Into the Dragon's Lair

Okay, so as I mentioned, this is one I don't physically own yet, so I'm just going to do a quick overview from a PDF file. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a copy before too long and I can give it a proper read-through. Until then, this will have to do.

So, Into the Dragon's Lair is the first Forgotten Realms product of 3rd edition, not counting the Polyhedron issues. It's a 96-page adventure set in Cormyr after the death of King Azoun IV and his daughter Tanalasta. It's a nation in turmoil now, with an unwilling regent ruling until Azoun's grandson, Azoun V, can take the throne. This is not for the weak; this adventure is for 10th-level characters, easily the highest we've seen so far.

There are two parts of the adventure. The first is the quest to find the lair of the dragon responsible for killing the king. The dragon is dead, but the lair still looms. It turns out that the lair is actually on a demiplane in which is located a city of extradimensional goblins. And that's the second part of the adventure: exploring the lair and the city.

As I said, this is just a quick overview for the time being. The first part is basically a brief tour around Cormyr, searching for clues to the dragon's lair. There are several encounters to keep the characters busy, and I'm not going to go over them here. Sorry, but reading a PDF isn't nearly as good as reading a physical copy.

The second part takes place in the goblin city of Grodd (no relation to the hyper-intelligent telepathic gorilla), where the dragon's lair is located. The goblins are trying to reorganize after the Cormyrean armies nearly wiped hem out, and without the dragon to ride herd on them, there is infighting and squabbling amongst the different surviving factions.

The most important thing about this adventure is that it is a departure from the 2nd edition linear style of play, where you're basically just playing the module writer's story in the order of whatever events are scheduled to occur. This is more freeform; the players have the freedom to do what they want, with only the outline of the adventure for the DM to guide them in the right direction to continue the story. There is a timeline of events when they reach the goblin city, but it's not set in stone; the characters' actions can and will impact this timeline.

The second part takes up about half of the book; the first part of the adventure is about a third. The rest is background information on the dragon's demiplane, as well as an appendix that describes the Grodd goblins (which are different from the standard Monster Manual goblin), a couple of magic items, and a few spells that can be found. There's also some basic information on converting the Forgotten Realms pantheon to 3rd edition, with some examples of deities' domains and favored weapons. Finally, there's a new template: Shadow creatures. This template can apply to virtually any creature, giving them a higher speed, cold resistance, darkvision and low-light vision, and shadow blending (concealment). Shadow creatures with higher hit dice get to pick from a list of other abilities as well.

And that's it. Sorry for the short writeup tonight, but there's lots going on right now, including the Jays game. So, I'll keep looking for a copy of this, and once I get it, I'll come back to it and give it a proper review and read-through.

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