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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8670597" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 53: May/Jun 1995part 2/5Spellbook Masquerade: For many years, I've been irritated that their solo adventures are all for nonspellcasters. Eventually, they did one for clerics as well, but it's taken them nearly a decade to finally do one aimed at a wizard. Whether the wait will have been worth it depends on your opinion of adventures with lots of social interaction and relatively little combat. An aging wizard carelessly sent his tome of Lich creation into the possession of a younger evil wizard who will likely actually use it if she reads it and realises what she has. Your mission is obviously to find it in her mansion and replace it with a similar looking but harmless cookbook before it's too late. This is further complicated by the fact that she's throwing a masked ball there, which means you can get in more easily, but have to wear the jester outfit provided unless you already have something better in your backpack. Can you get away from the crowds unnoticed to search the other rooms of the mansion, avoid setting off any traps or other weirdness, replace the book and be gone before midnight when everyone has to unmask? While the challenge is real, the tone is pretty whimsical even before you get to the actual adventure, and it continues from there, as if you explore the right areas you'll find out your hostess isn't just regular scheming evil, but full-on Norman Bates insane, with the corpses of her family in the upstairs rooms, that she still talks too and pretends are alive. (despite being the one who killed them in the first place. ) She also has a pet bandarlog in a tutu, just to add to the unsettling silliness. Depending on you you handle it as a DM, it could stay as light-hearted comedy or slip into evil toys & clowns style horror where the whimsical parts make the creepy ones even more uncanny valley. Definitely not one for hack and slash players or anyone who relies on their character's stats over their own role-playing ability, as it's a very socially oriented scenario and most wizards have spent their nonweapon proficiency slots elsewhere. People who memorise utility spells over blasty ones and use them cleverly will probably enjoy it though, and using a bard instead of wizard of equivalent level will easy mode it. We could still do with a more serious wizard focussed solo adventure, but it does at least fill a niche they haven't before, so it's not worthless.</blockquote>

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