Kellri's 18 Module Challenge - Day 13: "The Ruins of Andril" by Ian Melluish

Day 13 - A Module I Like from the 1980s:  "The Ruins of Andril" by Ian Melluish 

I'm picking up Kellri's 18-Day Module Challenge again today, a few days after my last entry (Day 12 - A Module From My Youth:  "Treasure of the Dragon Queen" by Rutgers University Gamers).  I got busy with work, and my need for sleep time outweighed my need to write ;)

"The Ruins of Andril" was written and designed by Ian Melluish, and published in Dragon Magazine #81 (January 1984) as the winner of the Dungeon Design Content (category A-3, a dungeon adventure for 4-8 AD&D PCs of levels 8-11 ) announced in Dragon #65 (September 1982).  

The Egyptian-themed desert adventure is set in the ruined (and cursed!) desert city of Ruatha within the "Sea of Dust" (not Greyhawk's, though), followed by four small dungeon levels with 42 total encounter areas.  The curse was laid upon the city and its peoples by Thoth, Egyptian god of knowledge, and nerfs divination spells cast within the ruins.

Why I Love "The Ruins of Andril"

Despite the nerfing of divinations (a school of magic I'm quite fond of as a player and DM), "The Ruins of Andril" is probably tied with "The Garden of Nefaron" in Dragon #53 (September 1981) and "The Dancing Hut" in Dragon #83 (March 1984) as my favorite adventure published in Dragon during it's heyday.  

I enjoyed running it a few times back-in-the-day, and these aspects still stand out to me as cool today:

• "The Ruins of Andril" is written for higher-level PCs (8th-11th), and could easily be expanded to include the desert wilderness surrounding the ruined city, as well as the ruins themselves (and the nearby town, for that matter)
• I like desert settings, and this adventure would combine nicely with I9, X4-5-10, UK6, I3-5, and/or C2 (among others!), if desired
• The dungeon site rises from the sands only once every two years, and if the PCs don't escape its confines before it sinks, then they're stuck for two more years (a bit of a Brigadoon-like environ...)
• Three of the levels are connected by shafts rather than stairs
• Well-illustrated by Roger Raupp---I've not always been a big fan of his artwork, but it fits the scenario, setting, and tone of the module fabulously
• Gates to the four elemental planes and excellent monsters selections and tactics round out the scenario

The doesn't really sound like it adds up to much, I suppose, but "The Ruins of Andril" does play well!

Three Runners Up

While I enjoy and admire many TSR module designs, I'm going to highlight three non-TSR ones this time around, to help feature a trio of perhaps-less-well-known adventures:

• Beastmaker Mountain by Bill Fawcett (Mayfair Games, 1982):  a classic delve into the lair of an experimenter wizard who married a demon-conjuring wife!; Fawcett's ]article "Orlow's Inventions Can Liven Up Your Life" from TD#30 (October 1979) is also included for use with the module, and he also wrote a sequel to Beastmaker in 1983, Tower of Magicks
• CH-2 Seren Ironhand by Tom Moldvay (Challenges Inc., 1986):  the middle of a three part module series, but the only title published (the other two are CH-1 The Morandir Company and CH-3 The Halls of the Mountain Kings), Seren Ironhand lures PCs into a raid on some river pirates, who live in the site of an ancient dwarven mountain kingdom
• Garden of the Plantmaster by Rob Kuntz (Creations Unlimited, 1987):  a magical garden grown twisted through demonic influence, Kuntz originally created the Garden for Castle Greyhawk, and expanded it in conjunction with the Lost City of the Elders

My other posts in Kellri's 18 Day Module Challenge:

1. Day 12:  "Treasure of the Dragon Queen" by Rutgers University Gamers
2. Day 11:  S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth by Gary Gygax
3. Day 10:  Return of the Eight by Roger E. Moore
4. Day 9:  Pavis and Big Rubble by Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Oliver Dickinson, & Diverse Hands 
5. Day 8:  Angmar, Land of the Witch King by Heike Kubasch 
6. Day 7:  X2 Castle Amber by Tom Moldvay
7. Day 6:  DMG Monastery Dungeon by Gary Gygax
8. Day 5:  S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Gary Gygax
9. Day 4:  "Deep Shit" by Jeff Barber
   
10. Day 3:  A Fabled City of Brass by Anthony Huso
11. Day 2:  Masks of Nyarlathotep by Larry DiTillio
12. Day 1:  Empire of the Ghouls by Wolfgang Baur
13. Day 0:  These are a Few of My Favorite Things...

 

grodog's Mega-Dungeon Maps - Introduction and V1 Vanquish the Evil

I have played D&D now for more than 41 years (since I was seven years old), and during those decades I've created many maps, with several periods of higher production back-in-the-day and more-recently since the (re-)advent of the mega-dungeon over the past 15 years or so.  I've shared my maps at several old-school forums, including (among those still alive and kicking), the Knights & Knaves Alehouse, Dragonsfoot, ODD74, and various Greyhawk-specific forums like Canonfire!, as well as my grodog's Greyhawk website, and a few here-and-there have found their way to Facebook.  

The maps all vary in age, size, spi (squares per inch), media (pencil, colored pencil, colored ink pen, colored marker), intricacy, and level of completion.  I'd begun to re-inventory them over the past year or so, both to update my grodog's Castle Greyhawk archive, and to insure that I don't lose track of some of them.  This series is an effort to help me keep on-track with that inventory work, as well as an opportunity to revisit some maps I've not looked at in a long time, as well as, perhaps, to complete some that have lain fallow.  

I'm (mostly) thankful that I haven't lost too many of my old creations, since I've heard several stories from Rob Kuntz lamenting lost maps and keys, manuscripts, entire sourcebooks, and such over the years.  Of course, such juvenilia's survival into the present is a double-edged sword:  some are definitely lame.  But even lame maps may often offer us opportunities to learn, and hopefully some nuggets to salvage and to bring forward into newer designs.   At minimum, they should demonstrate the progress I've made as a designer (in my eyes, at least ;) ), keep this whole blogging thing from going to my head, and hopefully some elements from the worst of them can still be repurposed:

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.

--- The Six Million Dollar Man (1974)                                                                                              

So, I'll start this series about my maps---and perhaps their keys (we'll see; many of the levels remain unkeyed)---by beginning with one of my earliest surviving examples.  Here are the c. 1982-1984 maps from V1 Vanquish the Evil, drawn completely in green marker ink (I have no idea why!):

V1 Vanquish the Evil - Level 01 Map

 

V1 Vanquish the Evil - Level 02 Map

 

My next post will discuss the maps, and perhaps some of the history of V1 Vanquish the Evil, or I may just move on to greener pastures.  We'll see! :D

 Allan.