The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is up (EDIT-All Chapters Now Added)

First adventure for the online Dungeon - Iggwilv's Legacy

EDIT: 2nd, 3rd and 4th chapter now added... the link remains the same.

Written by EN World's own Rodent of the Dark, Ari Marmell

That's it, I'm now signed up on their site.

Solid cover illustration.

Layout... either it's for screen or it's for printing.

Either get rid of the color corners or make them black and white or smaller or something. Ditto for headers, etc...

It pretty much looks like some of the freebies that we've seen in the past in terms of layout. It doesn't hold a candle to the latter print issues I'm afraid.

And ugh... rules for taint! Ah well, if they're going to be used it's good to have the rules again (but I believe this would be #4 for me... let's see... OA, UA, HoH and now here... yup, 4) Monsters that aren't core have full stats but those that are core have page references. Good way to handle it.

Darn it, I posted this on the 4e board without even thinking that, of course, it's a 3.5e adventure and the thread probably belongs here.....

Anyhow, looks pretty solid on a first glance. Same formatting and style of presentation as the previous downloadable adventures on the WotC site.

JoeGKushner said:

Solid cover illustration.

Layout... either it's for screen or it's for printing.

Either get rid of the color corners or make them black and white or smaller or something. Ditto for headers, etc...

It pretty much looks like some of the freebies that we've seen in the past in terms of layout. It doesn't hold a candle to the latter print issues I'm afraid.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the layout is... Word set on two columns and printed as PDF!
Erm... yeah. The pictures are not well-integrated into the layout, they look like an afterthought. The layout itself has some strange whitespace (after the Taint-rules, for instance). And it has strange printing borders - yet it is too colourful to be considered a print-version. It is... a bit schizophrenic, eh?

Well, they have to work a bit on that. If it's a screen-version, get rid of that white background. Black on white is fine on paper, but sears your eyes on the PC. And it looks unfinished, especially after reading so much Dragon/Dungeon articles with a different background.

JoeGKushner said:

And ugh... rules for taint! Ah well, if they're going to be used it's good to have the rules again (but I believe this would be #4 for me... let's see... OA, UA, HoH and now here... yup, 4) Monsters that aren't core have full stats but those that are core have page references. Good way to handle it.

Click to expand...

Well, these rules are basically the HoH rules in abbreviated form, so it's no. 3. Especially considering that the adventure shares some authors with HoH.

And generally, besides the layout, this looks pretty solid. I'm looking forward to see it in its completed form!

Cheers, LT.

Awesome Ari. I think this cements any adventure with your name on it as a "must buy" for me.

Too bad I'm not going to subscribe to the WOTC Dungeon. Hopefully you'll do more work for Paizo and Necromancer. Plus more published WOTC adventures.

Treebore said:

Awesome Ari. I think this cements any adventure with your name on it as a "must buy" for me.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

With one very minor quibble*, I'm really happy with the way this turned out. And I love the artwork for the cauchimera. (Since the original Lost Caverns introduced the gorgimera, I felt that a similar but different new critter was entirely appropriate here. ) I'm also really interested in hearing what people think of the background that C.A. and I came up with. We tried to expand and reinterpret canonical references to Tsojcanth, and tie it up into the history of Iggwilv and Graz'zt, without actually directly changing or contradicting anything. I think we succeeded...

*(In the original draft, both the mines beyond Steddegar's Hole and the cavern with the bebilith provided hidden entrances to the Hollow of the Horn, without the need to pass through the Caverns of Tsojcanth themselves. I thought that was kinda nifty, but apparently development decided that they really want PCs to progress through the three "chapters" in order. I liked the old way, purely aesthetically, but I fully understand why they went the way they did. And as I said, it's a really minor issue.)

Too bad I'm not going to subscribe to the WOTC Dungeon.

Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that. I've got at least one more adventure coming out through them, and I think it's one of my best. (But I think it may be due out before the DI switches to a subscription mode, actually.) And I'm sure I'll do more for them later. But that said...

Hopefully you'll do more work for Paizo and Necromancer. Plus more published WOTC adventures.

Click to expand...

I certainly plan to do all three, so long as the various companies allow me to.

Just thought I'd pass on something I hadn't appreciated until Chris Thomasson posted it on the Wizards boards just now. Chapter Two continues the Greater and Lesser Caverns, but Chapter Three is a brand new continuation from the original module.

FourthBear said:

Just thought I'd pass on something I hadn't appreciated until Chris Thomasson posted it on the Wizards boards just now. Chapter Two continues the Greater and Lesser Caverns, but Chapter Three is a brand new continuation from the original module.

Click to expand...

Yep.

Let me offer a brief primer on the history of this project. Originally, when C.A. and I proposed it to the folks at Dungeon way back in the day, it didn't include an update to the original. It was a new "sequel" adventure. (That's why, incidentally, we had entrances to the Hollow that didn't require travel through the original lost caverns.) Only when things moved back over to WotC, and I first talked to Bart Carrol about it, did I found out that he already had someone working on a 3.5 update to the original. Obviously, then, it made sense for the three to be reworked to fit together into the single mega-adventure that you're now seeing.

As I posted on the other thread, I had hoped that w/o page constraints we'd get art for every monster. That makes the DM's job so much easier.