Sagawork_Studios
First Post
I have this one, along with a few other; Rary the Traitor, Country Sites (somewhere...) Return to the Keep on the Borderlands (again, somewhere) and maybe some others. I used to own Nightmare Keep, Bloodstone Lands but I gave them away to a friend and never saw them again. Curses.
So without much further ado: LICH LORDS
The module is writtten by Lynn Sellers and the cover art is by Frank Frazetta. The module is 32 pages long. It mentions that this is for 6-8 characters (six to eight?!? who's group has eight players?) of Skill level 12 to 16.
Right on the bat, this is our first exposure to MAYFAIR ROLE AIDS nomenclature; Skill Level is your Character level. There is a glossary of terms printed inside the back cover, detailing standard abbreviations, however it is left to the reader to find the relationship of statistics between MAYFAIR GAMES and TSR related products. (Incidentally, the cover proudly exclaims 'ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a registered trademark of TSR Inc. This use of TSR's trademark by Mayfair Games is not approved by TSR.' (empasis mine)
So back to the stats for a second; a lot of it is easily recognisable (THACO as opposed to THAC0 is a good example, ST is STR, IT is INT, etc.) however some will baffle the casual reader:
- HTK - Hits to Kill - equates to Hit Points
- IN - Insight - equates to Wisdom
- SM - Stamina - equates to Constitution
- AP - Appearance - equates to Charisma.
Obviously, the adventure itself centres around a group of 5 Lich Lords who have awoken and seek to conquer the world from the buried northern City of OOL. The section on Liches deals with a paragraph on how to roleplay a Lich Lord then moves onto describing the Pentacate (as the module refer to the 5 Lich Lords as) in paragraph format. This is required reading for the module itself as it deals with some of the Liches
betraying their leader, Mortebus in various ways and forms
The last section on the Liches details their statistics; each Lich is given two sets of stats; one in a 'Weakened State' and 'Normal State' The weakened state represents the liches without the power of their (spoiler)
Crowns of Eternal Night. The Crowns themselves appear to be only incidental plot devices, not artifacts as I had hoped, so that was a minor disappointment.
Just a word on the stats of the Pentacate, if one was to run this adventure using AD&D or OSRIC, or even Castles and Crusades, I would certainly recommend the DM rebuild each Lich from the ground up; Mortebus, the leader of the Pentacate is my case in point; Mortebus is listed as a (spoiler)
Level 25 Magic User in his weakened state and as a Level 25/15 Magic User Cleric in his normal state (along with access to 5 Wishes!).
In the centre of the module, you are treated to an A3 double-sided map made of cardstock. One side details the overland trek from the City of Saybalod to Ool in the north, the other side details the dungeons of Ool itself, along with a small cutaway diagram how Ool is organised. My gripe is that because it is double sided, players wanting to view the overland map deftly prevents the DM from accessing the Ool maps. No small deal to photocopy them ,but the trust issues abound just by having the DM maps printed on the other side. No too much for me and will make my head explode. The players will have to make do with a B+W photocopy of the Overland map.
The overland map works hand-in-hand with the area encounters within the first part of the adventure. Each area, (such as Tanglewood, Fogdrop, etc, have a number (either 1, 2 or 3) of keyed encounters which may occur on the roll of a die, whereas other areas have sequential encounters that will occur if the PCs enter the area. Another factor is time
which deals with the Crowns of Eternal Night and the countdown their activation - or in game terms, the usage of the Normal Stats for the Liches
On the plot, the PCs are tasked with (spoilers)
destroying the Pentacate. Along the way, they will meet several allies who will insist that the players look for a holy sword that once belonged to a paladin who was instrumental in defeating the Pentacate the first time around. Regardless if the PCs decide to trek after the sword, they will be treated to some encounters with agents of the Pentacate, as well as one of the Pentacate himself before the final showdown in Ool. For me, this worked surprisingly well as it set up a number of memorable moments with these villains. at the time, I was reminded of being in the Dragonlance setting in terms of story arc. I had a small issue with the holy sword (Spellbane), being +5 for a Paladin, but +2 for anyone else. Even though it was a holy sword, it still had a capricious nature and on a roll of 01 or 02 on d00, meant that the sword would not fight for you, which to me seemed against the very nature of the swords purpose. Personally, I would have liked to see a more generic weapon fit for any user. The impression I get is that any prospective party needs a Paladin to finish the adventure successfully; something that does not sit well with me. Still, it is not a big issue to change it.
The City of Ool itself is dark and atmospheric, however some encounters seemed a little arbitrary and others needed more explanation, such as
why would demons, daemons and devils be in the same area together? And Theodros the Death Kn..er Soldier -- totally underused, in my opinion.
It is also of worth to note that there are a few format issues as well; the magical items are not italicized and there is some DM information whcih has been mistakenly formatted as read aloud text (Sections 45 and 55 spring to mind). On a positive note, I found the overland sections done well and the few internal illustrations captured the feel of what Lich Lords is about.
As a collector of esoteric...things, I bought it after having been a player who got through it (though my recollection of events is markedly different to the printed version) and since then, I have ninjaed bits and pieces over time; a name here, an encounter there. When i played it, the feeling of a coming apocalypse worked for me. This would serve as a great finale to a campaign after it had some work done on the stats and the PC aides were spread out a bit further. It is hard to be objective about something that is subjective for me. I like it as I have fond memories of having played it, but as a DM, I'd probably pan it because of the prep work that needed to be done.
It would be good for a one-off/one-nighter, provided the DM is willing to do the groundwork for it.
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