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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9155748" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 87: Jul/Aug 2001part 2/6The Raiders of Galath's Roost: Once again we lead off with an adventure from an official writer of a size that they’d have pruned heavily or turned into a standalone module in the previous edition. But unlike the past few issues, there’s no epic plot to justify the size. It’s just your basic 1st level site-based dungeon crawl aimed at starting characters. Only this time, it’s Skip Williams style. Since he does not have a very good track record when it comes to adventure writing, to put it mildly, that definitely has me worried going in. Anyway, Mistledale has recently been troubled by Drow raids. Only they’re riding horses? This doesn’t make sense. Horses don’t cope well in the underdark. Are they not drow after all, but the ghosts of the bandits that once laired in Galath’s Roost? The answer turns out to be a bit scooby doo. There’s a ghost, but it’s a nice one, the Zhentarim are using the rumors of them as a cover, there’s a water mephit also pretending to be a ghost, giant ant and giant bee hives under the fort, krenshars, stirges, assassin vines, a prank playing pseudodragon and a few actual drow who are as puzzled by all this as you if you actually talk to them instead of just killing them. It’s all a bit overstuffed, in other words. If you actually do some investigating, you’ll find out that the Zhentarim have been using magical portals to appear and disappear on their raids. If you figure out the key that activates it you can head over to their hidden citadel to stop the problem for good, where you’ll face some rather more intelligent and co-ordinated threats from mostly human enemies. Even there you can’t escape the comedy though, as they have a gnome technician working for them, plus an imprisoned baby gold dragon that’ll follow you around like a lost puppy if you rescue it. (and is easily powerful enough to escape and solo the whole adventure if it had a bit more confidence in itself.) This is an overlong slog of an adventure punctuated by bad comedy that’ll result in you being overleveled for the final part if you do explore everything and beat every encounter, because it’s paced more like a 1e adventure than a 3e one. It’s still better than WG9 Gargoyles and many of the tournament adventures he picked for Polyhedron, but that’s a very low bar to clear indeed. This easily steals the prize from Tracy Hickman last issue for most annoying 3e adventure in here so far. As I’ve said before, he really should stick to saging.</blockquote>

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