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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8368877" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 32: Nov/Dec 1991part 3/5Hermes'  Bridge: After a fairly original start, we go back to the old cliche of a bridge with a troll on it. But then thankfully they build upon the idea so this particular example has a decent amount of distinctiveness and depth. The bridge is a massive one created by a fallen civilisation that current technology can't recreate, spanning a river that would be very difficult to cross otherwise, with micro-dungeons in the arches holding it up. There's some dwarves poking around to try and understand how it was built, a troll trying to steal money from the donation urn, a stone golem that's doing it's best to defend the place with it's nonexistent intelligence. The kind of flavour encounter that you could just gloss over and have them cross easily, but they could also spend several hours poking around, finding all the secrets and clearing out all the monsters and treasure. It's easy to put into any world (apart from Athas, where there's a distinct lack of rivers to build bridges over) and helps make your world feel bigger and more nonlinear, not just a backdrop to a single story. Not spectacular, but conveniently usable. Another one I have no problem with, and probably showed up in more games than the epic quests.Side Treks: Changeling: The side trek actually manages to fit entirely into two pages this time, without even having to shift a paragraph to elsewhere in the magazine to round things out. It's a pretty basic gimmick encounter. The PC's think they're going up against a white dragon that's been marauding the local farmers. It turns out to be an albino dragon of a different colour, so all those cold resistance spells will have been a waste of time. Gotcha! It does actually suffer from some of the real world problems albinism causes in people & animals, so it's not the most deadly fight as long as you didn't overspecialise your builds for the day, but even a fairly weak dragon fight is still pretty scary for regular characters, especially when it uses the terrain and it's spells intelligently. This is much shorter than the previous adventure in terms of page count, but could wind up being a longer and more deadly one in actual play if the tactics work and the players can't figure out how to pin it down for a fair fight. The kind of playing with expectations that you definitely shouldn't overdo as a DM unless you want your players to be perpetually grumpy and paranoid about every encounter, but makes a nice spice when added sparingly.</blockquote>

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