Here we have XL-1: Quest for the Heartstone, which is quite possibly the nadir of 80s D&D modules. Silver lining: Warduke is on the cover.

XL-1 takes the rough (and silly) shared history of the LJN Toys characters sketched out in AC1: The Shady Dragon Inn and attempts to weave an entire module out of it. The results are…not good.

You are on a quest for the titular Heartstone, either with your own characters or using the pregenerated stats for the LJN toy characters. The structure is similar to a lot of other X-modules – two wilderness zones followed by a dungeon crawl. There are attempts to make this a prestige sort of adventure, with illustrated handouts in the mode of the S-series modules, nice art and maps, but that can’t hide the fact that the actual design was phoned in.

Worse, the adventure tries to incorporate as many of the monsters that LJN turned into toys as it can. Those encounters all have the note: “You may use the MONSTER NAME™ Monster produced by LJN Toys, Ltd. for this encounter.” Talk about blatant tie-in marketing. The problem is, the monsters in the toy line are all over the place, so using them in a single module makes zero sense. Also, use them for what? Instead of miniatures? What about the encounters that use monsters that aren’t in the toy line? Ugh.

The whole thing culminates with the Heartstone creating mirror versions of the PCs. Lawful characters get a chaotic double and vice versa. Each PC battles his opposite in what is meant to be a dramatic duel of selves, but is really just confusing and tedious. Maybe the worst D&D module I’ve read.

The worst. Warduke deserves better.