[Review] Swordthrust (AD&D 3PP); The King of All Role-Aids

[Adventure]
Swordthrust (1985)
Sam Shirley & Daniel Greenberg (Mayfair Games)
Lvl. 3 – 7
Summary: Mad God’s Jest + Dark Crystal + Solaris + Southpark 163; “Imagination Land”

Finally.

After 17 Role Aids reviews of varying quality, ranging from abysmal to damn fine, I get to answer the question; What would a Role Aids Masterpiece look like?

Swordthrust by the tag team of Sam Shirley and Daniel Greenberg is an inexplicably forgotten classic that maximizes all of the advantages of this quirky 3^rd party publisher while having none of its flaws. An unrestrained, uninhibited, mad tour the force into a location that is truly wondrous, it is everything D&D should be about and more.

The premise is reminiscent of Shane Ward’s Mad God’s Jest, if it had spent several days in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and levelled up its chi until it screamed a hole in the space-time continuum, to emerge, hair glowing a terrifying, radiant gold and dancing to intangible currents of inconceivable magnitude, into 1985 to have its final fight with Lorraine’s Five Demon Lawyers.

The Elder Titans fell into a dreamlike stupor to contemplate the arrival of Good and Evil, to discern which side they should be on. One of them sat down on the tallest mountain and fell into a stupor. An evil wizard tells you to get a magic suit of armor from the Titan’s Crown, not realizing THE ADVENTURE LITERALLY TAKES PLACE IN THE BRAIN OF THIS GIANT ICE TITAN THING.

Normally this is where I would become solemn and grim and lament at the tragic waste of this amazing premise but this is a rare occasion when the adventure proper is every bit as amazing as the insane premise makes it out to be. It starts out innocuously enough; the characters are sitting in a tavern when a mortally wounded rogue stumbles in, bearing a strange silver armlet. She actually joins the party if you save her, which is a welcome deviation from the tendency of NPCs to expire as they deliver the hook; a wizard is looking for guys to get him a mysterious silver armor from Titan’s Crown.

There’s an encounter along the way to the town of Ferraburg that immediately sets the mood. 42 fucking goblins led by an evil reptilian monster reminiscent of the Skeksis try to take the bracer. Little details, like sensible tactics, and the unique magic item in the possession of the monster, provide subtle foreshadowing of the craftsmanship of the adventure.

Sample pregens are a tier above the usual dreck, having some character to them. Grim Ben the one-eyed fighter and his faithful half-orc Turk, the obscenely powerful High Elf Prince Tildon, The covetous Hogan Iron Shield etc. etc. all of them loaded down with magic items. It’s a colorful mixture, fleshed out enough to have a little personality to them. It’s charming, but nothing special.

The genius starts to strike at around the time the adventure gets to the Town of Ferraburg, a once booming mining town, now kept from utter destitution by the ore-finding aid of the Wizard Morlean. He seems benevolent but is actually a fucking asshole that has used his arts to keep the town under control. What sells the town is the faction play; The Wizard has an ulterior motive, a Councilmen has hired assassins to take care of the criminal element in his own family but the assassin’s have gone haywire, the dwarves (LG and Neutral) have hired a group of wizards to murder Morlean etc. etc. It’s a powderkeg waiting to explode, in this 500 pop mining town. Awesome.

From the town onward the adventure travels into the realm of pure dream-like fantasy. The approach to the Titan’s Crown is warded by The King of the Mountain and his band of Silver Wolves, a distant memory of the Titan that has gained substance and asks a toll of one magic item each time the characters wish to pass. The way this encounter is set up its possible to befriend him as well as engage in all manner of trickery and violence to get past him.

The dungeon proper is five levels (though 2 of these are essentially one giant cave), shaped like a brain, the first three levels bisected by a chasm (opening opportunities for vertical, non-linear exploration). The top of the dungeon represents the good side of the dungeon, the bottom represents its evil side. At the top and bottom are the Fantsies (silver bird creatures of ultimate kindness) and the Durges (diseased, skeksis-like reptile creatures of pure evil). There are also tribes of goblins enslaved by the durges, renegade goblins, white apes and various memories of the Titan that have been given substance in his giant glowing ice-cavern brain.

What follows reads like a masterclass in dungeon design. It is not merely the elements or individual encounters themselves that are great but the way they are used. Let’s start with the elephant in the room; the writing. UNLIKE many a Role Aids product the encounters here actually approach terse and evocative and can easily be parsed while running them at the table.  

Hallelujah!

Encounters, even with familiar monsters, are laden with potential. Everyone is doing something. Patrols of Goblins are looking for renegade goblins stealing for food. White Apes are hungry. Fantsies are smearing ice water from feathers onto the wall, trying to clean it. There is negotiation and interactivity. The Evil Durges can be negotiated with. The mad archeologist Cletus Frues can be befriended to gain some hints as to the true nature of the dungeon. A chained Centaur begs players to ‘fight him’ so he can regain something of his substance. A vegetarian Blue Dragon is evil but has been lonely for so long he yearns for company first. Sentient Ice sculptures are avatars of the Titan’s consciousness, trying to grasp at the existential question he is grappling with. A golden ant queen can return people from the dead.

There are scenes that can only take place in a dream, adding to the atmosphere. Two Durges, fighting eternally over a glowing orb. A room with a liliput village that peppers the players with hail of tiny ballista bolts and catapult stones. Some Ice walls are transparent and can be looked through to provide hints of other areas of the dungeon. A fantsie statue with its wings missing, if you return them it will animate and begin to purge the level of all Drudges. A giant level where the instantiated champions of good and evil are engaged in an eternal battle.

The fatal flaw, the adventure appearing like a random bunch of horseshit, is entirely avoided. Encounters are vey clearly woven around the theme, and central mystery, of the Titan’s Crown. Exploration is structured around finding the pieces of the Silver Mail, which the wizard has explicitly warned everyone is fucking cursed. PCs foolish enough to actually put everything on and help themselves to its near godlike strength will be compelled to sit down on the throne in the centre of the Third Level WHICH WILL ACTUALLY AWAKEN THE TITAN AND DESTROY THE PC IN A RAY OF SEARING LIGHT.  THERE IS ALMOST A PAGE OF TEXT DESCRIBING THE RESOLUTION, WHETHER THE TITAN WILL SELECT GOOD OR EVIL, AND WHAT TO DO IF YOUR CAMPAIGN CANNOT AT THIS TIME USE A MILE HIGH TITAN MADE OF ICE DEDICATED TO A SINGLE ABSOLUTE MORAL CONCEPT.

There’s tonnes of unique creatures or just odd modifications, like the Giant Hellhound or a Shambling Mound that is hunched over, kobold necromancer with voodoo dolls, an intelligent giant slug with a golden brain worth 1000 gp…It is tapping into all the WILD out there fantasy stuff, but it’s anchored by mundane inhabitants like the goblins, all of them well fleshed out, having a reason to be there etc. etc. It’s such a bizarre tightrope to walk but the adventure walks it masterfully, never quite descending into a pile of random horseshit where nothing matters.

Some encounters reveal information about the dungeon, some rooms are frought with bizarre perils like a Soul Gem that project the memories of those it has trapped and must be held or else the character so trapped wastes away, a pillar of ice with a bound devil inside…

Magic items consist of the book stuff, interspersed with entries that are every bit as wonderful. A bronze ring with bronze teeth set inside, granting hill giant strength. The solid gold brain of a Giant Slug allows you to speak to animals twice per day. A bronze tree tied to a ring that allows one to benefit from all the items dangled from it. What the fuck were they on? Legend that’s what.

Swordthrust is an absolutely amazing journey into the strangest, most out there possibilities of 80s DnD and does ill deserve its current obscurity. It is chuck full of dynamic potential, riddled with terrific encounters, has great overlapping systems in place to facilitate exploration and creative up the wazoo. It deserves to be re-instated as a classic among the brightest of stars.

*****