I picked up a copy of the new limited edition S-series adventure compilation Dungeons of Dread. It’s a nice hardback book that collects 4 modules released by TSR that were meant to separate the wheat from the chaff when it came to D&D players. Those modules are: Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
This new edition begins with an introduction by Lawrence Schick, author of White Plume Mountain. He briefly explains the history of the series and of each module. Following this is a short table of contents and then each of the modules presented exactly as they appeared however many years ago. If you’ve seen the AD&D reprints the quality is much the same: that is to say quite good. Like the AD&D reprints the illustrations in Dungeons of Dread seem a bit higher contrast than the originals. The art work is reproduced reasonably well, but I suspect some detail has been lost in scanning the originals for their inclusion here.
Unlike the AD&D reprints Dungeons of Dread is much more of a collectible than a gaming aid. Presenting the 4 modules together like this is nice if you just want to read them, but to use them in the game would probably be unwieldily. The illustration booklets you’re supposed to show your players are bound in the book, as are the maps for each adventure. That’s not to say you couldn’t use this book at your table, but it’s a step back in usability compared to the original TSR modules. Really, something like this would have been better presented in a box set, but no one makes box sets anymore.
If you’re a fan of the old modules this collection is well worth a look. As I don’t own the originals, the choice was simple. I picked up my copy for $30 on Amazon, which is less than i’d pay for each module used on eBay.
I’m thinking of running a Dark Sun game using the Original Dungeons and Dragons rules at some point. As such, I wanted to figure out a simpler set of rules of psionics. I thought a good first step would be to settle on rules for wild talents–people who have some small psychic ability. I wanted about half the population to have a wild talent. It turns out that if you ask a random character to roll under their random wisdom score, they’ll succeed about half the time. I wanted a set of powers that weren’t overly powerful, but still interesting enough to be used in a game. I’m curious to hear what people think.
Player’s should roll under their Wisdom score to determine if their character has a wild psionic talent. If they fail the roll the character has no wild talent; if they succeed, the amount they succeed by determines their wild talent as follows:
d
Power
0
Know Direction - The character knows which way is North.
1
Far Hearing - For one turn the character hears all sounds within 50’ as if they were being whispered directly into their ear. The character may choose what sounds to focus on.
2
Far Seeing - For one turn the character may view a scene up to 50’ away as if they were right there. They may see through walls and other obstacles, but not through lead.
3
Thought Projection - The character may communicate a brief message mentally with a creature up to 50’ away. The target understands the character, even if they share no common language.
4
Object Projection - The character may teleport a small object in their possession up to 50’ away.
5
Telekinetic Grasp - For one turn the character may manipulate small objects from up to 50’ away.
6
Spark - The character may ignite any flammable object within 50’ of them. (The “heat” this power generates is no greater than that of a candle.)
7
Levitate - For 1 turn, the character can float above the ground (up to 10’).
8
Minor ESP: For 1 turn the character may read the mind of another creature. (The character understand the creature even if they share no common language.)
9
Cell Adjustment - The character regains up to 1d3 lost hit points. (This increases to 1d6 at level 3, 1d8 at level 6, 1d10 at level 9 and 1d12 at level 12.) The character may make a Save vs. Poison to cure themselves of any non-magical disease.
10
“Invisiblity”: For 1 turn the character can completely hide his presence from up to one sentient creature per level. The target may make a Save vs. Magic to resist the character’s power.
11
Id Insituation: All sentient characters, friend or foe, within 25’ of the character feel an uncontrollable urge to eat, murder or fornicate.
12
Psychic Distress: All sentient characters, friend or foe, within 25’ of the character are immobilized for 1 turn.
13
Minor Mind Control: For 1 turn, the character may manipulate the target into doing whatever the character wants. The target will have no memory of any events that transpire while under this mind control. The target my make a Save vs. Magic to resist the mind control.
14
Minor Precognition: The character may re-roll any saving throw.
15
Psionic Defence - Once per day per level, the character may make a Save vs. Magic to avoid the effects of any psionic power that targets them. (This is in addition to any saving throws the power may allow for.)
16
Psionic Immunity: The character can not be the target of any psionic power.
17
The Haitian: no character within 10’ of the character, friend or foe, may use their psionic powers. The character also gains Psionic Immunity.
A character may use their psionic power once per day. (Psionic Immunity and The Haitian are exceptions here: they are always active.)
Gorgonmilk is the place to go for all your DIY D&D needs. I’m a particular fan of his alternate covers for the Original D&D booklets. I discovered the site recently, and it’s really quite excellent.
If you feel like you aren’t getting enough Final Fantasy in your D&D, Hack & Slash has you covered with this new class for your D&D games, the Blue Mage. Now you can play Gau from FF VI along side Celes.
As far as I can tell, TSR put out four splat books for Dark Sun that were very similar in their presentation: Elves of Athas, Dune Trader, Slave Tribes, and Veiled Alliance. Each book takes a look at a particular group, with the bulk of the books being write ups of example factions: with Elves of Athas you had example elf tribes; with Dune Trader you had example trading houses; and with Slave Tribes you had example slave tribes. Having reviewed the previous three books, it seems only fitting I take a look at the last one, Veiled Alliance by Allen Varney.
Veiled Alliance takes its name from the secret society of magic users that the book covers. The book opens with two totally throw away chapters about the alliance in general. Most of the information is silly, boring, or uninspired. You could probably just drop these chapters completely or shrink them greatly and jump to the meat of the book, the descriptions of the alliance chapters in each city-state.
One thing that makes this book interesting is that it expands on the information available about the various city-states in Athas in general. Each city-state is discussed briefly before moving on to the alliance chapter that operates within it. For each alliance chapter we learn: how to make contact with the group, how they initiate new recruits in to their order, their history, their leadership (NPCs) and information about their hideout. The fact the various alliance chapters have hideouts strikes me as odd, since the first chapter describes the alliance structure as being organized like a terrorist cell: small groups that are only aware of a few other cells. Why would an organization like that need a place to hang out? Each section also has some example adventure hooks, some better than others.
On the whole Veiled Alliance just isn’t very good. It’s definitely the weakest of these four splat books. All of these books have been overly verbose, but this one really does feel like it is mostly filler with all the tangential information about the city-states. The book does do a good job at showcasing what different sorts of Veiled Alliance themed adventures might look like. Each alliance chapter is reasonably different than the next. If you’re looking for used Dark Sun books, this feels like one you could safely skip.
I was thinking the next little web application I was going to build would be something for managing notes for a hex crawl.
One problem with the way they are published now is that you need to flip all over the place because hexes are usually listed in columns. If your players are in Hex 0101 information about Hex 0201 is going to be further away than information about Hex 0116, which seems silly. With a website you could view your hex crawl as a series of 3 x 3 grids, the hex you are on being the centre. Clicking on one of the adjacent hexes would bring up a new 3 x 3 grid with information about the new hexes the players could now move into. This would probably give you a better sense of what’s happening around a hex than the way most books present things. With a web page you could even display a big grid of all the hexes and information about each one. You could scroll around on the page to see what’s up.
The PDF version of Carcosa does a pretty good job of linking to anything and everything it can within its hex descriptions. This is something you can do quite easily with a web page. More so, you could have this cross reference information be generated automatically based on the description the user types in.
As players move around they’re going to effect the world they are wandering around in. You could track these notes and changes, updating your hex crawl as you go. You could track what the players have done, and what your NPCs are doing as well. You could see a history of what’s happened in any hex, which could be handy.
I’m curious if anyone else has thought about this stuff? Is there other stuff about running a hex crawl that could benefit from the power of modern computing?
Slave Tribes is one of the first Dark Sun splat books I bought to help me run the epic D&D campaign I never ended up running. It’s authored by Bill Slavicsek, who went on to write Elves of Athas and several other books for the setting.
If these recent reviews1 all start to sound the same, it’s because these Dark Sun splat books are all quite formulaic. Slave Tribes is structured and written in a manner very similar to Elves of Athas and Dune Trader. Once more we have a book describing some niche of Athasian society: in this books case we are obviously looking at slavery and the slave tribes–slaves who have escaped their bondage and formed their own communities.
The book presents in some detail several slave tribes. For each tribe we learn the following things: their organization, their means of existence, their origin, their location and how their village is defended, their relationship with others, how one joins the tribe, and important NPCs. Each tribe’s settlement (or caravan in one case) is described with a keyed map. This section is the bulk of the book. Most of this material seems designed to help you run these tribes in a game. Some tribes could serve as allies to a group of PCs, while some tribes will make excellent enemies.
The book begins with an overview of slavery in Athas, which isn’t particularly interesting or informative. This is followed by the description of slave tribes discussed above. That section is followed by an uninspiring discussion of life in a slave tribe. The book ends with advice on how to create a slave tribe. It more or less outlines how to produce an example tribe similar to ones found in the book. There are some lacklustre random tables to help you get started.
The interior art work is all by Baxa. If you don’t like Baxa’s artwork, you definitely won’t like his early artwork. The cover is by Brom and is super cool.
Slave Tribes is a thoroughly middle of the road splat book. There is lots of material, i’m just not sure how useful it actually is. With all of these books the presentation is so verbose I feel like a DM would need to make their own notes to help keep things straight. Still, someone else has done a lot I work for you if you need some factions and fleshed out NPCs for your game.
The last of this series of splat books is the Veiled Alliance, which I plan to read next.
The last of my recent Dark Sun purchases I read was Dune Trader. The book is a detailed look at the merchants and merchant houses of Athas. It’s similar to Elves of Athas and Slave Tribes in its overall structure: a detailed look at specific merchant houses in Athas is followed by some more general exposition on mercantile adventure.
A good chunk of the book is spent describing various factions: in this book’s case trading houses and dynasties. The major trading house of each city state is discussed. Their history, assets, current situation, how they treat people in their employ, and important NPC are all covered in some detail. This is followed by a chapter on some small trading houses, and then a chapter on Elf tribes that engage in mercantile endeavours. As with Elves of Athas, these chapter are all full adventure seeds and hooks. Between the two books, I think Elves of Athas does a better job here: these chapters in Dune Trader feel a bit too anthropological. The long history of a particular merchant house might make for some interesting flavour, but it’s probably not that useful while constructing an adventure. A lot of this book felt like fiction for people who enjoy the historical appendices or digressions often found in fantasy novels. That was certainly a part of Elves of Athas, but it felt to me like there was more going on in that book.
The end of Dune Trader includes a lot of useful information. Examples of how to run a trading campaign are discussed in some detail, with a basic set of rules on how to govern the supply and demand of trade goods. There are also examples of different sorts of trade caravans in case you wanted to run an adventure raiding or defending a caravan. There is also an example elven market and an example trade fort. A new class, the Trader, is discussed, but it strikes me as a bit silly.
I liked Dune Trader, but it’s probably pretty middle of the road as TSR splat books go. I think it would definitely be handy if you’re interested in running a Dark Sun campaign where the merchant houses play an important role, but I feel like it spends too much time trying to develop the canon of Dark Sun, and not enough time trying to show you interesting examples of what you could do with the merchant houses of Athas.
