Welcome to the fourth entry in the series Original Scenarios Resurrected, wherein D&D scenarios from the 70s and early 80s are republished with the permission of the authors, usually together with extra contemporaneous material. Today we turn to P'teth Tower by Brian K. Asbury. For all entries in the series see here.
Today I am very proud to return to Brian Asbury (see The Complete Barbarian) and present his 1978/79 solitaire adventure P'teth Tower - finally published in its completed form after 43 years. I had great fun playing through it - my favourite bit being how it handles being chased through the dungeon pursued by a monster.
In contrast to the more usual "Choose Your Own Adventure" or "Fighting Fantasy" style, P'teth Tower is a free-range dungeoncrawl where you take a party through an old-school dungeon, mapping as you go, with choices attempting to be the many choices you could make as a player. In addition, since it was written in the late 70s, it's an authentic attempt to recreate a dungeoncrawl 1970s style - and you're experiencing it just as it was at the time without any special interpretation or divination required.
There is complex publication history to this scenario - in brief this previously unpublished version is much improved as well as having an extra level and maps - so you may wish to skip this and go straight to the adventure; if so, break out your dice and get rolling up some characters, grab some graph paper for mapping, and dive straight in...
P'teth Tower was originally a short one level dungeon published in Trollcrusher 13 (Sept '78) - and then a part II appeared in Trollcrusher 17 (June '79). In between the parts Brian read and was influenced by The Solo Dungeon (Games Publications 1978) and whereas the first part was quite short and simple and meant for one dungeoneer, the second was for a party of 4-6 and showed a major improvement in both complexity of options and fairness. Each part was now presented as a different level of the same dungeon, with a space left open for a third level.
Brian's solitaire Kandroc Keep (Games Publications 1979) was published shortly before part II hit the press, and Games Publications planned follow ups including P'teth Tower. Brian expanded Part I to fit the style of Part II and combined the two into a single solitaire ready for publication - together with map sections (which, believe me, makes navigating the dungeon far simpler and thus more fun), then also produced a further Part III in the same style. Unfortunately Games Publications went under, and neither was ever published.
When I contacted Brian earlier this year he not only surprised me with the existence of these extra/revised parts, which he agreed to let me share with you all, but also he put in a lot of work to produce cleaned up versions from his scanned typewritten originals - and furthermore he has integrated the unpublished Part III into the complete version. Once again a big thankyou to Brian! I've thoroughly play tested it with my two sons to iron out any issues introduced in the OCR and editing process.
In a future post I will share the individual parts, not only for a complete historical overview but also because of the great introductions the original parts had, but this complete version is the best for playing. So - what are you waiting for? Get dungeoneering! Name your characters if you dare, but don't get too attached to them...
Good fun, and I shan't be forever branded as a coward!
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