Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8227138" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 19: Sept/Oct 1989part 5/5House of Cards: Oh crap. The cover image wasn't just a regular grim reaper, it was one from a Deck of Many Things. Now there's something that truly inspires terror in knowledgable players, far more than any amount of supposedly spooky undead. As Dragon did a physical version of the Deck just last month in issue 148, that also makes this their first co-ordinated tie-in between the two magazines, which is very interesting to note. As usual for the last and longest adventure of the issue, that's not the only interesting thing going on here. Due to the worshippers of Mask, Westgate is descending into gang warfare as they try to corner the market on all the organised crime in the city. The authorities want to deal with this, but they also want to maintain due process and not become as bad as the criminals they're fighting. In practice, this means you can't use divination magic to find them and prove their guilt or AoE blasty stuff that causes widespread property destruction without forfeiting your reward and being thrown out of town, forcing the PC's to stick to the plot and do things the way the writer wants.Once you do find their hideout and get inside, that's where things get really weird. All the doors are immune to magic, so you're forced to stick to the paths, and many of the important rooms have cards from the Deck of Many Things (hacked so they function separately) covering their keyholes, so you can't open them without effectively drawing the cards and suffering the consequences. To get through the entire dungeon, they have to deal with the various brands of woe and weal from every single one of the cards, plus the more mundane monsters and traps as well. So this is interesting and different from the average adventure, but in a horrible linear naughty word way combining the worst parts of 1e screwage dungeon and 2e plot-based railroading. It's fascinating to read, but also not one I'd ever EVER want to play in or run in a million years, and I wouldn't judge a group for packing up and going home after getting through one or two doors, and doing the math on what condition the party is going to be in after dealing with all 22 cards. Unless you have a Wild Mage in the party who can hack the cards back, they aren't getting through this one without casualties. (Although given the levels, they'll probably be able to raise/rescue them later) To top it off, having been actively unhelpful in solving the problems with their bureaucratic nonsense, the authorities will then give you an IOU for the majority of the bounty money in slow yield stocks and shares, essentially cheating the PC's out of their money in the majority of campaigns that don't run for years of in-game time. I'm both impressed and horrified at just how annoying this whole adventure manages to be in both mundane and fantastical ways. It has my respect for it's inventiveness, but I sincerely hope I never see anything like it again. With two Forgotten Realms specific modules and a Greyhawk one, this is easily the most grounded in their established settings of any issue so far. With three adventures that are all scary in very different ways, it also fulfils it's theme pretty decently as well. The main adventure being a sharp lurch towards linearity is a bit worrying though. We're definitely in 2e territory now, and I just hope the amount of adventures that use and expand on specific settings will increase more than the amount of annoying railroads. On we go to see what the next pair of big round numbers holds.</blockquote>

Verification