Here are the basics: it’s an electronic game. Each player controls a quarter of the board, their kingdom, and seeks to raise an army to find the three keys that allow them to lay siege to the tower and it’s evil. While they move about the board, much of the action of the game is interacting with the tower, which presents and resolves events, and generally tracks their progress. There’s a digital display, but also a number of back-lit slides featuring Bob Pepper’s art work (which correspond to events). It’s a very impressive, if finicky, bit of tech for 1981.

The game was designed to take advantage of the momentary rise in popularity of the fantasy genre generally and D&D in particular — it was very much for folks who were curious about D&D but didn’t want to be a D&D weirdo and had the money to indulge. Despite investing a staggering amount of money into the game (including on an ad featuring Orson Welles), Milton Bradley kept it on shelves for only a single holiday season because it got entangled in a lawsuit claiming the design was stolen (which it seems M-B eventually lost to the tune of $750k in 1985). Having read a bit about it, I’m not convinced that was the right result. Nevertheless, the suit certainly shortened Dark Tower’s longevity. Because of that, the small number of units produced and their relative fragility, working copies are genuinely scarce today.

Part of the problem for me is that the game came out when I was three years old. By the time I became aware of the game, it was an immediate object of interest, but already largely a ruin whenever I encountered it. One kid, whose older brother had the game, used the box as a toy chest for his monsters; the game itself was nowhere to be found. Another friend was sure he had it, but could never find it, or maybe it was busted when he did. I knew a guy in college who had a dusty, broken tower on his dresser. When I crack open the box, I feel like I’m visiting an abandoned place.

So I’ve let Return to Dark Tower fill the void. It’s a good alternative, but admittedly, something is lost in the move to modern razzle-dazzle. Bob Pepper’s art carries so much of the mystique of the original. Like Dragonmaster (but unlike most of his book cover work, oddly), the art here seems archetypal, but for a system that is beyond our knowledge. Similar to the way we can identify religious objects that are Celtic but, because they left no written record, the details of their practice are lost.

I’m loathe to spoil such a rare mystery.

[Update: Since writing this, I spoiled the mystery. We fired up the game and it made for an enjoyable time experience, a bit simple and straightforward (and complicated for one player by a glitch) that was made sort of magical by the way the tower works, sounds and focuses attention. It lacks some of the complexity and wow-factor of Return but, I think I like it a smidge more?]

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It’s about 160 pages off from Temple, but that’s OK. Temple is too big and honestly, some of the appendices and other spots could have been trimmed. This, I could handle this at the table. Having the reprint as a discreet volume is nice (for Temple, it’s only half the first book). Because it wasn’t bound by silly license terms, you can get PDFs of this too, which vastly improves its table readiness.

And, honestly, this is one of the best Dungeons & Dragons adventures ever written and it has never gotten all the love it deserves. So I think it merits this kind of decadence, this level of adoring homage, probably more than most of the other titles in the OAR line. More people should know Jennell Jaquays name in this hobby and if this beast of a book helps cement her legacy, I am all for it.

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Use code DAYLIGHT with your purchases at Noble Knight! Our friends are their friends and get 10% off all purchases on the site or in the store! Good through May 31.Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord!If  you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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Also unusual is the backstory. Though only a couple pages, (the Giants modules have like…a paragraph of set-up?) it seems like a major shift. In a nutshell: the god Mitra built a tower, the god Set got jealous and grew and evil tower out of the ground next door. Hijinx ensue, in which both towers get buried in an avalanche. Years later, a village of evil Setites live above the buried ruins, trying to destroy Mitra’s tower and murdering adventurers drawn to by rumors of treasure. There are tons of NPCs both in the village and in the dungeons, good and bad, all with their own agendas, which sets Dark Tower up to be one of the first faction crawls too. Jennell Jaquays has lined up tons of dominoes for the party to come through and knock down in unique ways, a great example of emergent storytelling.

It is also crazy non-linear. Each tower is six levels, then there are four sprawling dungeon levels connecting them, as well as the village. Lots of paths between the levels, too, including disorienting ones, like secret teleportation zones. Which, speaking of, Dark Tower is weird. Lots of gonzo elements. So many things are randomly invisible, to the point that players are going to be stubbing their toes every other room. Illusions conceal danger signs, such as the snake hair of a medusa (that’s a real mean move, honestly). There are villains who sit in locked rooms waiting for adventurers. It’s a romp, but a dangerous one: Jaquays recommends a 6 to 10 characters ranging from 7th to 11th level!

A solid gold classic, honestly. And Jaquays, with Rudy Kraft, even sort of parodied it the next year with the RuneQuest module Duck Tower, which is also a damn fine adventure.

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we journey to Jennell Jaquays’ Dark Tower, one of the best books Judges Guild’s produced and often considered one of the very best D&D adventures of all time. We chat a bit about why that is, touch on Caverns of Thracia (which will be getting its own episode shortly) and generally discuss the state of dungeon design in the late 70s. There’s also DUCKS!

This episode also includes our second Indie RPG Elevator Pitch, brought to you by Exalted Funeral, in which we chat with Amanda Lee Franck (Vampire Cruise, You Got a Job on the Garbage Barge). What’s she got cooking in the coming months? Does it involve a boat? Listen and find out!

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Follow Amanda on Twitter and Instagram. You can check out PDFs of her games on her Itch page or buy hard copies through Exalted Funeral (US) or Four Rogues Trading Company (Canada).

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Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord!If  you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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