But to find, behind the corpse of the bloated queen of these monstrosities, a golden idol of the spider queen, to receive its strange boon, and to be ensnared by its deadly enchantment. Any group worth its salt will have at least one neutralize poison spell on hand. Giant Black Widow spiders ambushing the party unless they are properly disguised as Drow (and they should be at this point), all of them with save or die poison, is par for the course in a module for 10-14. The third encounter is perhaps even crueler. But what you see is a glade, its ceiling open to the sky, a beautiful statue of a nymph surrounded by a luscious garden. A succubus and a vampire, cursed lovers whiling away eternity in some lonesome abode by luring travelers to their doom. There is an element to faerie-tales and myths, where the protagonist is confronted by danger in an innocuous guise, that is being channeled here. Gygax makes extensive use of these types of encounters in the EX series, particularly the conclusion. Did you deserve your awful fate, or should you have picked up on the incongruities before you chose to take the situation at face value? This is the question these types of encounters ask, and they are very effective if used sparingly. As you descend into the cob-webbed underground, already pulling out your dice bag and rolling 3d6 in order, the monster’s facial limbs unfold to reveal an astonishing number of shark-like teeth and you die screaming and unmarked in the foetid darkness, your cries of agony drowned out by the grinding of the passing subway car.
The second is what I think is an oldschool design staple, or should be one, the seemingly innocuous encounter in an incongruous location that hides deadly danger.Ī riddle! You are off to a convention game but while you are waiting for the subway Fiona Geist beckons you into the subway tunnel with promises of playtesting the new OSE module. Compared to the earlier checkpoint in D1, it is relatively light, and should not prove much trouble for a party that has survived multiple engagements against the Drow. One is an invested gate, manned with warriors, and presented in a neutral light, as something that can be tackled straightforwardly or bypassed via trickery. The result is something that is not always a fun read BUT CAN BE USED TO MODEL HOW THE FACTION RESPONDS TO THE PCS AND TO ITS ENEMIES IN ACTUAL PLAY, WHICH IS WHAT A GAME IS MEANT TO DO.īefore the city proper is unveiled, we get three more encounters, complex enough in its own right but straightforward in their nature as obstacles. Names, appearance, history, artistic flourishes, these are often neglected, but in terms of the capability of the 12+ factions that inhabit D3, Gygax is meticulous in the extreme, listing the exact number, level of fighters, magic items at their disposal, number of slaves etc. Ordinarily this is where most adventures go wrong by focusing on broad outlines they neglect to give us anything gameable. Nowhere is this principle more in effect then in D3. Instead we get a skeletal structure, given life by the inclusion of a few critical and evocative details. To flesh out in its entirety the underground realm that is presented is a task that would take up hundreds of pages. As one progresses through GDQ, the focus becomes broader, perhaps the GM is expected to be able to apply the principles that have been demonstrated in the preceding parts. Throwaway sentences can hold key information.
One is expected to pick things up and retain and correlate information quickly. Gygax can be coy at times, especially to a modern audience.
Suddenly you have a vast, unexplored labyrinth of caverns, filled with creatures hitherto unseen. We started off with careful infiltration and information gathering, leading to a properly epic smackdown in G3. D3 isn’t the end of this mega-campaign, that honor would fall to the later, and much less well-regared Q1, but D3 FEELS like a conclusion.
#GYGAX PURE HEARTS HOW TO#
One could argue Gary Gygax knows how to end a series. A viper’s pit of cruelty, abomination, depravity and treachery, with at the end a smackdown with none other then the Demon Queen of Spiders herself! So put on your make-up, dust off your copy of Les Miserables, and let’s get this Thespian Wankathon started! The cradle of the evil intelligence that stirred up the Giants to eradicate mankind and gain control of the surface world. The black, beating heart of evil at the end of a 70 mile slog (at least!) of monster-infested underground caverns. The pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow.
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