Monday Magazine Classics

 Lair of the Demon Queen

Don Turnbull

White Dwarf #7

June/July 1978

 

“A difficult but rewarding section of the Greenlands Dungeon.”

 

This is what we might call a “drop in” encounter area today. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just Don Turnbull teasing us with what his clearly-inspired-by Greyhawk and Blackmoor dungeon was all about.

Sprinkled in with the requisite room and creature information are tidbits of design advice and Turnbull uses a conversational tone that makes this a little hard to use. You’ll need a highlighter at the very least to use this. I think I’d do a quick one-page summary.

 “These rooms may be inhabited by guardians of the Queen’s lair – say evil elves which fire arrows at an intruding party. My choice of occupant, however, was the Disenchanter (one in each room). This is one of Roger Musson’s creations...” Summary: Disenchanter (each room) replaced after killed

 So much of the prose here is of the commentary variety “So, to return to the poem...” “As an added incentive, of course, some treasure can be put in...” “Let’s hope they realise the meaning of...”

 There is a long poem (spoken by a magic mouth, of course!) that the PLAYERS have to work out the meaning of to be able to “beat” this room. This whole set piece feels very look how clever the DM can be to me. That’s how we used to play, so I don’t have a problem with it. The content is interesting enough – a little “funhouse dungeon” for me, but it seems to be pretty true to the source material (I hate hate hate disenchanters – they are just magic killers and really would have little place in any true ecology... like rust monsters and luck eaters and... but I digress – Source Material being Castle Greyhawk and Castle Blackmoor).

 As a player this would be fun and memorable. As a DM this would be a nightmare to run as is. I get accused of using too many words when I write adventures – but there’s just so much commentary that it really gets in the way of trying to work out the details.

 And then there’s the dearth of details... “The tombs, marked D, can be designed to suit the taste of the DM. Each will contain a member of the Undead class and some treasure. In my case the Undead were pretty powerful but the treasure in the tombs was excellent and contained a number of useful magical items. In particular, I left a few scrolls around with Cure Serious Wounds spells - the least I could do in the circumstances.” Wait... what? This thing is just over two pages long, with only five areas detailed... and this is the “detail” for one of those five areas...

 The titular Demon Queen does get a full three paragraph treatment, most of which is good role-playable detail. Until we get to treasure... which is rather abstracted, “The treasure (in a box under the bed) was of course very rich. In my room there were coins, gems and jewellery worth a total of 8,300 GP and two very powerful magical items – a Ring of Three Wishes (full, untarnished wishes, of course) and a Rod of Rulership. When added to the treasure elsewhere in this area, the total GP value was 13,700 and there were three scrolls, a Potion of Heroism, a good book and a dozen other pretty good magical items (plus a crocked sword just to add spice).”

 As a glimpse into the history of adventure design and the early days of the big dungeons, this is invaluable. Turnbull give us lots of commentary on what and why – all to the detriment of usability... As an encounter area, it’s okay. Like I said above, I’d make a one-page summary and maybe a handout with the poem (I know the players are supposed to listen carefully and take notes and whatever... yeah, not how I roll.)

 

 Other reviews:

I’m sure there are more, but all I could dig up was this brief comment:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/white-dwarf-the-first-100-issues-a-read-through-and-review.325009/

 

And this:

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/in-which-i-read-white-dwarf-from-issue-1.405199/page-4