Adventure Site Contest - The Tower of the Elephant The Tower of the Malphyr

Conan comes to OSE

This entry is from J. Blasso-Gieseke of 21st Centaury Games, the winner of both the Wavestone Keep contest and No Art-Punk II. Reviewing Gieseke's work is somewhat surreal, as he seems to bring a much high level of polish to his entries than is believable, and never to the detriment of the work itself. He is not all style with no substance, there is some serious meat to anything he brings to the table.

Speaking of that substance, let's get into the adventure itself. This is an adventurefication of a Conan story, The Tower of the Elephant as a matter of fact. Old School Essentials was the target system for this adaptation, with a level range of 6-8, so just below name level. That range is a good fit, sense the fluff would have you believe that the tower is well known and feared by the entire populace, up to and including the king. There hooks and rumors, as opposed to one or the other, a neat addition that helps ease the adventure into a given world. The hooks also provide more grounds for adventures, as they omit or add additional information that could steer player behavior. For example:

The lame daughter of King Amlek, Princess Kala, approaches the PCs disguised as a beggar. She believes her brother, Prince Elam, is held captive by Yara in his tower. Return him to the palace and she’ll pay them 50,000gp

Which points to the fact that said prince is there and explains why a giant spider in the adventure turns into the prince after being killed. Should this hook not be used, I can very easily see players killing the prince as soon as the polymorph wears off. Because really, whose going to believe the guy that was just a giant spider that he's actually a very important prince and not a monster trying to trick them. Compare this to the third hook:

The obese thief, Taurus of Nemedia, is overheard talking about the magical gem the Elephant’s Heart. He has a buyer for it and will act as middle man to anyone brave enough to steal it. He is offering 50,000gp of the undisclosed 250,000gp price. The buyer is Yara’s nemesis, the evil priest Thugra Khotan, who will try to kill, instead of pay, the thieves of the gem

Now you are dealing with an evil priest, the criminal underworld, backstabbing, etc, the texture of the adventure and it's consequences change, without particularly altering the substance. Good stuff.

Next, the map. This thing is immaculate. Extremely precise and clear, just loaded with information easily discerned at a glance. It's only real downside is that at the end of the day, a tower is just a tower. It leaves very little room for interesting traversal. Which is sort of the point of the adventure, the challenge is how to assault or rob a well defended tower with very little room for traversal outside of the normal path. I understand the appeal, even if to me the tower really looks like a prime target for hiring a catapult crew and a unit of sword and bows to tear down. Why risk everything on an uncertain heist when you could simply use the static positioning against those inside? The only real thing to persuade against this is the clerical spell extending Yellow Lotus that Yara is inhaling.

Glorious Information Density

Now, to the downsides. The most major one is that this adventure is going to be very difficult to fit into any given milieu. There are place names, assumptions about characters having knowledge, the existence of lotus and the Malphyr (sort of Great Old One-esque creatures that feed off of the evil commited by those in their thrall) at all, etc. And while all this can be made more generic, it would be quite a bit of work on the referee to do so. The tower itself should be a known quantity in players minds for awhile, given its description and the fact that the whole kingdom knows of it. It isn't something they can just rock up on randomly. Secondarily, a minor quible in that an appendix of monsters is included which technically brings it over the page count of 2+maps. I'll leave whether that matters up to the head judge though.

Treasure is good, lots of expense but heavy things and light but cheap things. A total of 403,500 GP, about half of that depends on whether the players are able to recover the Elephant's Heart gemstone. Combat is challenging but avoidable in some cases, such as with guards. A few nasty surprises in the high levels. All in all a well executed adventure that is somewhat marred by its specificity to being a Conan adventure.

Sail On,
-ShockTohp