You wander around a non-complicated dungeon layout and find clues/key to get through a special door. Inside is the usual assortment: skeletons, spiders, a “guardian” or two, and an imp … who is behind all the trouble. Inside the tower you’ll find a small 11 room dungeon that pairs with the three or so outside encounters around the tower. An evil wizard has disappeared … and so has the local girl he was courting. This feels more like a D&D adventure than an AD&D adventure … and that’s a compliment. It goes off the deep-end in places with history & ecology and could use a good pruning down, but it’s much better than it’s introduction would lead one to believe. There’s some decent descriptive text that serves to inspire: manacles turned left to open a secret door and poison needles shooting out of skull eye sockets. It works and fits together well and provides some decent variety. Anyway, the real level has decent amount of looping corridor variety, especially for a level with only 15 or so rooms. I’ve never quite liked that secrets should lead to a reward and not be work required to be done in order to go have fun. The dungeon entrance (which is really the first couple of levels) is mostly linear with A LOT of secret doors that you to find to keep playing. That extra bit, usually just a single short sentence, adds a wonderful variety to what otherwise could have been yet another generic desert dreck-fest. The wandering monster table is a nice one, with things like “you step on a sandling” and “dervishes looking for a ruin” and “nomads who trade with you.” There are a few “attack on sight” encounters and many more that have just a bit more to them. After the soul sucking BULLSHIT os over the actual adventure is better than Ok. And the “somebody” turn out to be yuan-ti. It amounts to: somebody stole/killed some thing/one, go get it. This is a decent little dungeon crawl with a little wilderness table surrounded by one of the most god-aweful and implausible rube goldberg setups that alone drain any enthusiasm for it. Even when they don’t to ally suck, like with with issue. The reality of the situation is that reviewing Dungeon Magazine sucks the soul out of you. I’ve been sick, work has picked way up, I’ve had a super busy personal life.
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