Beneath Two Suns (1986?)

This is Beneath Two Suns. It could be the last Role Aids adventure module — it says 1986, but the catalog number is after Crystal Barrier, which is 1987, so your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, cover by Ken W. Kelly, originally from Seg the Bowman (1984) the thirty-second Dray Prescot novel by Alan Burt Akers.

A moment on Dray — he’s an earth guy who gets teleported to another planet (this happens a lot in a certain sort of genre fiction) that is sort of like Renaissance-era Florence and there are endless intrigues and beautiful women and deadly duels. In 25 years, Akers wrote 52 Prescot novels, then promptly died before finishing the 53rd, which would have definitively finished the series, which is fucking bonkers to me. Anyway, this isn’t really my sort of thing, though I can appreciate the appeal it has for fans.

It being not my thing makes it really hard to evaluate this adventure, as it is essentially a Dray Prescot simulation and oh-so-brief sourcebook for Zenicce. It assumes that the players are teleported just like Dray (you can even play as Dray — him and some folks I assume are also from the books are pre-gens). The plot involves the intrigues that surround two kidnapped princesses, one of which is Prescot’s love interest in the novels. Interestingly, the adventure isn’t concerned with preserving the canon of the fiction — it is totally content to let players fail and the princesses die. So, kind of cool, if this is your thing, I think. It is not my thing.

I do find it unreasonably funny that this is written by Troy Denning, who would go on to work on Dark Sun (and write the first batch of novels for the setting). So many suns!

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