Last year, I was sure I posted about the last of the first edition AD&D products. I was wrong. Turns out I somehow missed some big ones, like S2: White Plume Mountain (1979, 1981). This is one of the first TSR D&D modules written by someone who wasn’t Gary Gygax and the company’s first funhouse dungeon. It began life as a sort of portfolio piece cobbling together the best rooms from five years of Lawrence Schick’s dungeons, which he presented to Gygax as part of a job interview. He got the job and, perhaps somewhat to his chagrin, White Plume Mountain got on the publishing calendar.

I love it. Players enter the volcano lair of a mage, Keraptis, who stole three powerful magic weapons. In theory, they’re supposed to retrieve the weapons for their rightful owners, but we all know how that will go. One of them is a sword named Blackrazor that is a clear, uh, reference to Stormbringer (Schick has expressed embarrassment at how obvious this homage is). The others are Whelm, a dwarven hammer, and Wave, a trident that catastrophically dehydrates people.

The dungeon is nonsensical in the best possible way. None of the rooms are remotely rational. Most present some sort of puzzle or clever trap. Unlike Tomb of Horrors, though, there is a spirit of fun in the proceedings. It’s a funhouse dungeon, after all, people don’t usually go into funhouses to die horribly. Memorable encounters include a giant crab with a magic bracelet who lives in a balloon at the bottom of a boiling lake. The terraced room, which pits players against giant crayfish, sea lions, giant scorpions and a pair of manticores is also pretty great. The manticores feature feathered wings, which is unusual for D&D. They also, hilariously, have clipped wings, so they can’t fly. Maybe shoulda just made them real manticores, huh?

The second edition expands the module from 12 pages to 16, mostly to jam in more art. One piece is the full page Erol Otus map, which features the mountain and its environs, including the lair of Dragotha, the undead dragon — a figure who capture the imagination of a generation of players despite not appearing further in the adventure.

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DA3: City of the Gods (1987) is the last of the Blackmoor modules that I own. The fourth wasn’t even written by Arneson, so I am probably not missing much. Apparently, he didn’t write much of this one, either.

This is like Barrier Peaks gone horribly wrong. So, Stephen, the guy who founded the Temple of the Frog? He’s the security officer for a space ship cut from the same cloth as Star Trek. They were stranded and the main group wanted to go into suspended animation until they were rescued, but Stephen and a small group wanted to go and explore. They were ordered to stand down because of a non-intervention policy, then mutinied, then fled. Now Stephen is trying to retake the ship from his old Captain and the rest of the crew. That ship is the titular “City,” which is presented in a loose, rather rushed fashion that asks more from the DM than it should.

Maybe if I was more of a Trek guy I could get into this, but I am not. I find it profoundly tedious. Even the high-tech stuff, which I usually enjoy in the context of D&D, is unexciting and somewhat insulting. A grenade launcher called a wand of death eggs? Ugh. There are lightsabers, too.

Kind of love Doug Chaffee’s cover art; I wish it was more indicative of the contents. Holloway on the interior. He’s well suited for this thanks to his time on Paranoia, but it doesn’t really help. 

Been under the weather all week, so I have nothing particularly interesting to show and tell (no new podcast next week, too, alas, as Hambone is down for the count, too). Stay safe out there with the blizzard and all the fascists and such, though. Really looking forward to shoveling a foot of snow while my lungs feel like they're full of glass, lemme tell ya.