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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9055164" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 80: May/Jun 2000part 3/5The Frothing Miscreant: Yet another nautical gnome adventure? It’s been a mere year since the last one! At least this one stays on the surface. Sick of not being taken seriously as a heroic adventurer, Skoradin Thinskin (very nomative determinism) decided to go evil and built himself a steam-powered paddleboat to raid in, which has considerable speed and manoeuvrability advantages compared to ones powered by sail or oar. After multiple very successful acts of piracy, people are obviously keen on stopping him. You get hired by a guy who thinks he has the scoop on how to counter his attacks, after getting hold of one of his projectiles. Thankfully he’s correct, which will come in handy if you do go on patrol and fight him on the high seas. However, you could also do some detective work and track things back to his estate, as constructing all this custom technomagical stuff requires a supply chain and people remember a gnome who wears platform shoes and buys a whole load of odd things at once. Either way, it’s a fairly short adventure, particularly because you’ll probably wind up using only half of it, but with some pretty inventive tricks & traps that use common items & spells in ways the PC’s could easily duplicate if they were so inclined. There’s plenty to learn from here even if you don’t use it exactly as is and the level of silliness is tolerable. Pretty good overall. Nodwick and Piffany are just the right height to avoid gnomish traps aimed at taller folk, making this one of his less painful adventures.Challenge of Champions III: Ooh, is it this time again? Off to the adventurer’s guild to participate in some nonlethal but very competitive puzzle-solving with a dozen other adventuring parties. Are you ready to solve each of these 10 cryptically named puzzles (who’s names combined are the solution to one of the puzzles in itself) within 15 real and IC minutes with only the tools provided? At least none of the other teams are trying to cheat this time, but there’s still a betting pool going if you want to up the stakes. As usual, they go to extra effort illustrating these so you have a proper idea what your PC’s are facing and clues to solving it, but the viewpoint is 3D isometric rather than the first person perspective as you enter the room of the previous one. (apart from scenario 8, which has a particularly complex diagram which you have to cut out and then give each of the 4 parts to different players.) Also as usual, I can’t describe these ones in too much detail without spoiling the fun if you run through it in the future, but the tricks are pretty inventive as usual. These adventures continue to scratch an itch no-one else is even trying to reach, making them extra valuable to DM’s who need a break from the continuity of a long-running campaign. Nodwick goes through the challenge in extra detail, with a full-page extravaganza of unorthodox (and frequently painful to him) solutions that eventually results in the team being banned. We shall see if the guildmasters remember that when the next instalment rolls around.</blockquote>

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