Jay, thanks for the thorough once-over. I'll respond to some of the points raised below:
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0. Shouldn't TYRG's get more than one attack?
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Not necessarily. For starters, the original WG5 version only had one attack. They attack with their bite. If you want to give them claw attacks, that shouldn't be too difficult. We made the call to stay true to the original creature and focus on the bite.
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2. The final level has virtually no relation to the rest of the scenario
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That was intentional. The final level is really a bridge to a larger "Maure Castle" campaign rather than an endcap to a self-contained story. This is discussed in some detail on page 71.
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3. For having been ransacked and overrun by Mordy and his bunch, there sure a lot of the same monsters in the exact same areas...
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Well, it's not strictly a "return to" adventure, although there are elements that point that direction in the new background material. It is, essentially, intended as a "first run" through the dungeon (at least for the PCs in question), and is an homage to the original adventure by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz. As such, a lot of stuff has remained the same.
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4. The adventure hooks have no interesting follow-up material. (Where are Kerfanes notes anyway?)
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They're long gone, having been looted well before the PCs arrive. However, the hunt for them is likely to turn up the hollow bedpost in area 17, which leads to an adventure in the City of Greyhawk that just might include recovery of the journals. Had we more time, I would have made that more explicit.
I think the "Into the Shadow Vault" hook (p. 14) is followed up nicely in areas 15 and 50.
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5. The addition of the mention of the 'elder gods' and the god "y" are intriguing but give us nothing to go on that could have been more useful
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If you think "Y" gives you nothing to go on, I suggest you haven't read the adventure carefully enough.
Y, quite plainly, is Yeenoghu, who is mentioned extensively throughout the adventure. The Elder Gods are more of a throw-away for future development.
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6. Encounter #9 has one of my pet peeves in the read-aloud (aka boxed text). "As you examine it.." Dungeon has become very good at not leading PC's by the nose (i.e. writing the text in 3rd person), but this is evidently just a missed editing error.
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We probably should have used "see" or "glimpse" instead of "examine." The intent is that you can see the color changes without taking any overt action.
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7. Theres a TON of background material that never gets explained to the PC's. This is also then known as fluff. If it's never revealed, don't put it in the scenario. If it is to be revealed, for the sake of the Goddess, put it in some books in the "library," have the NPC spout it, or something.
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Some of this stuff is to make the DM's job of reading a 97-page adventure more interesting. Other bits are to fill in holes that can help the DM answer divination spells and extrapolate background when asked questions by the players. A "fluffless" dungeon is often a dry, dull read. I'd be interested in specific examples where you thought the background went over the line.
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8. It's a dungeon crawl no matter how you spank it.
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Hell yeah. As a celebration of classic first edition style, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
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9. Shouldn't the IRON GOLEM have the abilities defined from the Monster Manual? There's a large chunk of info missing here.
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Actually, it's a unique creature with unique resistences and abilities. Perhaps not the strictly "by the book" way things work in 3.5, but this is exactly the kind of thing that didn't really matter in first edition, and yet somehow we all had fun anyway.
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10. The "tidbits" of the Lost City of the Elders are no more useful now than they were in the original scenario because there is so little to go on to add any kind of flavor at all. Those are 5 common words. Had there been a wierd name in there it would have been more interesting.
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C'mon, now. We'll get to the Lost City of the Elders eventually. Must everything be explained in full detail? It's a mysterious demiplane. Unless the PCs go there, more details than that simply aren't relevant.
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14. Torakian is a lame write-up. A Bard? Bards are support characters, not 'opponents.' I can see this meaningless combat lasting all of about 1 minute. There's no other evidence that he's there for anything useful except for a place that bards can pick up some stuff. Other writers have attempted the "let's get the gnolls to gang up on the bad guys" theme before..and failed. It's not effective in a work this 'contained.'
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That strikes me as an unusually harsh and nitpicky criticism. Sorry you don't like bards.
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16. There is a regular lack of "tactics" by the monsters and NPC opponents, while a lot of FLUFF is devoted to detailing the background of these NPC's (that the PC's will never hear about..or care to hear about). Shryg, for example, resurrected Eli. Nuff said! Instead, there's 4 paragraphs devoted to her background. She's going to die all the same (as my players would say).
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What if she's captured? Tortured for information? The tactics, in so many cases, are "they attack until the party is dead." We ended up with far more adventure than pages in the end, and cut a lot of the tactics sections to make the whole thing fit. It's unfortunate, but I'd rather cut tactics than something that lights the fires of imagination.
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18. THE MAPS, OH THE MAPS! No scale, no direction, inconveniently located. Next time, put the maps in an APPENDIX in the back for easier reference.
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I would have preferred that, but the ad count in the issue and the requirements of where those ads needed to be placed ended up doing some unfortunate things to the pagination. I'm not satisfied with putting Downer where we had to put it, but sometimes you have to make aesthetic sacrifices to push a magazine out in the short period of time we have to work on it.
The top of the magazine is "north," by the way. At least we didn't completely flip one of the maps like they did in the original module.
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20. Ely's artwok of him sundering is really cool. I wonder if he'll bother to stop and try to sunder a PC's weapon or if he'll spend the same amount of time to waste them with some damage.
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I suppose that's up to the DM!
These are insightful comments, Jay. I hope I've shed some light on the thinking behind some of the issues you raised. I didn't cut and paste the compliments, which are much appreciated.
Thanks!
--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon
