Tolen Mar

After I finished reading through the dangerous undead adventures of Region N, I saw how few pages remained in the World’s Largest Dungeon and knew the end was near. Rather than wait a week between chapters, I decided to race through the adventure the next night.

I get the feeling that the authors of this Region had the same idea. There are few glaring errors in this chapter, along with a conspicuous lack of adventure. Instead of a climax, this Region is more of an epilogue, with the adventurers fighting to get past the last obstacles to the official exit of the Dungeon.

This isn’t about Saving the World; it’s about Going Home.

Of course, the Dungeon was never designed with an exit in mind – otherwise it wouldn’t have been much of a Dungeon – but Region O is the best and most obvious of the possible exits. Region O is the last Region in Earthquake Alley: that series of four Regions on the right of map that became part of the Dungeon after the series of earthquakes: Region D, with the devil cube and the mining xill; Region H with the treant and the elven garrison; and Region L with the underground lake.

Region O (sometimes named Region P in the introductory text – an error that must date back to the draft when the double-sized Region N was divided in two) is a series of frozen caves. Here, the adventurers find a variety of cold-dwelling creatures, from purple worms to frost worms, to giant winter wolves to cryohydrae (frost-breathing multi-headed dragons in the style of Greek myth) to one more dinosaur (grand total of two in the Dungeon!) to a tribe of frost giants.

The frost giants are the principal villains of the piece. Called the “Red Ice” tribe (very cool, by the way), the tribe has taken up residence in the caverns and hopes to control the exit to the surface world. As creatures make their way through the caverns, the leader of the tribe poses as the guardian of the exit and demands both tribute and oaths of fealty in exchange for safe passage. Anything tough enough to make it that far to the end of the Dungeon probably isn’t in the mood to bargain for freedom, so the frost giants’ plan hasn’t been terribly successful.

There is an official guardian of the exit, but the frost giants have him captured. The official guardian is a Titan, brother to the dead Titan who guards the entrance to the Dungeon. Through magic, and the sacrifice of the leader’s brother, the Red Ice tribe have captured and imprisoned the living Titan. While saving the Titan is by no means necessary for the proper conclusion of the adventure, getting past the frost giant leader is, and the fight would go much easier with some assistance.

There’s not a lot of room for exploration, diplomacy or stealth in this Region. The adventurers have to fight past the guards, and there are lots of guards. There are plenty of reinforcements to go around as well, such that any early skirmish can quickly escalate if it goes on too long. On the other hand, if that does happen, it means that it’s clear sailing through the next few rooms.

Why am I not more excited about this Region?

I think I’ve become desensitized to big powerful monsters after reading through the preceding sections of the Dungeon, because, for all the stats in the stat blocks, having frost giants as the villains didn’t impress me. On the one hand, they’re giants, so that should be cool, but, on the other, they’re just big humans and don’t really measure up on the scale of terror and menace as, say, a kraken or a nightcrawler or cube of devils.

The only really interesting threat is the brother of the Red Ice tribe’s leader. The brother sustains the Titan’s prison as a kind of ghost, and offers his aid in battle while his corpse provides fuel for some gruesome and barbaric religious rites. The adventurers will have to contend with both the body and spirit of this brother, yet there are no stat blocks offered for this crucial character!

I noticed that there were some stat blocks missing from a group of ice mephits. I only noticed because the scaling advice for decreasing the challenge of an encounter involved removing the “fiend” template from the mephits. That’s hard to do without the stat block.

On a final note, I was surprised that there were no final words of advice for the GM on the subject of integrating the characters back into the game world, and for what could happen to the Dungeon now that it has been successfully traversed. So much effort was made at the beginning of the volume to provide justifications for the adventurers finding their way in to the Dungeon that there ought to have been at least a table of random consequences. Perhaps the celestials who crafted the Dungeon had a message for the adventurers (for good or ill), or they take on the task of hunting down escaped denizens, or they decide to send a group of novice adventurers to the entrance, just for kicks.

There is a short blurb at the end of the Region promising a product called the World’s Largest City in 2005, but I don’t believe that product will see the light of day. On the face of it, the idea of a World’s Largest City has less of a hook than a World’s Largest Dungeon that promises to include one of every type of monster. How complete could the World’s Largest City actually be, and exactly what would make the city stand out?

Still, after seeing what AEG has done with the World’s Largest Dungeon, I wouldn’t put any challenge past them.

I will say this, though: I’m very much looking forward to the Warlords of the Accordlands four-volume RPG set. There’s a gamemaster guide, a world atlas, a monster guide and a linked series of adventures. The set would certainly count as the World’s Largest Campaign in my books.

Region N is a microcosm of the World’s Largest Dungeon from nearly every point of view: in game terms, Region N is a prison for the undead, which impenetrable force barriers allowing the undead to enter, but not leave; in game terms, Region N runs twice the page length of any other region, contains an ambitious scale of adventure and storytelling, and, unfortunately, contains the most glaring typographical, layout and logic flaws.

If you want to see the whole of the World’s Largest Dungeon in miniature, with all its successes and failures, Region N is all you need.

I’m going to start with the good stuff, because there’s an awful lot of terrific material here. This Region was designed to contain the undead. Not just any undead, but the worst of the worst, from mummies to wraiths to ghosts of the heinous and evil to the very first lich in reality. And yet, these are not the worst of the beasts in the Region: contained within the very center of the Region is a nightcrawler called the World-Eater. Apparently, nightcrawlers are enormous, can summon undead to its aid, turn its victims into undead under its control at short notice and is basically the worst of any of the caged monsters in the entire Dungeon.

With time, the seals within the Region have weakened, releasing the lesser of the mighty undead to fight among themselves. By the time the adventurers arrive, there are three prime factions and two lesser factions, all of whom pose a considerable challenge.

Actually, all of them pose a lethal challenge. The author of this Region makes no bones about the dangers. In fact, during the scaling advice for a cunning trap, the author says the only way to make it more difficult would be to simply kill the adventurers outright with a bolt from the blue.

The three prime factions are headed up by the ghost of a blackguard (the new name for the famous anti-paladin), the prime lich, and a mummy priestess of an ancient god of death. All are trying to defeat the others and claim a key to freeing the World-Eater. Each leader labours under the misapprehension that the nightcrawler can be either grateful, reasoned with or controlled. Should all the keys be gathered and all the locks released (though the latter can be accomplished by a sufficiently high skill check), the World Eater is released and fights its way to the surface of the earth.

If the adventurers cannot stop the World Eater, the author very cattily reminds the reader, they can look forward to visiting the World’s Largest Graveyard on the surface.

I honestly don’t see how the adventurers can find the means to hold off the World Eater, should it be released. The magic items and scrolls available in the Dungeon are powerful, but certainly don’t appear to be in the same league as the nightcrawler. The very fact that all the undead are summoned to support the nightcrawler – including the prime undead, should the adventurers have already killed them – poses a considerable challenge.

Fortunately, the GM’s advice offers suggestions for keeping the mass combat within manageable parameters.

The sections of the Region controlled by the prime undead each has a particular flavour: the ghost blackguard uses wraiths and traps to patrol the borders; the lich uses a variety of iron and steel golems; and the mummy priestess has an army of zombies, morgh and other undead. Each prime undead is a worthy centerpiece villain of any other Region in the Dungeon.

But the minor characters are also fodder for interesting and challenging adventures: First, there’s the Great Death, an insane bodak who uses a zombie horde to control part of the Region. A bodak was once an unspeakably evil person whose very acts caused him to become an undead. The Great Death holds mock trials and executions of zombies in his army – hanging doesn’t seem to bother the accused, and the whole event seems to help pass the time. If the GM is in a mood for some Carrollian nonsense, the Great Death is the perfect set piece.

Then, there’s the wraith lord, who is just starting to negotiate a position of power with the other prime undead.

And, finally, there are the skeletal dragons. Have I mentioned them before? Oh, and the metallic skeletal pyrohydra (fire-breathing, Grecian multi-headed dragons), and, of course, the other undead who haven’t yet escaped their stasis cages and who won’t be too pleased with the first beings they see.

Finally, there’s a weird little test at one place in this Region. Players are given two scrolls, but no instructions on how to use them. If the players destroy one of the scrolls, all the undead in the Region are destroyed (save the prime undead); if the players destroy the other, all the undead in the Region are released. If both are destroyed, then there’s a Big Event of the GM’s discretion.

I don’t get this test. The effects of destroying the scrolls strike me as arbitrary, with no obvious link between the effect and the name of the scrolls. Destroying the scroll that frees the undead is an unpleasant and unfair surprise, to say the least.

So, that’s the overview of Region N. Believe me when I say that I’ve only scratched the surface. Now, it’s time to talk about the bad in the Region: this mistakes.

This is the only Region where the errors were so glaring that I was driven to take notes, just to make sure I didn’t miss any of the doozies:

• The title of this Region is the Tomb of the Unliving. The running header reads: Tomb of the Living (emphasis mine)
• Rooms N50-51-52 are missing. I wouldn’t have noticed except that the description of room N53 refers to the missing rooms as particular threats.
• In Region J, readers are told that the ancient red dragon’s prison is accessible only from a corridor within Region N. Looking at the map, only room N49 fits the bill…except that there’s no mention of this corridor in the room description. Ironically, this room is called “False Hope.”
• On page 708, the Great Death is said to have a thundering warhammer, but in the stat block, the hammer is described as a shocking burst warhammer.
• On page 711, the same paragraph is repeated twice at the top of the page.
• There’s some gender-based pronoun confusion about the mummy priestess and the minor lich named Saint Aramond.
• The World Eater’s prison requires four keys to unlock. The three prime undead each have a key, and the fourth is described as being in room N206…except in the description of room N206 itself.

And these errors don’t account for the purple prose in the descriptions, the incorrect subject-verb agreement, the pronoun problems, misplaced modifiers and sentence fragments. Of all the regions in the Dungeon, Region N is most desperately in need of a good thorough edit.

The glaring errors do the adventure a disservice, because the errors haunt Region N more thoroughly than any ghost.

For all that I wondered how the designers would fit seaborne creatures into the World’s Largest Dungeon, I gave no thought to how they’d find room for the airborne monsters in the SRD. Fortunately, Region M answered all my questions.

Much like Region H, home of the treant grove and the elven guard, Region M is an enormous cavern, complete with mountain ranges and the source of the lava flow into the infernal Region J. This mountain range, and the valley below, have the appearance of the outside world, except that the tallest mountains brush the roof of the cavern.

The principal villain imprisoned in this Region is an evil air elemental. If the adventurers feel as though the elements are against them, they’re right – the air elemental does not take kindly to trespass in his domain. In addition to this crazed villain, there are cloud giants, arrowhawks, and a nest of rocs (the giant, elephant-eating birds from the tales of Sinbad) ready to assail the adventurers’ ascent through the mountains.

Should the adventurers reach the top, they’ll find an escape route from the Dungeon. This is one of the few areas in the Dungeon where the designers have explicitly provided an alternate point of egress. If the adventuring party has been depleted, this is also a good point to explain the arrival of new characters.

On the other side of the mountains lies a valley infested with the rest of the mad driders and their drow slaves from Region I. The driders who remain have named themselves the Spider-Kings, and they are all creepy, powerful and evil. They continue their experiments on their drow slaves in an effort to perpetuate their species and keep the drow population down (recall, that drider are created by the drow demon-goddess, Lolth, and they cannot reproduce by natural means).

There is, of course, the requisite amount of scheming and backstabbing among the ruling drider class, which can be an advantage to the right party of adventurers. The home of the drow slave rebellion is also found here, offering sympathetic and cooperative adventurers respite and safe haven from their troubles.

The driders are also performing experiments on non-drow. In fact, one of the Spider Kings is a former apprentice of the drider sorcerer who created the chimera and gibbering mouther (the “Wonder Twins”) in Region I, and he seeks to continue the line of research on the adventurers, should he manage to capture them. If the adventurers free the apprentice’s laboratory experiments, they may find allies in their journey through the Dungeon.

A fiendish mystic alarm system powered by an engine fuelled by living sacrifices protects this area of the Region. Shutting down this system, even for a short while, would be a remarkable achievement.

There’s only one detail in this section of the book that bothered me: in the background information, reference is made to the highest-ranking Spider King who lead the drider to this region and who executed the sorcerer responsible for the Wonder Twins in Region I; yet this character doesn’t appear in this Region. The Wonder Twins are a creation of the recent past and, in the absence of a specific mention of the lead drider’s death, I’d expect to find some reference to him somewhere.

Given the strength of the other Spider Kings, I don’t think a party of typical adventurers would have enough time to look for him. The party might have better luck fighting the wind in the mountains.

After finishing Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal and running through this game a second time, I have to say that Going Commando is my favourite edition of the series. At that time, I felt that the game stopped abruptly, because the racing and robot-control mini-games didn’t follow through with the “Rule of 3″ for development, and I was expecting a better fight with Captain Qwark instead of a mutated giant protopet.

That was until Arsenal, which was even shorter and confounded my expectations more, despite the improvements in the weapon design.

The highlight of Commando is the variety of mini-games: starship combat, hoverbike races, arena battles, levitator courses, glider courses, mining for crystals, rail grinding courses, turret combat, side-scrolling platform sequences, the electrolyzer switch puzzles and the infiltrator circuit puzzles.

Add in the option to upgrade weapons through experience, resulting in increased ammo and destructive power, and you have a blissful gaming experience.

The second time around, I spent more time examining my surroundings, looking for the hidden power-ups and appreciating the level design. I also attempted more of the racing, arena, and starfighter challenges than before. Players have to complete at least one, and sometimes two, stages of each challenge in order to advance in the game, but there are significant rewards to attempting the optional challenges. Not only can players earn bags of bolts, but they can also find platinum bolts and health-upgrades, which I found surprising.

Other surprises in the game: The final challenge in the spaceship levels is a race through a series of rings. It’s actually not a race where you have to beat your opponent. All you have to do to win is complete the course without missing more than eleven rings. If you hit all the rings, you win a platinum bolt.

Another: Not only does the Black Sheepinator transform your enemies into exploding sheep, but other enemies are attracted the new sheep. This is very cost-effective

“Where are they going to put the whales and sea monsters?” was one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind when I heard about AEG’s goal of including every monster in the SRD in the World’s Largest Dungeon. There are lots of sea creatures in the SRD, and these aren’t the kinds of beasts you usually find patrolling stone-hewn walls.

The earthquake that led the formians and xill into Region D, and brought the treant and the elves down to Region H, also drained a freshwater lake into Region L. This is the source of the same waters that flooded Region K. This region is like its neighbour, except the water run deeper and are more dangerous.

Adventurers spending too much time in the demon-polluted waters of this region runs the risk of unwanted transformation and mutation. But that’s the least of their problems: there are whales, water-breathing ghouls, giant sharks, giant mutant sharks, and giant mutant zombie sharks. If those sharks took to piracy, or had lasers on their heads, this chapter would be complete.

But wait, there’s more: a dinosaur. Yes, there are dinosaurs in the SRD, and that means they’re in the Dungeon.

This is a region that’s easily avoided during an excursion in the Dungeon, so the authors provide a list of possible motivations to induce the adventurers to take a dip in the pool. There’s a kraken bent on conquering the waters of Region K, a magic trident broken into four pieces and dispersed throughout the region, and lots and lots of treasure. Treasure is usually motivation enough.

As in Region D, there’s a countdown of events for the kraken plot that culminates the kraken, along with some vassal sea beasts, invading Region K and killing the tritons and mermen therein. This is a satisfactory aquatic apocalypse, but there’s one significant conceptual problem: the countdown to the invasion begins as soon as the adventurers enter Region K…

…but the DM is only going to know this when he reads through three-quarters of Region L!

I’m going to hope that the authors intended for the countdown to begin when players enter Region L. Then, the only problem is that the authors didn’t include the countdown at the start of the chapter, instead of including in entirely the wrong chapter.