Tuesday 7 December 2021

 REVIEW I4 - OASIS OF THE WHITE PALM

By Philip Meyers and Tracy Hickman

Published by TSR in 1983.


Oasis of the White Palm was the 2nd adventure in the popular Desert of Desolation series.  It took the party from I3 Pharaoh into the finale of the trilogy, I5 The Lost Tomb of Martek.  The title gives away the nature of the setting, it's a Desert based romp based around a settlement that has grown up at an Oasis. As the second part of a trilogy it occupies an awkward position, that being it exists as a means of getting the story from opening salvo to the big finale.  Can it overcome this natural hurdle?


Let's get the presentation of the module out of the way 1st, before I dive into the nuts and bolts of the story and how it plays. Presentation is rather poor.  Jim Holloway's cover piece of a huge genie is not a patch on the covers of the other 2 modules in the series, the scale is all wrong, and though the lightning crackling in the sky looks cool, the whole piece just doesn't inspire in the way the other 2 covers do.  Internally the art is barely average, Holloway's comic style is grating once again, while other pieces by Keith Parkinson are somewhat sparse and simplistic.  Both artists would do much better work elsewhere.  The maps of interior locations are decent, the cutaways showing side views are useful, but as with I3, the outdoor maps are poor.  The text is the biggest problem though.  Snippets of information are dotted all over the place, and while it follows a formula in terms of encounter layout that worked with I3, it does not work in this module as it insists on listing NPCs under the heading Monster throughout.  There are a lot of NPCs.

 


I ran this adventure several years ago, and while I can normally prep with a skim read followed by a more detailed one, this one required multiple re-examinations and liberal application of a highlighter pen...no I didn't butcher my precious original copy, I printed out a throwaway pdf copy for this purpose!

So it's ugly to look at, and ugly to read, is it worth ignoring those issues and persevering?

In short, yes!

Oasis of the White Palm takes the story from I3, where the party inadvertently release an evil Efreeti and discover the purpose of artefacts called Star Gems, and wraps it all up in a layer of intrigue.  Having escaped the Pyramid of I3, the party seek refuge from the harsh desert at a thriving Oasis settlement. There they discover the Sheikh's daughter is missing.  With multiple factions at work and a plethora of NPCs the module really comes to life.  Add in 2 very satisfying and entertaining dungeon crawls, and you get a rather deep and compelling adventure, filled with imagination and challenge. Some of the tricks and traps are wonderfully sadistic.

 


It's now going to feel as though I'm picking holes for the sake of it, however there are a lot of minor irritations with Oasis of the White Palm, and many of them feel lazy or unnecessary. I've mentioned in other videos that Tracy Hickman has a very heavy handed style, and doesn't not seem to care much about established game mechanics. This series of modules is I3 - for levels 5 to 7, I4 - for levels 6 to 8 and finally I5 - for levels 7 to 9. Increasing levels of difficulty, therefore expected character progression.  Doing experience points by the book, they are woefully light on rewards for the characters.  And they have nowhere for the characters to train to get levels.  I know a lot of groups ignored the training rules, but a module should not be written with the assumption of that being the case.  When I ran it I had to boost the treasure rewards, add some additional encounters, and some extra allies capable of training my party at the Oasis - though this interrupted the flow of the story somewhat.

The Desert is still too damn small. The introduction talks about the adventurers trudging through the desert for 5 days.  All well and good if that corresponded with the map scale.  The main map showing the entire desert is on the inside cover of I3, and it is smaller than Wales, and a fraction of the size of the Mojave - which is NOT a large desert by any stretch of the imagination.  If they were walking for 5 days then to fit the map scale they will have been covering no more than 3-4 miles a day!  It also talks about them running out of water.  I wonder if any high level parties exist that do not have the magical capability to Create Water?

And then there's the rewards. One of the NPCs offers the party 3 +1 Maces as a reward.  A party of level 6 to 8 PCs will most likely be well armed and have no need for these, plus they are heavy, and they already have the issue of transporting treasure, with nowhere in the module to sell it or trade it.  And there's not enough of it anyway.... to make a campaign such as this work within the core game rules, treasures needed to be largely valuable jewels and gems.

One final minor gripe I have is the inclusion of Drow at the Oasis.  Yes, these are all over the place nowadays, but at this time they were a relatively new foe, rare, found deep beneath the earth.  Drow slavers?  At a burning hot Oasis with its beating sun? No, no, no no no no no no no....

The biggest problem for me is the nature of the main enemy.  In I3 they release an Efreeti, and in this module they confront him, but he's far too powerful, so hopefully they are able to use the 'thing' that makes him flee.  And at the end of the adventure they free a Genie who flies off to fight the Efreeti on the party's behalf.  How satisfying is that?  It isn't. 

But despite all these annoyances, I4 is masses of fun!  It plays so much better than you would expect from the way it reads.  What really lifts this module above I3 Pharaoh for me is the Oasis settlement itself, the variety of NPCs and their machinations.  It's raw, and not as well developed as Orlane in N1 for example, but the bare bones are there in a solid enough manner to allow the DM to go to town and fill in the missing details.

And the DM needs to for the reasons I've already explained..

The story behind the creation of the module talks about how Philip Meyers originally wrote something, and Tracy Hickman needed material to link his campaign together, and he adapted Meyer's work to fit the overall plot.  I have a feeling the basic town and dungeons are Meyer's work, and the story elements are Hickman's.  That would make sense.  I've been critical of Hickman's writing style before, I know, but it feels very much as though the clumsy, linear, forced parts are down to him, and the fun parts are largely Meyer's doing.

It's very hard to give this module a rating, because it is simultaneously highly frustrating and immensely entertaining.  A pain to prepare, but a joy at the gaming table.  Once again I wish they'd hired Hickman for his ideas, but never let him anywhere near a typewriter.  But I have to be objective - what is a module meant to provide?  Fun.  And I4 does that in spades.  Rather than being a mere vehicle to get the party from I3 to I5, I4 is the surprise highlight of the entire series.


Presentation: 4/10 – the most important maps are clear, and areas descriptions are thankfully quite brief.  But it's poorly laid out, an ass to decipher in places and artwork is crude at best.

Brawn:  7/10 - fighting is not the main priority, but there are some tough enemies if the party really want a scrap

Brains:  9/10 – lots of tricks and puzzles, tons of NPCs and a juicy mystery, this is where the White Palm shines

Overall: 8/10 – persevere with it, there's a shining diamond in the rough here

Monday 22 November 2021

 REVIEW N1 - AGAINST THE CULT OF THE REPTILE GOD

Terror by night!  The Village of Orlane is dying. Once a small and thriving community, Orlane has become a maze of locked doors and frightened faces.  Strangers are shunned, trade has withered. Rumours flourish, growing wilder with each retelling. Terrified peasants flee their homes, abandoning their farms with no explanation. Others simply disappear.

Damn, that could be the basis of a great Call of Cthulhu scenario!  But in this case, it's the cover intro blurb for AD&D module N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God.  Written in 1982 by Douglas Niles, this was the first adventure in the N series, with N being short for Novice.

If this is a Novice adventure then I'm a 6'2 adonis with a full head of hair, perfect teeth, and a Lamborghini in the garage.  Sadly none of those things are true.  But more about that problem with the adventure later.


As was typical of the day, the adventure came as a 32 page booklet with a cardboard outer cover featuring one of the main maps - that being the village of Orlane itself.  There are a number of other maps in the booklet itself.  All the maps are clean and appealing, though there is a glaring error in one as it has a maze with no exit.  Artwork in general is a bit of a mixed bag, from an atmospheric cover piece, through some entertaining action scenes. to a few almost farcical pieces displaying a couple of the creatures, it's inconsistent.

 

Orlane appears to be that way...

Somewhat unusually for the products from early 80s TSR USA, the combination of writing quality and organisation in this module is very good.  The main body of the adventure is logically divided into 3 clear chapters and the text is easy to follow.  The 1st chapter covers the party's arrival in Orlane, descriptions of the town locations and some expected events.  Chapter 2 is weaker though, a sorely underdeveloped wilderness trek to the enemy lair - it consists of just a very basic map and some suggested random encounters.  Chapter 3 is a lot more meaty and details the lair of the eponymous Cult.  Text is succinct and helpful throughout giving clear descriptions, stats and motives of all involved.

So what is this module about?  Erm, well, the title is a bit of a giveaway.  Having arrived in Orlane for whatever reasons the DM choose - the default is to find a missing merchant - the party find the place to be more than a little odd.  Some people are friendly, some are nervous, some are rude, but the general air is one of fear - at least from the innocent.  Some buildings stand abandoned, and nobody is willing or able to explain exactly why.  The aim is for the adventurers to talk to people and slowly unravel the clues that pertain to what is going on.  There are a lot of NPCs, and the scope for roleplaying here is immense, but the party need to tread carefully as a misplaced word to the wrong people will attract unwanted attention.  Gradually they need to win the trust of certain key individuals.  Inevitably at some point all hell will break loose - there is the potential for a lot of combat in the Orlane section, and much of it is very tough for a novice party.


 There's the potential for things to get VERY bad for the party in Orlane

Once Chapter 1 is complete and the party have learned where they need to go it is time for a short trek to the lair, and then loads more combat in Chapter 3.

Orlane is an extremely well crafted village, and a group who enjoy focussing on the roleplay pillar of gaming can easily get absorbed here.  There's the potential for the first chapter of the module to stretch over several lengthy sessions.  In fact the module as a whole contains a lot of meat, and how it all comes to the table is heavily dependent on the skill of the DM and how they control the cogs of the module.

Tough combat? Party need to be cautious?  Loads of NPCs? A module with many moving parts?  And this is supposed to be a NOVICE module.  Novice is it not.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  Against the Cult of the Reptile God is a challenging adventure to both play and run, and it's release as the 1st in the N series was utterly inappropriate.  It suggests a party of 4-7 characters of levels 1-3.  I believe it is best played by about 5 characters of level 2.  The last time I ran it my players had a poll of 10 1st level PCs.  They operated in 2 groups of 5, 1 group out investigating, the other staying at an inn. and my reasoning for this was that due to the adventure being deadly, having a spare PC in the village would make life logistically more simple. 6 of the 10 PCs died, 5 in Orlane, 1 in the final fight of the adventure.

 

I've seen better pictures of Harpies....

There are 3 other key criticisms that get dredged up.  Firstly the party are overly dependent on a *certain* NPC in order to have a chance of success.  This complaint is fair, though the on the 4 occasions I have run it, nobody has had an issue. The second is a technicality drawn from the AD&D rules - the priests from the Cult are able to cast spells, but as their so called deity in fact fake and very much mortal, then by the rules of the game their spells should not be available to them.  My opinion on this complaint?  It's not the serious issue some grogs make it out to be.  Yes, the basic framework of official modules *should* generally follow the accepted framework of the rules around which they are designed, I'm quite happy as DM to handwave away those oddities in favour of fun.  The third problem is a little more serious - as I mentioned earlier the title of the adventure is a huge spoiler.  With so much of the adventure devoted to investigation, the cause of the problem is spelled out by the the name of it.... The townsfolk are nervous, people are disappearing, what could be the cause?  Well it's called 'Against The Cult of the Reptile God' so I wonder if that's anything to do with it?

In my opinion though, all those criticisms pale into insignificance when the adventure is played - especially when run by a competent DM for a patient and attentive group. The structure and pace of this module is such that it is thoroughly rewarding.  Despite being light on puzzles, the scope for roleplay is substantial, a rarity in modules of this era.  Add to that an array of creative locations and situations, and the likelihood of plenty of highly challenging and varied combat and you have what I believe to be the 3rd of the 3 great early low level modules - along with U1 and T1.

Presentation: 7/10 - solid cover, patchy internal art, clear maps, logical layout
Brawn:  10/10 - it can be a slow burner but when this one kicks off, the fights are immense.
Brains:  8/10 - what it lacks in puzzles it more than makes up for in roleplay interaction
Overall: 8/10 - a few very minor flaws do not get in the way of a blockbuster of an adventure.

 REVIEW I4 - OASIS OF THE WHITE PALM By Philip Meyers and Tracy Hickman Published by TSR in 1983. Oasis of the White Palm was the 2nd advent...