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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9014529" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 76: Sep/Oct 1999part 4/5Crusader: It's so easy to take the piss out of the whole paladin concept. Between criticisms that hitting things really well is maybe not the skillset best equipped to spreading good throughout the world and moral relativity deconstructing the whole concept of good & evil in the first place, there's a lot of people that have problems with them, and that's even before you get past the conceptual level to more mundane complaints like them frequently being played as stuck-up prigs or bureaucratic lawful dicks. Dragon has done several articles on that from different perspectives and degrees of cynicism over the years. Due to it’s format, Dungeon has to be more show, not tell. The PC’s are going about their business in town one day when an old man has a heart attack and keels over. Presuming they don’t completely ignore it, they get there just in time to hear his last words, which are of course a cryptic clue to the rest of the adventure. First thing they need to do is find out who Lord Broden is. This is not hard, because he’s a very famous paladin. Despite his noble title, he lives in a tiny leaky shack in the worst part of town because he gives all the money he finds in his adventures to the needy. When the PC’s find him, he’s conked out from having been going heroically non-stop for a week. If the PC’s wake him, (or hang around for him to wake up naturally), he’ll tell them that the second word was the name of the magic sword the wizard was supposed to be making him. With any luck that means he finished it and was coming to tell him. However, he has dragons to slay, undead to turn, etc, and won’t take a few hours out of his busy schedule even though having the sword would make subsequent tasks much easier, so the PC’s will have to do it for him. This of course means going to a wizard’s tower and dealing with your typical array of magical traps & puzzles defending the treasure, which his other final words will be crucial in solving without having to fight some nasty constructs that are probably above your pay grade, then once you’re done, finding the paladin again, (or doing a whole load of tedious waiting around) because who knows how long it’ll be before he checks in at home again. So this is a combat-light little adventure where all the drama is driven by the main NPC being a completely relentless engine of do-gooding, even at the expense of practicality and their own health. It feels like a lesson to groups that are similarly devoid of personality, be it in the same vein of paragonic purity or the charop obsessed murderhobo end who spend every copper on more powerful magic items, that maybe they should lighten up a bit and do more roleplaying between the fighting & treasure hunting, form connections to the world they're in. It’s an aesop to the readers as much as it is an adventure to actually be played. It’s an interesting read, but a bit short and underwhelming as an actual adventure, with lots of dialogue bits where the PC’s don’t really have much choice of action. Tolerable once, but it would hit diminishing returns very quickly if they tried to do the same trick again.Maps of Mystery invites us into an inn to stay the night. Not just any old inn though, as it has a big statue of a dragon in the main lobby, a nice balcony on the upper level and a secret door leading down to an easily expanded basement level. No en suite bathrooms though, so if all the rooms are fully booked there's going to be a bit of a queue at the (completely gender neutral, tough luck TERFs) privys first thing in the morning. It's spacious enough and with enough distinct features that if a fight breaks out here you can make it properly swashbuckling instead of just a boring back and forth until someone's knocked out. There are definitely worse places to start an adventure in.</blockquote>

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