Original Scenarios Resurrected XI: The Tower of Mrannor (1980, Andrew Ravenscroft)

Welcome to the eleventh 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 is the turn of The Tower of Mrannor by Andrew Ravenscroft. For all entries in the series see here.

Andrew Ravenscroft has appeared a couple of times in this series - The Temple of Psaan, Clearwater Caverns, and The Devil's Quagmire. Of these, The Devil's Quagmire from The Beholder #16 was the most ambitious, detailing an accursed swamp dotted with atmospheric locations. The Devil's Quagmire was double the size of any of Andy's earlier published adventures, but even at 14 pages - half the fanzine - it is still very small compared to Andy's home campaign adventures.

Sketch of The Tower of Mrannor

Not much remains of Andy's old D&D home campaign - but very fortunately his last adventure still survives. Tower of Mrannor is 93 pages of maps, keys, background and monster descriptions. It details the three levels of the tower itself, and four dungeon levels beneath (plus a sub level). For the fifth level you pass through an Interdimensional Gate into a huge wilderness area containing various separate adventuring locations, some of which themselves are multi-level. Further it contains gates into four planar adventures.

Mrannor is firmly rooted in the tradition of megadungeons: in history (it was created by an Evil Wizard), in location (it lies underneath the Wizard’s tower on an island), and in scope (256 rooms across 24 levels or areas spread over 12 pages of maps). But it is also definitely a megadungeon of the late 70s – it is not the minimalist monster + treasure style of the earliest examples. Of the two main strands in late 70s dungeon design, naturalistic and puzzle, it fits the naturalistic mould (think Against the Giants rather than White Plume Mountain).

It also marks the point in history where adventures were (in this case literally) escaping the confines of the dungeon. The move away from the dungeon as a prime focus of fantasy RPGs which started in the late 70s is clear but also difficult to nail down. When Brian Dolton in Demonsblood #4 in September ’79 says that his campaign doesn’t have any large dungeons, this is clearly viewed as something unusual.

Caverns of Thracia (Jaquays, 1979) included an ‘outdoors’ level – a palace in an underground garden lit with magical daylight. Mrannor continues with the concept but takes it further – level five is an interdimensional gate into a 200 square mile enclosed ‘universe’ powered by a gem of planar stability. This level contains a number of different adventuring locations, some of which may be familiar to readers of early D&D scenarios: this enclosed ‘universe’ would escape and take on its own identity, becoming a wilderness adventure The Devil’s Quagmire (The Beholder #16, July 1980 – republished as Original Scenarios Resurrected VIII).

Mrannor was Andy’s last scenario for his Michael Moorcock-inspired campaign, and the players made it as far as level five but did not complete it. They “did just the Frost Giant scenario then they saw the Bulette in the distance and bugged out of there in a hurry. It was the end of the summer hols just before everyone headed off to uni, so my gaming group dissolved at that point, and I never had the motivation to finish it.”

When Andy sent me the manuscript for the Tower of Mrannor he had forgotten its relationship to The Devil’s Quagmire. As I was collecting and reviewing the material I noted sadly that several of the locations for the fifth level had been left uncompleted. The Pagoda (incorporating the Ogre Mage's Lair) and The Frost Giant's Lair are both complete, and Level 5A is half finished - but there was nothing for The Jetty and Outbuildings, House of Fear (Mrannor's House), Standing Stone, Castell Knight's Tower, or Arioch Temple.

Having nothing on The Standing Stone was a particular disappointment. It was added to the second version of the wilderness map and is located centrally on the map where three paths meet. No indication was given as to its purpose, and Andy's mind drew a blank.

I put Tower of Mrannor aside as I worked on preparing other scenarios for publication, and in time I came to work on The Devil's Quagmire. As I got to the end I noticed the name of the last location, Arioch Temple, was the same as that of one of the missing locations from Tower of Mrannor. It suddenly became obvious in a flash - The Devil's Quagmire is Level Five of Tower of Mrannor. The wilderness with its trails has been reduced to about one-third size, and the quagmire itself introduced to persuade you to keep to the paths. The Arioch Temple has remained the Arioch Temple, The House of Fear has become The Charnel House, The Castell Knight's Tower has become The Ruined Fort, and The Standing Stone has become The Pillar of the Three Tests.

Note that none of the locations which reappeared in The Devil's Quagmire exist in The Tower of Mrannor manuscript (only on the map) so it seems likely that the maps and keys for these locations in Mrannor all existed at some point and were removed to assist in writing The Devil's Quagmire (and subsequently lost). Since the only remaining missing location in Mrannor is The Jetty and Outbuildings, it would be reasonable to assume that this too was removed for use in The Devil's Quagmire - did it once house the guardian that became the Keeper of the Rolls?

The Devil’s Quagmire is included at the end of this scenario – you can either use the material from Devil’s Quagmire to complete The Tower of Mrannor or use the material from level five to expand upon The Devils’s Quagmire.

In addition, I have reconstructed two players handouts as described in the key, filled in a couple of missing key entries with the help of Andy’s recollections, added a side elevation map as an overview, and included a brief summary of all the monsters included from various fanzines and magazines.

To download it click on the arrow in the top right to open in a new window, you can download it from there.

Original Scenarios Resurrected X: The Tomb of the Waning Moon (1979, Russ Stambaugh)

Welcome to the tenth 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 is the turn of the previously unpublished sequel to Quest for the Fazzlewood, The Tomb of the Waning Moon from Michicon VIII by Russ Stambaugh. For all entries in the series see here.

From the early 70s Metro Detroit Gamers ran two annual gaming conventions - MichiCon and Wintercon. For Wintercon VII, December 1978, their members John Van De Graaf & Laurie Van De Graaf wrote a tournament adventure Quest for the Fazzlewood, a solo adventure concerning the exploits of Athelfrogg the Agile. MDG published this at the con, and later it was revised and expanded for publication by TSR as O1 The Gem and the Staff (the differences between the two are examined here). Because of this, originals of Quest for the Fazzlewood are amongst the most expensive of all D&D collectibles - and it's also a damn fine scenario.

For the next MDG con (MichiCon VIII, June 1979) another MDG member, Russ Stambaugh, prepared a follow-up adventure for Athelfrogg - The Tomb of the Waning Moon. It was advertised on the front of the program, and as you can see from the illustration it was a two player tournament adventure. Athelfrogg is joined by Balthazar - here they are depicted in the mists outside the Tomb lit by the light of the Waning Moon.

As it is for two players the time was extended to one hour. In this respect Waning Moon is similar to Escape from Astigar's Lair - a one hour two-player tournament adventure also played at MichiCon VIII (published later by Judges Guild) - but Waning Moon doesn't just keep the name Athelfrogg it also keeps the style of Fazzlewood with its puzzles and clues and (most obviously) the same style of dungeon map hand outs that was a key innovation of Fazzlewood.

The Tomb of the Waning Moon was unfortunately never published, but manuscripts survived and made their way into the hands of collectors. When I was researching my Complete History of 1970s D&D scenarios I came across scans of some pages of this module Adrian had shared on The Acaeum and from what I could see it looked fascinating. When I started this series I contacted Russell to see if he would agree to its inclusion, and I am extremely thankful to him that he has agreed for it to be republished here. As always, all rights are retained by the original author. In addition I also required Adrian's agreement to share his original copy, and thanks to Adrian's efforts we have the scenario I present for you today. Many thanks again, Russell and Adrian!

So, is it any good? Well we had a blast of a time playing it. Read on for my review and the scenario itself...

Original Scenarios Resurrected IX: Kandroc Keep II (1980, Brian K. Asbury)

Welcome to the ninth 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 is the turn of the previously unpublished sequel to Kandroc Keep, Kandroc Keep II by Brian K. Asbury. For all entries in the series see here.

When I was researching early D&D scenarios for my series on every single published D&D scenario of the 1970s, I was struck by the approach of these early scenarios which I found very refreshing, but also saddened by how many of them were long out of print and nigh on impossible to obtain.

An idea for this series started to germinate - I hoped to be able to make one or two rare long-out-of-print scenarios available again. At this stage the plan was simply to republish some of those out-of-print titles - I didn't expect to uncover unpublished material.

When Brian K. Abury's Kandroc Keep and Richard Bartle's The Solo Dungeon were published in 1979 they were meant to be the first in a series of solo D&D adventures. Brian completed a sequel, Kandroc Keep II, a second level to the dungeon, but (as was the way with most small press at the time) the publisher went bust before it was released. Brian had sent his original to the publisher, never to be seen again. Fortunately he retained a photocopy of the manuscript. Unseen for over 40 years, today I proudly present the previously unpublished second level.

Original Scenarios Resurrected VIII: The Devil's Quagmire (1980, Andrew Ravenscroft)

Welcome to the eighth 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 is the turn of The Devil's Quagmire by Andrew Ravenscroft, with illustrations by Quentin Manley. For all entries in the series see here.

The Devil's Quagmire, published in The Beholder #16 in July 1980, was the last of Andy Ravenscroft's three published D&D scenarios, all illustrated by his friend Quentin Manley. Thanks to Andy I've already republished Clearwater Caverns and The Temple of Psaan, but in this third effort he really raised his game both in the quality of the content and the scope of the adventure. 

There is perhaps no better way to introduce The Devil's Quagmire than to quote a recent review at Prince Of Nothing of the adventure:

"Throw this in your campaign RIGHT NOW."

Read on to find out more and download it...

Original Scenarios Resurrected VII: Kandroc Keep (1979, Brian K. Asbury)

Welcome to the seventh 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 is the turn of Kandroc Keep by Brian K. Asbury. For all entries in the series see here.

In my Complete Timeline of 1970s scenarios, Brian Asbury's 1979 scenario Kandroc Keep was literally a closed book to me. It was one of only two scenarios that I hadn't seen any of the contents of, only having ever seen its cover. As I wrote - "In the case of Kandroc Keep, I have located two people who owned copies - but one has mislaid theirs, and the other had donated theirs to a museum!". 

In the end I managed to get in contact with the author, Brian Asbury, and he generously agreed not just to let me have a copy but also to republish it along with several other scenarios of his for this series - I'm still on the lookout for an original copy though (donations welcome!)

So, now I've seen it at long last, what's it like?

"Have a look at Kandroc Keep (1979) by Brian Asbury. It was written as a solo dungeon but is easy to convert. It's a blast" - online review of KK

Read on to find out more...

Original Scenarios Resurrected VI: Clearwater Caverns (1979, Andrew Ravenscroft)

Welcome to the sixth entry in the series Original Scenarios Resurrected: D&D scenarios from the 70s and early 80s republished with the permission of the authors, usually together with extra contemporaneous material. Today we turn to Clearwater Caverns by Andrew Ravenscroft, illustrated by Quentin Manley. For all earlier installments see here.

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Andy Ravenscroft, in particular his previously featured scenario The Temple of Psaan. Today we jump back a year to September 1979, and Clearwater Caverns. Clearwater Caverns are a natural occuring cave occupied by a tribe of Troglodytes and a variety of nasty cave-dwelling critters. It is a short low-level standalone exploration adventure, and was just one of three adventures featured in Demonsblood #4, but while short it has quite a few interesting features worth pointing out.

The adventure is part of a recurring sub-zine, Andy Ravenscroft's "The Raven Croaks". In the downloadable pdf I've included the entire sub-zine, and since one of the illustrations in the 'zine depicts a monster not given a name or stats until Demonsblood #6, I've included that as well.

Original Scenarios Resurrected V: P'teth Tower - the individual parts (1978/79, Brian K. Asbury)

Welcome to the fifth 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 return to P'teth Tower by Brian K. Asbury. For all entries in the series see here.

Today we're taking a second look at Brian K. Asbury's solitaire P'teth Tower. In the last post I presented the complete omnibus edition, but P'teth Tower was originally written in three parts, and any presentation of it would not be complete without a reproduction of it in its original form.

Of particular interest is the fact that Part I contains a very early use of ability checks. I've also included some parts of the subzine Aryxia with Part II which lends some context to the adventure.

Part I was originally published in  Trollcrusher 13 (Sept '78), part II in Trollcrusher 17 (June '79), and then there was also the unpublished Part III. I only own a copy of Trollcrusher 17 (that's my copy on the right), thanks go to Guy Fullerton for providing high quality scans of Part I, and to Brian not only for writing it, and allowing it to be shared, but also for hunting down his unpublished manuscript for Part III. 

Original Scenarios Resurrected IV: The Complete P'teth Tower (1978/79, Brian K. Asbury)

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...

Original Scenarios Resurrected III: The Temple of Psaan (1980, Andrew Ravenscroft)

Welcome to the third 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 look to The Temple of Psaan by Andrew Ravenscroft. For parts I and II see here and here.

Today we move on to The Temple of Psaan by Andy Ravenscroft, originally published January 1980 in The Beholder issue 11. Andy started out writing for Shire Talk, a small print run local D&D fanzine, but he soon moved onto more mainstream D&D fanzines, where his contributions were often illustrated by his friend Quentin Manley. Andy stopped writing for role playing games in the mid 80s, but more recently he is the author and publisher of Dark Streets, a science fiction noir set in near-future London. He is well known to regular readers of this blog for his contributions to the Complete History of Early D&D Scenarios, providing much of the info on scenarios in fanzines.

Andy published three D&D scenarios in this period, the second of which is the focus of today's post - Temple of Psaan. Originally titled The Temple of Psaan, it lost the "The" when it was published for reasons unknown. It is a short scenario inspired by the introductory chapters of L. Sprague de Camp's novel "The Fallible Fiend", a story about a demon servant whose literal mindedness causes him to fail one master after another.

Fanzine submissions were not usually returned to the author, so Andy no longer owns copies of the originals. In the case of Demonsblood, which was more akin to an APA, the articles were included exactly as typed. For The Beholder, however, Guy Duke retyped submissions. It is quite unusual, therefore, that Andy retains the original manuscript for The Temple of Psaan, which we present here for the first time, along with the published version of the adventure.

You will notice that the scan of the published scenario includes pencil marks where the original owner recorded hit points lost during combat. I've not removed these as they're a nice touch as they show that published adventure were played, not just read

It is immediately obvious that the printed scenario is far more developed than the handwritten original, and the most likely explanation for its surival is that the published version derives from a revised version Andy prepared for publication. In particular, many details in the original are explained in the published version.

As two simple examples, in the original there are 5 war-dogs in a room by the entrance - in the published version it details "Maldivius' guard dogs - he keeps 5 dogs in here to deter intruders. Attack without fear; no subdual." In the original for Andy's eyes only this was unnecessary detail, but it is needed for the published version to make it clear for others. Similarly in one room it simply states a Gnoll has for treasure 1GP, and for the published version this becomes "He is in possession of the princely sum of 1GP" which makes it clear that the treasure isn't just pathetic, it's intentionally humorously pathetic.

These details are what make the existence of the manuscript interesting - we can see here how a dungeon for personal use gets altered into one intended for publication and use by others. We cannot infer from the terse 1-line descriptions of early scenarios whether it was just a monster in a room to be killed, or if the DM was to improvise the detail, and how much information was in the DM's head who didn't see any need to write it down for themselves.

For my own scenarios I favour an extremely terse style where all the info is noted on the map in the blank spaces with lots of arrows. This is a style I developed in the mid 80s and it means I can not only see information at a glance, it's easy to ammend as you develop. There is never a formal key, and I hate to think what others would make of my (often rather illegible) scrawl!

Finally here's a short Bibliography of Andy's work.

Bibiliography

July '79 - Demonsblood # 3: The Raven Croaks 1 (inc. falling damge rules)

Sept '79 - Demonsblood # 4: The Raven Croaks 2 (inc. Clearwater Caverns, a D&D scenario)

Nov '79 - Demonsblood # 5: The Raven Croaks 3 (inc. background skills)

Dec '79 - The Beholder #10: The Archer (a new character class) & a D&D crossword

Jan '80 - Demonsblood # 6: Reviews

Jan '80 - The Beholder #11: (The) Temple of Psaan

Mar '80 - Demonsblood # 7: The Raven Croaks 4 (inc. poisons & Cerberus Class scoutship for Traveller)

July '80 - The Beholder #16: The Devil's Quagmire - co-authored with Quentin Manley. A 14-page scenario

2014 - Dark Streets, a science fiction noir set in near-future London

Also contributed to Shire Talk, a local fanzine.

Thanks to Andy Ravenscroft for allowing me to publish this, and also to Guy Fullerton for his help.

Original Scenarios Resurrected II: The Complete Barbarian (1977-79, Brian K. Asbury)

Welcome to the second in the series Original Scenarios Resurrected, wherein D&D scenarios from the 70s are republished with the permission of the authors, usually together with extra contemporaneous material. Today we look to The Barbarian by Brian K. Asbury. For part I see here.

Brian K. Asbury was a prolific writer in the early days of the UK D&D scene. He wrote numerous articles for White Dwarf and other early fanzines and magazines. He devised the Xill (from the Fiend Folio) but is probably best known as the author of "The Asbury System" for awarding XP based upon succesfully using thief skills or casting spells etc (from White Dwarf #5-9) and  - the focus of today's post - the first Barbarian character class.

The Barbarian, which appeared in White Dwarf issue 4 December 1977, was written for OD&D. It was many years before the "official" AD&D Barbarian was published, and Brian's class was very popular (being reprinted in The Best of White Dwarf Articles Volume 1, and even translated into Italian as part  of "The Blue Book"). It is a very atmospheric class, with great abilities including Fearlessness (Fear instead makes them go beserk) and Sensing Danger, whereas the Unearthed Arcana version is rather bland.

But furthermore Brian's Barbarian also had something which the official AD&D version never had - it's own dedicated scenario.

Original Scenarios Resurrected I: The Solo Dungeon (1977, Richard Bartle)

Welcome to a new series where out of print D&D scenarios from the 70s are resurrected (and often expanded with contemporary material by the original author). These Original Scenarios are resurrected as opposed to being reincarnated, since (as everyone knows) in D&D when you're reincarnated you have only a slim chance of coming back in the same form and are of a lower level - an OD&D adventure would be in danger of being reincarnated as a 5th edition adventure...

To start with, we present The Solo Dungeon by Richard Bartle from 1977, wherein you can get a truly authentic 1970s dungeon crawling experince. Richard wrote this adventure shortly before he co-created the world's first MUD - MUD1 - in 1978. Along with a scan of the adventure, we present a scan of the original manuscript along with the original introduction. 

Copies of this do come up on ebay from time to time, but not often, and they're not cheap. Last Saturday a copy sold for rather a tidy sum:

That's a health rate of return on your investment. I wonder how much the original '77 version would fetch?