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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8213183" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 18: Jul/Aug 1989part 2/5Irongard: Ed Greenwood's prolificness in Dragon is long established by now, but this is his first contribution to Dungeon. Unsurprisingly, it's a Forgotten Realms one, but easily adapted to other worlds as well. A mad wizard curses one of the PC's to gradually forget all their spells one by one for the pettiest of imagined slights. The players need to go to the tomb of the original inventor to find out how to remove it. The result instantly reminds me that while he's good at coming up with cool ideas, he's also capable of being deeply irritating and railroady, filling a story with whimsy and NPC's that can do things that are impossible for the PC's, while cheating on or ignoring the dice rolls to make sure things go the way he wants. This definitely qualifies in both respects, and  while it has some cool encounters, the only reason it's not more annoying is that it's mercifully short, so the linearity doesn't have a chance to get too implausible and tedious. It also references multiple other products (gotta collect 'em all!), including an issue of Dragon magazine, making it distinctly newbie unfriendly despite being a starting level adventure. As much as I love his articles, this is well below the usual standard of adventure writing in here and can go straight in the naughty word bin. Hopefully we won't be seeing him around here too often, as this format does not play to his strengths.Whitelake Mine: Another regular purveyor of whimsy follows straight on. Willie Walsh takes us to tinker gnome territory, to go fishing for a giant pike with an experimental submarine so they can mine the lake bottom for jewels. There are several twists in the tale to keep it from being too short and simple. Definitely one for the more technically minded player, as they're still too low level to just bypass all the hassles of underwater adventuring with magic, and have to actually think about how to handle the underwater adventure with the equipment they're given, plus whatever clever uses they come up with for regular tools from the PHB. So while this is still a little silly, it's still a vast improvement on the previous adventure because it sets a problem and gives you free reign to solve it, expecting the players to use their brains, while not tying you down to a single solution. Plus it's the kind of adventure which is well suited to being built upon and having long-term consequences later in the campaign, if they encounter a similar problem and can go back to their gnome allies for further technological aid. The pleasure of solving adventures via using out of context abilities is definitely something I like to encourage, and this'll set you on the right track.</blockquote>

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