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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2009058" data-attributes="member: 9860">Beware! This review contains major spoilers.This is not a playtest review.The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a 136-page city adventure by Ernie & Luke Gygax, sons of Gary. It is set in the world of Erde, Troll Lord Games' campaign setting, but is transferrable to most fantasy campaign settings. The adventure is designed to take PCs from level 1 to 10.In terms of value for money, $20.95 is fairly average for its size, with average text density, margins and space usage. The internal art is generally good, as are the maps (though they use a 1 square = 10 foot scale). The style of writing is pretty basic, more the fault of clunky grammar and poor editing than anything else.The basic set-up is that the city of Gaxmoor was threatened many centuries ago, so the patron god of the city translocated it to a pocket plane where time ran slow, to protect it. Evil servants of a demonic entity discovered the key to bring the city back to the Material Plane. They did so, immediately invading it with their prepared armies of evil humanoids. The humanoid armies have now split up into factions within the city, fighting amongst themselves for control. Meanwhile, some of the more powerful leaders search for a powerful magical staff that is rumoured to be hidden somewhere in the depths of the city.Four adventure hooks are given for the PCs to investigate the reappearance of the ancient city, including discovering a band of humanoids with Gaxmoor coinage - 1000 year old coins that look brand new.There are also some amendments to standard rules recommended for the adventure, such as replacing the 'death at -10 hit points' rule with a 'death at a number of hit points equal to Con + Character Level' and doubling costs for creating magical items. There are also a couple of new feats - Weapon Mastery (+1 to attack and damage rolls) and Rapid Attacks (extra melee attack when using Full Attack action).The adventure begins with the PCs journey to Gaxmoor, with five encounter areas described. After an overview of the main factions within the city, the adventure continues with a location-by-location description of first the Outer City (those locations outside the city walls) including the graveyard and tannery, then locations in the Inner City, and the Palace of the Citadel, the climactic location, including the labyrinths beneath, with finally a listing with brief detail of the various statues and pools within Gaxmoor.Eight new monsters are detailed from the adventure in the appendices, as well as 13 new spells, and 12 new magic items (including the aforementioned staff, which is an artifact). The remaining pages give a range of indoor maps for various locations described in the text and there is a two-tone rip-out map of the city and its environs well attached into the back of the book.Conclusion:There are a number of major issues I had with the adventure. Probably the biggest one of these was the challenges and treasure of the adventure, both of which were too high for 1st-level characters (the first three encounters are EL 5, 4 and 6 respectively; in these encounters the PCs can pick up two +1 arrows, antitoxin, a +1 Mace, spyglass, flask of alchemists fire, helm of comprehend languages and read magic, spell book, 18 masterwork crossbow bolts, and possibly a pelt worth up to 2400 gp, amongst many other items). This theme continues, with a vast array of evil monsters and characters in most buildings, magic nearly everywhere you look (including highly powerful magic items), and enemies up to CR 21 later in the adventure. I also found a number of mistakes and missing information in the stat blocks and text. There were no ELs listed and no information for scaling the adventure for parties of different levels or numbers.However, if you can amend things, either to introduce higher level PCs to the adventure (I'd recommend starting level about 5th, moving up to 15th) or amending all the encounters in terms of creatures and treasure, there are many positive qualities to the adventure - apart from the first few encounters, the adventure is non-linear and gives good background information for the motivations (political or otherwise) of the main factions vying for control of the city. The feel is very much 1st Edition, quite combat-orientated and rich in reward, but also manages to keep the situation logical within its unusual precepts. Creatures and characters within buildings have a reason for being there, and there is tension due to the various factions being located near to each other. The city is well-detailed with plenty of information on the many locations described. The adventure bulds up to a significant and exciting climax and there are plenty of new creatures and items that could be used outside the adventure. In addition, the adventure itself is fairly generic so could be translocated to another campaign setting.All in all, this adventure is spoiled by the mistakes in ELs, treasure and stats. I am not a great fan of very combat-orientated adventures and my rating includes this bias. However, it may appeal to those who enjoy plenty of combat and treasure, as long as they make some compromises in terms of the level of PCs they introduce to this adventure.</blockquote>

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