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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8336701" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 30: Jul/Aug 1991part 3/5Elminster's Back Door: Another short adventure from a regular set very explicitly in the Forgotten Realms. As with his previous one, this shows that while Ed may be fun to read when he gives you plot hooks and setting details and gives you the freedom to do with them as you will, when it comes to writing fully fleshed out adventures, he's obnoxiously linear and twee, producing things that you wind up wishing you'd never engaged with at all. As the title indicates, this is what happens if you try to get into Elminster's tower the wrong way. All the sadistic imagination of an archmage with access to 9th level spells and centuries of time on his hands, this'll be a challenge to any characters below epic levels if they try and fight through it with brute force, but if you use caution and divination magics you can just bypass a lot of the tricks harmlessly, plus you could stop any time if you just swallow your pride and ask Elminster nicely, or simply walk away from the dungeon. So unlike most adventures in here, this is one that you're not really supposed to play through and win, but a warning of what will happen to you if you try to go up against the Realm's resident mary-sue in chief. Not only will you fail, but it'll be in a humiliating way that'll probably leave you alive to tell the tale, thus further warning away any other adventurers who think it's a good idea to kill Elminster and take his stuff. It's interesting as contrast to all the normal adventures, but also really not the kind of adventure you'd want other writers to imitate and make a regular feature of the magazine. It further reinforces the idea that while I might get plenty of use out of Ed's material in my own games, I'd hate to have him as a DM. Hopefully he'll stick more to his strengths in Dragon & Polyhedron and it'll be several more years before I have to deal with him in here again.</blockquote>

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