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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8931055" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 70: Sep/Oct 1998part 3/5Side Treks - Boulder Dash: One of those pun titles that encapsulates the adventure perfectly. The PC's are walking along an elevated ravine walkway when a bunch of stone giants decide to use them as target practice. They need to either make a hasty exit from the whole area or figure out how to get down safely to fight the giants, for standing still and exchanging shots will probably get the walkway smashed and you dropped in the water. They've already smashed some parts of it anyway, so you'll get to put your climbing & jumping proficiencies to good use in the ensuing action scene. All very Indiana Jones in feel, which is a good thing in my book. Encouraging battles that are more mobile instead of just hacking until one side runs out of hit points is an idea I approve of, even if the D&D rules aren't the best system to run them under. Hopefully you can figure out how to run it as fast and frantically OOC as it's supposed to be IC.Maps of Mystery steps out from the dungeon to give us some coastal borderlands between lots of little countries. What adventures are to be had wandering between the Nation of Anok, the goblin bandits of the badlands, the Old Kingdoms, Bret Minor and the Sea Duchy of Lionwalk? Have fun taking the tiny linguistic hints of what each of these countries are supposed to be based on and extrapolating outwards, and also deciding on the scale, as a precise one isn’t given, so you can slot it into your own world.Ssscaly Thingsss: Part two of the adventure path continues to use the swamp environment and reptilian adversaries, but puts even more moral complexity into the situation. The PC's are sent to deal with a particularly aggressive tribe of lizard men that have been attacking people on the High Road. They do have good reason though. Another recent band of adventurers stole some of their eggs in an attempt to blackmail them. This just made them angrier and now they're besieged in one of the little forts found on the solid bits of ground around here. Which side of the story you get first will depend heavily on your actions. If you try to fight your way through all the lizard men at once, there'll be too many of them, you'll be captured, then given an opportunity to escape with new information that'll hopefully change your course of action. If you sneak or run, you'll probably wind up heading for the only obvious landmark and being trapped in the fort with the adventurers, who turn out to be not very nice people in spoileriffic ways. So there is a "best" solution to this that'll earn you the most story XP - siding with the lizard men against the adventurers and then using the goodwill you gain from that to negotiate a peace with them afterwards, but the adventure is intentionally designed so you could side with either side and complete your assigned mission while finding out a varying number of the secrets involved without it affecting the other parts of the adventure path. (although one specific magic item is noted as making a later adventure in the series much easier if they do well and find it here.) Once again they're carefully threading the path between giving an adventure an interesting default story, but also enough leeway that the adventure path as a whole doesn't break if the players pick a different option and making it functional standalone but also adding up to something greater with the other parts. Once again this is a cut about the average adventure in the care and attention to detail put into the mechanical design as well. This experiment continues to be a success and I hope it can continue to build through further instalments and stick the landing.</blockquote>

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