​For OSRIC, Level 4-6
By Szilárd Dreska
Scrotum was a hedonistic scientist and sorcerer who hosted many wealthy eccentrics in his secluded Sanctuary. He had many generous supporters, so he acquired a considerable fortune. However, 150 years ago, he disappeared, not even visited by guests, and his name was slowly forgotten.
   I'm going to assume Scrotum is a perfectly normal name in Hungary and let it otherwise pass without comment. Playtesters are credited, nice.
   The site's story here is going to be in the sci-fi/fantasy mix, which seems to be a common theme for the Melanian Renaissance (Hungarian OSR). Scrotum was messing around with some Star Trek level crap, to the point of this sanctuary having a central reactor powering strip lighting and multiple force fields. Then he did That One Wizard Thing where he messed up a ritual and turned his entire complex's staff into undead, while putting himself and his lady into stasis. So, your basic fallen wizard's lair, with added tech stuff. 
   Map is portrayed rather simply, but very clear and clean...looks like a graph paper scan with a lot of post-production. Love the symbols like collapsed staircases, locked doors, etc. It's three-level with tons of interconnections, flow is good. I find the number of big open rooms without walls in between them is interesting, slightly hard to adjudicate at times but there's a logical pathway or two, great stuff. Also pretty big.
   ...because then we get to contents and we get a slightly empty vibe. Many rooms are bare, while those that do have interaction usually just have a single thing. I will highlight a good bit of interaction, a devil statue as part of a carved fresco is chatty and willing to help, but also Charms a PC to go kill one of the servants because he's been slighted by the man. Some of the poison or death effects are a little random, but lead to stuff like "party member goes berserk", which can be interesting. The whole "shut down the reactor" bit where you have to figure out the sorcerer's favorite number for the passcode can be fun.
   I think part of my feeling stems from the rather simple monster roster. Wanderers are skeletons, giant rats, or ghasts, fine things to fight but not a lot of variation (and clerics get rid of the undead easily). The Melan-imagined "Breathstealers" are a cool undead, pity they're only fought once. Mechanical scorpions give a little variety, but beyond that it's just "bigger deal undead" like juju zombies and the nasty final chamber with a spectre and a shadow.
   I do appreciate the treasure distribution here. There's a steady drip-drip-drip mostly of bulky stuff (yes you can swipe the silverware) while bumbling around, with the main hoards near the bottom behind a bigger boss fight. The book that caused all this is a huge value and there's an opulent mass of statues and jewelry in the final room (behind the force field, so need reactor shutdown). I don't have issues with the amounts either...my only grump is that magic treasure feels a little light, three magic +1 weapons and that's about it. Players don't mind that, fundamentally.
   The site's location is cool and easy to put anywhere (secret passage beneath a monolith) but campaign managers will need to make a choice about how much high-tech stuff they're willing to have in their game, it's central to the location. Your mileage may vary, but if you like tech...

​For RC, Level any
By Jamie Henson 
A Foggy Night to Forget is as easy or hard as the DM decides. It can be used as: the basis of a single session (a simple in and out); a way to remove/kill PCs (of almost any power level—a campaign-fix); a method to introduce gear, treasure, and/or characters (ala aurum ex deo); or an introduction to domain play (the hamlet has to go somewhere).
   Danger Will Robinson, Danger! It can be a bad sign if an adventure has no level listed; that often is a sign of no playtesting, or some DM hand-waving, or just a sloppy oversight. Obviously, each of those things can lead to other, more serious deficiencies. But there’s a worse sign. A sign of terror. “For any level.” That means the adventure was written to nerf or bypass 90% of all the game’s default mechanics. This is actually the second such entry to this contest; the other didn’t even have a proper site associated with it, at all…that one will get reviewed at the very end along with a site that broke the 2-page limit. At least this one listened to page limits and does have an associated physical location.
   In other words, it might say Rules Cyclopedia, but it’s actually for AD&D 2E.
   Provisos aside, there’s nothing at all wrong with the site-as-a-site. The nicely-formatted and well-framed document tells of a magical cursed hamlet that appears in a foggy night? That’s Ravenloft Standard, nothing weird about accessing an adventure locale that way. Once the party is in the foggy village, they’re trapped there until they can either figure out what happened to make the village is way (it’s a curse, natch), or until they lose all their memories and become more inhabitants (or die before the curse sets in). Fixing the town’s curse involves solving the mystery (easy enough, they just murdered an immortal godlike being’s favorite servant) and them making the inhabitants admit what they did and say they were sorry. That’s a sticky wicket. Good luck adjudicating all the mind-control spells and deciding if the wizard charms a villager if that really counts. Also there’s a superpowered fighter at the middle of town who’s load-bearing if you figure out how to overcome his hugely inflated statblock. Good narrative setup for a story, proper players should work to sequence-break immediately. 

    Map is pretty standard for “outdoor site” which means its just a flat sheet of POIs to go to at random. There’s not a real “pitched battle” scenario around here but hey, trust the players, I never put a riot off the table and the picture helps run that. Despite the grid no clear scale given and it’s a weird stylistic semi-isometric. The existence of a stream automatically helps a little bit for shenanigans. It looks good, but I would prefer a larger village to be honest. Still, site is a site, so that’ll work.
   This is a social scenario like most mysteries, so there’s a need for plenty of interactive NPCs. Unfortunately, most the NPCs are a little on the spacey side, the village’s curse specifically making them somewhat unfocused, passive, and forgetful. Only a few of the villagers are original inhabitants, with extra NPCs like a passel of Gator-men, an amnesiac set of mercs (keeping the decapitated head of the immortal’s pet mystic), and a druid-turned-vampire in charge of a spider cult. Some of these can get very hostile indeed, and put a lie to the “all levels” designation. And that’s not even mentioning the automaton in the center.
   Rules Cyclopedia incorporates BECMI all the way up to Immortal, so the center figure with a -13AC, saving as a F36, is within the rules but it seems designed to be a purposeful “can’t fight this” middle mystery. Still, if it has hit points, it can be killed, granting vast riches plus a fix to the village curse-trap that is not “talk to people”. Players being players, that’s mostly like the avenue out of here.
   Assuming the players get out killing everything, there’s about a million gp, or a few dozen thousand if the middle fight gets avoided. That middle guy’s equipped with “Suit Armor +4, Shield +5, Girdle of Giant Strength, Warhammer +4, +9 against Spellcasters) And/or any other equipment & treasure the DM feels appropriate.” Otherwise the magic is a little spare, things like a few potions and scrolls, Stone Plate, a shield +1 and battle axe +1…not quite the reward I’d expect for tangling with a vampire-druid with 9th-level spells and or so on.
   Inclusion of this site is easy enough, geographically, but campaign inclusion is a mix of dangerous and difficult…a TPK or a Monte Haul, not much of a space in between, that would probably leave many players perplexed as to why. With great difficulty you could probably seed rumors into the world beforehand but that’d be a difficult task.

​For AD&D, Levels 4-6
By Grützi
Four centuries ago, the paladin Geren of Khaz defeated the demon Malgryth the Sanguine Blight by impaling it with his holy sword Schattenbann onto a rock in a hidden cave deep in the Broken Hills, trapping it alive but paralyzed. Mortally wounded, Geren left a warning and died there as the demon’s blood still seeped into a dark stream. Fifteen years ago, the halfling thief Barlo Lipply stumbled upon the cave, found the desiccated husk of the demon, drank from the stream, and saw his wounds healed and strength restored. Sensing profit, he enlisted his old accomplice, the human illusionist Thorman, and together they set out to exploit the cursed cave. Five years later they built a small cloister and shrine, sealing the original cave.
   Oh boy, it's a Grützi Site. If you've been with the contest long, you know what that means...dense, brilliant, dense, clever, dense, well-designed, dense, fun, and dense. The "Grützi Rule" restricting font size comes from our halfling-superfan friend and fellow judge, whose great Lipply's Tavern impressed every one of us once we got past the eyestrain. He's promised to be a good boy this year, let's see what we've got...
   Despite the name, this adventure site bucks the trend of ASC III and is not a religious location. Instead, as seen above this is the site of a con (run by another Lipply, hey) where demon-tainted waters heal people with only a teensy weensy 1% chance per use of moving them toward CE. Once that happens, oops, the demon takes them over, turns them into a pseudodemon, and then uses said servant to turn more evil all to free the stuck demon. As of the start of the site, Lipply just went nuts and slaughtered a lot of his monks and there are pilgrims hiding upstairs and all of en media is very res. Which, as you know, I dislike...
   ...but of course, in a long-term campaign, that is not how to use this adventure site. Instead, given its a shrine of healing and even limb-regeneration, you have this sucker in normal operation and just a normal feature of the game world, even used by PCs, until later ol boy snaps and goes demony and now your party gets summoned to help. The notional setup is best for a one-shot, but the integrated site is ideal.

   The map in this case is quite simple, but has just enough up and down, secret doors, and hidden passageways to make exploration worthwhile. The secret section of the map linking two buildings together as well as showing the way to the nasty demon death area, plus all the best loot, is classy. As always, hiding an essential part of your dungeon behind a single secret door can go very wrong but behind multiple possible secret doors, you are guaranteed to get somebody finding the way in. It does work well though, making sure that when the site is visited at peace there is an explanation for why nobody realizes what's up. Really big fan of this entire complex. 
   There are loads of wonderful interactive characters here if you go with the module's suggested scenario, paranoid and terrified monks and pilgrims being led by one-handed fighter is a good group just loaded with fun conversations, and The illusionist Abbot isn't evil, he is just trying to sneak around and find his partners key so that he can steal everything and leave. If you can't run something interesting off that, I don't know what to tell you. 
   Of course, the majority of the area is going to be dominated by those pseudo demons, very interesting and fresh enemies to have to fight, the main bad guy up and running around is Lipply transformed, and he has the nasty ability to transform other helpless victims into more pseudo demons. A lot of very chaotic and interesting fights available here without having to go with a vast number of different monsters. Traps are just going to be naturalistic and not very common, but the single best piece of loot here being a holy avenger embedded fully in the demon's body is a great temptation. Forget any measly 1% chances of slow corruption, wave that massive sword in front of the players and you have all the temptation you need to make sure that the final fight is against the big bad evil demon guy. 
   Other loot here is going to be a little bit funky, the location is not a legit shrine so everything in the main area is going to be cheap and shoddy. There are the occasional valuable bits and pieces to be found but the real loot is in the very clearly valuable massive iron safes that require not one but two keys, used simultaneously, to open. You need two thieves lock picking to do it at a normal success rate, which is great. I also like the bug out kit in the main guys lair, that is always a nice little bonus loot hoard. Outside of the amazing sword magic is going to be mostly restricted to what is worn and what has been squirreled away for a rainy day. I don't know if you will be able to steal everything if you rescue the terrified victims, but that is just more interesting gameplay as well. It is definitely a lucrative site for level 4 players, and even level 6 parties won't complain too badly about the amounts available.
   As I said, this site can go anywhere in any campaign and would be best served to be placed early and referenced from time to time. Regardless, this shrine needs to go into your campaign, and massive congratulations to the writer for making something that is actually readable without zooming in.

​For B/X, Levels 5-7
By Stooshie & Stramash
This adventure can be (1) dropped in as the location on a treasure map, “here be sea monsters!”, showing Rockall and the name of one of the named sunken vessels areas 2-5, or (2) to investigate strange weather, lost ships and reports of sea devils.
   There’s something romantic about the lonely sea stack of Rockall, remote and tiny and barren set amidst the storms and surf in the middle of the North Atlantic. It’s just a little dot on the map in the middle of the north Atlantic Ridge, but something about it calls to the imagination. So it’s odd, then, we don’t see more sea stacks in our dungeon adventures. Stooshie, second-place winner of Adventure Site Contest I, aims to rectify this lack.
   Story on this one is pretty normal, a horrible custom sea hag lives deep within the sea stack, hanging out and occasionally doing Hag Things, but otherwise chill. Rocs nest on the stack top, natch. This isn’t a site that reaches out to grab you, this is a rumor to plop on the map, as said above. The sea stack is a small part of a bigger seamount, most of which lies just a little under the water and is dotted with crashed ships, monster oddities, and a merman village. Despite the centrality of the above-water portion of the site, it’s very much all about the whole plateau. 

​   …as you can see in the maps. So, so many maps. Levels 5-7 is just a little into True Expert zone so there’s no handholding here with free water breathing or other gimmie solutions, you’re just suppose to figure out the “outdoor” site here. Given the nature of swimming this is almost a “fly anywhere” site, so just a collection of locations. It’s a smart collection in a very realistic site, but I’m not sure how much the proposed “kelp forests block pathing” aspect works. Still, a lot of interest in exploring here, definitely in the “DM maps this” category though.
   Our first challenge is in underwater combat. B/X don’t do it, so the writer tells you a correct answer (use 1E) or the popular answer (here’s a rule kludge). The in-module rules all look sane upon first glance, but I have no idea how they’d work in edge cases. It does look like the module expects players to be walking around on the seafloor with water breathing.
   I get a little nervous about the balance at the lower end here, there are a lot of wrecks around the sea stack for a very good reason; those two rocs are horrifically dangerous for most boats. They’re supposed to just be kidnapping lawful characters, but hard to communicate their intentions. Add in the (abstracted) bad weather too, I’m not sure how we envision pick-up and drop-off. Everything monster-wise is tough, especially to fight underwater…plenty of D&D sea monsters, of course, but there are also humanoid undead and I’m particularly fond of “panicky school of fish” acting like bat swarms but underwater. Tough as the hag is the real big fight is Gronda the Dragon Turtle, who, to be fair, takes a lot of effort to wake up/activate. I’m not sure why you want to wake her up, but hey, adds some chaos. The mermen are stated like a tribe of combatants but we’re mostly assuming negotiation with them. They’re reluctant to fight with the PCs but do provide some of their considerable treasure if an alliance gets hammered out. Traps and hazards are mostly “you’re in the ocean”, but there’s also the chance of trapping yourself in a giant clam, that’s fun…it’s baited by a skeleton arm with a gold ring, so you can’t complain that the module didn’t warn you. My favorite NPC is a desperate cleric trapped in a giant clam who’s been down there for years, sustained by magic. Kind of loot, all the best henchmen are the deranged and traumatized ones.
   Treasure here is appropriately fantastic, sunken wrecks with holds full of gold, magic weapons among the bones of monsters, jewelry and gems and in one place 2,000pp hidden under guano. The biggest pile of loot is under the hag and is extremely mobile (includes the rocs’ egg so if you did manage to talk to them there’s a sticky wicket). Dredging up piles of coins from undead-infested wrecks is a Logistics & Dragons moment…I like it, but some will complain.
   This is a big, tricky, and somewhat confusing environment but it’s also very cool, and very easy to insert into any campaign world with an ocean. I’m not quite sure how aspects of the underwater adventuring will play (particularly in B/X), but underwater adventures are rare and I’m impressed with the effort to make a good one here.

​For B/X, Levels 3-4
By Adam Szabo
The laboratory of Zhaggarog, the Chaos Mage, is located deep within a rock floating 30 feet high, visible only in the moonlight. He uses a teleportation spell to abduct creatures, including humans. Beyond developing special mutagens, he aims to conquer the region with an army of experimentally created perfect beings. The unknown floating rock has recently been sighted nearby, and the city has commissioned its exploration and destruction due to the disappearances it has caused.
   Floating castles can be conservative things, static locations under the command of cloud giants. Jack and the Bean Stalk stuff, basically. There's another option, though, in which floating fortresses pull from UFO/abductee literature, flying locations devoted to capturing victims for unknown (but always sinister) purposes. The passive flying castle is something to be infiltrated and robbed, the flying slaver ship is something to assault more aggressively. Themes are themes, that's just how it goes.
   In this particular case we mix the abduction UFO with "crazy alchemist wizard's lair" and have ourselves a floating rock. Said chaos mage is obsessed with making "perfect creatures", which mostly seem to be kind of umber-hulky. Mutagens make you buggy, this is established in the lore, it's fine. Fine little rumor table to wind you up, and there you are. Go there and fix the issue, my little level 3 darlings.
   Your first challenge is to understand these map interconnections. The shape is good, the layout is fine...but how do these stairs interact? Well, let's just look at the keys ohcrapnonumber. There's a lot of interconnection that just isn't keyed, because this map is too big. It's not bad in and of itself, but its too big for two pages, hate to say. Really do like the mix of stuff, and more sites need to do the thing where pit traps/holes drop you down below. 
   Going to note a great little piece right here: "-Character replacement: Opportunity for replacement characters in the cells of rooms 11 and 16." This is a very good thought for any dungeon that's remote/hard to reach, like this one. Those prison cells also have "four henchmen" as an offered benefit too, great stuff. 
   Beyond that, most of your interaction on this one is "stab" and "don't die to trap". That's not terrible if the fights are interesting, and most of the baddies have a little something. Random encounters are servants (crazy cultish fellas), slaughter beasts (bug monsters), and insidious gnome assistants (treacherous crazed little dirtbags). A few rooms have nasty fights contained by stasis fields; those are wonderful because the players see the danger, but of course no player ever can resist pulling a lever. Evil mage Zhaggarog has troll blood for regeneration and his spell loadout includes stinking cloud, fireball, and mirror image...level 3s must be pretty adroit over there in Hungary. 
   How much loot are you getting for this? Well...you won't go hungry. Straight coinage is a little rare, but you'll have stuff like "robes woven from pearls" (on dryad in stasis), or a jewelry box containing a diamond (5000at) (scorpion underneath because HAH)...it's solid stuff. Like everything else, slightly crazy. 
   Ease of campaign integration? Despite the zany premise and gonzo flavor, this is actually extremely ease to include in most games with magic. Floating monster-filled wizard rocks are a frequent and understandable problem that'll crop up in most such worlds.

​For ASSH, Level 7+
By Joseph Griesel 
In the author’s campaign this small site sits in the middle of a hostile wasteland in a god-forsaken plain. The primary reason to go here is the destruction of an evil relic, or due to a treasure map/sage/etc leading to a sword of wounding. Decide what campaign appropriate dead language all writing in the dungeon is written in.
   Nothing about this site screams "Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea", but apparently that's what it is. Two-column text, classic blue-background map, breezy informal style, you know the deal, let's press.
   So this little tomb is suggested to be located either as a treasure map leading to the sword of wounding, or as a bit of paladin-bait for the usual "please go destroy the evil relic" reasons. It's a lich-hangout, where this Ithog character apparently just chills without much purpose, just being evil and lichy and occasionally experimenting with Evil Experiments of Evil. Nothing wrong with that, let's go.
   I like how the map looks like a little guy. Remove room 9 and it's a decent robot drawing.
   What it isn't, however, is a very interesting exploration.Linear hub-and-spoke dungeons are still linear even if you start them in the center. Meaningful choices are few and far between here, just poke and figure out traps. While a secret door can give a further avenue of exploration, if it's just "find doors check to finish dungeon" that's bad design. With nine rooms linearity can be reasonable, but it's definitely not a plus.
   Those traps are telegraphed, with 1a already activated by an unlucky thief; it's a classic walls-mush-together trap, which means the activated version also acts like a mild puzzle, "how do we pry these walls apart?" The other side has the exact same trap, untriggered. This is good use of symmetry. Likewise, the two traps to the south are spike pits so triggering one will warn about triggering another. Within one of those pits lies a bugbear with a valuable bit of loot, so of course you know it's going to animate as an undead (wight this time). In the "things to mess with" category there is a tub you can fill with meat to make an empty husk-clone that gets possessed very quickly by a demon (rules for this unclear, sorry). 
   As is often the problem with houses of the lich and famous, a single good cleric with some powerful turn rolls will obviate a lot of the threats. The initial fight (or a fight in the end if avoided upon entry) is with a massive swarm of flameskulls, who are turned as demon-special, and there's a desperate trapped nalfeshnee in one room, but otherwise it's a very dead space. The sword of wounding fight is a wraith trio plus a wight wielding said sword, so turn undead is huge against that. Mummy trio, likewise. The final boss fight against the lich involves him hiding behind a pair of bone golems and spellcasting, designed to be a nice cinematic fight. I'm always a little skeptical that these will play out as outlined, but it's an appreciated effort.
   Loot beyond the aforementioned sword is cash-light, with the biggest pile in the form of platinum filigree embedded in the floor, making up the demon’s prison. That’s good stuff. Lot of alchemical and tech loot, with vials containing potions (and poison, of course), techno-magical implants, etc. The squished thief was wearing a cloak of elvenkind, which is nice for the henchmen at this level. Our main draw, more as a quest item than as a useful artifact, is the wand of depopulation…it’s about as evil an artifact as it sounds, a wand that can only be used on a new moon that deals one hit point of damage to every single living thing in a ten-mile radius. As the text notes, given how most commoners are a single hit die…yeah, that’s a vast number of dead peasants and chipmunks. Very evil, very nice, I approve.
   Placement of the site can theoretically be anywhere, but ideally is within a nice blighted land surrounded by ashes and death. I will note the tech stuff in here…there’s a lot of mad science stuff including bionic eyes and an adrenal spine implant, that’s going to be a little clashy for some campaigns. It can be excluded, of course, but only at the price of removing one of the few discriminators on this little lich lair. 

Written by zs.gothpunk
For “old school” (uh-oh), levels 1-3
Secret Forgotten Mausoleum
A simple night in a simple inn in a simple town. After midnight, shouting and muffled screams wake up the adventurers. It is coming from below! As they try to find the source of the noise, they walk into a trap!      
   I believe, upon inspection, this is an OSE adventure. The shine has come off the system somewhat, but it’s still a perfectly cromulent B/X retroclone, there’s nothing disqualifying about entering an OSE adventure here. But unfortunately a vague “old-school” flags every single panic button we’ve got. This one’s cool, it’s got stats and intent and whatnot, but specificity is king.
   Our story is absolutely fine. The site is suggested to be in a cellar trap underneath an inn being used by the party, but a cult-infested tomb can really go anywhere. The pathetic aesthetic is strong with this one, the tomb is run by a “dark lord” who’s just a ghoul, his cultists are five desperate poor rubes…it’s all got a pleasingly Warhammer Fantasy feel, which is great for levels 1-3.  Who the titular forgotten hero was and how the ghoul got in here aren’t mentioned, but hey, undead and cultists, go fight ‘em.
   Now on to the map, which is simple but clean, technically vertical but without a lot of interconnection. It’s a hub-and-spoke linear design, fine for something with a 14-key scope. The nonlinear bit is hidden behind a couple secret doors, which is good design in a couple ways…hiding your “final room(s)” behind a single secret door leaves you a bit more at the mercy of those find hidden doors checks, this at least gives you a couple chances, plus in a dynamic site you have a chance (or explanation) for the classic “sneak around back” encounters.
   Sadly the random encounters don’t take advantage of this dynamic; you just get 1d4 giant rats in most of the dungeon or 1d4 zombies in the hidden section. Bummer, but at least we do have random encounters. Other encounters are cultists (weak but prone to being tricky), in-room rats or zombies, an animated statue (preventable by opening up something elsewhere in the tomb), and of course the ghoul at the end. None of the fights are complex or particularly threatening, but each of them is trying to do something. Plenty of interest, a decent sign of playtesting (and this adventure does credit playtesters).
   As we’re in what’s shaping up to be The Adventure Site Platonic Ideal, of course there’s some old classics in the trap department…the pit is obvious, but the empty chest with a magic ice-blast afterward is a nasty curveball. Janky pressure plate, nice. The king of low-level traps, the venerable greased stairwell, crops up on the way down to the final room. It’s both dangerous and comical, love it. For the last bit of environmental interaction there’s a puzzle with statues and items retrieved further in beneath the Dark Master, very solid.
   Treasure is pretty good for the level, and helpfully summed up in the front section. Just a hair under 5k in coins and jewels, a couple magic swords, and a couple utility potions. Perfect. A few bits and bobs are available just lying around but all the major hauls are behind tough fights (animated statue, ghoul+zombies) or the puzzle. Just solid design work, top to bottom.
   This site can be placed literally anywhere and it really should be. Some might call it vanilla, and they’d be right, but vanilla is a wonderful flavor and this is pure vanilla-y goodness right here. Just make sure its hit at a pretty low level, I suspect a pack of level 3’s would completely steamroll this.  

​For OSRIC, Levels 4-6
By LouisJo
A glacial metal labyrinth, flanking a 1000’ clif , towering waves crashing its top.
A hellish beacon for minotaurs, draped in adders, who never get out of it (alive).
A lighthouse of sorts, for a barren and forgotten islet, its eternal light ablaze.
   Ah, the maze. Of all the dungeon layouts, nothing else is so controversial. Most of us find solving a maze comprehensible if not enjoyable, and it makes sense to put a maze into your dungeon, but the problem with mazes comes when we try to convey the twists and turns of the structure as someone with the map (the DM) tries to get someone else to solve it (the mapper) by way of precise instructions. It's good practice, but by its nature a maze is far far more mapping call-out than other gameplay. "Okay, you go 20ft and hit a T, left goes 30ft hits another T, while right goes 15ft and hangs left. No, left as you're traveling, not your left. No, wait, you've hit a key, let me check..." Not saying that it should be a problem, but it often is. 
   The story of this maze is that a strange islet existing at a confluence of the planes of Air and Water got a metal maze built by some cultists (drink!) to make a Hell-portal. They oopsied, but not before summoning a Horned Devil, who, uh, summoned minotaurs who now play a weird King of the Hill game in the maze. Also there are brownies underneath. And a pirate ship. I adore the cover illustration by the way.
   Map here is not a lot to talk about other than the maze itself. I like that the islet the maze exists on is also mapped, it's a weird environment that interacts with the maze via encounters and magic elemental waves, so having the whole thing out is good. I like how the cliff side of the maze is just open to the air, that's fun and it interacts with the wave hazard well. 
   So, The Wave. Over half of all the results on the encounter table (frequency 4-in-6 every three turns) is a magic wave that crashes over the entire islet in a random direction, forcing everyone on the ground to make a minor STR test or be tossed in the wave's direction. As a very intentional nerf to flying characters, it's a much more dangerous test for them. Also, the brownies have a continuous mass of dancing lights above the maze to make it visible but that makes it much harder see anything by going over the wall. Intelligent, if somewhat gamey, nerfs. There are also electricity surges (remember, metal walls). It’s a tricky environment. And altars to mess with for different emotion themes, plus King of the Hill rolls…each one has something odd to play with.
   Monster roster is mostly supplied by the random encounter table, which is pretty common for mazes. It’s not just the time-based encounter table, there’s also a chance for the “King of the Hill” (a hyper-buffed minotaur) to appear at every altar, and the bored horned devil after waves (or if he spots a flyer). Lots of randomness there. All the other encounters are in tunnels or little squirreled-away spots with oddball stuff like giant adders or a dead air-focused wizard’s ghost. Plus the brownies. Yeah, it’s challenging, but its weird.
   And the pirates…they have a complex set of motivations and internal factions, but I’m still a little confused about their plan’s interaction with the players. I love that the lieutenant in the planned ambush site is annoyed with his job and will leave if he’s given enough gold level up and a fighter trainer, that’s great interaction with the game’s rules.
   Treasure is very random as well. Worn on monsters most commonly, owned by neutral brownies in several cases, a melted platinum blob in a drain grate. All very strange, although the amounts are fine. Your players won’t feel impoverished, although the extreme randomness of the environment and the encounter setup means that difficulty vs. reward is going to be well-neigh impossible to calculate.
   Weird as this little site is, I’ll compliment it thus: You can put it into most game worlds. A weirdo isle at a planar conflux is very much in keeping with a lot of game worlds…at least if you can figure out where 1d8 swimming minotaurs are coming from once or twice a day every single day of the week. 

​Written by Zoranu
For AD&D, levels 6-8
White Dragon Lair
A white dragon raids the foothills. Rumor says it lairs in an ancient, icy dwarf ruin in the mountains.      
   One of my favorite parts of DRAGON LAIRS is how they always tend to have intense environmental effects added in. Red dragons love volcanoes (or in last year’s case, a volcanic steam geyser), black dragons have acidic swamps…blues and greens are nice and distinct with desert/woodland, although that’s harder to evoke “lair” from. But WHITE DRAGONS, now THEY are peak for lair environments. You roll up to a white dragon, you know you’re getting an ICE FORTRESS. Evocative as all get-out.
   This one is an abandoned Dwarf Fortress, notably the kind where they all went a little crazy, ran out of booze, and died off, leaving the place to demons and derro. And, apparently, a white dragon, the titular Albarino. You know how this story goes, go raid the dragon and have fun.
   So, this map. Hand-drawn in a charming style, but sadly not stapled to the document. Key 1 is the icy entry. 2 is the secret door to not killing yourself. 3 is the white dragon on top of his massive hoard. Kind of wild how the whole thing could be two rooms (1 and 3) and then the big bossfight, if the party did their intelligence-gathering and loaded for a white dragon fight, then they could quite conceivably summon him just by the noise of breaking down the door, making the rest of the complex kind of a letdown. Which would be a bummer, because the rest of the fortress is pretty well-designed for dungeon crawling. It’s not aggressively loopy, but there are some alternate routes and the broken-wall ingress point is honestly more likely the one that gets used. The actual “final boss” is the lower section (helpfully highlighted in purple) where a shadow demon lurks, a linear final march that really conveys a sense of dread while they walk in, sometimes linearity is its own design consideration. Probably a little big for a single session, but pretty funny how short it could practically be.

   You’re heading up to a white dragon’s lair, you know what hazards await. Slips, falls, bitter cold. Actually that’s mostly in the dragon’s tiny little section, most of the rest is pretty low-trap. Don’t eat the rotten food, dummy.
   Fights aren’t dense but beyond the WHITE DRAGON most are pretty mild, just derro-and-friends until you get into the bottom level with shadows and a nasty demon that stops your cleric from turning the shadows while he’s still alive. THAT is a nasty kick in the jibblies, nice. Derros have good tactics and do have a few extra-powerful bruiser types and the occasional spellcaster; loaded up with cloudkill and a couple lightning bolts, that fella can tag PCs even at this level. One mixed boon/bane/monsterfight is a Dao in an iron flask at the end who pretends to be benevolent and wish-capable but only manages limited wishes and will attack parties if they’re weak-looking. Neat. No strict random encounter table here, but there’s a very solid order-of-battle notes section for how the dragon and the derro react. Derro might be convinced to fight the dragon, but they’re treacherous little monsters of course.
   As is only right and proper, treasure here is stratospheric. Level 6 given as the floor feels slightly ludicrous, with near half a million just in cash, plus scrolls, wands, trinkets, magic weapons, magic armor (most dwarf-sized, a few cursed), etc. I’m particularly tickled by the adventure slyly noting “subdued dragon =2.5 mil gp”. Oh you card. Most of the treasure is in bar form, so there’s less of a “how to we get a U-haul up here” discussion than normal, but its still a very bulky setup. Need to kill everything in here before you can steal it all.
   You better believe I’m going to put this sucker in my campaign. I’m not listening to the level range and I do not believe this will be a single session even with all the empty rooms, but it’s still really cool. Plus, it’s a DRAGON LAIR.

​Written by Alex Edwards
For AD&D, levels 6+
FREAKING VOLCANO DRAGON LAIR
An extinct volcano on a tropical island is home to Cavemen, Rango (a huge ape) and an Evil Mist Dragon: Kotomon the Hidden.      
   Okay, we just need to stop for a moment and admire this cover. Holy cow. Call me to adventure, baby. This is not an art contest, once again, but MAN did Sandbox Sorcerer knock this cover out of the park. The module is going to be a little terse up ahead, but this sucker communicates at least another thousand words. I could probably run the site based on the cover alone.
   Story is your typical tropical-island-giant-gorilla-cult-of-fallen-Altanteans-taken-over-by-a-mist-dragon-who’s-allied-with-pirates-who-also-lair-in-the-extinct-volcano. The island is only half a mile long and less than a quarter mile wide, so we’re trading a little heavily on tropes, but it’s a fun compressed space to encounter Polynesian-flavored adventuring, good setting. My only story complaint is that “extinct” word. All ingame volcanoes should be “dormant” at least…just like every waterfall should have a secret cave behind them, every volcano should be ready to erupt if the players monkey around with things Men Ought Not Mess With. Even so, if site has dragon, that makes site 100% better by default.
   This map might be too much, but it’s so bonkers that I don’t really care. Just wildly imaginative location, but it actually works for exploration gameplay, while making sense as a sort of hyperreal environment. The shapes here are oddball but there’s an explanation and we have neglected neither verticality nor water features, so of course there’s a lot of interest. Multiple means of ingress/egress, tons of space to crisscross, and the misty environment in the lower two levels means that despite the wide spacing you don’t feel exposed. 
   You are exposed, however. This thing will murder a few PCs if they neglect careful scouting and intelligence-gathering. Kotomon the old mist dragon is the most terrifying threat, but there are a bunch of other monsters, including the pirate crew, wights, an ettin servant, carnivorous apes, treants, dryads, giant crabs and octopi, plus a whole tribe, split 50/50 between evil dragon-worshippers and CG Noden-worshippers who consider Rango the huge ape his avatar. If players are careful, they can probably ally with the good faction but they’re not going to be inclined to be aggressive in fighting the bad faction and they’re sitting on some decent loot too, so players being players there will be added complications inevitably from their own greed. I’m always looking for interactions though, and everything here has a level of “talk to me” that’s rare to see. Oh, also there are wandering pterandons.
   Treasure is also suitably nutty. The dragon’s hoard is only 95,000gp in value with a few other choice magic items, but there are idols, narwhal tusks, pirate treasure chests, pearls, jewelry, etc for cash, while for other magic items there’s a load about the pirate ship plus a hidden crystal ball, a crossbow of speed, a +2 Megalodon Tooth battleaxe…it’s huge. It’s all great.
   It’s also, frankly, probably too big to be a proper adventure site. I don’t know how he fit this much stuff into two pages, but the sheer size and scope means even if you’re one of those competition crews you’re going to be hard-pressed to finish this one in a single session. And if you do, you’re kind of doing it wrong, this is a place that would reward multiple delves to fully appreciate the depth here. That’s not really a very substantial criticism, but it’s really the only thing that gives me pause. Everything is very high-level, 10,000ft view, which means there will inevitably be more effort on the DM’s desk to expand it once we get down to the nitty-gritty. There’s enough here to do the expansion work, but that is a problem.
   This sucker’s still going on my map ASAP though.