You would think that with Asticlian Gambit (1992) straying away from the plot of the Dark Sun novels that it would be the least on-rails of the Dark Sun adventures, but you’d be wrong! There is a caravan. The players are going to join it, one way or another. They are going to go to Gulg. They are going to meet the queen and she is going to throw them in the dungeon. Hey, there’s a dungeon, though! I think this is the first one in Dark Sun? But, you know, not that kind of dungeon.

They get out and become nobles by participating in a hunt that uses a flowchart that I…I don’t understand what is going on in this part and the flowchart seems broken. They then wind up in Nibenay and the Shadow King makes them go back to Gulg to steal the queen’s necklace. There’s a dungeon that also involves a flowchart, which is maybe the worst way to design a dungeon?

Hey, at least there is an encounter with a cistern fiend, one of my favorite Dark Sun monsters.