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And we're back with the exciting conclusion!

Note! This retro review of a 25 year old novelization of a 46 year old D&D adventure will contain unmarked spoilers! Which hero will tragically die? Don't read on if you don't want to be spoiled!

FINAL WARNING!

To recap:

“Escalla checked the set of her thong – perfect as usual.”

Now that that is taken care of, the heroes are ready to take on a literal (lesser) God(dess). But first they stop to ponder some deeper questions of man and god and our place in the universe.

"All right these 'god' guys? Hasn't it struck you that they're just beings a bit higher up the power scale than you and !? They're a scam!"

And

"You don't have any gods?"
"None I'd cross the street to say hello to."

With that settled off we go!

They arrive in the first level of the 666 levels of the Abyss and thanks to some shape changing and portable hole mischief they make it to the door to Lolth's person layer.

"No one touch the door. Polk do not touch the door! Polk!"
Polk touched the door.

So they find themselves on a floating stone platform surrounded by a maelstrom of souls of the damned and encountering doorways literally stuck to the side. There's heroic battles with demons, a trip to the lodestone trap room, everything you would want.

"Hey you! Hello in there! Anyone here order a two-foot-tall goddess in a thong?"

And through courage and skill they find their way through. Until someone sets off a fireball in an enclosed space.

But they survive, and they find a map.



Which is kind of neat since Q1QotDWP (as I like to call it) has one of the coolest and highly original maps of any module, and the players really never get to see it.

But it leaves the question, who left them the map and why? The only clue is... a snake scale.



Hmm...

Side note, my search for pictures Lolth's secretary brought me here:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/osec

Make of that what you will.

Now as all DM's know players never follow the script, so after a few rooms of clever traps and killer demons they're sick of it and just drink the stash of enlargement potions (much to the annoyance of the fairy who was using them for more personal reasons) and climb to the top level.

There they find the door to the vampire dimension but find the vampire in question hacked into small pieces by six curved swords. And a table full of food waiting for them.

And the only clue is a snake scale.

Hmm...

Fed, rested and ready they now enter... the Steampunk Demon Spider Palace of the Damned!

And we get my favorite scene.

"Behind a desk sat a slim, cool woman with bobbed black hair. Her six arms were busy all over the desk, writing, sorting, doodling and filing all at once."

Lolth's secretary, without ever looking up, tells them to enter their names in the appointment list and since they have an appointment, they're not intruders. And since she never looked up she can honestly tell her mistress she's not seen anyone strange.



Oh and she leaves a map of the Giant Mecha Spider Palace on the desk and leaves.

We cut to Lolth, sitting in her throne room, covering the floors with extra quicksand and waiting for the heroes to arrive (alas her secretary was not quite as clever as she thought).

But the heroes don't show. Instead they go down to the boiler room and start trashing the place.

Lolth is forced to confront them and there's a huge fight among blowing steam pipes where Lolth faces the full and unleashed power of not just Chekhov's Gun, but Chekhov's Arsenal as the party uses every magic item and power mentioned so far to take her down.

Even Polk gets in on the action

then an enraged badger suddenly had her backside in its jaws

Lolth ends up drowning in a portable hole full of holy water and the heroes win!

Note: Lolth can only be permanently killed on her own plane, I would argue that killing her in a pocket dimension like a portable hole does not count. So feel free to use Lolth in future adventures.

But victory, as always comes at a price as a hero meets a tragic end.

Surprisingly it's not Henry whose entire personality so far has consisted of 'having a crossbow' and 'being named Henry'. No it's Enid.

You remember Enid right?

Enid is the sphinx.

So in the epilogue the heroes set out to bring her back.

I kind of expected this would consist of trekking to the nearest High Temple and bargaining with the priest until they got 10% off of a resurrection spell. Death in D&D is slightly less permanent than death in the X-Men after all.

Nope.

Instead we get a heist. An afterlife heist.

"Children of Thoth! I am an amazingly benevolent energy being from far beyond your realms! Long ago, my people evolved far beyond mere physical form."

And the party tries to con the god of wisdom into giving them the soul of their buddy.

In the end they succeed, after tripping a literal deity with a grease spell, and are drifting down the river with their resurrected friend and their new buddy the Type V Demon, off to their next adventure.

Which due to rights issues and Greyhawk being a dead property will never be told.

Come back next time as we wrap this up.

And we're back. The novel was fun, not a great one, but fun.

Sometimes it really reads like someone's gaming session typed and novelized. I would bet good money some of the funnier bits are from actual games.

And you can almost reverse engineer the players from the characters.



The Justicar with his Schwarzenegger physique, unmatched warrior skills, arsenal of unique magic items and grim-dark manner is obviously someone's long-run character who is now almost as cool as the sketch on top of the character sheet. He may not have glowing red eyes himself, but his talking hellhound cloak does.

And guaranteed he takes the character way too seriously. I'm not sure if the player made The Justicar bald because he is, or shaved his head because The Justicar did. Either way I know he has a shaved head.



Henry, he has a crossbow and his name is Henry. At least it's a magic rapid fire crossbow. Obviously a casual player getting the hang of things, and the DM took pity and gave him a decent magic weapon.



While Enid is a power gamer taking advantage of permission to use non-human races by playing a sphinx. But she's not a very good power gamer, because Enid's contributions are reading languages and dying.



While Polk, Polk had been in this campaign way too long and has no F's left to give. He's just there to play the weirdest character he can and make fun of everything. Probably misses a lot of sessions too.

And then we have... Estella.



2' tall, highly sexualised, and with whatever powers or skills the plot may require. Need to fake it past some demons, Estella gets the job because she once slept through a semester of Demonic, rather than say the Sphinx who speaks every language ever created...

So your enjoyment of the book will depend entirely on how funny/sexy/annoying you find her.

The player is nothing like this in real life, but goes nuts after her second Mountain Dew.

QotDWP-The Novel isn't quite a parody but it is fun.

Paul/Pauli Kidd is a long-time gamer and has a really good interview here:

https://greyhawkstories.com/2020/03/25/interview-with-paul-kidd-the-real-justicar/

And has other, non-licensed, books out there.

So basically if you like these Retro Reviews this will be a good read for you. I've started White Plume Mountain, the first book in the series and it's about the same. The middle book however does not seem to exist in digital format and people want $100 for the hardcopy so alas I may never enjoy it...

Anyway onward.

Next up, a lost classic by Michael Moorcock: The Outcast of Kitzoprenia!

Guaratee if it was based on an actual campaign, the Estella player was a dude.

And we’re back with more! I guess since I read the books I may as well review them! Presenting the further adventures (and or prequels since I started with book 3) of The Justicar and Escalla!

GREYHAWK: WHITE PLUME MOUNTAIN



White Plume Mountain, the module, is one of the gamier early modules. The plot is paper thin, an evil wizard had hidden 3 high-end magic weapons in his personal dungeon and your lads need to get them back. And probably keep them. They are kind of nice. And you have earned them haven’t you?

According to Wikipedia (oh yes I do research these!) the author wrote as a demonstration/audition piece and was kind of surprised they printed it. Especially since one of the magic weapons is Blackrazor, better known as Similar To But Legally Distinct From Strombringer.



It's best remembered for the clever (and cruel) trap rooms. Many corridors are knee deep in water hiding all sorts of nastiness like green slime.



There’s a corridor which heats any metal red hot, so your players have to choose between going on buck naked or being cooked in their armor. Meanwhile the Druid just whistles on through wondering what the issue is.

A room which locks you inside. The only way out is to pop these balloons handing from the ceiling and find the key, but 8 of the 9 balloons have monsters instead.

A friction-less room with a spiked pit in the center which you WILL slip and slide into because it is completely frictionless, even the movement of your heartbeat will cause you to slide.

Stuff like that.

To this Kidd adds some meat. We meet The Justicar, already fully formed with his hellhound pelt and his shaved head and his relentless hatred of evil. He’s investigating a plot to ambush supply shipments to the frontier when he meets Polk a wagon driver and Escella a fairy working for the bad guys and spying on him shapeshifted into someone’s foxpelt scarf.



In the process his sentient hellhound blows up a wagon of fish oil starting a forest fire, a riverboat casino and a mystical library. So typical murderhobo stuff.

Finally they find that the artifacts were stolen as part of a plot to start a civil war and the heroes must retrieve them in time. They’re accompanied by priests from two rival temples and various other folks who barely get names or descriptions.



Kidd uses experiences in RPGs in his writing and it shows, the characters find innovative ways to use their powers, skills and magic items to defeat the traps, tricks and monsters. The aforementioned green slime gets bottled and I used as grenades. I especially liked the scene with the Sphinx Enid. Rather than sword her death, or outriddle her, Escella basically sits down and they talk about how much it sucks to sit in a hot sweaty volcano dungeon all day waiting for some heroes to come along and swap riddles with. In the end Enid joins the party, and considering she’s a winged lioness with centuries of wisdom and magical powers, proceeds to do nothing useful. I stand by my guess that her player got a job working weekends and missed a lot of sessions.

The party finally claims the hammer Whelm (it doesn’t overwhelm, but it gets the job done), and the trident Wave. Unfortunately the mighty sword Similar To But Legally Distinct From Strombringer ends up impaled in the chest of the evil wizard, who then falls into a volcano, which destroys the dungeon and thus the cliches are fulfilled. Good on The Justicar for letting the sword go, it’s a pretty cool magic weapon and I know a lot of folks who’d’ve jumped into the volcano after it hoping they could somehow soak the damage.



Like Greyhawk: Queen of the Demonweb Pits the Novel Based on the Module (GQofSDWPtNBotM), Greyhawk: White Plume Mountain the Novel Based on the Module (GWPMtNBotM) was a fun and quick read and is available in electronic form from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AWFAQJ8/

It’s not quite a parody but has a lot of cute moments that RPG fans will recognize.

By the gods, I have that module and it is not good. Which is just my tastes as I am sure many others LOVE it.

We played the HackMaster version of White Plume Mountain. I think we snagged one of the artifacts and then noped the hell out of there.