X9: The Savage Coast (1985) introduces a large area of the Known World that would be oft-revisited in coming years, though it would be largely unrecognizable. This iteration is by Merle Rasmussen and his son Jackie and takes the form of a hex crawl.

The region is intermittently settled, mostly by non-humans. There are rumors of gold deposits and lost cities. Several potential reasons to explore are given, but they all boil down to exploration for exploration’s sake – there is no narrative thread, really.

The map is huuuuuuge, but there are relatively few (16) adventure sites. Relative to the size of the map, that makes the Savage Coast feel rather…barren. Does that make this more of a point crawl? Maybe (I am a little shaky on the application of that term). It definitely makes it less than thrilling, I think, even though several of the locations (particularly the lost city) are pretty good. And hey, this module introduced us to Tortles, so its not that bad.

A much fuller Savage Coast was revealed over the course of Bruce Heard’s Voyage of the Princess Ark serial in Dragon Magazine (which is mostly mirrored in the Champions of Mystara box set). The region was further developed for the D&D 2E Red Steel box sets.

Oddly, I feel like Keith Parkinson’s cover painting has much the same energy of Jeff Easley’s cover painting for the 2E Player’s Handbook.