This is Crystal Barrier (1987), a module whose attempt at cleverness is admirable, but ultimately a failed experiment. Boris Vallejo on the cover again (a pretty good one, at that). Interior art by Todd Hamilton and Jeff Bush. I don’t want to say it is bad, because it is not, but it is definitely somewhat unconventional. It also recycles at least one interior piece from War of Darkness.

OK, plot. This links in to the civil war in the Dragonlands as laid out in the Dragons Role Aids sourcebook. Ostensibly, the players are looking to destroy a drug that the bad dragons are using against the good dragons. However, in doing so, they encounter the titular barrier and fall through it into another dimension where a Necromancer is fomenting the civil war by having captured the soul of a dragon lord. This feels like an inside-out Dragonlance already, but it gets even moreso: there is some light time travel involved and Fistandantilus-like, the big twist at the end is that the Necromancer is a future version of a player character’s mage. I like this in theory, but it all happens so fast it feels similar to when a show gets canceled and they try to wrap up another season of story in the finale (actually, thinking some more, it reminds me of how Millennium got a weak send-off after its cancelation as just another episode of The X-Files). It doesn’t satisfy. Also, what the heck happens if the mage dies on the way? And wouldn’t the Necromancer be worried about that?

The module is interesting in the way it applies different rules to the world beyond the crystal barrier, in a way that I think predates the way different planes work in Manual of the Planes, which came out around the same time. The encounters there tend to rely on large numbers of monsters, though, which is a drag.