I’ve written before about my general dislike of dungeoncrawls so I won’t go into the reasons why, but the Ghost Tower seemed
workable. For starters, the
dungeons of the adventure are so absurd that it’s easy to throw plausibility
out the window and just accept it for what it is. I’ve seen it referred to as a “funhouse” adventure and that
makes total sense. The premise is
that the PC’s are all the prisoners of some Duke and he frees them from his
dungeons in order to have them retrieve the fabled Soul Gem and bring it to him
in exchange for freedom. The Gem
was the possession of some wizard who constructed an insane tower filled with
monsters and traps to protect the Gem. Eventually the wizard disappeared but
the Gem remains! Alright, that’s not too bad. I suppose one could ask some questions about why the Duke
(who has tons of resources at his disposal) is choosing this motley crew of
vagabonds to undertake this important quest, but whatever. If I start asking
questions now I’ll be at a million words by the time I reach the underground
chessboard that electrocutes people when they make a wrong step. Ghost Tower
was originally a tournament module run at Wintercon VIII in 1979 and featured
five characters, so I rounded up five players to fulfill the roles of Lembu,
Discinque, Hodar, Li Hon and Zinethar the Wise. And we’re off…
My initial thoughts on the experience are twofold. One, 1st
edition AD&D is legitimately awesome. It’s easy to play and very clear cut.
For as many bizarre rules and charts exist, there really isn’t all that much
that the characters can do so just about everything is left to the imagination
of the players and the whims of the DM. That’s fine with me. And secondly, dungeons are just as
horrible as I remember them being. And what’s maybe even worse are wandering
monsters. Where do these things
come from? Are they really wandering? Or do they have a destination that we
just don’t know about?
As far as the actual adventure goes the Ghost Tower is
pretty good for a packaged romp, but the lack of roleplaying inherent in a
dungeon crawl limits what it can do.
It consists of two main components, a dungeon in which the characters
need to locate four parts of a key and use them to unlock the second section; a
tower in which the Soul Gem is located.
The initial dungeon is really four separate sections that each has some
sort of gimmick room that the key is in. As a DM I never design puzzles as an
encounter because I just don’t think that they are very fun, most of the time
they come off as a yes/no type of proposition in which the players either get
it or they don’t. So the result winds up as something that is easily bypassed
or completely frustrating. A good
example of this is the bizarre bead curtain that is waiting for the characters
in one of the many ten foot wide corridors.
On one level of the dungeon the passage is blocked by what
appears to be a curtain of beads. This is the not the entrance into the lair of
stoner teenagers or gypsy fortune tellers, but rather an immoveable obstacle
for the PC’s to surmount. Pushing
against it does nothing, nor does any sort of damage inflicted on it. The only way to pass through it is to
either cast Dispel Magic (which seems the most logical), cast Knock twice on it
(I can’t imagine anyone has ever done that. If Knock doesn’t work the first
time, why would you cast it again?), or to run into it at full speed and make a
successful Open Doors check on it.
The running part seem weird to me.
Why doesn’t pushing work? Why does it have to be running? In yesterdays game the party eventually
decided to rest up and have the cleric memorize Dispel Magic in order to make
it through. It was a thoroughly boring encounter that ultimately tested no part
of the party. It was sort of just
filler. Which is a bit of a
problem because the adventure takes a really long time to get through. I had picked the Ghost Tower because it
seemed like it was something that we could get through in a single session. I
allotted most of a Sunday for this game and we still didn’t get through it,
having called it quits around the five hour mark with the party just entering
into the second part of the adventure.
I was bummed that we didn’t get further along but it was
getting late and people do have to spend time in the real world, not just the
fantasy land of Wintercon VIII.
Which also brings me back to the wandering monster issue. A lot of the
dungeon level is filled with long corridors and rooms that literally have
nothing in them. When the party
was entering into a space I felt compelled to have something happen; an
encounter, a description, really anything to break up the monotony of the ten
foot wide passage. It’s not fun to open a door and find nothing in a room. It’s boring and breeds the bad kind of
paranoia that ultimately just wastes everyones time. So in true first edition
style, I leaned heavily on the wandering monster chart. Turns out that this long forgotten
tower isn’t all that forgotten.
The corridors are populated by giant ants, giant badgers, giant
centipedes, and other giant pains in the ass. Some of them were actually very challenging encounters (such
as the Horned Devil and, shockingly, the giant badgers) but ultimately they
were like the bead curtain. Boring,
mainly because they just didn’t mean anything outside of the damage they
inflicted. I grew up playing 1st
edition D&D modules and it’s the perfect game for kids getting together after
school and on the weekends. You kill a bunch of shit and then bicker over who
gets what treasure as you tally up your experience points and watch your
character grow in power. As a teen I wasn’t interested in being anything other
than chaotic and getting more magical equipement than I could possibly carry. But
as I’ve gotten older I want a lot more out of my roleplaying games, especially
as a DM. I don’t get to have a character that levels up and acquires a Robe of
the Magi so I would much rather be really invested in a story that is
compelling and interesting as opposed to a linear walk around interrupted by
some fights and some puzzles. It really
has nothing to do with the edition, like I said I really like 1st Edition
and think it’s wonderful, but premade adventures just aren’t all that
good. They are great for stealing
some ideas and kickstarting the imagination but not really for good adventures.
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