A friend from Ukraine wanted to try this D&D game he's heard so much about, so I decided to run him in a tournament I developed back in the nineties for the ancient second edition of AD&D. To round out the group, I invited my wife and daughter who were veterans of Champions RPG and my son and his friend Andrew who play Fifth edition rules. Everyone liked the snacks, but the boys hated the old style rules. The thing people liked the best, as I remember from college days, were my maps. This is a sample of the opening of the adventure where they visit a Greek city near a wizard academy.
This is a topographical map after landing on the academy island. Since I'm never going to use the adventure again, I snapped a few key photos for the sake of nostalgia to share with people I've adventured with. I'm recycling the paper, reusing the folders, and probably selling the stack of manuals online.
Level one of the fortress.
Level two of the fortress.
And the ever-popular wandering monster table. The rust monsters and giant chicken were hilarious to play. The shadows guarding the iron plates in the dining hall (it's a rare supermetal in the Golden-Age Greece campaign) either drained someone or gave them white hair every time.
Paging through the stack of modules I made, I found "The Impossible Pyramid" from an Egyptian tomb adventure, which occupies both the ethereal and prime material. This engineering marvel looks like it is floating and is almost impossible to pillage. One of the fighters in this adventure found a magic ring that convinced him that he was the reincarnation of the king buried here.
The Island of Misfit clerics, an oriental D&D adventure, was one of my favorite campaigns. Everyone loved fighting the pirate ship and finding the map to his treasure. This brings the party together and leads them to an island where several things are amiss, including a cult with a crystal city on a mountain top.
My favorite part of this adventure was an artifact the samurai found in the trove, a willow-iron dragon mask that could grant powers when you feed it coins or gems. Yes, everyone knew it was cursed with side effects, but the player didn't care--which is why my wife makes me wear devil's horns when I dungeon master. It doesn't affect the outcome at all, but it did give me a cool opening for my magic novel "Foundation for the Lost."
As you can tell, this creativity shifted into writing after the nineties. The papers brought back a lot of fond memories, only a few of which involved the wailing and lamentation of the players.
