of these monsters, so the DM will have to do the conversion work from other sources, I suppose. Why BX then? Why not just write this for AD&D or OSRIC?
Strangely, the map indicates the encumbrance of "non-coin treasure" (not counting gems and jewelry) is calculated as "their weight equal in coins." To accommodate this design choice, an item's coin values are given alternately between cp, gp and pp. Sigh...
So, for example, we have a set of furniture worth 100,000 cp, meaning it's sellable for 1,000 gp, but weighs 100,000 coins, or 10,000 lbs. Every DM who ever tries to run this will have to perform these calculations throughout the adventure; it would have been nice for the designer to have saved everyone else the trouble and just done it for them. Your duty as an adventure designer is to help the DM by making his job easier. This does not do that.
Total treasure (once all the extra calculations are done) amounts to about 22,310 gpv. There are a pair of earrings that are given no value, so there's a little extra there. That's only about 4,400 apiece for a party of five characters, around half of what most classes would need to go from 4th to 5th level. That's not much reward for a site that approaches a full-on adventure with 20 keyed areas.
There is a fair number of good magic items to be found here, but only two of them (a cursed Ring of Animal Control and, handily, a scroll of Remove Curse) are from BX. There is also a unique Potion of Negate Poison, which is a magical antidote (something I've always felt was a glaring omission from the potion repertoire). The remaining items (a Jug of Alchemy, Figurines of Wondrous Power, a Folding Boat, pots of Marvelous Pigments, a Potion of Sweetwater, and an Ioun Stone) all come straight out of the AD&D DMG. Again, why not just write this for AD&D if you're going to borrow so heavily from it?
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1) THEME
(How strong/consistent is the adventure's premise, flavor, and setting?)
Generally speaking, this is a puzzle (or "funhouse") dungeon—a series of simple escape rooms that, when strung together, test the players' resolve and resources. The rooms are not necessarily connected to the same thematic elements, and a theme really isn't necessary or desirable unless you have a strong set of ideas.
White Plume Mountain is probably the best-known example of a straight up funhouse dungeon; Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan or Tomb of Horrors are tied for the most famous thematic ones. (Your level of fun may vary...all three are famously deadly.)
A puzzle dungeon, by its nature, means the party comes to an area. The area has a setup, with some sort of distinctive features or contents that suggest a particular set of actions from the party. The setup results in a damaging trap, a clever trick, or a monster encounter—or some combination of the three. Sometimes the setup displays potential treasure as bait; other times the treasure (if it's there at all) is only apparent once the room's puzzle has been "solved."
Once you can read the document, this submission does a pretty good job of presenting an archetypal funhouse, though not a very deadly one. Some of the rooms are hit-or-miss for me personally, but that's to be expected for any dungeon like this. The conclusion isn't all that satisfying, but it does deliver on the promise of the hook so I would call that a success.
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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?)
The map is created in image software, possibly Dungeon Scrawl (the rounded corners are a clue). I don't care for rounded corners unless the passages are meant to be tubular in shape, but that's a personal taste thing. It just looks too sci-fi for me, but I won't hold it against the scoring. The map is clean and easy enough to understand, and the non-repro blue background and grid is a classic look.
SCORE (MAP/ART) = 4 / 5
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3) CLARITY
(How easy is the writeup to read/parse quickly? How well does the information flow?)
...
SCORE (CLARITY) = 0 / 5
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4) INTERACTIVITY/INNOVATION
(How well does the adventure use the rules to create interesting play?)
By its nature, a puzzle dungeon is built on interactivity. There is plenty of dungeoneering to do here, though the puzzles are often innocuous and not all that threatening. Many are super obvious or easily avoided by a reasonably intelligent party. Many of the tricks are simply cursed items that have an oddball but not debilitating permanent effect. A couple of the rooms are appropriately deadly, but the site could use a big spoonful of danger to better challenge a party of 5th–6th level.
One of the rooms (the billiards room/bowling alley) contains no puzzle but recommends that the DM running the adventure create something. That's a bit of a letdown.
SCORE (INTERACTIVITY) = 3 / 5
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5) MODULARITY
(How easy would it be to drop/integrate the adventure into an existing campaign?)
It probably wouldn't be hard to find a spot for this if you need to provide some sort of test or directed challenge to the party. The site background, the stated setting, even the device the party acquires to enter the site isn't relevant to anything inside the dungeon, so you could remove or change the entire intro and still have the same experience running it for your players. That's perfect for an adventure site.
SCORE (MODULARITY) = 5 / 5
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6) USABILITY
(How much work will the referee have to do to run this adventure at the table tonight?)
You'll have to do some copy-and-paste work to make the illegible PDF usable, and you'll want to add a lot more treasure, and you'll need to convert all the coin amounts into normal D&D values and weights. Oh, and you'll also need to convert all the AD&D monsters and magic items to BX (or vice versa), and you may want to add a few more threats to increase the risk levels.
But once you do all that, you'll have a pretty runnable adventure site on your hands.
SCORE (USABILITY) = 2 / 5
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7) OVERALL THOUGHTS
It takes some creativity and careful thought to put together just one or two memorable puzzles/challenges for an adventure, much less an entire dungeon full of them. The author clearly had fun writing this and injected a lot of creative energy into his work. Just gotta work on those PDF skills. It may not quite be a "kickass" dungeon, but I'm glad I made the effort to read it.
FINAL SCORE = 3.0 / 5
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