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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8685434" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Magazine Issue 54: Jul/Aug 1995part 4/5Redcap's Rampage: Another dose of fae, this time with a more murderous slant to their whimsy. A redcap lost his iconic hat when people came to renovate the abandoned keep he lives in and even though they've left it, he followed them back and is now on a vindictive rampage through the local village trying to find it, with lots of vandalism and the occasional murder putting everyone on edge. Being both invisible and tiny, the villagers don't know what's causing it, but are becoming increasingly fearful and superstitious, so they're quite willing to pay wandering adventures to fix the problem. This leads into the kind of old school sandbox they haven't done much of in recent years, where you have a village and a dungeon, and the village gets as much attention as the dungeon crawling so there's plenty of NPC's you can get to know and the place continues to be useful after the danger is over. In fact, you can solve this one without ever dungeon crawling at all if you use enough cleverness and set a trap for the redcap, putting him in a position where you can fight him without him just slipping away invisibly and coming back to inflict more grief on you when you don't expect it. Alternately, you could solve it without combat by going to the keep, finding the hat, realising it's significance, then just giving it back to him. (although there are some rats and wererats that mean that probably won't be completely violence free either. ) So this is an adventure with an intelligent but not hugely powerful adversary, that also respects the intelligence of the players and gives them free reign to use their powers to solve it how they choose, while not giving them obvious stand-up fights they can just roll dice for until someone runs out of hit points. Chris Perkins manages to deliver another well above average adventure despite the sheer quantity he's submitting lately.Side Treks - Eyes of the Iceborn: The second short adventure is one of those ones that's basically an excuse to submit a new monster with idiosyncratic powers and immunities so the players feel the fear of the unknown again. The people working in an ice house get killed mysteriously while the players are in town, and the only survivor is raving cryptically about how no weapon can hurt whatever it is. Hopefully this'll be enough warning to get them to stock up on various energy typed attacks ready to experiment to see what's effective or not, because you're dealing with an electrically charged fog creature that's not only incorporeal, but causes serious zap damage every time you hit it with a metal weapon. Dumb knights in heavy armor will die very quickly and possibly have their equipment melted in the process. This feels strongly like a throwback to old school dungeoneering where each color of ooze is immune to different types of common attack, poison is instadeath and there's no save against energy draining, so you approach unknown enemies with caution, because they can mess you up quickly if you choose your moves wrongly. If you like that playstyle, this should be suitably scary to people who know the quirks of the Fiend Folio monsters inside and out and want more of the same tension of discovery. If your playstyle is more concerned with fairness and game balance or narrative over combat you'll probably want to pass on it.</blockquote>

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