[Review] Deadly Power (AD&D 3pp); The sun and the moon, and even mars…

[Adventure]
Deadly Power (1984)
Laurel Nicholson, John Keefe & Donald Nicholson (Mayfair games Inc.)
Levels 6 – 9

This is it boys. The Coffers! The rarest of pepes. Do you notice and recognize miracles? A good Role Aids adventure. And I don’t mean Clockwork Mage good. I mean good like an old TSR module. Hidden depth up the wazoo. Trickery. Secret doors. Enchanted acorns. Talking with fucking wererats. Trapped giant skull shrines in hidden tombs. Getting diseases from wading through smelly cave water. Nine bazillion gp worth of treasure concentrated in a few square miles of mining town. Adventure. Excitement! The Stuff of Legends, right Boo?

The adventure starts you off on the wrong fucking foot with a FULL PAGE of backstory. To its credit, almost all of it is used. Almost all of it is also batshit insane in a way only 80s DnD could be. The adventure takes place in Shallotsville, wealthy mining town and frequent trophy of myriad factions that seek to control its supply of gold. Enter Yelad, exiled Servant of Dispater, who takes over the town in human form and controls the town with magic weed that gives you mass persuasion powers if you smoke it that he brought from hell.

Yes that is a thing that happened. So Yelad uses his power to do what any of us would do and taxes the town of gold miners until it practically falls apart from neglect, marries a beautiful lady, fathers a half-devil son named Mynor Yelad and becomes best buddies with Grinmare the Sorcerer, the town’s RATS and their Wererat leader Greasel Greedigutt (obviously they are in charge of the mining). This all goes well until his half-devil son leaves on his 18th birthday, Yelad leaves the secret of the magic super weed in a tomb underneath a mausoleum for him to recover, proceeds to murder the slaves that constructed the crypt and SACRIFICES HIS WIFE TO DISPATER SO HE MAY RETURN TO HELL. Only he gets fucked over at that exact moment by Enaj the CN illusionist and the traitor Grinmare and gets himself curbstomped. Only now it is 2 years later, Enaj rules the town, Grinmare has been captured and the last message he sent was of MYNOR YELAD’S RETURN!

The adventure immediately wins you back by starting if the PCs visit the town and having them “hired” by Yelad and the 20 heavily armed human and half orc fighters that form his retinue. Also 7000 gp and a magic item each? It’s really no choice, it’s like working in the financial sector! What the adventure then does BRILLIANTLY is having the players contacted by a bluejay with a message. They are in luck! They have just been “summoned” by QUEEN Enaj who wants to “hire” them. She wants the magic weed also, and also for the party to kill as MANY fucking rats as possible since they are blocking the mines. Perfect. Two powerful and nongood factions that both want something from the PCs and that hate eachother. If you refuse their generous offers you will get your shit wrecked. Let the QUEST FOR THE SMACK FROM HELL BEGIN!

It all begins with a good homebase. Shallotsville is FULL of interesting NPCs and little details to the point where it reminds me of the village of Homlet. Hidden treasures and interesting little nuggets everywhere. The Eat’N run tavern where you have a 60% chance of getting sick from the food if ‘Samuel’ is cooking. The Bottom’s Up tavern owned by Mama Mcoy with its secret storehouse, high level adventurer poker game. Perrat the Pawnshop broker who dresses in rags and is so poor no one complains about his outrageous rates but has a vault filled with 36.000 gp. The Poor Man’s Magic Shop where Lester Laslow makes you any kind of potion within an hour ‘while you wait’ with a sign that explicitly says NO REFUNDS. And so it goes on, slamdunk after slamdunk. Whoever did this section was on FIRE. No mock seriousness, pretentiousness or bullshit history the PCs could give less of a SHIT about. Instead a myriad of things to pifler, colorful NPCs and that lost art: Whimsey!

The locations you must travel to are all hinted at in a long ass riddle Yelad left for his son so its puzzling and gathering information time! After that is a short dungeon, the Minter’s Tower! What I find so effective about the module is that clever players can make the allegiances to both parties work to their advantage, and in that way avoid most of the combat in the adventure (the Tomb will always involve combat and so will the Ghoul Caverns). The Tower is essentially linear, if not for the occasional secret entrance serving as a speedbump. The monster compliment is similarly standard, but at the very least all the humanoids in service to Enajj are doing something, and little details like drunk Hobgoblin guards or Bugbears still clutching half-eaten chicken legs make the place feel just a tad bit alive. A bizarre series of enchanted mirrors functions as a teleportation device too and from the Goldmines, though the classic 1e overthinking bullshit does pop up and the adventure feels the need to explain exactly WHY this minter’s tower has these exact magic mirrors with these exact magical abilities. On the other hand, when is the last time you shattered a mirror and all the shards turned into delicious, hp regaining cake?

The mines (or Rat Caves) are more standard fare. Branching passageways, up to 500 ft. long, not much room, rats, spiders, ochre jellies you name it. Once again, the negotiation element elevates what could have been a fairly mundane cave-slog. All the were-rats get a personality, Greasel Greedigutt has his own objectives and circumstances under which he will negotiate and the were-rats even have their own defensive strategy (which also happens to involve summoning some sort of water elemental like Red Prophet Rises).

One thing that drove me nuts in this section is the description of keys. Keys to certain doors or strongboxes would be in the possession of certain NPCs but would not be in the stattblocks under equipment, which is fucking annoying because it means that the entire section must be thoroughly cross-referenced since some of the NPCs can be random encounters. In addition, there is an entire procedure for how the NPCs interact with the players if they determine them to be on their side (i.e Yelad or at worst Yelad AND Enajj) but these reactions are described under the rooms, which is aggrevating as all hell since it requires you to effectively memorize the dungeon or take notes. If you ever want to run this (Which I recommend heartily despite its atrocious way of presenting the information you require), I recommend note-taking at the beginning of this section.

Anyway, Greasel’s central problem, which just also happens to be the site of the Wreckage you need to search for a key, is an inlet with a rather large ghoul population Greasel originally used to guard his spellbook. Unfortunately for Greasel he has run out of Potions of Undead Control and his plans to kidnap an alchemist to get himself some new ones have thus far proven unsuccessful (though he will pay handsomely if the PCs assist him in this insane plot). But here too what could have been a straight up (and very dangerous) combat encounter is instead given some depth by adding enchanted mushrooms, a secret door in a nonobvious (but not TOO farfetched) location and colorful treasure. It’s also the fact that Greasel sends GUARDS with the PCs like a normal person would so, and responses are again discussed.

The keyword here is grain. Deadly Power is exciting because there is always something extra to discover and DnD is fundamentally, a game of exploration. Whether it is the subtle details that help tie the adventure together into more then a series of random encounters, the boatload of secret doors or the sheer variety of the treasure, both arcane and mundane, on display, there is something about Deadly Power that was present in some of the modules Gygax wrote; A sense of continuity, of hidden depth, whimsy but also of lethal peril.

There is an entire enchanted forest next to the city of Shallottesville that has nothing to do with the primary quest but is included only as an optional location. Once a holy place belonging to Sylvanus, the depredations of evil men have caused its magical inhabitants to gradually leave the forest, leaving few behind, until a Good ruler sits upon the throne of Shallotsville once more. If you LOVE whimsical Fey this thing will make you cream in your pants. Weird Gypsy fortune tellers, The Last of the Rainbow Leprechauns (do you take his Rainbow Gems atop his Rainbow?), groups of Brownies but also an asshole CrioSphinx that demands treasure for safe passage. The section is A LOT EASIER if you are Good-aligned, but since the entire module does not function like this I find it forgiveable (and it even makes sense in the context of the adventure).

Everything leads to the Tomb of Yelad, which is located in the graveyard but never exactly pointed out, something I appreciate, oddly enough, since your PCs should be able to figure something like this out on their own. The Tomb is a straight up 20 room complex, turns up the Satanism by popping out the pentagrams, sacrificial altars and fucking DOORWAYS TO HELL as you descend, and is as wonderful and idiosyncratic as the rest of the piece. A room guarded by 10 illusionary spectres and a cleric that tell you to fuck off. The subtle opening of leaving the first three rooms empty of foes or traps. The Hideous, armor-shredding Glass Golem and its secret weakness that is hinted at in the opening riddle! And even a whiff of Asshole Gygax shows up! A Mummy with an amulet that absorbs fire that only works for mummies! Fuck you Deadly Power! And then it becomes all good because touching a Satanic Altar stains your hands red and makes a Barbed devil leap from a tapestry and attempt to murder the shit out of you.

What I love about this Tomb too is that in theory you can just skip the Mines and the Tower and visit this place first. The only problem you might face is that you have NO FUCKING IDEA how to use the magic devilweed safely (since anyone smoking it that doesn’t know the secret dies instantly, something they actually neglect to inform you because not even Yelad knows, and yes he CAN die that way). There is some fucked up cursed treasure in this thing too. None of that wishy washy removable curse shit. Age 30 years or become a Servant of Dispater fool! In the end all concerns are swept away before the unstoppable tide of  a Fifty Foot Golden Skull with a 5 foot bridge leading to it, surrounded by a lake of fire. Oh Deadly Power, I can’t stay mad at you.

The treasure and monsters are solid too, in a way that old TSR modules usually were. All the solid items from the DMG, coupled with weird unique shit that the author just made up because it was cool, or items that feel like they should have been part of the game all along, like the potion of Alignment Change. Great use of classic monsters with the odd new addition like the Elite Rat or the Glass Golem (yeah I know they probably made a glass golem in Ravenloft 2e [1] but this was before that so it was technically new okay?).

What else is there to say. The wrapup is fairly comprehensive and there is even the possibility of a full blown faction war to get the Seeds, not bad all in all.

Pros; Dat Oldskool feel. Great hidden depth. Opportunities for negotiation and roleplaying galore. Charming and whimsey but also Satan (the edgiest of edgy villains) in one charming adventure.

Cons: The information is not presented in the proper order so it can become hard to follow or quickly find what goes on where. Tiny maps.

This is a good adventure. For Role Aids. A Borderline classic. The layout is its worst enemy, the teenie-tiny maps that are almost small enough to fit on a stamp are its second worst. If you can overlook a decent amount of note-taking, reading and rereading then by Golly, I think you could run this for a bunch of Grogs and they couldn’t believe it’s not TSR. If you yearn for those halcyon 80s roleplaying days and you think all the OSR stuff is just a pale imitation or degenerate mockery (though FYI you are wrong), I invite you to check this one out if you can still find it (a problem in itself but certainly manageable). Embrace the 80s. 8 out of 10.

[1] Yeah I nailed it. I remembered it from Children of the Night: The Created, which was the first thing I ever bought after I got the Phb and DMG.