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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9032353" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 78: Jan/Feb 2000part 4/5Trial of the Frog: With all the big old school callbacks they've done recently, I'm a bit disappointed that this has absolutely nothing to do with Dave Arneson's Temple of the Frog, not even a little easter egg for the hardcore. Instead, it's another short fetch quest that'll probably last you less than a session. While walking through the forest, they're asked for help by a grippli to get hold of some gems as an offering to his queen. He's found a volcanic cave that's reputed to be filled with gems, but it's sealed up tight with a new door. If you have the equipment to get in, (Knock continues to be one of the best dungeoneering utility spells) you find out it's being mined by a duergar cleric and his pet spiders & undead minions, who will obviously not be pleased to see you. Whether this is one big fight or several smaller, more manageable ones depends on how loud your entrance was. If you beat him the wrong way, you'll find out he's set up a loadbearing boss trap which will collapse the caves, preventing you from grabbing more than a small handful of the potential treasure. A pretty decent challenge on a tactical level, with opportunity for different degrees of success or failure depending on how smart the PC's are, but very much just another day at the office for experienced adventurers. Meh. If you need to stall them on the way somewhere else it'll keep them busy for a few hours.The Winter Tapestry: Another dungeon in quick succession which has changed ownership, reminding you to keep your world living and the creatures in them doing more than sitting in their room waiting for the players. The PC's come across a tapestry that shows a bunch of heroes fighting a white dragon. Apparently it's based on real events and they only wounded it, not killed it. If you can link the scenes depicted to landmarks, they have a solid lead to pursue towards treasure & glory. But as already mentioned, it's been decades. The dragon was killed some time ago and a family of frost giants have moved in, giving you a very different set of challenges to the one you were expecting. There is still a white dragon there, but it's a very young one they've chained up outside and kept as a pet, which will be easy to kill and have very anticlimactic treasure. The real meat of the adventure will come when you venture inside the thoroughly remodelled lair and find the frost giants, their yeti servants and their selection of human slaves. (that are treated like toys by the frost giant kids) The result is a mildly comedic old school style location based adventure where everything is designed on a larger than human scale and you'd be better off using the sneaky approach than straightforward combat, but it gives you plenty of free reign how you approach it. The maps are unusually three-dimensional and comprehensively designed, giving you lots of different viewpoints of various areas to clear up any confusion. Despite putting two giant-centric adventures in the same issue, they're both high quality and sufficiently different enough that they don't feel redundant together. There's a lot of fun to be had in a world where giants are dominant and smaller races have to live in the cracks between and it shouldn't be impossible to put together enough adventures to support the concept with 50 years of D&D to draw upon. Nodwick has an impressive carrying capacity for a "kid's toy" and is quite happy to be underestimated.</blockquote>

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