Ranger Love

I've had time to reconsider my earlier thoughts on the ranger and while I gave plenty of reason for not including one in a B/X game (or any other edition, for that matter!), I gave no justification at all for putting one into a D&D campaign. And just because I say that A, B, and C are reasons for leaving it on the cutting room floor, does NOT mean there aren't reasons X, Y, and Z for including it in one's game.

Yes, there is some ranger love about to happen here.

Let me reiterate my earlier points, just so they're fresh in everyone's minds:

• the ranger class as presented have no literary precedent as an archetype in fantasy/adventure writing (don't argue with me on that, folks...one unique character does NOT make an archetype)
• the ranger usurps the fighter's position in a party by doing everything the fighter does PLUS possessing extra goodies (and don't give me that weapon specialization "add-on" in the UA as a lame attempt at "balance;" that's closing the barn door after the horse is in the next county).
• adding "kewl (if conditional) powers" needlessly complicates an elegant adventure game for the sake of some munchkin-twink's desire for an uber-character
• I hate alignment restrictions in class for many reasons, but forcing players to play "good guys" gets away from the heart of the game (scurrilous rogues of a sword & sorcery tradition plundering dungeons)

Okay, got all that? Great. So here's where rangers come in DAMN HANDY as a playable character class:

1. When you have a very small number of players in your campaign...say 1-3 plus a DM.
2. When you want to emphasize alignment by making strong character choices and situations, drifting towards narratavist play that addresses a premise.
3. When both of the above apply.

When the size of your gaming table is limited, it really behooves no one to play straight basic classes...say, a fighter and a magic-user or a cleric and a thief. Not everyone has the wonderful blessing of a dozen hearty souls ready to die in their DM's dungeon...in the past, I've played campaigns where only two or three players were available, and it was these games where a multi-role capable characters really come in handy.

For example, a fighter and a magic-user seem like a great one-two punch...until one (or both) of them need healing. A cleric and a fighter combine to form a pretty stout duo...but one that clinkety-clanks their way into ambush after ambush (at least with unforgiving DMs like myself). Throwing a ranger into the mix gives a two- (or three- or even four-) person party a wide range of skills and abilities to draw upon withOUT forcing players to handle multiple PCs.

And that is (to me) much more desirable than forcing players to go "short-changed." Because we ARE talking about a role-playing game here, and fun as it is to simply treat it like a giant "board/war game of imagination" it is most rewarding when players DO have the chance to role-play, matching their own desires with character action, identifying with their character and experiencing the imaginary world through the vehicle of the character.

That's a lot harder to do when your attention is split between two or three characters.

Forcing a small party to play short-staffed (for the sake of role-playing and a purist approach to game play) can mean condemning even skilled players to a lot of character death and thus lack of progress/advancement. And "no advancement" means confining your campaign to the lowest levels of play indefinitely...which will eventually get tiresome.

Trust me on that.

; )

SO...allowing a player to run a character with access to some bushwhacking skills (surprise, tracking) some spells, some extra damage bonuses...all these things will do well to help fill up and round out the small party of PCs...and at the same time doesn't infringe on the spell-caster or thief's niche.

[assassins, monks, and acrobats can provide the same extra "punch" over a normal thief and paladins a combo fighter-cleric, by the way...again, useful in small parties]

So what if there's no literary tradition of a "ranger archetype?" I mean, there's a ranger archetype now...you can see it in Paul Kidd's stupidly named character, Justicar, or the even stupider named Drow ranger, Drizzle (or whatever the hell his name is). Of course, there was also Weiss and Hickman's character Riverwind, and I'm sure Terry Brooks threw in a ranger-ish character for one of those damn Shanarra books (I could never stomach my way past the first one). AD&D has created a literary archetype with their ranger class...so there. Now it's out there: if you want to read "D&D-esque" fantasy, you may find yourself stumbling across this class.

As for the other reason to include rangers...i.e. drifting a campaign into a narrativist exploration of premise by introducing ethical challenges to players forced to be "good" (or else lose all those cool powers)...well, that's more a theoretical question, as even MY somewhat "drifted" campaigns of my youth never posed serious moral quandaries. But you could do it...and alignment-restricted classes (like the paladin, ranger, and druid) would be the showcase classes for this type of game.

BUT the first reason (rounding out the small party) is an immensely PRACTICAL, not just theoretical, justification for including the ranger in a party...and paladins and the 1st edition bard and characters with psionics...it provides that extra oomph needed to help small parties survive and progress, developing into characters that live and breath in our minds and that can provide us with a window into an imaginary world.

So for THAT reason, it's nice to have some "uber-class" options.

I'm just glad I have enough players at my current gaming table that I have not the slightest guilt for banning rangers.

Cheers!

: )

Unfinished Dungeons

No, I am not talking about writing projects left un-done. I’m talking about adventures that have never been completed. For example, has anyone ever actually seen a Kopru in game?

I have NOT…and I’ve run X1: The Isle of Dread at least four or five times. It is, after all, one of my Top Ten Modules of all time. But in all, I think only one adventuring party ever made it to the central “island within an island” and I don’t recall anyone getting beyond the 1^st or 2^nd level of the temple.

Is this strange to people? It ain’t to me. I’ve run many games that were never finished, their secrets never discovered, their depths never plumbed.

Reading Mr. Maliszewski’s retrospective the other day on S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth reminded me of this. S4 is one of the modules I picked up in that treasure trove of adventures the other day. I had owned it as a kid, and had also thought it was great. I also remember reading it and despairing at the thought that MY regular adventure group could ever uncover the secrets of the central chamber…just in reading it, the thing seemed damn nigh impossible.

I mean, I’d seen my players (I was always the DM in those days) stumble through the Tomb of Horrors, and THAT adventure at least had a riddle of clues to help players through (multiple parties reached the end of S1, even though none had the proper gear to harm the demi-lich in the slightest). But this thing with the doors and the teleports? Who but the most anal-retentive of spelunkers and map-makers could figure out such a thing? Personally I know I would never have the patience.

Plus the booby-traps at the end, should they actually uncover the treasure? Sheesh!

I did make two attempts to run the Lost Caverns, though. The first time, my players were never able to even find the damn thing in the wilderness. The second time I skipped the wilderness altogether and just said, “all right you found it and are sitting on the door step…what do ya’ do?” They never made it past the first level, getting washed out through an underground river as I recall.

Now certainly some of these adventures were left un-finished by my group due to Total Party Kills (even if their PCs were later “wished” back to life by their friends in town, they’d say “I ain’t going back THERE!”). But often I think the modules were simply too long, too large in scope.

While the players in the campaigns of my youth were clever and creative, and adventurous, NONE of them were of the take-it-slow-and-systematic variety. This idea that people make multiple forays into a dungeon, cautiously mapping and retreating to recover strength? Nuh-uh. The only time they were going back to town was to pick up replacement PCs for the guys that had met their ends underground.

Now part of this can be blamed on the DM (me) NOT making resource management a huge component of the game…I have a noted tendency of playing fast-and-loose with certain game systems especially encumberance, time, movement, and food. D&D isn’t a board game, so I never worried too much about characters’ movement rate…until they were in pursuit or being pursued by monsters. And if you stop worrying about movement, you stop worrying about turns…and how long torches/lanterns last (after 3^rd level the characters would generally have access to continual light anyway). Better for the lights to go out at dramatically appropriate times (like when they get dropped in the middle of combat) than after 6 calculated turns.

Encumbrance puts a real limit on the amount of time one can spend in the dungeon…at least if one is hauling up thousands and thousands of coins in treasure. But bags of holding and portable holes certainly ease this burden, as does the B/X rule “all miscellaneous goods = 80coins weight.” When I moved to playing AD&D I continued to retain THAT rule.

As a DM, I never enjoyed being caught up in the minutia…I already had enough on my plate, dammit! Knowing the rules and being able to adjudicate, knowing the player characters and how THEIR gear and abilities worked, balancing player personalities, not to mention trying to know the adventure, DM it, and making the whole thing fun and exciting. If the minutia got dropped, it sure wasn’t missed!

But when the only “resource management” that needs to occur is managing of hit points and spells (I’ve yet to see characters ever “run out of arrows,” though we were pretty good about marking off ammunition)…well, it makes for fairly gung-ho players. Right up till the axe drops.

And that could easily happen when you’re three levels deep in the Halls of the Fire Giant King (unless, of course, you’re armed with Blackrazor…that sword was born to be used with a gung-ho style of play) or at the bottom of the Lost Caverns, or trapped between levels 4 and 5 of the Barrier Peaks nightmare without the correct colored card. If you push deep into the jungles of the Isle of Dread and get lost…well, that food issue will catch up to you eventually (if a wandering dino doesn’t use you to solve ITS “food issue”).

I’ve said before that I think S2: White Plume Mountain is perhaps the best adventure module ever designed, not only for its showcase of D&Disms, but for its over-all LENGTH. It can certainly be finished in a session or two, whether a party is taking it slow-and-steady or blazing away (remember the novel of the same name? THAT protagonist wasn’t making multiple expeditions into the volcano). With 27 different encounter areas (28 including the “end note” optional encounter), S2 has less than half the numbered encounter areas of B2: Keep on the Borderlands or X1 or S4.

And it IS the quantity of these numbered encounters that are important, not what they contain. Even a room that is empty of monsters, traps, and treasure will be thoroughly ransacked, prodded, and poked by the average party of adventurers. I’ve played in games where many loooong minutes were spent poking through a pile of rocks in a corridor despite their (to me) obvious use as a simple “no trespassing” sign. 60 to 80 numbered encounters? That’s not an adventure, that’s practically its own campaign!

Now before I go any further, let me say that I am NOT knocking B2 or X1. These modules are DESIGNED to be mini-campaigns, not one-off adventures. They illustrate their particular play rules (Basic – Dungeons; Expert – Wilderness) and give lots of room for exploration and experimentation with those new rules. Of course, neither one has real “end goals” either…there’s no “winning” of B2, unless I suppose you clean out the entire series of cave complex (though there are notes that new monsters will move into cleared caves). The same holds true for X1 (though I suppose you could extinguish every living monster on the island and turn it into some sort of tropical resort). But modules like S3 and S4 are crazy huge, despite having semi-specific “goals” inherent to ‘em. They might as well be called “mini-mega-dungeons” for the amount of time required for exploration…and modules like I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City, I3-I5 (Desert of Desolation series), and X4-X5 (Desert Master series)…well I can’t think of these as anything less than mini-campaign settings.

And if your players are like the ones with whom I used to run, this ain’t what they’re looking for. They don’t want to sit down at the game table every week or two and say “ok where are we again? Oh, yeah…still there in that adventure.” My old players wanted new, fresh locales and challenges every session or two. They wanted to explore their characters while adventuring in the game world…they weren’t interested nearly as much in exploring some designer-author’s magnum opus of a dungeon.

When you have episodic adventures…or a campaign composed of them…the PLAYERS begin to create their own meta-plots and story-lines (well sometimes). When you’re stuck in a long, drawn out adventure, sub-plots and such MIGHT form but they become secondary and attached to the adventure at hand…which to me is a stifling of creativity for both players AND DMs.

[hmm…I wonder how Oddysey and Trollsmyth’s current on-going campaign developed. Odd has said this is the first time she’s played in a campaign that took things to this particular depth of character interaction…were her former games played in the mini-campaign or forced plot setting? Or is their current gaming style simply built on mutual rapport and understanding of narrative agenda needs?]

ANYWAY…attempting to tie this back to the original premise, I’ve worked a LOT of modules in the past and have only managed to complete a few…and then only with a lot of diligence and/or particularly “captive” audiences (like my little brother!). And I played A LOT of D&D in the past…the same core group of players, weekly or bi-weekly sessions, with full day and all night stretches. And the majority of these modules were simply never finished. The adventures BETWEEN adventures were (as Oddysey and Trollsmyth could perhaps attest) far more interesting…the intrigues, the rivalries, what was “going on” with the adventurers in the larger campaign world. For me, White Plume Mountain is the biggest site based adventure I want to explore…and think about this: it’s a whole goddamn mountain! Why should a dungeon set in a ruined keep or tower be bigger (what are the dimensions of the biggest tower in the Expert set? 30’x30’ maybe?).

Just some things I’m considering as I set about writing an introductory adventure module to go with my B/X Companion.

: )

Descent Into The Void

The in-laws have headed for home and I may now resume my normal blogging schedule...well, I may after I've resumed my normal sleep cycle. Yowza!

In looking back over my various posts from August, I see that I've completely neglected to fulfill my "pseudo-promise" (there's a better word, but I AM pretty sleepy right now and the phrase doesn't spring readily to mind) of detailing the why's and wherefore's of my Top Ten Adventure Module list. Tonight I want to look at #7 on the list, Gary Gygax's D1-D2 Descent Into the Depths of the Earth. Now as I said, I'm calling these as I purchased them, and when I got D1-2, they were one module combined. Yes, I realize they were originally published as two. Enough already! As I said, let's look at it...I mean LOOK at it! What a piece of cover art! Right there, the image is enough to stick it in my top ten. No giant, grinning blue man on the front, just a badass battle between several shady looking adventurers. Of course, the cat getting his brain sucked out on the back cover is pretty sweet, too...more Willingham goodness. For those who haven't played D1-D2, it is the middle section of Gygax's epic G-Q, 7 module series (yes, I realize Gygax didn't write Q1...Q1 is a different post folks). I don't think one could call a series of adventure modules an "opus;" not when the guy writing 'em has penned the DMG and the PHB. But there's no doubt the series is a classic. So why then do I only single out D1-2 for my top ten list? What about G1-3 or everyone's beloved Vault of the Drow? Is it just the cover art? Nah...though of the whole series, I find the Roslov illustration on D1-2 the best of the bunch. No it's the adventure. See, I've run the whole series...what...MAYBE three times? Q1, as I said, is a whole 'nother story necessitating its own post (some day, some day). I've actually owned the D series longer than I've owned the G series...hell, I had access to Q1 through a friend prior to finding a copy of G1-3 (and guess where? yeah, that little used book store in Missoula, Montana). So D1-3 I've run individually more than others, and of them, the first two are the creme de la creme for me.  I mean, come on! A wilderness adventure underground? Drow back when they were totally evil? Mind flayers? No, there are no dragons in the caverns of the troglodytes...but there is a badass lich.

I'm not even going to talk about the DM's option of crafting his own Underdark adventures by allowing the PCs to explore side passages...I, myself, never went though the trouble to detail "the rest of the map," though I think it's a fairly cool idea.  However, for the record, I think the first two scripted encounters (the Drow outpost and the Mind Flayer lair) are two of the best I've ever laid eyes on in a published module. Each encounter is like its own mini-adventure...you need brains and tactics to defeat both, and if your PCs have never encountered drow or mind flayers before they are in for just a vicious surprise.

And yet, the encounters also perfectly showcase what these two classic monster-types are all about. You get a taste of the drow, their matriarchal society, their clerical and magical powers, their weird magic, their purses filled with platinum.  You get mindblasted and brain-sucked by the illithid...holy crap! 

I should probably do a whole post about the mind flayer. It breaks my heart that I can't stick 'em in my B/X Companion (no psionics, no IP material). I had probably used or thought about using a mind flayer prior to owning/running D1 (I did have the Monster Manual, though I may have "winged" the psionics without a copy of the PHB).  But what happens when you throw one mind flayer at a party of adventurers? You get a dead mind flayer, no shit.

But throw TWO mind flayers at a party? With their wererat thralls as canon fodder/distraction? You get a LOT of dead party members, is what you get...ha!

Vicious, vicious, vicious...D1 taught me to respect the illithid for the terrible foe they are.

And the lich in the great cavern...how many of my players got encouraged to venture into its lair and start "detecting magic" by yours truly?  All of 'em, that's how many...no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to use such a powerful monster...hell, that's excellent XP for PCs and excellent loot to boot! Why stash something so cool in a hidey-hole. That lich is the most powerful being in the caverns, it only makes sense he'd be running the joint.

[just by the by...in Paul Kidd's Descent Into the Depths of the Earth that's his take as well, and I respect him immensely for it, even if I don't like what he did later in the book]

Anyway, I've wasted a ton of blog space on D1, and it's not even my favorite part of the module...that would be D2: Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. I LOVE the Kuo-Toa; don't ask me why.  They have a draw and appeal to me that is similar to the draw and appeal of H.P. Lovecraft's works...certainly there are marked similarities between the Kuo-Toa and HPL's "Deep Ones." Not to mention Blibdoolpoolp the Sea Mother...she could easily have been one of Lovecraft's elder gods.

But I found D2 and the Kuo-Toa long before I found H.P. Lovecraft.  And I dig 'em. I love their weird amphibious nature. I love how, while tool-users, they wear no garments besides harnesses for their weapons (how very Burroughs...). I love how they have this weird priest-hood and character classes including assassins and "whips." I think it is especially creepy and weird how they "grow with age" so the more powerful ones are larger than man-sized and imposing compared to the younger, grunts...I find that just disturbing and yet totally fitting for the weird pulpy "city" that Gygax has created in D2.

I mean, I could really go on for a long time. Jermalaine? Love 'em. Getting teleported to Blibdoolpoolp's elemental plane of existence? How could you not love it!

There ARE flaws to the module...I found much of the underground stuff more time-consuming as a kid than fun (I wanted to get to the action, not worry about wandering trolls!). The Svirfneblin are just "okay" in my book...I don't find it necessary to have some sort of short, good-aligned allies in the Underdark (dammit, it's too deep underground for "good" to exist!).

And I really don't like the whole Kuo-Toa boatman encounter. Not because the rogue monitor isn't a cool encounter, what with his chance to go berserk and his giant gar and all (who doesn't love a giant gar?). But I think it "gives away the farm" too fast.  Ideally, I would prefer the PCs to not have ANY contact with the Kuo-Toa prior to finding the Shrine. Having one that is "kind of friendly in a professional if slightly crazy way" down-plays the weirdness and inhumanity of the Kuo-Toans. In my opinion, tt would have been better for this encounter to have occurred AFTER the shrine (as in, on the way down to the vault) where the strangeness of a "friendly monster" would have been more felt (after invading and fighting hordes of the things).

All right, I should probably talk about why D3: Vault of the Drow FAILS to make my top ten list when it rates so highly with others. However, this post is already running pretty long, so I'll save it for another day.

Paul Kidd's Revenge

So after recently posting about my wanting to play military scifi and reading Dyson's post about military RPGs he's sampled, I figured it was time to put my head down and finally take a look at Albedo 2nd Edition, which I picked up for $6 in the "used" section of my local game shop. Hrmmm...not quite what I was hoping for.

The Albedo Platinum Catalyst game (the newest version of Albedo) is quite slick in its game mechanics and the way it handles military role-playing; that's kind of what got me jazzed about the whole thing (other than the idea of totally hating on rabbits; my beagles can relate to the urge).  What I did NOT like about APC was that it's an incomplete game...it leaves out vehicle rules to a degree I find unforgivable in a military game. You're required to purchase the supplement if you want air or armored combat rules.  Being a convert to the Old School and Indie game movements, I like my rules more self-contained.  And when my local game shop doesn't even carry the supplement...well, that sucks to a high degree.

So enter Albedo 2nd Edition, a more or less complete game INCLUDING the vehicle rules.  I had hoped it would be compatible with APC...unfortunately, at first read it seems remarkably dissimilar. 

Albedo 2E IS a complete game. In fact it fills in things that are left out of APC that I really wanted to know (like do these animals reproduce with each other? what are their lives like outside the military? etc., etc.).  It provides combat rules for handling air, space, and land combat.  It has more equipment lists and descriptions and a LOT of illustrations of the gear. Since most (all?) of the art comes from the comics, a lot of the illustrations are duplicated in both games, but I'm fine with that; all are indicative of the flavor of the game.

However, the rules of 2E are quite a bit more complex and cumbersome than the rules of APC. The systems are a bit over-worked, and not well organized, and I could feel my brain blurring over just reading the chargen process, let alone the combat system (a heavy mix of you-name-it skill based task resolution merged with plethora-random-tables including detailed multi-dice-roll  hit-location system).  Having to keep track of armor points on various areas is madness for any game more complex than BattleTech or Elf Quest, in my opinion.  What with penetration ratings, fatigue, pain/suffering, etc. you have a system as complex as DeadLands or (nearly) The Riddle of Steel...but not as succinctly written. Also missing are some of the niftier aspects of APC, like the 5-PC squad character creation and the "all critters are basically the same" mentality (there are now major differences between, say, a mouse character and a bear character).

Thankfully the vehicle combat rules seem much simpler than the rest of the rules...in fact they seem fairly similar to WH40K (no more complex than the 2nd edition rules).  They do have a bit more "scifi" feel than the rest of the game, but not overly much...there's still no powered battle armor or tactical laser weapons (eat your heart out Mongoose Traveller).  It shouldn't be too hard to 'port something similar into APC (should I decide to start up a game), but in re-writing the simple vehicle rules of a crunch-heavy game...well, it feels like it would be just as much work to hand-craft my own rules for the more elegant APC.

Ugh.

Anyway, the non-rules parts of Albedo 2nd Edition are written well and, as said, address a lot of the role-playing aspects of the "critters" (as the PCs and NPCs are called) rather nicely. I think the world creation stuff is excellent, dealing with the politics and social mores of individual planetary societies with a few simple rolls...and describing what those rolls mean. The disposition (Personality) mechanics are quite cool, and while I like the Drive and Clout rules of APC, I wish some of the "random role-playing personality" stuff had been included in APC, if only for NPCritters.

The writing was different enough, that I bothered to check out the author of Albedo 2nd Edition and was surprised to find the game was designed and co-written by Paul Kidd.  I can't say for sure that this is the same as the author of the White Plume Mountain novel, but if so it is an amazing string of coincidence to be reviewing two such works by the same author within a week's span.  I mean you wouldn't normally equate militaristic anthropomorphic animals with Blackrazor would you?  I sure as hell wouldn't!

Anyone Else Read This?

So it wasn't more than a couple days ago that I googled "Blackrazor" and found that my blog had made it to the first page.  Sadly, today I see that I have once again fallen to page two, behind comic book police forces and cellular phone adds.

Obviously, I have been neglecting my own subject matter.

And so it is I return to the subject of returning to the adventure of our youth, White Plume Mountain.  Or to be more specific, one author's novelization of WPM: Paul Kidd.

Let me say right from the start, I was not a huge fan of this book.  In fact, I sold it to a used book store (sorry, Kris...it was actually your book, I know) rather than keep it on the shelf (remember, I'm the guy that re-reads books multiple times?).  Just why I didn't like it, I'm trying hard to remember, so bear with me (I probably SHOULD re-read it, just for reference).

First off...well, strangely enough, I consider RPGs their own art form, different from such forms of artistic expression as literature, film, and comic books.  Similar to music or live theater, it is a collaborative art form. Like literature and film (and some types of music), RPGs tell stories. They're not always very good stories, but they are stories nevertheless.  The game rules which facilitate play, are much like musical instruments, or word processors, or the cameras used by a film crew.  Some RPGs better facilitate a "story-telling agenda" by directly addressing premise (see the Forge for some good examples). Some, like B/X D&D only tell stories by "putting together the pieces of what happened" AFTER game play. 

(some versions of D&D simply railroad players into the works of fiction of other authors...see Dragon Lance and Ravenloft modules for examples)

Anyway, RPGs tell a specific type of story.  There's back and forth banter between the players (including the DM) at the table, there's social contract issues, there's decision-making about how things go down...all of which make perfect sense IN PLAY, but not necessarily anything that makes sense from a "real world" perspective.  An epic battle that involves whittling down someone's hit points or a fortunate saving throw at just the right time doesn't translate well into screen or prose...the adrenaline rush for the players (again, including the DM as a "player") is not there for the audience.

Which is not to say I don't like ALL novels based on RPGs.  In fact, I thought both Dragons of a Winter Night and Dragons of a Spring Dawning were pretty good, though this was after Weis and Hickman stopped writing the novels like expanded adventure modules (see the first of the Chronicles series to see what I'm talking about).

The difference for me is this: the Dragon Lance novels are based on an RPG's themes and rules.  White Plume Mountain is based on an adventure module.  The module is designed to be played...not to be written (and read) as straight fiction.

Does this make sense to anyone besides me?  I'm having a hard time thinking of a proper analogy.  I suppose it would be one thing to watch a hockey movie (i.e. "a movie about hockey"), another thing to watch the film Miracle on Ice, and a totally different thing to watch Miracle on Ice if you had been an actual player in that historic game, and the cast of characters looked nothing like the team you played with, and the names had all been changed, and the score was different, and...etc., etc..

Except even then you might consider it to be good entertainment...but you know the game is more fun to play than to read about.

But I actually enjoy reading stories of other peoples' D&D adventures...hell, I read the various examples in both the Moldvay Basic set and the AD&D DMG with relish.  I wouldn't mind reading a write-up of one party's adventures in White Plume Mountain, even multiple party's stories actually (now THAT would be cool...an anthology of short stories that all showcase different adventure groups tackling the same module. HA!).

But that's not what's in Kidd's book.  It has a fairly dour, bald ranger who's as annoying as Keldern.  Rather than an adventurer looking for fame and fortune he's got some bullshit about righting wrongs and administering "justice;" he even has a stupid name like "Justicar."  He's so obnoxious that his only adventuring companion is a...skinned animal?  And not much of a conversationalist.

There is some kind of faerie that seems like a HackMaster "pixie-faerie"...is this some sort of 2nd edition race I'm not aware of?  There's some sort of weird sub-plot with an erinyes...I don't know, it's all kind of hazy.

I do remember that in the climactic battle beyond "the inverted ziggurat," Keldern...um, "Justicar" manages to take out the erinyes even though she has Blackrazor and the ranger dead to rights.  Or not (if this was based on an actual game,  the DM was a real pansy).

Basically, it's unlike the novel is paced and written like a novel with bites of WPM thrown in for flavor.  If I want to revisit old school Greyhawk adventures in a novel form, it needs to be more than Vin Diesel mopping up. I want to see a party of adventurers.  I want to see the opposition between the DM and players.  I want to see PCs sweating...or dying...and not because of some diabolic sub-plot.

There are some parts of the book that were enjoyable: the high level characters clad in all their accoutrements and entourages I found both believable and scathingly funny.  Same goes for the wagon driver and his dry commentary and Boy Scout "Be Prepared" attitude (gotta' have a rope...).  While I didn't like her characterization, I thought the simple inclusion of an erinyes was pretty cool...nothing says 1st edition to me like a lesser devil from the original Monster Manual. 'Course, I don't remember if she had the rope of entanglement or the venomous dagger that is the erinyes's signature weapons.

Um...I liked that it was set in White Plume Mountain...

...and that's about it.  If memory serves (and I admit, it is not as infallible as I wish it were), I was most disgusted by the poor treatment of Blackrazor itself.  Now, I am definitely considering finding a (used) copy of the book for research.  I'd like to run a mock combat between old Justy and the Lady E.  Even as a 6+6 Hit Dice monster she should have been able to take him...especially as she sucked the souls out of a couple critters before actual engagement.  This is Blackrazor, folks!

Sure, reading how a protagonist dies may not be good literature or cinema, but it's GREAT gaming drama (ask ol' Black Dougal about that...forever enshrined in the Sacred Halls of the Fallen Adventurer, a little demi-plane of Valhalla).  

Plus, Kidd's book can better serve as a cautionary tale for young D&D players: you don't split off from your party and head solo with naught but a dog-skin, a pixie, and a torchbearer as back-up! Sheesh!