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.

Stephen Chenault designs a solid D20 module, Troll Lord’s first. Although possessed of great strengths, A Lion in the Ropes is held back by a central weakness in its design.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for A Lion in the Ropes. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

At first glance, A Lion in the Ropes is a fairly typical D&D module: PCs enter a village, the village is besieged by “something evil,” and the PCs take the necessary steps to rid the village of evil. But there are a couple of things which set it apart from its familiar brethren:

First, as with Troll Lord’s other products, A Lion in the Ropes is distinguished by its distinctive and developed setting. The village which the PCs enter is not just Generic Village #117, it is Capendu – a place given a specific history, context, and character. Some of this is accomplished through little details which make all the difference (for example, the fact that the roofs in Capendu are made of a distinctive green tile which comes from a nearby town). In other cases, it is accomplished through elements more integral to the adventure. For example, a central element in the adventure is the Church of the Four Saints. The church was built upon the ruins of a prison. In most adventures such a prison would simply be “ruined” – in the case of A Lion in the Ropes, however, the prison was specifically torn apart by the citizens in order to build the town… which is why Capendu’s structures are built of stone (unlike the other towns in the region).

Although designed for Troll Lord’s After Winter Dark campaign setting, I find that the setting elements they include in their adventures are of a quality which not only allow them to be easily incorporated into any generic fantasy world, but will enhance the world into which they are so included.

Stephen Chenault (the author) also does a nice job of interweaving multiple actions into his narrative: A lion who is mistaken for a demon, a group of undead who are actually responsible for terrorizing the town, and a band of bandits who attempts to take advantage of the chaos surrounding the murders committed by the undead. By interweaving this three-tiered dynamic into the complex supporting cast established in Capendu, Chenault manages to create a fairly compelling low level adventure.

Chenault also does a nice job of making sure that, if the PCs have an deficiencies in their skills or resources while tackling the task he’s set them, that there are ways of filling those deficiencies within the course of the adventure. At the same time, however, Chenault makes sure that there are contingencies which will allow the DM to take away the PCs’ new toys if he feels they will be overly powerful beyond the scope of the adventure.

Another point of commendation in the module’s favor is the boxed text. Although, at times, the text makes decisions for the PCs (a common mistake by module writers, but one which drives me right up the wall because it means I absolutely cannot trust the boxed text while running the adventure), it is also written very strongly – and, therefore, worth salvaging.

WEAKNESSES

Unfortunately, not everything about A Lion in the Ropes is equally commendable. The most significant, and perhaps crippling, problem is actually hinted at in Chenault’s own words:

“This mystery revolves around three separate actors. The Orinsu, the escaped lion, and the bandit, Orange-Hair. To track the movements of all three, the Referee should create a time line and allow the characters to weave in and out of it in a chaotic, albeit, realistic manner.”

Wait a minute. The referee should create a time line? If Chenault feels that the successful running of this adventure requires a time line to be established, why doesn’t he provide one?

And that pretty much sums up the source of most of my problems with this adventure: At many points it reads less like it has been designed, and more as if it had been merely outlined. To a certain extent, I feel as if Chenault became trapped by the standard concept of what “a module must be like” – and couldn’t get his ideas to function sufficiently within those constraints. A Lion in the Ropes might have risen above being merely good to something truly memorable if Chenault had followed his instincts and designed the adventure primarily around a time line of events – preferably a branching one which showed some responsiveness to multiple courses of action taken by the PCs, with specific events along each branch of the time line detailed.

CONCLUSION

That being said, A Lion in the Ropes is a solid module. If you’re looking for a memorable locale, a mystery, and undead for your low level party (the module is designed for levels 2-4), this is probably a good place to look.

Style: 3
Substance: 3

Author: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $6.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-5-0
Production Code: TLG1401
Pages: 24

There was an ineffable quality to Troll Lord’s first modules that I really struggled to communicate in my reviews. There was, for lack of a better word, a texture to them that made them feel woven into a deeper reality. There was something magical about them that I desperately wanted to bottle up and bring to the table. But they also, as this review alludes, often had some deep issues that would have required some significant labor to polish them up and actually run them to best effect.

As a result, very few of these modules ever made it to my table. I sometimes wish that I’d run more of them. Perhaps some day I shall.

Many of these modules, including A Lion in the Ropes, have been updated several times to new editions. I haven’t checked out any of these revisions, so I can’t really comment on whether any significant changes have been made to their content or presentation. This review is strictly of the original D20 System edition.

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

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.