TSR TSR Module WG5 "Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure"

[Cleon]

I was recently given a large treasure trove of 1st Edition books, magazines and modules which included Module WG5, which I had not owned or played before. I'm thinking of running it with my weekly 1st Edition gaming group. Who else has played this module? What are your thoughts?

I ran a group through it back in the day because my players fancied trying out high-level gaming, most of our D&D at the time being in the 3rd-7th level range.

Not being used to running 9th-12th level characters, there where a lot of casualties - some of the players suffered 5 or 6 character deaths before getting to the end of the module - though they always managed to have enough survivors to get the corpses back home for a raise dead, resurrection or flesh to stone.

The Terrible Iron Golem was particularly lethal and was responsible for multiple PC deaths. They eventually managed to get rid of it by polymorph other to turn a mouse into a rust monster...

A few of the other deaths were due to traps and cursed magical items, but many were down to PC carelessness. (As in casting fireball at an efreet while the party are all in a 20 foot cube room, which resulted in 75% PC casualties without harming the enemy).

They eventually got better-organized and started playing more effectively, but by then they'd got through most of the tough encounters.

Since the dungeon is fairly static and they kept on dying, the PCs were making a lot of forays into it. They'd explore about, deal with the occupants of a couple of rooms, then retreat to regroup & raise anyone who'd fallen.

Indeed, it's a bit too static, so I livened it up a bit by having Eli Tomorast occasionally move around monsters that the PCs had encountered and retreated from, and had some of the intelligent creatures go to support their neighbours when attacked. That didn't make the encounters that much trouble for the PCs, since a lot of the creatures in the lower levels are relatively weak compared to the party. Indeed, I suspect that was assumed that some of the monsters would act like that, considering many of them weren't much of a challenge as individual encounters.

By mutual consent we agreed to have a big showdown in the big hall at the lowest level between the party and Eli Tomorast, plus his assorted surviving minions - an epic fight which was the best fun we had in the whole module.

They then just had to deal with the demons in the final chambers of the dungeon and call it a day.

 

[Cleon]

It's a problematic adventure. The first level has some really inspired (and nasty) encounters on it, but there's also a lot of empty rooms without any descriptions at all. After that, the lower two levels aren't really that interesting - a few encounters that have potential, but a lot of rather boring material.

*SNIP*

Yes, that's pretty much my experience running it too.

A few other levels of RJK's castle were published in 3E stats in Dragon magazine, as I recall. @grodog could tell you where!

Dungeon #112 has Maure Castle, which is a 3rd edition update of the three dungeon levels in WG5 - Mordenkainen's Magnificent Adventure plus one additional level, "The Statuary".

Dungeon #124 has another level of Maure Castle, "Chambers of Antiquities".

 

[howandwhy99]

There's a lot of good stuff in there, but you should learn most of that by reading it. It rejects expectations, yet provides all the enjoyment one might like from a Clark Ashton Smith novel.

Dungeon design is solid though there are an unusually low number of paths between levels.

It is a high level dungeon with a single entrance - meaning it is a potential trap for any party without teleportation magic. The tunnel entrance should be level appropriate to pass through so lower level parties don't stumble in... otherwise NPCs will find it and you'll have a lot of work to do before the PCs find the module.

There is no published material on the dungeon levels and edifice above. That can be lengthy though easily solved with ruins well picked through.

There is some material for the wilderness surrounding the castle, but not enough for my tastes.

Civilized areas to retreat back to are not in place and will need to be for the multiple forays the dungeon deserves.

The WG4 module really does deserve adding the extra levels published in Dungeon Magazine & the one in the Greyhawk magazine (I'm blanking on the name). All of which are as good or better in quality to the originals.

 

[knightemplar]

There was also the Greater Halls in Dungeon 139 And the Warlock's Walk that was published on the Pied Piper website and reprinted in issue #23 of the Oerth Journal which you can get from here.

 

[grodog]

A few other levels of RJK's castle were published in 3E stats in Dragon magazine, as I recall. [MENTION=1613]grodog[/MENTION] could tell you where!

I posted this over in the DF thread, but thought someone here might find it handy:

This is my #2 most favorite adventure published for D&D after G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King.

In addition to the materials in Dungeons 112, 124, and 139, Rob wrote some more info on Maure Castle, including the Warlock's Walk level (a freebie download from the old Pied Piper web site, now on the Internet Archive @ http://web.archive.org/web/20090214...publishing.com/index.php/RobsWork/maure_casle and Oerth Journal #23 @ http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5851594/Downloads_Section/Oerth_Journal/OJ_23te.pdf was dedicated to Maure Castle. Rob published one additional pieces that's related to Maure Castle: "Advent of the Elder Ones: Mythos vs. Man in the Lake Geneva Original Campaign, 1973-1976" in AFS#2 (available at http://hallsoftizunthane.blogspot.com/), and the recently-revived Fight On! #14 was dedicated to him as well.

Further discussion and useful information on running MC is in the Paizo board @ http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/olderProducts/dungeon/maureCastle