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.