The Maze of Zayene 3: Tower Chaos

[Messageboard Golem]

Part 3 of the Maze of Zayene Series by Rob Kuntz! The characters have finally escaped from the maze and returned to complete the mission they originally started-they must infiltrate the tower of King Ovar and end his evil reign. Will the characters discover the secrets of the missing queen and the wizard Zayene's influence? Or will they perish in dragon fire? A classic adventure for 4 to 6 characters level 9 to 12. Contains even more new monsters and magic items from the creative mind of Rob Kuntz, as well as an innovative system to handle encounters within a populated tower!

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Tower Chaos is the third in Robert J. Kuntz's Maze of Zayene series. It is an adventure designed for 4 to 6 characters of 9th to 12th level characters. It is published by Necromancer Games ("Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel") under the Sword & Sorcery umbrella.

At $11.95 for 56 pages, this is fairly average pricing for the type and size of product in terms of volume of content. This is spoilt somewhat by the three pages of ads and a good deal of white space, particularly at the end of dungeon levels, where this can be nearly a full page. The subtitles and spaces between paragraphs also take a lot of space though the font and margins are themselves average. The internal mono art is mainly average to good, with one or two superb pieces - though all done by Brian LeBlanc. The cover art is slightly cartoony and did not live up to the art quality within, in my opinion, though the use of light and colour was good. The basic maps are clearly labelled with a good key, but have no scale specified for the grid used and no compass direction. The writing style is dry and a bit boring, occasionally confusing. Different types of text (e.g. text to be read to players) are not delineated well. Editing is average, with occasional but regular mistakes.

The five-page introduction contains a variety of information:
* Advice on using the adventure stand-alone, a prequel, or a follow-on from the previous Maze of Zayene adventures. Some pre-generated PCs are provided at the end of the adventure for use as a once-off adventure. There is also advice for using the castle as a setting for a solo high-level thief/assassin adventure.
* Adventure Background - essentially the evil court wizard keeps the king prisoner, creating simulacrums to fool the servants, in his attempts to gain total control of the kingdom by getting the simulacrums to give his orders. The PCs, in most scenarios, enter the castle in an attempt to assassinate the 'evil' king, only to find (through various clues hidden in the castle) that the wizard is behind it all, and they must rescue the king.
* General information on the tower/castle
* Details of the various clues to be found around the castle to the real plot.
* Rumours and Facts (slightly confusingly labelled 'F' for Fact (not False) and 'R' for Rumour).
* An explanation of a set of teleporting mirrors the wizard has installed to keep the ruse going.
* Similar to Gaslight Press' The Gryphons Legacy, Tower Chaos uses a 'real' time system for occupants of rooms - with different occupants at different times of the day and night. This section explains the system with various references to charts at the end of the adventure and a good tip for using an alarm clock to keep track of all the comings and goings.
* Some advice on concluding the adventure and future related adventures.

There are five levels of the tower/castle. Each room has a listing for the main occupants and any possible visitors that might be in the room with the times that the room is occupied. Treasure is identified in the room description but NPC stats are given at the end. Details of the tactics of the occupants if attacked are given. The usual assortment of creatures, traps, puzzles, and treasure adorn the various rooms along with the commensurate lack of roleplaying information that identifies the adventure as '1st Edition feel'.

There are nineteen pages of appendices covering the following information:
* Some new magic items and minor artifacts, including magic tobaccos and incense cones.
* Two new monsters, a Death Demon (summoned using the essence of a dying person), and a Myrmic (a semi-intelligent baboonish animal with an ability to mimic speech)
* A page on King Ovar, or rather the various simulacrum that the evil wizard creates. Gives stats, tactics, routine, spells, and possessions. Roleplaying notes are limited to a "purposeful demeanor".
* The pre-generated PCs - Ragus The Righteous, Merrick The Mage, Kuryck The Mercenary, and Creys The "Luckster".
* NPC Stats (with no stats for non-combatants), which are riddled with mistakes.
* 6 pages of random encounters in the hallways with any of the tower's inhabitants over the 5 levels
* The master list of tower inabitants that the rooms refer to

Conclusion:
There is nothing particularly original in this adventure. The writing quality is poor, the plot basic, the characters leaden, the stats incorrect, the layout confusing, the timekeeping complex, and little or no explanation of the existence of certain monsters (troll guards, a berserker earth elemental, a black dragon, and kobolds) within a castle ruled by a neutral-aligned king.

I did like the advice at the beginning on different ways of running the adventure, the internal art, the use of clues planted round the tower as to the plotline, and the Death Demon.

It may appeal to those GMs and players who particularly like hack'n'slash and tripping traps, if the GM is willing to correct the stats for the NPCs, as there is theoretically a decent adventure hidden in the confusion for this type of gaming. For me, it exemplified much of what I disliked about 1st Edition adventures and sparked off my pet hates - complex timekeeping and no characterisation. Add to this the mistakes in the rules, and the poor layout and writing style, and I can't give this more than a score of Poor.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Maze of Zayene: Tower of Chaos
Written by Robert J. Kuntz
Published by Necromancer Games
56 b & w pages
$11.95

First off, let me start with where I’m coming from. I didn’t like the previous Maze offerings, and I don’t like Robert J. Kuntz writing style. His use of exclamation marks is excessive and his use of telling players what’s going on instead of showing them leaves me wondering what all the hype is about.

The third book in the Maze series has the players investigating the tower where the king lurks. Characters have a few options here. First off, they can be the same pregenerated characters from the first book. Second, they can be the player’s own characters. Third, they can be new pregenerated characters from this book. Some options of getting the players involved are provided to help GMs who are using this as part of the series or as an independent module. One of the more interesting aspects is now possible by having the characters scout out the tower prior to the events of M1, Prisoners of the Maze.

It relies heavily on a timetable that determines who is in which area. I found this device useful for keeping the players moving. The goal of the module is the same as the first one, to kill the tyrant King Ovar. Along the way however, clever characters will encounter some clues that hint that not everything is what it seems and that the court wizard, Zayene, has far more power in his hands than has been previously thought.

The party gets to make their way through five different levels and as they do so, they encounter a wide array of NPCs, some of whom can point out the differences in King Ovar’s behavior and some of these differences may be traced to a stranger truth.

SPOILER

It seems that King Ovar isn’t himself these days in a most literal sense. The mage has replaced the King and has placed his own power base in the tower. This includes killing the king’s pet falcon, the queen, and using a summoned creature to scare away the loyal servants who would have noticed the difference in King Ovar’s attitudes, taste, and morality. The problem is that this duplicate is a faulty one and must be replaced every day.

There are some good ideas in the module and players will have some fun with some of the different encounters like the encounter with Stony, an earth elemental who takes care of the china and silverware and the game room where players have unseen servants bringing them snack dishes.

One of the main problems with the adventure though, stems from the fact that it’s not a complete adventure as even if the characters put together the clues and realize that the king they’ve been sent to kill is a false creature, to find the real king and put an end to the wizard Zayene, they have to go to another plane via a gate in the tower itself and finish the series in the unpublished module M4, The Eight Kings.

END SPOILER

Most of the game stats seem correct but without trying to hard I’m able to spot some issues like kobolds with a CR 1 that have no classes and a reference to an adult Black Dragon being powerful enough to wipe out the characters.

Art is all done by Brian LeBlanc and is top notch. His illustrations appear to be charcoal base and make a nice difference from the ink and pen pictures commonly seen in modules. Some of his pictures like the guards in the king’s throne room and the black dragon atop the tower are great pieces. One of the nice things about having a module done by one artist is the whole book has a unified feel.

There are several problems I have with the module. First off, the first two modules used the interior covers. Second off, this module has three pages of ads. The expanded page length helps make up for these factors but there’s a lot of white space, mostly at the end of each section that takes up half a page or more, as is the case with pages 14, 20, 25, and 35. The pregenerated characters are a nice touch, but the ones for the first module possessed special powers that were supposedly necessary to help balance them out against the issues they would face. Are we now to believe that there isn’t an effect on the game if the group is using one set of characters as opposed to another? Worse, the characters range from 8th to 11th level, strange in a module for 9th-12th level characters. Why is King Ovar’s stat block repeated twice? Do we really need pages upon pages of hall encounters?

In a non-game related spin, Necromancer Games will not be publishing the fourth part of the series, as this will now be done by Kuntz’s own publishing group. These elements may make for a fine tournament module, but having a mad king that the party is going to assassinate spread out through the course of four modules, especially with one of those modules being unavailable, is a problem and GMs who want to run the series as a whole will have a wait in front of them.

If you need tower maps, some new monsters, items, and ideas for general play or want to use it whole in tournament play, Tower of Chaos may be for you. If you didn’t enjoy the previous modules and want more details about the events going on without having to wait for an unpublished book, then skip out on the Tower and move onto the good old campaign setting of Necropolis.

 

[MerricB]

Just a note: Maze4 will be released FREE to subscribers of RJK's "El Raja Key Magic Emporium" list. Visit RJK's site http://www.pied-piper-publishing.com/ to sign up - I am unaware of how you'll get it if you aren't a member at the time it is released.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

MAZE OF ZAYENE 3
Tower Chaos

CAVEATS
This is not a playtest review. There are moderate spoilers.

OVERVIEW
This is a 56-page volume, the third of four (or five, depending on rumor) volumes in this series. The first and second have also been published by Necromancer Games, while the fourth is being released by the author's own company, Pied Piper. Maze of Zayene 3 features maps by Rich Lee, and art by Brian LeBlanc. Layout and font follow the standard for Necromancer Games, with an overall good use of space.

The Maze of Zayene series was originally a series of tournament modules written by Robert Kuntz for AD&D (first edition). I am unsure if the original tournament modules covered only Maze 1 and 2, or if the entire series was written. In any event, Tower Chaos stands apart from Maze of Zayene 1 and 2, and can easily be played separately from those two modules.

This adventure describes in exacting detail the contents of the tower where King Ovar lives, including details of the contents of all the rooms, an exhaustive list of inhabitants and workers (down to individual cleaners and commoners), and charts showing who is where at any given time of the day. The module is obviously designed more for intrigue than outright conflict, and would lend itself much better to PCs who can disguise themselves or hide effectively, or get jobs in the tower and use their positions to gather information and position themselves to assassinate King Ovar-the goal of the failed mission in the introduction of Maze 1. At least, killing the king is the PCs' initial goal, but there is a mystery to be solved as well.

IN DEPTH
I won't hide the fact that I feel this adventure is the weakest produced by Necromancer Games, and from what I can see is nearly unplayable. I suppose it can be used as a basis for any kind of highly-detailed fortress, but I think it serves more as an example of how NOT to handle this type of thing than as a usable product.

Figuring out who is where at any given time is a headache, with a coded entry being given with each area to tell the DM who is there at any given time. For example, selecting a random room, Area 47, Mess One, the subheading reads: "Variable: 6 a.m.-7 a.m.. 7 x (1), 8 x (3), 44 x (1); 1 p.m.-2 p.m. 37 x (2); 2 p.m.-3 p.m. 29; 6 p.m.-7 p.m. 7 x (1), 8 x (3), 38 x (2)." If you consult the key matching numbers to NPCs (located near the back of the book, on an unnumbered page), cross-referencing indicates number 7 to be sergeants, number 8 to be guards, number 44 to be manservants, number 37 to be scrubbers, and number 29 to be a valet. You can alternately flip to the Combined NPC Encounter Appendix and look up the entries by number to see stat blocks for each. I feel a headache coming on just describing this complex arrangement.

As if that weren't enough, there are also several detailed tables to determine whom you might encounter in a given hall or corridor at a given time of the day. As near as I can figure it, you roll on a die (which varies by area) to determine if an encounter takes place, and then roll on the table to determine whom you encounter. This table's entries are not by NPC number, however, but by code. So, on level 1, between 9 and 10 a.m., you have a 1 in 10 chance of running into an FM8, a CP 24*, a P1, or an (R). What do these codes mean? Looking back a page we find that FM8 is a furniture maker, I think on his way to area 8 (a storage room), CP 24 is a captain of the guard heading for staircase/landing passages north and east, P1 is a level 1 patrol, though I'm not sure where such a patrol is statted, and (R) is "reroll the die". Complex enough yet? I haven't even described some of the individual room letter subkeys, or the complex teleporters that allow you transport throughout the tower.

Trying to figure out how all this works is not helped by the descriptive text, which feels like it needs a strenuous editing. Here's an excerpt from the Hall Encounters Explanation section: "Note: NPCs encountered in transit to lower levels can NEVER be encountered on upper levels during the same hourly period. The same holds true in reverse. NPCs encountered in transit to upper levels can never be encountered on levels lower than the first encountered at, unless, of course, such encounters pursue the characters, or, in the DM's opinion, have some reason for deviating from their appointed schedules. Obviously this holds true in the former case; and all schedules are "ruined" when the tower is beset by intruders or such, and the DM must wing it until the tower's internal order is re-established."

The last line of the above quote underlines one of the biggest tragedies of this product: For all the massive detail in the scheduling of every single inhabitant of the complex, the moment PCs start making their presence known, all of this scheduling becomes useless. Unless you are running this as part of an infiltration adventure, with players who are willing to put up with the tight scheduling and capable of avoiding suspicion, it all becomes an overly detailed mess. The product would have been much better served with a simple listing of PCs and general encounter tables, rather than trying to track the location of valet X at every moment during the day.

On a side note, the pregenerated NPCs given in this product are NOT the same as those in Maze 1 and 2. The reason for this, I suspect, is because the NPCs in the first two books would be terrible at espionage; they would quickly be discovered, and "tower chaos" would ensue. I find it ironic that for being part of a single series, Maze 3 is nearly incompatible with Maze 1 and 2 in this regard.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Buried beneath this unclear text and needlessly complex abbreviation system, I suppose there could be an interesting adventure. However, I feel zero desire as a DM to try and unearth it.

One of Robert Kuntz's greatest strengths is coming up with inventive and unusual creatures, items, or areas. This book, I feel, largely ignores those strengths in its efforts to create a detailed timetable, and I feel it suffers accordingly.

If you read the above description of the hall encounters, abbreviation system, etc. and thought it was quite comprehensible and interesting, and want to run an infiltration or espionage adventure, then by all means pick this up. You won't even need Maze 1 and 2 to run it, though I suppose if your spies are discovered you could have them tossed into the Maze of Zayene and run it as a sequel, not prequel, to this product.

 

[Melan]

Maze of Zayene 3: Tower Chaos

WARNING! SPOILERS

Tower Chaos was the last part of the Zayene series to be published through Necromancer Games. Since it was released after Rob Kuntz and Necromancer had a fallout, less attention was given to tiny things (like putting the map on the inner cover) and the whole adventure looks like a partial train wreck. It could be used with some work - but it falls flat without a fair amount of polish.

What do we get? Essentially, a tower, which is supposed to be part of a large royal palace (not detailed because of what?). There are dozens and dozens of NPCs, from lowly scrubbers to chamberlains, tobacconists and other courtiers, not to mention royalty and (of course!) monsters, like a clay golem handling fine china. Even some strange places are present - a jungle-garden and a roost where an old black dragon (yikes!) dwells.

Detailed timetables are given for all inhabitants, which is, unfortunately, not quite as hot an idea as you think. Au contraire, it is precisely what makes the module an ugly mess. We get codes for NPCs, which are then cross-referenced with a master table or with a table given for the various locations. This means the DM must be particularly good at timekeeping, not to mention have a photographic memory. And this is just the beginning. If there is a disturbance (say, the PCs do anything suspicious, an NPC doesn't show up at a location or something goes missing), all of this carefully consrtructed house of cards will come tumbling down and it will immediately be apparent why this module is called Tower Chaos. In some ways, I understand why Rob went with this method - I merely wonder how much playtesting went into the product... Especially since it was originally written for a tournament.

The rest of the module isn't as bad as it sounds first: something is amiss in the palace - King Ovar has been acting strangely as of late, the Queen died under mysterious circumstances (she is still found in a sealed section of the tower) and the previously goodly monarch has been more and more like an evil despot. Therefore, the party must infiltrate the tower and assassinate their insane king, or find out what exactly happened to him. Alas, this is precisely the module that should have been part one of the Maze series: it wouldn't be hard to send the party on an assassination mission, let them be captured by the vile Zayene once they come dangerously close to the truth, and let them find out the real deal once they escape. There are clues about the real fate of Ovar, but they are (in my opinion) extremely obscure and found only through much exploration and random poking about.

Tower Chaos is a partial train wreck. It is, on one hand, a partial train wreck... On the other hand, you could use it as an assassination quest (and even exchange Ovar with someone else) and it can be saved with work - and lots of it.

Score: 2/5