This is the 1979 edition of Snake Pipe Hollow, for Chaosium’s RuneQuest RPG. Most of Chaosium’s RQ material took the form of sourcebooks or large campaigns. Snake Pipe Hollow is one of only three books from the period that is comparable to D&D’s adventure modules in size and format (the others are Apple Lane and Balastor’s Baracks), which is surprising, because Snake Pipe Hollow was probably the best designed adventure on the market at the time. OK, look, I know the cover art doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but stick with me here.
Snake Pipe Hollow presents a wilderness region and cave system that is thought out with surprising detail. Once the site of a temple of good earth deities, a terrible clash with Chaos turned the hollow into a place of horrors – these events are central to the history and mythology of Glorantha. What begins as a standard dungeon crawl reveals that complex history to players in a slow, methodical, bite-sized way. Once the scenario is done, your players will come away with a significant understanding of how the world works – the adventure is also a teaching tool for future RuneQuest games.
It is written with a fair amount of dynamism for the time. There is a good variety of creatures populating the hollow, each with their own needs and wants. Together, they form an ecosystem of sorts that makes sense, which is something of a rarity for D&D adventures of the time. How many times have you fought a monster in D&D and wondered why the hell it was in that room? The answer is usually because the DM is trying to be a dick and keep you off balance. It is possible for players to explore the Hollow and come to understand its inhabitants, even play them off against one another, in ways that are often impossible in D&D scenarios (see: White Plume Mountain, much as I love that module).
Perhaps most interesting, the authors were at great pains to include multiple plausible reasons for adventurers to visit the hollow. As a place rich in local history, it makes sense that a number of people with diverse interests would be keen to encourage adventurers to delve into the caves. More importantly, the multiple hooks provides a distinction from D&D modules, which often assume exploration to be completed in a single expedition – Snake Pipe Hollow is meant to be visited multiple times, and to change with each visit.
Not a lot of art in the book, though, aside of this kind of not good dragon snail that shows up in every subsequent edition for some reason…
PS: I wish I had thought to come up with a badass DM name like Kalvan the Sinister.
