This is the 1983 reprints of Snake Pipe Hollow for Chaosium’s RuneQuest RPG. With the exception of the cover and some new typesetting, it is identical to the 1979 version. This one boasts my favorite of the three Chaosium covers, a menacing Broo warrior by staple artist Tom Sullivan.

One of the most interesting this about the adventure is that 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.

I’d like to draw your attention to the book’s subtitle: Adventures in the Caverns of Chaos. Astute roleplayers will note the similarity between that name and the Caves of Chaos, the name of the region of exploration in the D&D module B2: Keep on the Borderlands. Both that and Snake Pipe Hollow were both published in 1979 and, as is often the case in early TSR and Chaosium products, there is a lot of (nearly) simultaneous inspiration going on (I haven’t been able to confirm the exact original publication date for Snake Pipe Hollow, but seeing as how B2 was released in December, I suspect Chaosium’s adventure was in the world first – take that for what you will).

Structurally, the regions of both modules are extremely similar: an untamed wilderness surrounding an elaborate and confusing system of interconnected cave populated by diverse monster tribes that are often at odds with each other. B2’s caves are a good deal less thought out and the whole thing hangs together a lot less realistically than Snake Pipe Hollow (you know, as realistic as caves filled with monsters can be). If you’re of the mind that B2 is one of the best D&D modules ever written, you owe it to yourself to check out Snake Pipe Hollow…