Let’s fill in some of the other I-series modules this week, starting with I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. I believe it is David “Zeb” Cook’s first module and…its OK. It has a lot of the rough edges you would expect from a first module, with a lot of the material feeling a bit tacked on and disjointed. However! I think it is still pretty great.

The plot is your standard lost city in the jungle yarn, with plenty of hidden treasures and deadly traps, with the main hook being a treasure map. Doesn’t get much more straight ahead than that.

But oh, the monsters! Dwellers introduces some classics into the D&D fold – yuan-ti, tasloi, mongrel men, bullywugs, the infamous yellow musk creeper and, drum roll please…the dreaded aboleth.

There’s some great illustration work, including some isometric maps. I particularly like that wasp-riding tasloi.

The thing I like most about Dwellers is that it is, essentially, a module that details an adventure site, rather than a plotty thing. Cook provides plenty of campaign hooks in an appendix in the back, and they’re certainly useful, but I enjoy the idea putting out a module that is essentially “Hey, here’s a lost jungle city you can fit into your homebrew world somewhere, if you want.”