Review Originally Published January 3rd, 2001

What I think I like best about Forge: Out of Chaos is the fact that it manages – while avoiding the common pitfall of market ignorance in assuming that D&D is the only game which has ever existed – to unabashedly bask in the glory of “Old School” gaming. Dungeon crawls, monster bashing, ornate pantheons of gods – all the fun stuff that used to fill you with awe and pulled you into gaming in the first place.

And maybe its just nostalgia overcoming me at the grand ol’ age of twenty, but I love this stuff.

So when I opened this game up and found, immediately within its cover, a twelve-page retrospective on the gods and creation of the world of Juravia, my inner child did a little dance, scampered around for a bit, and then kicked up its heels for a really fun ride.

It’s just too bad that the next two hundred pages failed at every single level.

It’s just too bad that the designers, for reasons beyond the comprehension of man, decided to randomly generate attributes by rolling 2d6 + .1d10. (Yes, you read that right: You generate decimals.)

It’s just too bad that this skill-based system utterly fails to describe the rules for resolving any sort of non-combat action. (Yes, you read that right: If it doesn’t involve swinging a weapon or casting a spell, there aren’t any rules for it in Forge: Out of Chaos.)

It’s just too bad that, after those twelve pages of creation myth, not a single scrap of information about the world of Juravia is contained in this book.

It’s just too bad that the art in this book is not only consistently mediocre, but regularly ripped off from other sources. (I don’t care – adding wings to the giant serpent does not disguise the fact that you ripped off Michael Whelan‘s cover for Conan the Usurper.)

It’s just too bad that Basement Games, like so many other would-be game publishers, not only felt a need to reinvent the wheel – but make it in the shape of a square.

Forge: Out of Chaos tries to move beyond D&D and embrace the larger tool-set of game design tools available today, but somewhere along the way it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

Writers: Mike Kibbe, Paul Kibbe, Mark Kibbe, Jim Childs, Scott Hawkey, Blair Hughes, and Loraine Sivoy
Publisher: Basement Games Unlimited, LLC
Price: $19.95
Page Count: 202
ISBN: 1-892294-00-1
Product Code: BGU1001

As described in my review of Enchanted Worlds, during 2000 I was trying to diversify the markets for my RPG reviews. This included seeking paying gigs from outlets like Games Unplugged and Pyramid Magazine, but also from websites like the long-defunct and, as far as I can tell, almost completely forgotten Gaming Outpost. At the time, though, the Gaming Outpost actually a pretty big deal in the online RPG community, and publishers would send them review copies.

I was kind of a sucker for weird, obscure, and unusual games, so I think Graveyard Greg, who ran the site, would send me the stuff that nobody else was willing to take.

I was looking for diamonds in the rough. Unfortunately, I didn’t find one here.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 41C: I’ll Be Seeing You

They returned naturally to the question of their lodgings: Should they go? If so, where?

Jevicca suggested the Nibeck Street mansion. It was currently abandoned, it would give them a base of operations as close to the Banewarrens as they might care to have, and it would let them defend the entrance to the Banewarrens.

On the other hand, as Agnarr put it, “Living over the hellmouth? No thanks.”

After Arveth’s assassination attempt in the previous journal entry, the PCs were highly motivated to figure out what their permanent — and secure! — home base in Ptolus would be.

Wanting to establish a permanent residence wasn’t an entirely new thread in the campaign, however. As the GM, in fact, I was kind of surprised it hadn’t happened already.

When I was initially ginning up the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, of course, I had anticipated that the Ghostly Minstrel would serve as their initial home base:

• It was a well-detailed location.
• There were cool, poster-sized maps of the inn to enhance play.
• I had positioned the inn as central to the mystery of the PCs’ missing time.

But then, during character creation, Tithenmamiwen unexpectedly ended up being from Ptolus. As described here, the initial pitch was that, although the campaign would be set in Ptolus, none of the PCs should be from the city, but this shifted as we developed Tee’s character background. This meant that Tee actually owned a house in Ptolus, and I assumed it was quite likely that the group would end up staying there:

But when the PCs went there, way back in Session 1, something unexpected happened:

Returning to her house, Tee found everything undisturbed – essentially as she had left it, except for a thick covering of dust. With a distracted, almost manic air, she immediately set to spring cleaning the place. Others in the group offered to help, but they had not gotten far into the work when Ranthir suddenly came to a stop: “If we’ve been back in this city for two weeks and you have not returned to this place… Perhaps there was a reason for that?”

Tee stopped what she was doing. It seemed to tear her up inside, but she was forced to admit that Ranthir was right. They left and she locked the door behind them.

And, with only a couple small exceptions, the PCs, in order to keep her friends and family safe, have not returned to Tee’s mothballed home.

When Tor’s player joined the campaign, they really wanted the group to get a house. It was something that they, as a player, had always wanted to do in a D&D game, but had never had the opportunity to actually make it happen.

I fully expected that this would happen, so I reached out and grabbed Rosegate House from the Ptolus sourcebook (pictured at the beginning of this post).

The PCs in Monte Cook’s original Ptolus campaign were gifted Rosegate House, and he set it up as a resource specifically for GMs like me who had players looking for a house in the city. (One of the great things about Ptolus as a setting is that, having been born from actual play, it’s chockablock with these kinds of practical tools and toys.)

But for whatever reason, despite often talking about it (both at the table and away from it), the PCs never did it. They never actually went looking for a house on sale. (I was surprised that even in this session, as they were actively exploring a bunch of different options, it didn’t actually come up.)

The other major candidate that had been floating around for awhile was Pythoness House, which had first appeared as an adventure location before being cleared out by the PCs. (As I’ve previously discussed, Pythoness House also has awesome graphical resources that were published for it.) I suspect that if the players hadn’t just ensconced Sir Kabel and the Order of the Dawn in Pythoness House a few sessions earlier, that this would, in fact, have been their solution. But since Pythoness House wasn’t currently available (and was also now tangled up in Church politics), it no longer seemed like a viable alternative.

For whatever reason, I had not expected them to approach Lord Zavere about the possibility of staying at Castle Shard. (If I recall correctly, that didn’t work out because they blew their Charisma check.)

PLAYER RENOVATIONS

At this point, therefore, I had actually expected the players to have long since left the Ghostly Minstrel. (Although I did hope that it would still be a place they’d visit as a social hub.)

Instead, with other options not quite panning out for a bunch of different reasons, the PCs ended up doubling down on the Ghostly Minstrel.

Which was great!

When the PCs settle into a long-term home base, I think it’s almost always a good idea to create a map of it. First, I think it makes it feel more like a real, concrete place to the players. Second, the odds that at some point they’ll get involved in a fight or some similar action scene there is approximately 110%.

In this case, as I mentioned above, there was already a great one for the Minstrel (and we’d been using it for a while):

Second Floor of the Ghostly Minstrel

Once the PCs have a home base, though, the moment will almost inevitably come when they want to remodel the joint.

So they decided to stay where they were. Instead of hiding, they would bunker down. They laid out a plan for remodeling an entire wing of the Ghostly Minstrel: A false room with a secret door would be used as a pass-thru to a real suite of other rooms connected by new, interior doors.

They spoke with Tellith, who agreed to the remodel if they paid for it and if they also paid at a year’s rent in advance for the rooms they would be converting. This done, they spent several thousand crowns and arranged for more than twenty contractors (including several master craftsmen) to install the secret door, punch thru the two new connecting doors, and to strengthen the security on the existing doors. They also hired an arcanist to ward the windows with permanent alarms. And then they spent even more money to speed a project that should rightfully take weeks until it would take only two days to complete. On top of all that, Tee set aside enough money to pay every single person working on the project a hefty bonus to forget that they had ever worked on it.

Nasira was somewhat taken aback by the sheer amount of money they were able to throw at the project (more than 5,000 crowns when all was said and done). And while the project surely tapped deeply into their resources, they all felt it was an investment worth making.

Which is also great! It’s how the PCs can truly take ownership over a space and make it definitively theirs.

Once the PCs start making major modifications, though, what do you do with your beautiful maps? Well, sometimes you’ll end up just making an all-new map. More often than not, though, I’ll us a map patch like this one:

These alter just the section of the map that has been changed. Sometimes I’ll apply the match digitally and simply print out a new copy of the full map. In this case, I just printed out a copy of the map patch itself. Several sessions later, when the renovations were complete, I was able to present the patch to the players and let them actually add it to the map themselves — a little metagame ceremony that let them share in their characters’ excitement at touring their new rooms.

You can find other map patches I’ve done for cities and wilderness maps here and here.

To create map patches like these, I simply load the map into a graphics editing program like Photoshop (scanning it first if necessary). Then a little judicious copy-and-pasting combined with the clone tool generally lets me use elements of the original map as a palette for the new one. For location maps like the Ghostly Minstrel, seek out:

• Clean sections of wall without surrounding décor. (You’ll likely need both straight walls and corners.)
• Empty floor tiles.
• Doors and windows.

Other elements can also be useful, obviously, but if you can get these basics in place, you can usually do almost anything.

You might also find it useful to seek out other maps by the same cartographer to source other useful elements while maintaining the same visual style.

It’s vitally important, of course, to keep the resolution of the patch synced to the original image so that applying the patch (whether digitally or physically) can be seamless and easy.

Campaign Journal: Session 41D – Running the Campaign: Aftermath of Adventure
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

THE ALLIANCE MIRAGE

When the false dawn was still cresting the sky, Tee arose while the others still slept and left the Minstrel. She headed up to Castle Shard, where she found that even with the early morning hour Kadmus was waiting for her. He escorted her to Lord Zavere, who it seemed had arisen not long before.

“I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning,” Tee said. “But I have news about the Idol of Ravvan.”

Zavere was more than interested when Tee showed him the letter they had recovered from the Temple of the Ebon Hand concerning the Dawnbreaker, the Argent Dawn, and the unnamed “idol”. Zavere wasn’t as certain as Tee that the letter referred to the Idol of Ravvan, but he agreed that it was a definite possibility. “Keep me informed of anything you might discover.”

“We will,” Tee promised. “But there was one other matter.”

“What is it?” Zavere asked.

Tee quickly supplied him with an abbreviated version of the ambush from the night before.

“Is everyone all right?”

“Yes,” Tee said. “Barely. But we don’t know where we can go that would be safe. We were wondering if… Well, we were wondering if it would be possible to stay at Castle Shard.”

Zavere pondered it for a long moment, but then he said, “I’m sorry, but it’s not possible. Your relationship to Rehobath is too well known. If I were to give you or your comrades sanctuary – particularly Sir Tor – it would be seen as Castle Shard aligning itself with Rehobath.”

Tee chose her next words carefully. “I don’t trust Rehobath any more than anyone else should.”

“Be that as it may,” Zavere said. “It’s ultimately a matter of public perception, not reality. I have no desire to tip the scales in this matter. Nor do I want to antagonize the Commissar in this. The situation is simply too delicate.”

“I understand,” Tee said with a resigned sigh, and left to rejoin the others for breakfast at the Minstrel.

THE PACTLORDS OF THE QUAAN

As they were settling down to their meal, they were surprised to see Jevicca come through the front doors of the inn.

“Good morning!” she said cheerfully, waving her red-glass arm towards them.

“Jevicca!” Agnarr said, a huge grin creasing his face. “What brings you here this morning?”

“I have news,” she said. “We’ve identified the bone ring you gave me.”

‘Really?” Tee said.

“They belong to the Pactlords of the Quaan,” Jevicca said.

“The who of the what now?” Elestra said.

“They’re not very well known,” Jevicca said, “And they’re mostly dismissed as a minor criminal organization. They’ve also got a minor reputation in the slave trade.” (Tee’s ears perked up at the mention of the slave trade. Could there be a connection to the Brotherhood of the Blooded Knife?) “But the reality is something more than that.

“There is an ancient book known as the Tome of the Shadow Dragons. Or perhaps it is many books. Only fragments of it have ever been found, and even these are few and hard to decipher. This book speaks of the “teachings of Jessuk”, a body of lore dedicated to the warping and corruption of natural life – the transformation of the natural races into abominations.

“These arts were practiced en masse by both the Banelord and Ghul, among others. The Pactlords are the descendants of the creatures created by them. They hold themselves superior to the “natural races” and, ultimately, seek to subjugate us.

“The group is held together through a living pact which is focused through these bone rings. The nature of the pact – and the force which binds it – is a secret kept by the Pactlords themselves. As is the nature of the ‘Quaan’.

“They have never been seen to pose any true threat, but they consider themselves – like Ghul before them – to be the natural heirs of the Banelord’s secrets. This explains their interest in the Banewarrens, but that doesn’t appear to be the group’s only current activity: Slave raiders have been prowling the caverns around Kaled Del and attacking the trade caravans of the Delvers’ Guild. Some of the raiders have been reported to be wearing ‘rings of bone’.”

THE FORTRESS SUITE

Jevicca’s briefing gave them a lot to chew on. She asked after their progress with the Banewarrens, but there wasn’t much they could tell. (And even less that they wanted to.) As they turned to amiable chatting over the rest of their breakfast, they returned naturally to the question of their lodgings: Should they go? If so, where?

Jevicca suggested the Nibeck Street mansion. It was currently abandoned, it would give them a base of operations as close to the Banewarrens as they might care to have, and it would let them defend the entrance to the Banewarrens.

On the other hand, as Agnarr put it, “Living over the hellmouth? No thanks.”

Greyson House was another abandoned building, but, as Tee pointed out, “The bad guys have already looked for us there. It’s no safer than here.”

“We could just go to another inn,” Elestra suggested.

“But that has all the same problems,” Tor said.

“Only if we stay in the same place,” Tee said. “We could just load everything we own into bags of holding and stay in a different inn each night.”

But that would prove troublesome for Ranthir’s research.

Tor proposed, as he often had in the past, that they buy a house somewhere in Ptolus.

“But that has the same problems, too,” Tee said. “It’s only a matter of time before they track us down, and then we’re vulnerable again.”

If they needed fortifications, then perhaps Pythoness House would be a solution. But Sir Kabel was already there, and while the others might be able to make that work, Tor would only be able to stay there if he abandoned his position within the Order of the Dawn. They briefly considered Tor staying at the Godskeep or the Holy Palace, but splitting the party seemed like a bad idea – particularly if it meant burrowing even deeper into the politics of the church.

Security through obfuscation, as Ranthir pointed out, was playing with fire: They could reset the clock, but eventually their new home (wherever it might be) would be found. And once it was found, they became vulnerable.

So they decided to stay where they were. Instead of hiding, they would bunker down. They laid out a plan for remodeling an entire wing of the Ghostly Minstrel: A false room with a secret door would be used as a pass-thru to a real suite of other rooms connected by new, interior doors.

They spoke with Tellith, who agreed to the remodel if they paid for it and if they also paid at a year’s rent in advance for the rooms they would be converting. This done, they spent several thousand crowns and arranged for more than twenty contractors (including several master craftsmen) to install the secret door, punch thru the two new connecting doors, and to strengthen the security on the existing doors. They also hired an arcanist to ward the windows with permanent alarms. And then they spent even more money to speed a project that should rightfully take weeks until it would take only two days to complete. On top of all that, Tee set aside enough money to pay every single person working on the project a hefty bonus to forget that they had ever worked on it.

Nasira was somewhat taken aback by the sheer amount of money they were able to throw at the project (more than 5,000 crowns when all was said and done). And while the project surely tapped deeply into their resources, they all felt it was an investment worth making.

THE NEXT STEP

While they were still drawing out their plans for the new suite, an invitation arrived.

INVITATION TO THE CRUISE OF THE VANISHED DREAM

We had hoped that this invitation might arrive on a most triumphant note – giving you proper congratulations on the apprehension of Shilukar and the ending of his scourged blight upon the city. With the recent news of his escape within the prison, that triumphant note is perhaps muted, but your accomplishment was nonetheless notable and worthy of great praise and equally great appreciation.

To whit, it would be our honor – both in light of the duty you have done for us and for those sundry other accomplishments which you have achieved in the name and for the betterment of our fair city – to attend upon us for a grand cruise of the Vanished Dream at the estates of House Abanar upon the Fifth of Noctural to celebrate the last rays of the year’s light and the coming of the Days of Night.

Dered Abanar
Merchant Prince of the Abanars

Ranthir quickly penned a positive and elegant acceptance, and they dispatched it by courier.

While Tee was drawing up the contracts and making the other arrangements necessary for the suite, Tor went to the Godskeep to continue his training with the Order of the Dawn. While he was there, he was informed that Rehobath had requested a meeting with him that evening at 7 o’clock. Tor wasn’t told what the meeting was about, but he could only suspect it had something to do with Dominic’s denunciation of Rehobath the day before.

Elestra, meanwhile, was checking the morning newssheets. The headlines were considerably less dramatic than the day before (“What a Whopper! Stranded Jellyfish as Big as a House!”), but there was also a report of another brutal murder in Oldtown: A priest had been killed on the Columned Row. His head had been ripped open, just like the woman who had been killed the night before on Flamemoth Way.

On her way back to the Ghostly Minstrel, Tee stopped by the Delvers’ Guild and left a message posted for Arveth:

Arveth—

Eye’ll be seeing you.

“Do you think she’ll break my code?”

Running the Campaign: Home Base Renovations – Campaign Journal: Session 41D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

M., T. & J. ask:

I needed to roll up some treasure in the middle of my last session, so I cracked open the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, but couldn’t find any treasure tables! What gives?!

This question seems to be in high demand at the moment and my Let’s Read reactions to the new Dungeon Master’s Guide on the Alexandrian Discord and Bluesky seems to have people reaching out to me for answers.

I understand why the question is being asked. I was also a little confused when I first looked at Treasure in the new rulebooks. But there is a method to the madness, even if the essential information has been spread out between multiple chapters, and once you understand the procedure, it’s pretty straightforward.

TREASURE TYPES

Monsters are assigned a suggested treasure type, often including a treasure theme, in the Monster Manual.

Monetary Treasure can be coins, trade bars, trade goods, gems, or art objects. (DMG p. 213-15) When a monetary treasure value is determined, as described below, use it as a budget to “purchase” an appropriate mixture of monetary treasure.

Individual Treasure: Roll on the Random Individual Treasure table (DMG, p. 120) to determine how much monetary treasure they have.

Treasure Hoard: Roll on the Random Treasure Hoard table (DMG, p. 121) to determine monetary treasure and number of magic items. Then roll on the Magic Item Rarities table (DMG, p. 218) for each magic item to determine its rarity. Finally, use the Treasure Theme to determine their nature.

TREASURE THEMES

The page number for each theme’s random magic items table is given below, as well as the nature of their monetary treasure.

• Arcana (DMG 326): Gemstones
• Armaments (DMG 328): Coins, trade bars.
• Implements (DMG 329): Coins, trade bars, trade goods.
• Relics (DMG 330): Art objects.

Hoard – Any: For this treasure type, monetary treasure can be of any type. Roll 1d4 for each magic item to randomly determine which theme table to roll on (1 = Arcana, 2 = Armaments, 3 = Implements, 4 = Relics).

BONUS: RANDOM MONETARY TREASURE TYPE

One tool missing from the Dungeon Master’s Guide that I think would be useful is a Random Monetary Treasure Type table. This would be useful for both individual treasure and the Hoard – Any treasure type. Use it when you’re having trouble deciding what to use or just to inject a little random inspiration into your adventure.

TABLE: RANDOM TREASURE TYPE

Use this table when you just want to generate one random treasure item type other than coinage. Useful for individual items, but also, for example, what a specialized merchant caravan might be carrying.

d4	Monetary Type
1	Trade Bars
2	Trade Goods
3	Art Objects
4	Gemstones

TABLE: POCKET CHANGE

The Pocket Change table is designed for rifling through an NPC’s pockets. This table has a strong bias towards the type of monetary wealth a character is most likely to be carrying around in their daily lives.

d6	Monetary Type
1-4	Coins
5	Coins + 1 Interesting Object
6	Strange Pocket Change

Interesting Object: This character is carrying mostly coins, but also one unusual item, which will usually have a value of 20% or less of their total monetary treasure. Roll on the Random Treasure Type table (above) to determine type.

Strange Pocket Change: Roll 1d3 times on the Stash & Cache table. Why the heck was this guy carrying around a rare painting and two Avernian rubies?

TABLE: STASH & CACHE

This table can randomly generate all five monetary treasure types. It has a slight bias towards coins, but should give more varied treasures. Consider this table when rolling up the monetary treasure in a Hoard or otherwise stocking a room. For example, what a hag might be keeping hidden under her cauldron or a goblin under their mattress.

d20	Monetary Type
1-8	Coins
9-12	Gemstones
13-15	Trade Bars
16-18	Trade Goods
19-20	Art Objects

PARCELS

To get a more varied stash, divide the total monetary value of the treasure into 1d3 parcels and roll on the Stash & Cache table separately for each parcel. (It’s okay if you roll the same result multiple times. That will just change the ratio between different treasure types and mix things up.)

If you want, you can obviously increase the number of parcels for large hoards. (Although, equally obviously, this will increase the amount of rolling you need to do and will tend to homogenize your treasure results.)

A generic fantasy adventure with some interesting twists on the familiar tropes of the genre. This one deserves a closer look than you might first suspect.

Review Originally Published December 29th, 2000

You’ve seen these RPG books before: Questionable cover art. Amateurish lay-out. “Compatible with any fantasy roleplaying system” (*cough* D&D *cough*).

So you think you know what’s inside: A generic adventure that could have been popped out of a cookie cutter, in a flat fantasy world rip-off populated with paper-thin logic.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Fantastic Adventure. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

So obviously you know exactly what to expect:

Evil villagers send the PCs on a quest for a nonexistent item.

Hold it…

The Fantastic Adventure takes the familiar traits of a fantasy adventure and then gives them just enough of a twist to provide an entertaining gaming experience which keeps your players just a little off-balance.

Basically the adventure goes like this: The people of Westfork have been burned by one too many adventuring parties of questionable morality in the past (just imagine that the Knights of the Dinner Table have come through town one too many times), and have hatched their own plan for revenge. Upon arriving in town the PCs are feted as heroes, but then framed as criminals and forced to seek the Anomaly Stone in order to clear their names.

However, the Anomaly Stone does not actually exist: It is the result of the nightmares of a faerie which have been imprisoned in the nearby ruins of the Auctumnix Monastery. When the PCs go there, they’ll discover the truth… and the faerie.

One last twist: While on their way to the Monastery the PCs will run across a group of horrible “monsters” (a giant, a satyr, a minotaur, and a witch orb). These guys aren’t villains, though: They’re another adventuring group, come to save the faerie (who is the childhood friend of the satyr).

STRENGTHS

In addition to the general cleverness of the central concepts driving The Fantastic Adventure, the entire adventure is set in the Red Marches. In this small slice of their Winter Dark campaign setting (which is available as a separate product), Troll Lord Games has created a really nice, generic fantasy area. The primary economy here is driven by the forest’s rilthwood trees, which are tall, white, and, in the fall, covered with bright red leaves (hence the name Red Marches). Its a simple concept, but one which results in an area which is subtly alien,  successfully capturing the essence of the fantastic without having to blow the players away with fireball-like intensity.

This is nicely done – showing a subtle creativity and attention to detail which many larger companies lack — and makes me look forward to reading the complete campaign setting.

WEAKNESSES

The Fantastic Adventure has a good idea – take the tropes of fantasy and turn them on their head – but like an injured quarterback it never runs with it. I would have liked to see the villagers deliberately send the PCs on a dangerous and misguided fool’s errand (perhaps complete with the catch that, if the PCs succeed, they will have mistakenly done a great wrong). I would have liked to see the encounter with the monstrous adventuring group (a nice twist in and of itself, mind you) designed so that there was a greater chance of the PCs mistakenly attacking their counterparts. And so forth. There is a hesitancy about embracing the really cool idea on which The Fantastic Adventure is based which, unfortunately, flaws what had the potential to be a really outstanding module.

The other problems here are entirely aesthetic: The cover artwork and lay-out on the product is poorly done – lending the entire product an extremely amateurish feel.

CONCLUSION

The Fantastic Adventure is a little shaky, but the foundation is fairly solid – with a couple of easy tweaks you could easily transform this one into a real winner. A couple of other nice touches definitely make this one worth the measly $5 the Troll Lords are asking for it.

Note: Troll Lord Games is planning to release The Fantastic Adventure, along with the modules Mortality of the Green and Vakhund — which I hope to be reviewing shortly – on a CD-ROM, complete with D20 conversions. You can check out their website.

Style: 2
Substance: 3

Grade: B-

Title: The Fantastic Adventure
Authors: Mac Golden
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: Sword & Sorcery
Price: $5.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-3-4
Production Code: TLG1301
Pages: 24

I’ll be honest, until this review cued up in my reprint queue, I had completely forgotten The Fantastic Adventure. It was a weird opportunity to read a review I had written while having no actual memory of the book I was describing.

What I do remember, and what this review reminded me of, is how much I truly adored Troll Lord’s campaign setting. Even now it’s hard to describe what I found so enchanting about it. There was something richly textured and deeply mythological. There was beautiful imagery woven into a tapestry that tempted you to step through into its fantastic realms.

Several years later I ended up working on a couple of books for Troll Lord Games. I wish I had been paid for them.

The Fantastic Adventure has been updated and re-released several times: Under the D20 System trademark for D&D 3rd Edition, then for Troll Lord’s Castles & Crusades game, and then again for D&D 5th Edition.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.