Review Originally Published May 22nd, 2001

Every so often I read an RPG supplement and I just can’t figure out what was going through the head of the editor who green-lighted it. This is one of those books.

The D&D Gazetteer is, essentially, a 32 page excerpt from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer which was released several weeks prior to the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.. And I mean that literally: Every last scrap of information to be found in the D&D Gazetteer is to be found in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Every last bit. Honest. Scout’s honor. (Would I lie to you?)

So the question which ran through my mind as I sat down to review this product was simple: Why would you release two products with the exact same information in them?

To get an answer I went to Ryan Dancey (a VP at WotC who was previously in charge of the D&D product line), and his answer was simple: There is a segment of the D&D market which doesn’t want fully developed campaign worlds: They want a gazetteer-style product which just briefly covers the highlight of a campaign world – something which gives them a common gaming environment, but also lets them fill in the details.

Okay, I can buy that. Sort of. It still leaves questions in my mind as to why the confusingly similar names were used for the two products (especially since the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer isn’t, strictly speaking, a gazetteer), not to mention the release schedule which seemed to scream “we’re trying to rip people off who aren’t following our upcoming release schedule like a hawk” (since the unwary consumer would most likely pick up the D&D Gazetteer without realizing that the much more complete Living Greyhawk Gazetteer was coming).

But I can buy it. So, if you’re one of those people who prefer a less-developed campaign world, this is the book you want – not the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer.

So what is this, anyway?

Well, as most of you probably already know, Greyhawk is – arguably – the original D&D campaign setting; designed and developed by Gary Gygax himself and originally released in a product with a very similar format to the D&D Gazetteer itself. During the last years of TSR, however, Greyhawk – which had been steadily losing ground to the extremely popular Forgotten Realms setting – was canceled. When WotC bought out TSR, however, one of the first things they did was announce the return of “the original campaign” and, with the release of Third Edition, Greyhawk was made the de facto standard of the D&D game once more.

The D&D Gazetteer is a 32 page pamphlet which, basically, serves as a broad introduction to Greyhawk – a campaign world with nearly three decades of development behind it: The history of the world is covered in broad strokes; the significant stats of the major kingdoms are given and they are briefly described (an average of three paragraphs or so is devoted to each); major geographical forms are detailed; and major power groups are given a similarly distilled treatment. A full-color map of the world is also included. All of this is done extremely well.

In other words, the D&D Gazetteer does exactly what it’s supposed to do. I just don’t have that much confidence that a large segment of the market really has a desire for what it’s doing. I, personally, would be happier with the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer – but your mileage may vary.

One thing I have considered doing with the Gazetteer, however, is using it as a player resource. My read-through of the material here didn’t turn up any deep, dark secrets of the world which I wouldn’t be comfortable with my players knowing – and the low price point would make it comparatively easy for me to pick a copy up for all my players (or for them to pick one up for themselves). As a result, the D&D Gazetteer could, essentially, serve as  “player’s guide” to Greyhawk – although you might want to preview the material yourself before okaying it for your own campaign.

Writers: Gary Hollan, Erik Mona, Sean Reynolds, Frederick Weining, Skip Williams, Ed Stark
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: $9.95
Page Count: 32
ISBN: 0-7869-1742-3
Product Code: TSR11742

I remain confused about the decision to publish both a D&D Gazetteer and D&D Living Greyhawk Gazetteer just a few weeks apart. It actually kind of echoes my confusion with Wizards’ release schedule at the tail end of 2025, when they released two different starter sets a few weeks apart, followed by two different campaign settings in back-to-back months.

I remember even in response to this review there were people saying stuff like, “Wait… this ISN’T the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer?” and, “There’s two of them?!”

I also found the decision to make Greyhawk the “official” setting of D&D 3rd Edition, but then only releasing a single setting supplement (or, I guess two setting supplements) to be a weird one. The official explanation, if I recall correctly, alternated between “this way the DM can feel like it’s a setting they can do anything they want with” and “we’re leaving it for organized play to use,” which were basically diametrically opposed. Ultimately, I’m guessing there was just some weird internal politicking going on as a result of Dancey’s decision to ruthlessly (albeit necessarily) slash the number of D&D settings that were being published, and these weird product decisions were the result.

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

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

One of the first scenes in A Knight’s Tale is that of a crowd chanting and stomping their feet to Queen’s We Will Rock You while watching a medieval jousting tournament. Throughout the film – telling the story of a young peasant who dons armor and competes as a knight while falling in love with a princess – rock music will appear again and again, along with other anachronistic elements such as: Geoffrey Chaucer using WWF-style language while acting as the knight’s herald; a medieval dance which transforms itself into a dance party; and a host of modern colloquialisms.

When I was leaving the theater, I heard the couple behind me utter the following:

Girl: I liked it.
Boy: Yeah, but the music wrecked it.
Girl: Yeah.

These two people, my friends, are idiots. The music in A Knight’s Tale does not ruin the movie. To the contrary, the music saves it.

Let’s get one thing straight: From a certain point of view, A Knight’s Tale is cliched, trite, and predictable. From the moment you see the previews you already know everything which is going to happen in this film: The main character is going to succeed brilliantly as a knight, he’s going to win the heart of the princess, the bad guy is going to get beaten, and there’s going to be a happy ending.

End of story. Done deal.

But the minute that crowd starts stamping its feet and chanting We Will Rock You something magical happens: A Knight’s Tale imbues itself with what I can only describe as an ineffable energy – an excitement which permeates every performance, every scene, every moment.

Perhaps the only analogy that really suits is that of the roller coaster: Before you ever get on the roller coaster you know exactly what’s going to happen – you’re going to go up, you’re going to go down (really fast), you’ll probably do a couple of loop-de-loops, and then you’ll end up right back where you started. But you still get on the roller coaster because the ride is fun

The ride in A Knight’s Tale is fun. Sure, you know where you are every step of the way. “Oh,” you say, “This is the scene where the handsome young knight makes a fool of himself in front of the princess, and she is bemused.” Or: “This is the scene where the villain establishes himself as superbly talented, but cruel and heartless.” But at the same time you’re enjoying yourself.

The real key here is that A Knight’s Tale isn’t trying to fool anybody. We Will Rock You is, quite simply, the filmmaker’s way of saying: “Look, you know and I know you’ve seen this plot a dozen times. But, look, I’m not taking myself too seriously here. Kick back, relax, and let’s have fun, okay?”

The couple behind me probably thought this movie was historically accurate except for the bizarre musical numbers. This movie ain’t for them – they don’t get the joke.

And, of course, most of use have already heard from the historians who are so tightly wound up that Shakespeare in Love gave them a aneurysm. This movie ain’t for them, either – they couldn’t get a joke if it can labeled with a disclaimer.

This movie is for people like you and me, who can kick back and enjoy something on its own terms. For us, this movie is pure fun. So go grab yourself a ticket, a bucket of popcorn, and a large soda.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Director: Brian Helgeland
Writer: Brian Helgeland
Distributor: Sony Pictures

A Knight’s Tale is like a fine wine: Every time you come back to it, you can savor it in new ways.

This movie review came out of the same gestalt as my previous review of The Mummy Returns: I was moving a forum discussion into a review. At the time I considered doing more of these film reviews for RPGNet, but I ended up drifting away from them instead. Checking the Reviews page, it looks like it’s been a hot minute since I did a movie review here at the Alexandrian, too.

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

An excellent overland adventure, organized to make the GM’s task simple and the player’s experience memorable.

Original Review Posted May 21st, 2001

Before WotC’s OGL and D20 trademark license came along and allowed them to release products like A Lion in the Ropes and The Malady of Kings, Troll Lord Games was producing generic fantasy adventures. As with many products of their kind, the production values on these generic modules were weak. But in the case of Troll Lord, the modules were cheap enough to match those production values ($5), and the content itself was highly memorable (if sometimes in need of some fix-up work). These modules are now being updated to D20 (check out their website), and are – I think – worthy of your attention.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Mortality of Green. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

One of these modules was (and is) The Mortality of Green by Stephen Chenault. Set within the Darkenfold Forest, The Mortality of Green focuses upon the Druidic Council’s efforts to recover the forest from the evil which has long possessed it. Although the task will be long and arduous, the Council is attempting to offer the denizens of Darkenfold hope by having Cornelius the White carry a sapling of the Great Tree to the woodsmen of Rangers Knot, who will plant it in a secret grove whose ground shall be sanctified. In turn, the grove (and sapling) will begin to heal the Darkenfold.

Unfortunately, deep within the forest lives a sentient tree named Gristlebones. Gristlebones is twisted, old, and corrupt. He sends one of his allies – Quagmire the Troll – to intercept Cornelius and steal the sapling. Which Quagmire does.

Enter the PCs, who stumble across the dying Cornelius – who attempts to extract an oath to recover the sapling and fulfill his failed mission. The PCs’ attempt to fulfill this oath will lead them throughout the Darkenfold as they seek to catch Quagmire before he can deliver the sapling to Gristlebones, who will corrupt its powerful magic for his own purposes.

STRENGTHS

When I was first being exposed to the adventures being produced by Troll Lord Games, I was immediately struck by the extremely memorable environments in which they were being set. All of them take place within the After Winter Dark campaign setting (which I have reviewed elsewhere on RPGNet). Despite this, however, their unique – and compelling – elements are still presented in a fashion which allows them to be inserted seamlessly into any sufficiently generic campaign world.

The Mortality of the Green, of course, is no exception to this. Stephen Chenault is very careful to present the Darkenfold in such a way that it is not simply rendered into the meaningless background noise of the stereotypical “evil forest”. The Darkenfold is given a specific character, history, and geography – playing upon familiar fantasy themes, but establishing itself as something memorable unto itself.

With his setting established, Chenault then proceeds to develop upon it an excellent overland adventure. As a general rule, I find that overland adventures generally have problems. Unlike a standard dungeon, the players are not tightly confined to a set of stone rooms – and, as a result, it’s all too easy for the PCs to simply start missing things. On the other hand, unlike scene-act structure, the overland adventure has a certain assumption of self-direction. The Mortality of the Green is also a chase adventure – in which the PCs are expected to track someone down. This provided yet another opportunity for the adventure to fall flat, because its all too easy to fall into the trap of designing such an adventure so that the entire thing will derail in the DM’s hands if a single tracking die roll (for example) is missed.

Fortunately, Chenault avoids the pitfalls – and the result renders the DM’s task simple, and the player’s experience memorable: The necessary possibilities are covered, the adventure responds with changing dynamics to the actions of the PCs, and the entirety is kept simple enough to be easily played.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Author: Stephen Chenault
Publisher: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $5.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-1-8
Product Code: TLG1101
Pages: 22

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

This is a product you shouldn’t ignore. Read the review. No, really: Read the review. I’m not kidding.

Review Originally Posted February 12th, 2001

After Winter Dark, I’m afraid, is one of those products which – if you saw it on the shelf at your game store – you would promptly ignore. I mean, it’s got three strikes against it:

1. It’s from a company you’ve never heard of before.
2. The cover, while having a very nice picture of a dragon on it, still comes across as very amateurish in its overall composition and structure.
3. It’s a generic fantasy campaign.

Whoa! Hold on there! Don’t hit the “back” button on me quite yet! Keep reading!

After Winter Dark is, thus, one of those products which is truly fun to review, because you know that you have the chance to let people know about an outstanding product which they might otherwise miss.

So give me – and After Winter Dark — a chance to change your mind.

WEAK POINTS

Let’s get these out of the way first: Yes, the cover has a certain taint of amateurism. The interior art is reproduced too darkly. And the two maps (one of the geographical forms and the other for the sociopolitical boundaries – a nice touch, by the way) are organized numerically, while the text is organized alphabetically (making it difficult to cross-reference between them).

After Winter Dark is also only 24 pages long – which isn’t so much a fault in the grand scheme of things (because, at $5, that makes it a far better deal than the comparable product on the market, the D&D Gazetteer), as it is a fault because I want more.

Okay, those are the downers. It’s all uphill from here.

HISTORY

The After Winter Dark campaign setting is placed upon the world of Erde. The story of its creation is fairly typical in all but the details: The All Father brought the world into existence, and during the Days Before Days all creatures knew his mind – even the Great Dragon Frafnog who, today, is the only being which remembers this ancient time. Given eternity, however, the All Father grew weary of his creation and allowed the dwarves to enter it – and the dwarves did not know his mind, and their empire grew great. Some of the dwarves settled far from their brethren and lived wholly above ground, eventually becoming the thirteen tribes of man. And the Great Trees still wandered wild, and the Dragons made their nests across the world, and for three hundred centuries Erde thrived beneath the light of the sun.

Then the Goblins came – from whence, no one knows (although there are whispers of dwarves forever twisted and corrupted by the dark and evil of the deep). The terrible sorcery of the goblins made war upon the dwarfs, and the Goblin-Dwarf Wars stretched across four millennia – smashing the world of the Days Before Days into chaos. In the final days of the wars, the goblin sorcerer Ondluche worked powerful magic in an attempt to undo the dwarves – but the magic went awry, and the mind of the All Father was broken, opening gates into all of his imaginings. Thus the multiverse was born, and a host of new creatures sprang into the world. From the All Father’s purest thoughts came the Faerie, but there were also darker things – demons and orcs and, worst of all, the All Father’s Nightmare: Unklar.

The Age of Dwarves came to an end, with the great societies of both dwarf and orc smashed back into a primitive state by their self-destructive war. And thus the Age of Man began. From their “shallow roots in the distant north, the thirteen tribes of men grew.” The tribes became kingdoms, and the greatest of the kingdoms became the Empire of Aenoch. Then the Empire decayed, and the Middle Kingdoms arose in its place. This was the Age of Heroes – when “men, elves, and dwarves battled the evil remnants of the Old Empire, and heroes, like Aristobolus the White, Luther the Gallant, Daladon Half-Elven, and the monk Jaren ruled the day”.

But the Age of Heroes was doomed to end in tragedy: Sebastien Oliver I, “last of the House of Aenoch”, summoned forth the “last breath of the Days Before Days”. Using vile sorcery he summoned forth Unklar from the Paths of Umbra, and Unklar slew Sebastien and for forty years made war upon the land – bringing all the world beneath his heel: “In the last only the Kingdom of Kayomar stood alone against him and his vile folk. But in the Catalyst Wars, they too were thrown down and their last King, Robert Luther, slain, and with him, Jaren the monk. Only the Great Tree avoided Unklar’s touch for it hid in the deeps of the Eldwood, on the edge of the world. There, servants of the Oak under the ranger lord Daladon struggled on through the long years of the millennial darkness. Jaren, taken to Aufstrag, languished there for a millennium.”

Thus came about the Age of the Winter Dark – when Unklar ruled with an iron fist, and a shroud of mist obscured the sun and brought eternal winter upon the land. Then, “in the 1019th year of Unklar’s reign the Winter Dark Wars began”. Unklar’s power had waned, and his opponents gathered about the Great Tree – Aristobolus returned from the Land of Shade and Chaos, Luther from the Sea of Dreams. Jaren was freed, Dalodon half-elven and Dolgon (the last dwarven king of Grundliche Hohle) came as well. “In the 1030th year of Unklar’s reign they stole into his throne room and cast him from the plane.”

That was sixty years ago.

This, then, is the world of After Winter Dark: There is just the faintest scent of Elric here, as the Young Kingdoms begin to build anew beneath a lingering shadow upon the remnants of an ancient past.

THE WORLD TODAY

It was the history of the After Winter Dark campaign which first caught my attention. You know that something is being done right if you are immediately enraptured with era after era of a world’s history: I can easily see myself setting entire campaigns in the time of the Goblin-Dwarf Wars, the Empire of Aenoch, the Age of Heroes, the Age of Winter Dark, or the Winter Dark Wars – not to mention the Young Kingdoms which are actually detailed in this pamphlet.

After Winter Dark takes the familiar, twists it just enough to make it its own, and then adds that ineffable quality of the epic which can take the ordinary and make it exceptional. In short, I was excited — and that’s worth $5 right there.

Erde’s cosmos and calendar are described, then its people and languages, followed by the gods and divine orders, and then the guilds and other organizations of the world. Finally, the individual lands are given brief descriptions (including their Lord, Capital, History, and Modern Classification). Finally, the major geographical and terrain features of the world of Erde are described.

The actual detail of the world, although sparse (as the format would suggest), is no less exciting than the history. A few examples.

Aufstrag. “Fell Unklar, brooding in fear, roused himself and fortified his Keep. Rending the earth with his great axe he cleaved huge rifts about the Imperial castle of Old Aenoch, and with sorceries created great pools of water and pestilence to cover the rent lands. And all of Aenoch between the rivers Udunilay and Uphrates was made a swamp of fell death.” Aufstrag was once the mighty stone citadel of Unklar’s rule – “in time of years the place became a cesspool of all things vile; tunnels, great and small, fanned out beneath the halls into the rock of the world, towers and buttresses rose into the sky, and the city sprawled out over hills”. The halls of Aufstrag have fallen into decay now, but Coburg the Undying – one of Unklar’s unvanquished lieutenants – is rumored to lurk within its massive halls, plotting for the day that he will reclaim his power.

(In my opinion, Aufstrag is simply a wonderful excuse for an elaborate dungeon. And I really hope that the Troll Lords return here some day with a product which will explore its dark depths in detail.)

Grundliche Hohle. The Deep Halls, as it is known in the tongues of men, is the oldest of the dwarven realms. Unklar opened it to the darkness and slew or enslaved Angrod’s people. Eventually, though, Dolgan – the last king of Grundliche Hohle – rose up from the slave pits and helped defeat Unklar. Now the dwarves have returned here, to reclaim their ancient land.

The Shelves of Mist. “These gently rolling, forested hills, north of the Darkenfold, are home to all manner of fantastic creatures. The many creeks and small lakes lend to the banks of mist which seem to forever hang over the shelves. ‘Tis said that these hills harbor the gates of Vakhund, doorways to other worlds.”

The Detmold. “An old and dark forest. Its short thick trees grow close together and crowd the northern road. It is said that Queen Ephremere of Aachen became one with the Unicorn here.”

Even in the brief span of 24 pages, it becomes clear that what truly helps After Winer Dark excel is the attention to detail: Specifically, Stephen Chenault has crafted a world in which every detail has been dipped in the fantastic and awe-inspiring. The mountains of Erde have a history; the hills echo with the ring of magic; the rivers flow from springs of time immemorial; and the entire world seems harmonized to an ancient, evocative song. If you can take nothing else from this product, you can take the rich elements from which it has been built and use them to spice your own campaigns.

This is a world of fantasy, above all, which deserves a much more detailed presentation. But, until that happens, we will have to content ourselves with After Winter Dark.

COMMERCIAL DETAILS

A full color poster map (21” x 32”) of the world of Erde is sold separately, also for $5. It is well done for the price, and I honestly can’t imagine using After Winter Dark without owning a copy. Check it out.

After Winter Dark and the After Winter Dark Fantasy Campaign Setting 21” x 32” Map can be ordered directly from Troll Lord Games or from Wizard’s Attic. Both of these have also been packaged with the CD-ROM editions of The Fantastic Adventure, Mortality of the Green, and A Lion in the Ropes for the low price of $10. I have reviewed The Fantastic Adventure, and will be reviewing The Mortality of Green and A Lion in the Ropes in the near future.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Grade: B+

Authors: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: Sword & Sorcery
Price: $5.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-0-X
Production Code: TLG 1001
Pages: 24

This campaign setting has been vastly expanded and released as After Winter Dark: The Codex of Aihrde, but there is something still incredibly appealing about the slim, 24-page version I first read 20+ years ago.

This review nearly went astray. It somehow slipped through my original archiving of these reviews and, although I recalled reading After Winter Dark, I had actually remembered NOT reviewing it. (I think because I wrote half of a never-finished review of a later Troll Lord Games campaign supplement.) It was only because a review that will be reprinted next month mentioned that I had written a review of After Winter Dark “that could be found elsewhere on this site,” that I realized something was amiss.

Thankfully, I was still able to track down a copy of the review. And here it is!

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

Each Troll Lord release improves significantly upon the last. The Malady of Kings is a noteworthy, high-level D20 adventure.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Malady of Kings. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

A thousand years ago, as the Catalyst Wars which would signal the beginning of the Dark Age fell upon the world, Luther Pendegrantz – guided by visions – set sail from his throne in Kayomar. His wife, Vivienne, guided by visions of her own, knew that she would never see her husband again. Luther found his way upon the Sea of Dreaming, and spent a millennium upon those fabled waters before returning to rejoin his old comrades in overthrowing fell Unklar and ending the long Winter Dark which had rested upon the world in his absence.

Unknown to Luther, however, Vivienne – his long-lost wife – had not found a peaceful death. Pining for her absent husband, she became one of the undead, haunting the royal sepulcher in which she had been quietly inurned. She remains there still, while her husband – having saved the world and been sainted as St. Luther – retired to the Isle of Blight upon the Sea of Dreaming, from which his order of paladins stands guard over the world. St. Luther has recently fallen under the foul curse of ancient enemies, and has been trapped in a sleep of deep dreams within his castle upon the Isle of Blight.

Enter the PCs: Following ancient clues discovered within the legendary Books of Jaran they track down Frieden Anhohe and the Shrine of the Gallant, the ancient crypt of the Pendegrantz family. There they discover – and disturb – the long-forgotten Vivienne. This sudden psychic disturbance summons the arch-mage Aristobolus – now half-mad, but once Luther’s companion and Vivienne’s dear friend. This in turn, brings forth Daladon Half-elf, another of Luther’s famous companions. Both Aristobolus and Daladon mourn for Vivienne’s current plight, and ask the PCs to aid them in relieving her sorrow by summoning Luther from the Isle of Blight to make peace with his wife.

From here the PCs will sail upon the mystic Dream Horn (provided by Daladon) upon the Sea of Dreaming, finding their way – at last – to the Isle of Blight. Here they will converse with a demi-god exiled from his homeland, and – at last – free Luther from his slumber.

GREAT GAMING ENVIRONMENTS

I’ve said this about every single Troll Lord product I’ve reviewed, and I’ll say it again here: They have really incredible settings. For example, in The Malady of Kings you’ve got:

The Eldwood, a subtly fantastic environment, and utterly memorable. The Eldwood is the oldest forest in the world, and its mysteries are both ancient and well-protected. What separates the Eldwood from every other “ancient forest” of generic fantasy, however, is its unique geography: Its outermost reaches are known as the Rimwald, where travel is easy, the trees are far apart, and a small number of human settlements are sprinkled throughout. As one pushes beyond the Rimwald, however, they come to the Festungwald (“festung being an old dwarf word, literally translated as ‘fortress’”) – a tangle of underbrush, younger trees, and wild animals nearly fifteen miles deep in places serving as an effective natural barrier of protection for the Eldwald, the deep woodland of the forest, with oaks which stand like “monumental buildings”. You know, its a subtle thing – but its small touches like these which distinguish the worlds and settings which are truly memorable.

The Sea of Dreaming, also known as the Dreaming Sea, is – in fact – another plane of existence which lies in coexistence with our own (and, possibly, all others). “The sea is a watery plane of chaos, each drop a physical manifestation of a dream. These droplets of the dreams and nightmares of the living creatures of past, present, and future have accumulated over the millennia to form this great ocean. They are infinite in number, and the Dreaming Sea has no bottom.”

The Isle of Wintery Dreams, built by the foul demon who ruled over the world during the Dark Age as a way of corrupting the world of dreams, the Isle of Wintery Dreams remains – inhabited by fiercesome Dream Warriors.

And, finally, the mystical Isle of Blight, where St. Luther rests and rules.

PROBLEM AREAS

When I first started reading The Malady of Kings I was somewhat concerned by the fact that this adventure – unlike Troll Lord’s others – depended very heavily upon the idiosyncratic elements of the After Winter Dark setting. I felt there was a very real possibility that the only way this adventure would be playable was if you were playing it on the World of Erde.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how easily this module could be adapted. St. Luther, for example, can be replaced with any ancient hero of your campaign world that might still be alive (and trapped in a magical sleep) – or he could even be a minor noble of some sort. The settings themselves can be transferred fairly easily – swapping villain for villain and hero for hero. The adventure as it stands is of epic proportions – building upon the central mythology of the After Winter Dark campaign setting – and you can certainly maintain that by bending the mythology of your own world. But nothing stops you from toning down the epic elements to a more manageable degree (with little more than some simple name changes).

The only element which could pose serious problems is the Sea of Dreaming. Truthfully, this can be added to any campaign world (and would, in my opinion, be a worthy addition). But it may, of course, have no position in your person cosmology. Again, this is easily worked around: Simply place the Isle of Blight somewhere on a normal ocean in your campaign world. (You only lose one small, and relatively unimportant, scene this way.)

Other than that, I only found a handful of minor problems: Chenault describes one encounter as being of EL 19. While technically accurate (the wizard in the encounter is, in fact, 19th level), it should not actually be described as such (if you were to reward the PCs for defeating the wizard, as the EL rating implies, you would do horrible things to game balance). In some places the boxed text (generally very evocative) trips over the line into poor melodrama and amateur histrionics, which is unfortunate.

The setup and adventure hooks for the adventure are also, in my opinion, underdeveloped. I would have liked a little more detail on why, specifically, the PCs should get interested enough in the passages regarding the Shrine of the Gallant in order to go looking for it. As it stands you have little to no sense for how the PCs get involved in the plot.

There are also a couple of points where you can tell this is an adventure which saw its inception as something which the author ran for his own play group (preserved, most noticeably, in areas where the plot briefly seems to follow the logic his players took, rather than the possibilities which other DMs may face).

These are minor problems, however, and do not noticeably detract from the overall quality of the adventure, or – more importantly – its usefulness.

CONCLUSION

Each new release from Troll Lord Games improves upon the last: Content, lay-out, boxed text, art, maps – the whole nine yards. If they continue along this course, it shouldn’t be long before they’re turning out material rivalling the quality of Penumbra, Green Ronin, and Necromancer.

The Malady of Kings, specifically, is an excellent adventure for 10th level characters. This is a point in a campaign where truly epic themes typically begin to creep into the game, and The Malady of Kings addresses this need perfectly.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Authors: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $7.00
ISBN: 0-931275-01-7
Production Code: TLG1601
Pages: 40

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