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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9137153" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 86: May/Jun 2001part 3/6Rana Mor: Now here’s one I can go into with somewhat less trepidation, as while Richard Baker isn’t quite as successful as a novelist as Tracy, the game writing I’ve already seen from him is much more to my tastes, including the rather cool Prism Keep from issue 45. We’re off to somewhere vaguely india-like to find a legendary emerald known as the Rain Tiger. This will involve a lengthy trip into thick jungle that has plenty of both rain and tigers to impede your progress. Fortunately there’s a massive river leading into the jungle that’ll take you most of the way there, although that’s still not without it’s hazards, but at least you don’t have to worry about getting lost apart from the bit where it turns into a swamp for a stretch. This does admittedly mean the first half of the adventure is a linear sequence of half a dozen encounters, but at least there’s a decent amount of variety in them. The temple of Rana Mor itself is a more interesting tactical challenge, as it’s surrounded by multiple rings of canals/moats that’ll make it much harder to get in stealthily if you’re weighed down by gear that can’t survive a soak. This becomes particularly significant when you do venture underground, as he remembers that the water table exists and all it takes is one carelessly triggered trap to open up the plugholes and flood the lower level, forcing you to make a hasty exit without all the treasure. In between, you have a decent mix of Huecava, living priests of Nerull and various jungle animals to fight, plus traps both intentional and caused by bits simply being in poor repair. So this turns out to be a fairly typical pulp adventure in the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom mould. Go to exotic places, find out the people there are already dead so you don’t have to feel guilty about killing them again and taking their stuff, probably having to make a hasty exit at the end. (but not being inevitably railroaded into it like a worse written adventure would do) Mildly problematic on a cultural sensitivity level, but much easier to use in any campaign than the previous adventure and less likely to cause massive long-term headaches to the DM if the players take an unexpected direction, this is definitely one I can work with. Nodwick has Steve Irwin join the party. He’s probably safer here than he was dealing with wild animals in real life.</blockquote>

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