Review - Lich Dungeon Level II - A Dungeon Out of Time

When I say that Lich Dungeon Level II is "a dungeon out of time" what I mean is that it doesn't fit into modern gaming sensibilities, even those built around the OSR. It is a product of the late 70's / early 80's, even if it was written in modern times.

What are some examples?

Boxed or highlighted text for the DM to use as a memory refresher / quick description for the
party? not present. You better have a full working knowledge of every nook and
cranny of this level before running it, or your players are going to go back to texting / surfing / talking amongst themselves as you read a single room's complete description to yourself to refresh your memory. Actually, back in "the day" I don't recall many dungeon rooms having paragraphs of lengthy description, which is probably why we didn't need boxed and / or highlighted text for the most part.

A pole-arm random table with 16 possible pole arms? Present. This is more like a small gem and makes me want to break out my AD&D 1e books to see what each one looks like.

No blank spots on the map - every hex is used. Sure, that's how I drew dungeons when I was 15 - but then again, I was 15.

Doors. WTF is it with all of the doors? Level II is the level of doors it seems.

Fun. I can tell Frank had fun writing this. There are many parts that I had fun reading. The thing is, this is one of those "silly" dungeons, and unless your players are in the mood for such, it will get old - fast. If they are in the mood for such, there's lots to like.

Gygaxian ecology explained? Yep

So far for me, it's a mixed bag. The problem I have with mixed bags when it comes to gaming is sorting it out to the point I can comfortably use it. Time to dig deeper for that.

Lich Dungeon links at The Tavern

Review - Lich Dungeon Level II - Old Vs New "Non System Specific" Stat Block

My first introduction to the "Non System Specific" stat block employed by Eldritch Ent was in Lich Dungeon Level I. I found it needlessly confusing for something aimed at OSR gamers and the straight forward stat blocks that are employed in the vast majority of adventures aimed at such systems.

Here is a sample of a stat block from Lich Dungeon Level I which I reviewed in May of 2012:

Painfully annoying to convert, and really, if it's aimed at old school or OSR rulesets, why should one have to convert at all?

Here's an example from the recent release of Lich Dungeon Level II:

The conversion from percentile to straight up plusses based on a D20 are included for you, which is a big step up. Still, it's not easy to read and is repeated in total in the back of the PDF for each monster encountered. That results in on heck of a needless page bloat. The above works well for a bestiary in the back of an adventure, but not when it's used to fluff out an encounters "page space".

Now here's an example from a recent release, The Last Candle:

The above is about the most I want when I'm running an adventure and looking at an encounter or dungeon room or whatever. It also aligns fairly closely to classic stat blocks in adventures.

So, to recap. Lich Dungeon II has an improved stat block compared to Lich Dungeon I, but it's still needlessly bloated. The adventure itself has some charm to it. More on that later.

Review - Lich Dungeon Level II - Prelude (Some Things Never Change)

Remember that "Non System Specific System" or as I prefer to call it "The Stat Block Fluffer and Obscurer" is back in Lich Dungeon Level II 

It's easy to convert from one OSR game to another. Hell, there is little conversion needed at all.

Here's an example of the definitions of the stats used with the "Non System Specific System" or whatever it is called now:

And this is better than the usual OSR stat block because...

Welcome to "needless conversion for every encounter". Sigh.

The above get's presented in full with the encounter and again at the end. My biggest gripes with Lich Dungeon I seem to still be present.

Ah well, at least the stat block issue is out of the way. I mean, it's a hell of an issue for me, but at least I can put it to the side for now.

Time to read this sucker...

Lich Dungeon Level 2 is Out - It Has to be Better Than Level 1, Right?

In case you missed my coverage of the 1st Level of Lich Dungeon back in April of 2012, I'll link it here (it's actually a 3 part review)

In summary, it wasn't as bad as I had actually expected and pulled off the "1970's Nostalgia" fairly decently, but didnt compare well to more modern dungeon releases. Well, that and the "Non System Specific System" stat blocks were annoying as all hell. Reminded me a bit of Mayfair Games products, and not in a good way.

So, 15 months later Lich Dungeon Level 2 is out from Frank Metzner.

Is there an interest in having this reviewed?

Level 2 is about 50% larger in page count than level 1, but there was lots of bloat in the page count of level 1. So, there's lots of room for improvement or just repeating last year's annoyances.

If you are interested in a review, let me know and if there is enough interest I'll grab it in PDF.

Review - Lich Dungeon - Part the Third (and Final) - It's All About Expectations

32 Corridors greet the party when they descend into the first room of the dungeon.  That is not a typo.  32 corridors are the exits to the dungeon entry area.  They may as well flip a coin.  Or coins.

(Lich Dungeon Review Part 1)
(Lich Dungeon Review Part 2)

Wandering monsters are a major part of Lich Dungeon.  Unlike most of the encounters on the outside, the party will be engaging the majority of them.  Just like the random monsters on the outside, each gets a full stat block.

If there is a major problem I have with Lich Dungeon (aside from the Non System Specific System used in the stat blocks) it is the stat blocks themselves.  They are excessive consumers of space and in the end, page count.  While not a huge deal with a PDF (as the consumer doesn't have to pay extra necessarily for extra pages) it does lead to a misleading page count.

Nine pages are devoted more or less to stat blocks for the wandering encounters outside (13 pages in total deal with the random encounters).  You can make an argument that encounter descriptions are included in the stat blocks, so we'll go with 6 1/2 pages for the outdoor wandering encounter stat blocks of creatures, nearly all of which are in the OGL SRD and the OSR rules of your choice and deserve maybe a line or two at max.  Because, truth to tell, much of the stat blocks don't match up the OSR rules that you'll be using.  So, many of you will be ignoring them.

The dungeon wandering encounter stat blocks take less space, as there are less individual encounters compared to outdoors.  They also include write ups of the dungeon workers, which in this case, do deserve their own stat blocks.

The problem is, each room that has an encounter gives us a a full stat block.  Do we real need that for Undead Skeletons?

Undead Skeletons
Power: 5%
Defense: 15%
Health: 4, 5
Move: 9
Init: 0
Damage: Sword 1d6 or Clawed Hand 1d3
Special:  Undead; immune to mental & cold-
     based attacks
Demeanor: Robotic, hostile
Appearance: Skeletal human or humanoid

Does anyone else see the space waster this is?  I will give Frank Mentzer credit, as he wanted to go with a line or two for the stats and he was outvoted by his partners (as he posted elsewhere).  Frank, you were right and they were wrong.

Furthering the issue is that many rooms just repeat the same stat blocks from other rooms.  Then we wrap up at the end with 7 more pages of stat blocks repeating all of the stat blocks that previously appeared.  I'll roughly guess at least 15 pages are wasted on stat blocks.

As for the dungeon itself?  If you've been around D&D in it's various forms long enough, you'll remember the dungeons that used every last lick of space on the graph paper.  Why waste good gaming space?  ;)

This is that type of adventure.  There is nothing wrong with that, as it is entirely justified by the backstory of the dungeon, but it might seem strange and awkward to new gamers.

It also has traps, teleports, magic fountains (remember those?) and lots of secret doors.  Very old school in this manner.

How well does it pull it off?  It depends on your expectations.

If you are expecting something on par with a Judges Guild type of adventure (maps-wise and bit of silliness) coupled with a decent back story, you should find much to your liking.  It is, if nothing else, a piece of modern gaming history.

If, as someone else pointed out, you're expecting Stonehell, Barrowmaze and the like, you will be sorely disappointed.

I still don't like the Non System Specific System.  It's not a math issue.  It's an awkwardness issue and a needless series of steps to convert to something that resembles what I need to run it.  Which, strangely enough, becomes a non-issue when things converted still don't match stats in OSR rulesets.  I'd suggest referring to the ruleset of your choice and ignore the NSSS stat blocks.

Review - Lich Dungeon Level 1 - Part the Second - By the Numbers ("Non-System Specific")

And now Part Two of Lich Dungeon Level One's review.

(Part one of the review is here)

To get into Lich Dungeon your need to talk to a pair of trees (it's a riddle / puzzle of sorts).  I don't think this will be spoiling anything for anyone reading this, as this needs to be established with the players when you feed them the seeds and rumors they will need to embark on this adventure.  It works surprisingly well in this context.  As I said in the first part of this review, this adventure is a few notches to the silly side.  As long as you accept that (or adjust the adventure to remove such, which is easy enough) you should be fine.

Just because things have a little silly to them doesn't mean they aren't dangerous or even potentially lethal.

Mr Mentzer does a fine job describing describing the environment of the dungeon so as to prepare the DM for running the adventure.  It should allow the DM to fill in details as needed when requested by the PCs without having to do much on the fly.  Floors, walls, doors, hasps, locks and the like are all covered in their various forms.

Also included is the nuts and bolts behind the workings of this dungeon.  As I said in the first part of this review, it is not you standard dungeon.  There are work crews that maintain it and repair it.  It is a dynamic environment.  It is quite possible, even likely, that the players will encounter those that keep Lich Dungeon in top notch form (remember, it is a heavily explored and traversed dungeon).  You will have all the tools to do so.

There will be (if you so decide) treasures that can be acquired from within the dungeon that require the solving of a riddle.  All of the answers to the riddles are in the form of a 4 digit number (no big secret, as that will be revealed to the party before they enter the dungeon).  I'll be honest, even with the explanations to solve the riddles they make no sense to me (I stopped my math at pre-calc, sorry).  That is why they are optional treasures (and riddles) as per the author.  My suggestion?  Find some medium / hard riddles on the internet that won't suffer from modern assumptions and substitute them.  I like the idea of the riddles and how the items are distributed and would hate to see my players lose out on them because due to my / their math issues (Ah, I think I see where the Non-System Specific System comes from now ;)

Gee, two parts into the review an I'm not even to the dungeon itself.

Tomorrow, we leap into the dungeon depths.  Well, Level 1 at least ;)

Review - Lich Dungeon Level 1 - Part the First - Getting to the Dungeon Door ("Non-System Specific")

I told Frank Mentzer I would give the Lich Dungeon (his new release) an honest shake and review it, so I am.  It is an 88 page PDF, so I'm going to do this in parts, which in my mind seems to work.

Part 1 will deal with the history of the dungeon, both it's fictional history and it's history as a dungeon that Frank began running in the 70s.  It will also deal with the alternate stat block used by Eldritch Ent. as well as the encounters around the entrance to the Lich Dungeon.  Oh, and the technical stuff and editing.  Part 2 will deal with the dungeon itself.

Where to start?  The font size is perfectly readable.  I'm real tired of RPG products that feel like that have to cram 3 pages into 1 and somehow find an 8 font typeface is sufficiently readable.  It isn't.  Lich Dungeon uses a fine font size with clean pages.  If you want to print this out your aren't going to kill your ink cartridge.  Kudos for not driving me blind ;)

The PDF lacks hyperlinks or bookmarks.  If this were a rulebook, I'd be fairly upset, but with an adventure that comes in at 88 pages I can like without the bookmarking or hyperlinks.  They would be a nice addition, but they aren't needed and the lack of such does not detract from the product.

The introduction is priceless.  It's a short piece of in game fiction that gives on a solid idea of how such a magical dungeon can and does exist, how it got to it's location, the hows and why of it's occupation by various monsters and even it's up keep.  I have to admit that I smiled upon reading it.  It is a few notches towards the silly side, but many an Old School adventure were a few notches towards silly.  Besides, I'm a big fan of Tunnels & Trolls, and that system encourages silly in it's fantasy.

The Author's Preface is a two page retrospective of Frank Mentzer's process of creating the Lich Dungeon, it's starts and stop and starts again.  I always like to read history of the hobby, and I really enjoyed this piece.  If you aren't into such pieces, no worries, it's only two pages long ;)

Nomenclature is where all the little bits get explained, such as bold text is to be read to the players and elves are called "olves".  It is also where the non-system specific stat block used in Eldritch Ent. products is explained.  Suffice to say, I don't like the "generic" stat block that EE has invented.  The additional math, although not horribly complicated is not intuitive and doesn't match up in all cases to OSR rulesets. My suggestion is to either ignore the stat blocks and use the ones from the rules you are using, or go to this link supplied by Frank Mentzer himself updated as per Frank Mentzer.

If you are expecting a bunch of hooks to get your players to the dungeon, you'll need to think of them yourself, as none are supplied, at least not directly.  Remember the introduction?  The hooks are there, you just need to extract them.

The area around the dungeon is a living, breathing environment with it's own ecology of sorts.  There are intelligent creatures that pray on adventurers (at least, the wounded parties laden with treasure - no point in killing an unfattend calf).

This is also the first place you find these new stat blocks in action.  Even if you plan to ignore them (as I do) the Demeanor and Appearance aspects of it are very useful in playing out the encounters.  Most are not lethal UNLESS the party decided to make it so.  Discretion is very much the better part of Valor in most of these.  They are not balanced to the party, but for the most part that shouldn't be an issue so long as the party plays it smart and knows their own limits.  TPKs are definitely possible for the foolish (and it's even mentioned in the text as such).

There is a trick to entering the dungeon which is best set up as a rumor or rumors for the players to pick up before arriving for the first time, or it may be a long time before they get to enter.  As there is a decently sized population of adventuring parties using these dungeon, rumors shouldn't be a problem to plant ahead of time.

Thus ends the first part of my review of Lich Dungeon - Part 1.

(Part 2 of the Lich Dungeon review is here)

(Part 3 - Final Part of the Lich Dungeon review is here)