This is the 31st installment of old school Dungeons & Dragons! There’s nothing special about that milestone, other than me realizing that it’s a lot of posts. Anyway, let’s jump right to it…

X6: Quagmire! (1984), by Merle M. Rasmussen. Here we delve into one of the more obscure members of the E(X)pert series of modules!

Quagmire! has a curious and somewhat unique plot. The characters are contacted by the ruler of the city of Quagmire which, true to its name, is sinking into the swamp. The PCs must get there and lead the residents to a new, stable city.

This is largely a wilderness adventure, true to the E(X)pert series of modules. The PCs must fight overland to Quagmire, then fight their way to an alternative, almost identical city and clear it of monsters for its new residents.

What is either remarkably clever or incredible gall, three cities of note in the adventure, including Quagmire and the new city, all share the same spiral city map! A third city that is completely underwater can optionally be explored.

Quagmire! introduces a number of “new” creatures for wilderness encounters, though some of them were recycled from the old expert rules, before those rules were revised and abridged.

Pros of Quagmire? Probably a very easy adventure to run and set up very quickly. Cons of Quagmire? Not a whole lot of interesting stuff happens! I would love to see the story idea of escorting refugees done with more interesting encounters.

PS though now that I think about it, DL3: Dragons of Hope involved leading freed prisoners to safety in advance of a pursuing army!

Day of Al’Akbar, by Allen Hammack (1986). Time for a more controversial adventure!

First things first: that cover! At the time, it was widely criticized and even called “sexploitation” because of the ladies on the cover! We’ll come back to that…

The adventure was one of the first D&D adventures to feature a Middle East setting, albeit a generic one. Al-Qadim wouldn’t appear until 1992.

The adventure focuses on a plague that is striking the land. The mythical Cup and Talisman of Al’Akbar can provide a cure, but they were hidden in the city of Khaibar, now overrun and a lair for bandits. The PCs begin by traveling overland to the city…

At Khaibar, the PCs will most likely follow directions given by their employers, and seek out the tomb of the sultan hidden in the sewers of the city. The sewers and tomb are very classic dungeon crawl type locations.

The overland trip isn’t particularly inspired, but the dungeon includes some clever tricks! One is a timewarp trap, that advances time 12 hours when it is passed through. This basically kills long-duration aid spells cast in advance on the PCs!

Another fun little wrinkle: the PCs will pass through the late Sultan’s treasure room, which possesses more treasure than they can possibly carry, enough to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams!

There is also a quite lovely puzzle room, where a cryptic message must be deciphered in order to safely cross a checkerboard floor.

The PCs can find the Talisman in the tomb, but as a fun twist, it turns out the Cup is hidden in the late sultan’s palace! The party must venture into the city and infiltrate the palace to find the Cup. The city is an extensively detailed setting.

The city is an active location, and could potentially serve as a base for future adventures. Here, one gets the full Middle East flavor in the form of shops and characters appropriate to the setting.

The Cup turns out to be hidden in a pool in the harem chamber of current bandit ruler of the city. So the cover image of the woman looking at the Cup is, at least, plot-relevant, “sexploitation” or not!

Depending on how the PCs play things, they could fulfill a prophecy that liberates the city from the bandits and puts the rightful heir on the throne; it could be the Day of Al’Akbar!

WG7 Castle Greyhawk (1988). Time to talk about one of the weirdest products that TSR ever put out for D&D!

To explain why Castle Greyhawk is frustrating, let me share my teenage perspective. I had been waiting years for Gary Gygax’s definitive mega-dungeon, Castle Greyhawk, to be released, so I bought WG7 with excitement…

… but WG7 *isn’t* Gygax’s castle! It is a 12-level parody mega-dungeon, filled with meta humor, gags, and bad puns! Each level was written by a different designer or designers, and have very different themes.

The overarching story is that the Castle is being hounded by “random monsters,” produced by an artifact on the lowest level. The PCs are enticed to delve deep and put an end to the threat.

Level One’s theme is that it is the dumping ground for all the random monster rejects. For example, the PCs can encounter “miniature giants,” who are human sized.

On Level 2, the PCs stumble into a recruitment party being held by low-level monsters to entice a major villain to lead them, and get mistaken for party staff!

A later level features a group of wizards who discover roleplaying games, and have built the ideas into a level. We get incredibly silly puns here, such as this group of Star Trek wannabees.

(Full illustration of the chaos, including the Star Trek trio and “Indiana Gnome.”)

As we get deeper into the dungeon, the encounters do in fact get much more intense. One level is dedicated to the bee queen and her minions, jealous that the demon queen of spiders gets all the attention.

This illustration always freaked me out. Iggwilv wants a party of adventurers, and her lover Graz’zt obliges, sending demons to hound the party. Any party member that is killed is eaten by Iggwilv!

One of the deepest levels involves rescuing a little girl’s puppy, who it turns out has been adopted by Jubilex, demon lord of slime. The PCs can negotiate the puppy’s release by making Jubilex a socialite in high society.

In the final level, the PCs find the wizard responsible for the random monster chaos, but he’s glued to watching his magic tapestry, which allows him to see the action everywhere in the dungeon. This premise seems to anticipate Forgotten Realms’ Undermountain, also run by a mad wizard who populates the dungeon for his own amusement.

Reading through this module again today, I look at it much more kindly. The goofy meta-references and humor seem to anticipate the more laid-back fun roleplaying styles of modern D&D. And some of the scenarios would make for fun one-shots, if nothing else.

Why Castle Greyhawk, though? It has long been rumored that this project was a deliberate slight of Gygax, after his acrimonious removal from TSR. However, it seems unlikely that the talented writers would’ve participated in such a grudge product. Perhaps the upper management intended it to be a slight, but from the writing and effort put into the product, it seems clear to me that the writers did not. And TSR put out a serious “Greyhawk Ruins” a few years later.

Anyway, this was one of the earliest and perhaps only official parody of D&D! I enjoyed reading it again (though I would never play it).

XL1: Quest for the Heartstone (1984), by Michael L. Gray. While I’m on a roll of unusual products, let’s look at one of the most hated adventures!

“XL” in this case stands for “E(x)pert (L)icense,” and this is the source of much of the hostility: it was an adventure designed for use with licensed D&D toys that were coming at out the time, like action figures!

Reviewers blasted the adventure as an excuse to sell toys, which included the action figures as well as PVC non-posable figures that TSR was releasing at the same time. I had the following one.

The adventure itself is straightforward: the king has died, and left no heir. The queen asks the PCs to seek out the Heartstone, stolen some years ago, as it can divine who the new ruler should be.

The PCs must undergo a wilderness trek to the dungeon lair of the thief who stole the Heartstone; at least in the maps, TSR went all out with a lovely isometric map!

Pregenerated characters are included, which of course correspond to the action figures that had been released (and a few extra characters to fill out the party). This bizarrely included both evil characters as well as good characters.

The dungeon itself it rather straightforward, but has a few clever gimmicks, like skulls hanging by thin threads to appear animated, to distract PCs from the covered pit below them.

Quite good illustrations were included, such as the previous one and one showing the goal, the Heartstone!

Overall, the adventure wasn’t a hit — only one XL adventure was released — and the figures didn’t stick around long, either. However, new versions of the action figures have appeared, and the figure characters make a surprise appearance in a 5e adventure!

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That’s it for this edition! More to come in the near future!