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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8205821" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 17: May/Jun 1989part 5/5Out of the Ashes: As usual, they save the big cover story until last to build the anticipation. Through a convoluted series of events, Flame is returned to life after his untimely demise in issue 1. He'd rather like to build a new fortune and get revenge on the heroes responsible, maybe even killing two birds with one stone. So he disguises himself as a mysterious wizard to send the PC's on another macguffin hunt. If they lose, well, they're dead, and if they succeed, he can swoop in, take the treasure and finish them off while they're worn down from the adventure. It's a win-win situation. So they get sent over a distinctly dangerous bit of wilderness to find a valley who's soil is ridiculously plentiful in diamonds, and a dungeon which is a single colossal floating semi-hollow jewel. That's a setpiece that'll have the players drooling over the potential GP haul until they find out it's pretty much indestructible, and messing with it's power mechanism will drop it in the lava. This will likely happen anyway during the final confrontation, limiting the amount of treasure they can gain from the place by preventing repeated trips once it's cleared out.  As this is a sequel, they have to escalate both the scale and the drama, putting clues as to the big secret in there before the final confrontation, and giving Flame plenty of tricks that make it quite likely he'll escape again, leaving things open for further sequels. It's a definite step towards more 2e style narratively driven modules, but still gives the PC's multiple routes to explore and at least a chance to win fair and square if they're smart and roll well. If you've reached the kind of level suited to playing it it's pretty usable even if you haven't already run the previous adventure. Let's hope it's popular enough to inspire a few more sequels and multi-parters. This issue engages in a sharp abandoning of the setting building recent issues have featured, to go back to fewer, more lengthy challenging adventures instead. Since I was just starting to wonder when that would get tired, I'd say the change came at just the right time to keep things fresh. The increase in continuity is also very welcome, although I suspect that won't be catching on quite so much. Still, it's managed to keep this issue interesting overall. Let's see if next issue can manage a similar feat.</blockquote>

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