Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8493060" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 41: May/Jun 1993part 3/5Side Treks - The Well of Lord Barcus: The short adventure is also on the whimsical end of the old school spectrum, as it's one of those magical wells that gives you a random blessing or curse if you toss a coin into it. Some are temporary, some are permanent, many are comedic, such as gaining the ability to fly, but only at a speed of 1, or making you taste bad so monsters won't use their bite attacks on you more than once. To spice things up a little more, the area is also haunted by a guy who stole from the well, and got cursed to never rest until he returned the treasure. If they hang around after nightfall his ghost will try to possess a player to return the treasure, or failing that simply beg them to do it for him. Will they be nice enough to help him find eternal rest, or just use magic weapons to kick his ass and be on their way, leaving him to reform later, trapped there until wiser adventurers come along?  So this is one where there might be a best solution to the scenario, but it won't ruin the campaign if the PC's get it wrong or get an unlucky roll on the offering table, as the penalties for doing so are fairly mild. Unless they make the same mistake and try to scoop up the well's offerings, which will lead to a much trickier adventure trying to get the curse removed. But either way, this one is very unlikely to be a campaign-ender no matter how poorly they roll, and even a failure will still make for an interesting story. That makes it very usable in a wide range of campaigns as a bit of light relief between more dangerous missions.A Way With Words: After two adventures that are intentionally playing to the old school crowd, they flip round and do one that's comedic and whimsical, but a very new school way. A gnome wants his stolen book of poetry back. He thinks it was the snake owning mopey goth girl who attended one of his readings. He's technically correct, but when they go to get it back, they find out it was stolen from her by kobolds who thought it was a book of spells. Now they're reciting poetry badly thinking they'll produce magic effects some day soon if they can just improve their pronunciation a little. Make your way through several other minor encounters to get to them, endure their mid-combat poetry, retrieve the book, and have a poetry reading to celebrate. Barf. Barf on a raft while wearing a scarf, while half the party tries not to laugh. This is short, twee and linear on the same scale as the very worst polyhedron adventures, which is even more annoying to see in here because I expect better of them. Nul naughty word points.</blockquote>

Verification