The Lost City of Gaxmoor: nice '1e' atmosphere, its millenia-lost Roman-style city fits well in my campaign, & it has a nice glossy city map. But the editing is appalling, the floorplans have no keys AT ALL - it requires a lot of work for the GM. More of a campaign pack than a scenario, really. Good once you work out how to approach it - I settled on PCs as commando team running hit & run missions into the ruins. As a standard 'dungeon crawl' it doesn't logically work - the angry hordes will squelch any party that tries to camp out in the city for any length of time.
EDIT: Here's my complete, rewritten Gaxmoor review...
After a thousand years, Gaxmoor, shining jewel of the ancient empire, has returned to the world. But the city, once a beacon of civilisation, now swarms with evil forces led by an unholy half-demon who seeks the ancient artifact that is the source of the city’s vanishing a millenium ago…
‘The Lost City of Gaxmoor’ by Ernie Gygax, Luke Gygaxis and David Moore a scenario/campaign pack, it has 134 pp of text and maps, perfect-bound, plus a pull-out glossy map of the city that’s nicely drawn and definitely one of the highlights.
The sections are as follows:
Cover: The slightly amateurish, wraparound cover of adventurers hacking through humanoid hordes, aided by some faceless helmeted soldiery (probably Gaxmoorite city guards, I’d guess) gives a good idea of what’s inside, and the authors’ cheerful determination to ignore all 3e DMG advice about suitable encounter sizes - and in fact, pretty much every other bit of advice in the DMG. Despite this, I found Gaxmoor’s 1e feel and relentless chirpiness to be a lot of fun.
Dungeon Master’s Intro - lots of good ideas for tying in the time-shifted city, relic of a lost Roman-style empire, to your home campaign.
Player’s Introduction - nice atmospheric read-aloud text to start the scenario. I use it on my campaign web page to set the feel.
Encounters Before Reaching the City: These EL5+ encounters immediately give the lie to the book’s claim that it’s suitable for 1st level PCs! Apparently according to Luke Gygax it was playtested with a party of 8, including his dad, some guy called Gary. The adventure seems to assume PC deaths at almost every encounter. If you don’t want this 1e-style ‘feature’, I suggest starting with PCs around 5th level, maybe a strong 4th. They will need to be around 15th to complete the scenario as written, not the 10th suggested - given that some of the encounters are ca EL 22, 10th isn’t even on the XP chart!
Outdoor Encounter Matrix: One of several handy wandering monster tables, plus 3 useful NPCs with which to help or hinder your PC group - I’ve used 2 (the cleric Hugh Burke and Nirjan) so far, and the players have found them quite memorable. The editing problems rampant in the scenario start here - eg Hugh Burke is apparently both 5th level and 4th level, a human and a gnome…
Persons & Groups of Note Within the City - a vital reference, this brief section covers the politics and motivations of the many disparate factions competing for power within Gaxmoor. Far from a monolithic evil, the city is seething with humanoid hordes, most of whose leaders are jockeying for power while their armies disintegrate under the influence of vast quantities of cheap beer! Added to this are the surviving enclaves of surviving human and other native citizenry and the evil forces from the undercity, and you have a rich brew of turmoil to keep players entertained and DMs hard at work bringing the city’s many groups to life. With most of the factions mutually opposed.the players have largely a free hand in who they help, who they fight - and a little diplomacy could work wonders.
Note: All the above are available in a free .pdf download from Troll Lord Games (www.trollord.com I think), a great ‘try before you buy’ feature.
Gaxmoor: Environs of the Lost City
The heart of the adventure, pp 15-101, this section attempts to detail the entire city as much as space constraints allow. It’s generally well done, despite poor editing and read-aloud text that has a condescending Hackmasterish tone that’s sometimes amusing but occasionally annoying. There are many detailed NPCs and quite a few interesting encounters, as well as many of the ‘240 goblins live here’ variety. The main problem is that there are almost no keyed-in floorplans here, they’re all banished to an appendix at the end. The evil occupying Gaxmoor grows steadily more powerful as you approach the Citadel at the heart of the city, giving smart PCs the chance to grow in power as they battle on the outer fringes. My PC group headed straight for the citadel - and met the CR 20 big bad guy at its heart. He will kill at least one character per combat round - use with caution!
Finding the Staff of Urnus Gregaria: A small extra-dimensional dungeon around the artifact that is Gaxmoor’s heart. Contains the only keyed floorplan in the scenario! The open-endedness of the scenario is apparent here - the PCs are free to do whatever they want with the staff, whether using it to return Gaxmoor to the mini-dimension from which it recently came, or (more likely?) take it for themselves. Dedicated to Gaxmoor’s god of travel, he’s not a million miles from Fharlanghan of Greyhawk & PHB fame, making adaptation easy.
Statues and Pools Within the City Walls: Whimsy strikes with a vengeance here, as the designers allowed their dad to detail Gaxmoor’s magically-mutated statuary (courtesy of ‘Zagig’, natch). Personally I enjoyed EGG’s work here, and it’s entirely optional - if you don’t want statues of voluptuous noblewomen that turn into hideous monsters when embraced, you can ignore this bit. You can still use the descriptions, and they give a nice feel for Gaxmoor’s pompous, prideful Romanesque culture.
History of Gaxmoor on Erde: An explanation on how the lost city fits into Troll Lord’s house campaign world. An interesting read, of limited use if you don’t use Erde.
New Monsters: Several new creatures to be found within Gaxmoor. Nothing remarkable here, they’re perfectly usable outside the scenario. It’s worth noting that Gaxmoor uses a lot of Creature Collection 1 critters and it’s advisable to have this hardback available to get the most out of several encounters.
New Spells: A variety of new spells, mildly interesting they don’t seem particularly balanced - many are rather weak - I’d use with caution.
Magic Items: This section summarises the variant magic items to be found in the scenario, mostly repeated from the main section.
The OGL: ‘nuff said.
House & Villa floorplans: The last and arguably weakest section, this gives plans both for generic buildings (Gaxmoor is a big place) and for important locations like the Royal Palace. The problem here is that there are no map keys at all, the DM is left in the dark about what goes where! Considerable preparation is therefore needed if you’re going to run the city to its full potential. You will probably need to improvise your own interior layouts for the buildings as the PCs explore, the ones given seem to have been taken straight from ‘Daily Life in the Roman Empire’ or somesuch, and don’t really provide much help at all.
Conclusions: I’ve enjoyed using Gaxmoor as the centre for my own ‘Borderlands’ campaign, it has both a unique, memorable pseudo-Romanesque flavour (the authors have no idea how Roman naming conventions work, but are always cheerfully ready to give it a try!), and the potential to be easily inserted into most campaign worlds. Since it only reappeared a few months ago, any world with a fallen Roman-style empire can use it with very little modification at all. It has big problems - the poor editing, the lack of integrated maps, the relentless disregarding of standard 3e norms - the treasure, for instance, is generally distinctly under DMG stipulated norms, which fits my low magic campaign fine, but a more generous DM might wish to add additional treasure such as magic in the hands of the humanoid leaders. While the authors are clearly novices at writing, it’s not suitable for novice DMs - it’s a far cry from story-path hand-holding and needs an experienced DM to do the work required to get the most from it. That said, it has a great brashness and freshness about it, a relentless enthusiasm that I found quite infectious.
As a dungeon crawl, it doesn’t work well- PCs who try to camp out in the inner city are unlikely to last long, unless you play the monsters as even lazier than they’re presented. Treat it as a campaign sourcepack around which you and the players can create your own scenarios - seek the Governor beneath the Palace, searc for the Staff of Urnus Gregaria, try to assassinate the bugbear warlord Panchmo or conspire with Grond the orc chieftain - and it can be a lot of fun. In all conscience, and given the work required, I can’t rate it higher than 3*, but I don’t regret buying it and a DM willing to put in some work will find dozens of hours of enjoyable playing time, and a chance for players to make their own decisions and succeed or fail not just by their firepower, but by the choices they make and the enemies (and allies) they create.
