SoloQuest 2: Scorpion Hall (1982) is the best of the three RQ solos. Unlike the previous volume, this is all one scenario. As with that book, Rick Becker delivers a cool little illustration for the cover, this time of a horrible scorpion man. He even has a couple interiors! I love the naga.

Again, the intention here is for replayability and, more, to create a “living” dungeon. As you progress through, the monsters you defeat stay dead and are replaced by different creatures. The difficulty scales with your level. Treasure you removed doesn’t replenish and, if you character dies, their corpse will remain. Of course, all of this requires some elbow grease from the player, use of their imagination and a little bit of ignoring the text about the monsters you already killed. The book is ambitious, though, and I think it largely works, though it is marred by the same hard-to-parse layout and bad jokes as the previous volume. Honestly, the jokes would be fine in a smaller dosage, there’s just too great a concentration of them, and they often undercut what would otherwise be exciting situations.