D&D General Dungeon Magazine Hidden Gems 1986-2007.

[jayoungr]

This is a great project, and I look forward to reading it! Not to pile more on you, but there are adventures in Dragon magazine as well; any thoughts of looking at them?

 

[Mort]

Oh I didn't know either way. Personally I like variety, not all will appeal of course.

Since @bryce0lynch (the reviewer in question) has commented here and seems to be following along, you could just ask him re: his approach.

Or just keep doing what you're doing - it's a worthwhile project and engenders many different views - heck it's already gotten me to dust off some old issues for inspiration.

 

[Zardnaar]

This is a great project, and I look forward to reading it! Not to pile more on you, but there are adventures in Dragon magazine as well; any thoughts of looking at them?

Nope idk what issues they're in and are missing a few anyway.

 

[Zardnaar]

Digging deeper we have found a door leading to level 4. This level dates from March/April 1987 and the cover has a barfight on it with perhaps an half Orc but we find out its a half Ogre which 5E conveniently has.

Issue 4 has 4 adventures as well. Mostly level 1-5 with one at level 6-9. Levels in older D&D ofetn dont translate that well to 5E but it gives you an idea.

The Adventures

Kingdom in the Swamp
Escape form the Tower of Midnight
Fluffy Goes to Heck (dognaped lol)
Trouble at Grogs (the cover).

All AD&D (poor BECMI)

The author of Falcons Peak who has posted here in this thread made issues 4 letter page lol and here we are 32 years later.

Old dungeons are also a great source of NPC names, factions etc you can mine for your own games. Escape from the Tower of Midnight in particular has a few names worth lifting. Its also a tournament module with points whihc is interesting I suppose in 2019.

Fluffly goes to Heck is a shamelessly absurd adventure which disqualifies it for me, it even advertises it in the description.

This means its a toss up between Kingdom in the Swamp and Trouble at Grogs. I like both adventures, Kingdom in the Swamp has an early example of a fighter vampire which predates the 3E template system by around 13 years while Trouble at Grogs revolve around the fate of a Half Ogre opening an Inn in a human town. Basically they want to shut it down also see recent arguments about the reception of monstrous type PCs on the forums.

Often with Dungeon the cover often gives you a heavy hint as to the "featured" adventure and Trouble at Grogs is also the best one IMHO. Its also written by the Bouchers who are kind of the MT Black from the DMSGuild of the 1980's they're a very consistent highlight of early Dungeon adventures and they also wrote the best adventure in issue 1.

Certain authors normally turn out something good, and yeah. A level 1 adventure wins.

 

[Zardnaar]

The 5th level of this Dungeon branches out. Reaching May/June 1987 we have 7 adventures. The downside of this is all of the adventures are small with one only being 5 pages. Still the world needs smaller one shots and encounters I suppose.

The cover has some sort of ghost or lurker type monster on it with some scared children or something running. They are

The Rotting Willow
Lady of the Lake
The Stolen Power
The Kappa of Pachee Bridge
The Trouble With Mylvin Wimbly
The Eyes of Evil (beholder?)
Hirward Task's

6 AD&D adventures, 1 D&D adventure and one of the AD&D adventures is for Oriental Adventure- the Kappa of Pachee Bridge.

The Rotting Willow is an small AD&D hexcrawl, BECMI was more associated with them than AD&D I suppose. Lady of the Lake involves another wilderness adventure to a lake also for AD&D. Stolen Power has a cult of Shami Amourae which gets a nod in 3.5 Abyss sourcebook and the Savage Tide AP. Malcanthet displaces her as the Queen of the Succubi. The Kappa of Pachee Bridge is 5 pages long, the Wimbly adventure is the D&D one.

Eyes of Evil has a beholder in a small lair, once again the adventure is a short one. Hirwards Task is a mage has messed up and lost control of an elemental. It gets away a bit form the hack and slash stereotype of 1E with a bit more creative thinking rewarded. It is a dungeon but its kind of a clever one. Its also rather large with 93 keyed encounters and it eats up 1/3rd of the issue.

So overall a mixed issue, most of the adventures are more side quests and encounters. I have two picks The Stolen Power or Hirward's task. Not an overly interesting issue for me as always YMMV.

 

[David Howery]

Fluffly goes to Heck is a shamelessly absurd adventure which disqualifies it for me, it even advertises it in the description.

yes, I probably wouldn't have run it either, although it was a lot of fun to read. I did run a few less-than-serious adventures back in the day (never shall I repeat the tale of Mechahamster and the Great Black Flumph of Doom)…

 

[el-remmen]

Looks like this project got abandoned. . . I'd take it up, but I don't have a complete collection of Dungeons, despite having most of the first 90.

 

[Zardnaar]

Looks like this project got abandoned. . . I'd take it up, but I don't have a complete collection of Dungeons, despite having most of the first 90.

Think it got buried and I forgot.

 

[jgsugden]

Think it got buried and I forgot.

If you decide to pick it up, it would be more useful if you managed it on something more organized than a forum. I've long wished to see an index of adventures out there in the public domain. I'd love it to be a spreadsheet / SharePoint style with the following data:

1.) Name of Adventure/Module
2.) Author
3.) Year
4.) Edition
5.) Estimated Length to Run
6.) Degree of Railroading
7.) Setting (Including Era - Example: Forgotten Realms - Before the Time of Troubles)
8.) List of Monsters/Minis

 

[delericho]

Dungeon 150 has an index covering some of these - name, author, edition, and setting (plus issue number, which gives at least a guide to the year).