Adventure Site Contest: Death Talon Lair

​Written by John Nash
B/X, Level 3
Ruined temple in a swamp, being used as a DRAGON’S LAIR.
  No atmospheric blurb here at the start or explanation, we’re here for the DRAGON LAIR.
  The name of the game that we all play is Dungeons & DRAGONS, but for most of us, most of the time, the game is Dungeon. And Dungeon. And maybe & Wilderness. At most, & City. There’s a tragic lack of DRAGONS in all of our D&D, in part because of how powerful they are and the low-level tendency that schedules and flaking often impose on most campaigns. John Nash is the first submitting author to this contest to address this concern with a good ol-fashioned dragon’s lair. Measuring in at two pages even with the scanned pencil map, Death Talon Lair doesn’t give a crap about your hooks, your rumors, or your settings. Screw you, there’s a swamp, it’s a young black dragon (named Death Talon), you’re all level three, here’s your random encounter table and now let’s get to this.
  Miffed as I am about the lack of context, the adventure site’s immediately presented content is well-formatted, monsters bolded and treasure listed at the ends of entries, the two-column text uses its space efficiently; there are twenty-three rooms here with some reasonably complex traps at times. Keys are terse, with direct language in the present tense e.g., “6. Bloody tomb: Collapsed wall opposite the stairs. Crushed bone and blood stains on the floor.” For all that, adjective usage is strategic and evocative, giving the reader all the sights, smells, sounds, and sensations experienced by the players entering the environment.
  The map is good for what it is, with a whopping three entrances/exits, some up/down action, naturalistic flow between “zones”, and good secret passage action, plus lots of caved in tunnels (which are in turn cleared in 8 hours, or 4 for blessed worshippers of the earthworm god (Lumbricus) honored in the temple. Underwater passages are a wonderful addition to any dungeon, too. From left-to-right, there’s the undead section, the natural caves/ooze/crab section, and the gnoll section. Keys imply each section is fairly static but the random encounters roll seems to think that a ghoul pack might be hanging out with the mushroom cave, the gnolls might be looking in the skele-tombs for bullying targets, or a grey ooze might be just be chilling in the gnoll’s kitchen. It’s a pity for the author that we aren’t grading maps on artistic quality because I really do like the quality of the line work here.
  Presumably the dragon Death Talon is a known quantity to delvers delving here in the eponymous Death Talon Lair, but unfortunately our young black dragon host doesn’t have a strong presence throughout the site. The earthworm god bit is a fun idea too, but it’s mostly just a single altar you can mess with for a blessing or curse. The whole lack of hooks isn’t just being fussy about motivation, the site lacks coherence in its parts in part I think because it lacks context, if the author did have a story to this whole place, then it’s not something that comes out in the keys…
  …which is a real shame, because darned it, I really like the details of the keys. Traps are interesting and dynamic, secret doors are meaningful and indicated by good mapping, the descriptions of the rooms are very focused on getting the bare minimum to the players needed to run the game. Even the rare weird stuff, like the King Crab being a giant crab who can talk a tries to sell junk, understands that this is a game where meaningful choices have to be made for benefits and detriments. I love the babbling fountain that literally babbles…and drinking from it lets the character understand every language but common. Great stuff. The dragon does a neat thing too, living with grey oozes it’ll spend its first turn alerted rolling in them to coat its scales with anti-weapon goop. Difficulty seems on the high side for level 3 B/X, so I hope your players understand how to use all those tools to their utmost if they expect to overcome the dragon and get out with the loot.
  The loot is also pretty good. Not sure if it’s objectively enough for the danger but a little south of 14k is a fine haul for a day as a level 3 Basicman. There’s not a lot hidden, but the wonderful “loot glittering over there in the middle of clear deadly danger” is used often, which is always a fun risk/reward. The one bit of magic, a +1 shield of arrow attraction, is on the other side of an obvious sandpit with a non-obvious acid component.  Good stuff.
  Putting Death Talon[’s] Lair in an existing map should be very easy in the broadest sense, just find a swamp that needs a black dragon and boom, need filled. I’d complain about the gonzo flourishes of dancing skeletons, talking giant crab-salesmen, or earthworm gods, but frankly more of that stuff wouldn’t go amiss…if we had context. As it is, you’ll have to do a little work to go from swamp to room-by-room night of adventure. Even so, when they get there they’ll have good time if they survive.