Throne of Evil (1984)

This is Throne of Evil (1984), an adventure for the Role Aids line that has nothing to do with the Rowena painting on the cover (originally from the cover of Victor Canning’s The Crimson Chalice, 1978).

This one is a dud, pretty much. An old-fashioned cavern crawl to get access to an impregnable castle to kidnap some royal asshat for some other royal asshats in an odd remix of British history circa 1100 AD. The intrigues are petty and utterly unimportant to the primary focus of the module (unlike the last few Role Aids modules, where plot actually drives the exploration without being event-focused). There isn’t anything really wrong with the dungeon crawl, it’s more that there is nothing terribly interesting about it. As with Shadow of Evil, the monster stocking and traps feel generic. Unremarkable. I think I’d rather catastrophically bad to unremarkable. Oh, and the throne isn’t actually evil. What a let-down.

The maps are nice and Teanna Byerts’ interior illustrations are fine.

Lich Lords (1985)

Lich Lords (1985) has a very cool recycled Frank Frazetta cover and, somewhat amusingly, an ad for the just-opened Frazetta Museum on the copyright page. This is a Role Aids adventure I often see cited as a favorite. I don’t think this one is bad, really, but I do think that the Frazetta cover predisposed a lot of people to enjoy a module that is just pretty OK instead of really frickin’ good. The back cover has a real good tag line though: “Fail and see a world…CRUSHED BY SKELETAL HANDS.”

Basically, there was once an evil city named Ool (good evil city name, tbh) rule by liches, but the gods didn’t like them, so they buried the city. After centuries, the liches are awake and their evil is seeping back into the world, so go to Ool and kill ‘em. Or, novelty: go to Ool, recruit the lesser Lich lords to your side and with them, kill the High Lich or whatever he is called. Then betray the other liches, cuz the king who hired you wants all their crowns. Easy peasy.

The new high level magic and material on wishes amounts to a single page of forgettable text. Weirdly, this book has nothing to do with the Lich Lords portrayed in Undead a couple years later (and covered here last month).

The interiors are by Keith Berdak and David B. Bromley. Lots of good stuff, like the main lich and the demon in particular.

Clockwork Mage (1985)

If Swordthrust didn’t exist, I’d probably count Clockwork Mage (1985) as the most original adventure module in the Role Aids line. Like Swordthrust, this one doesn’t go for broke — you’ll immediately see ways to do things different or push the concept harder than the original designers did. I appreciate having the path laid out, but I would have much rather this have been a slam dunk rather than a lay-up (A…sports metaphor? Am I OK?).

Even playing it conservatively, though, this is an unusual and well-conceived adventure. The idea is that there are two mages who have been subjecting each other to practical jokes for a while. Recently, the clockwork mage went too far and pulled off a joke that left the mage on the cover (painted by Janny Wurts) diminished in a way she did not find funny. So she really upped her game in retaliation, trapping him in one of his clockworks in such a way that outsiders need to enact an elaborate solution to free him. This requires the party to explore the clockwork mage’s strange villa. Unlike the last few Role Aids modules, there are not a lot of typical encounters to be had. Rather, there are a lot of jokey puzzles and strange constructs (the mages “Sims”). Oh, oh, and a bard is necessary for a successful outcome! How often do you see that?

There is no real dungeon, just a rather well-kept, magic-soaked house. Merely exploring someone’s pleasant residence is a major paradigm shift and one I don’t think has been duplicated very often, if at all. I love how low the stakes seem (though the players are in some serious trouble if they upset the various folks who have a stake in the mage’s rescue, not to mention the house’s automated defenses).

Throw in excellent interior art by Erin McKee and Gerry O’Malley and some crisp maps and you’ve got the makings of an overlooked classic, I think!

Elven Banner (1985)

Alas, they aren’t all like Swordthrust and Clockwork Mage. This is Elven Banner (1985), an adventure that combines two things I don’t like very much: elves and time travel. Dawn Wilson’s cover is fine, and previously fronted Terri Wilding’s anthology Faery (1984). Teanna Byerts’ interiors seem rushed.

I honestly can’t parse the way the time travel works. Somehow the titular banner has been destroyed and if the players don’t go back in time and get an undestroyed version of it and bring it to the present, the evil forces will triumph, or something. I don’t think time travel is supposed to work like that? But, whatever. When I was in school, I’d get in trouble a lot because if I thought an assignment was a waste of my time, I just wouldn’t do it. Same feeling applies here.

If you look at the cover, you’ll see that the box that explains the compatibility with D&D, which is on the cover of every Role Aids product pretty much, covers a banner and part of the credit. So careless. I feel like that sums up the module perfectly.

Ice Elves (1985)

Argh, more elves? WTF? This is Ice Elves (1985). The cover is a recycled Boris Vallejo painting. It was originally used for Michael Moorcock’s novel The Ice Schooner. This module basically revolves around arctic survival and ice schoonering.

Look, as the late, great, Kenny Rogers once said, “You got know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” I’m gonna run. I don’t get paid enough for elves.

Mail Call

Mail Call

In addition to the little plastic goobers that became the rust monster, the owl bear and the bulette, there are six Hong Kong patchisaurs that I consider the classic forms (there are other weirdos, but those central six seem the most recognizable). Of that six, I owned five - the four-legged dragon, the huggy dragon, the lizard guy, the insectoid lizard and the spike dog. Until recently, when I finally got around to buying the humanoid armadillo on eBay. Bonus: he came in a lot with this Hong Kong sea serpent I have never seen before. I have an essay on all of them, and more, coming in the next kaiju/kawaii-themed issue of Unwinnable, which you might be interested in. Hooray for weirdo monsters!