CM4: Earthshaker! is a straight-up classic, one of the best modules for basic D&D and probably the best of the modules supporting high level play. You can see why on the cover: giant robot! Truly, massively giant — it is 1,280 feet tall, taller than the Empire State Building. And it is running amok. And the only way to stop it is to traverse it’s interior, a massive, moving, mechanical dungeon, before it flattens another village. Zeb Cook delivers on this one, man.

There are politics and schemes and a whole domain detailed in the adventure, but the heart and soul of the thing is the giant automaton. It’s one of the wildest dungeons ever created for any edition of D&D and it is damn strange that it doesn’t get more love. That’s probably because the robot is the product of ancient gnomish engineering. I suspect folks don’t like technologically inclined gnomes as much as I do (and even I have my limits — just wait till August’s posts).

My very favorite part of the module, though, is the final page. Assuming the players are triumphant in stopping the robot from destroying the country, what then? They either have a gigantic robot rusting in place in the middle of a field somewhere, or they have a truly epic pile of scrap metal. What do you DO with it? The last page offers some ideas, but the real joy of this adventure is see what the hapless players come up with. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, after all!

Pretty good Caldwell cover, though I hate his insistence in dressing his women characters in living room drapes and nothing else. Ben Otero does decent enough interiors, though his name doesn’t really ring a bell beyond this. Diesel LaForce kind of outdoes himself on the maps here. The cutaway is pretty perfect. DSL has nice maps in all the CM-series modules, actually! Sabre River in particular. He’s kind of the unsung hero of 80s D&D.