Ah. The infamous one with the Science Fiction stuff.
I wish I could properly thrash it and make fun of it, or conversely just tell you that it’s one of the most amazing obscure titles in DSA history. I will tell you in advance that it’s not going to be like that. I don’t mind the SF stuff all that much, and the adventure has a few good, even great parts. The whole idea of the module has the exciting promise of a new direction that it completely fails to deliver on.
So, the background is two paragraphs: the PCs traverse the Khom desert to find an abandoned mountain monastery and raid the temple treasure. Now they have found it.
There’s a neat but crude illustration by Ina Kramer in there as well that really sets the mood nicely.
This is how you write a proper introduction, not 4-5 pages of nonsense. This is the best introduction of all the DSA modules so far.
The monastery is not as abandoned as hoped. There are robbers and cultists. The cultists have a blue square in a yellow circle as their cult symbol and they worship a giant demon statue they call Orcus (no relation, I presume). So the monastery is not as abandoned as the characters assumed.
I can’t really fault the cultists for reacting a bit badly. They were just chilling in the desert for the better part of 80 years doing their thing, and then the “heroes”stumble in and try to rob them.
To be fair, “their thing” turns out to be sacrificing anyone passing by to their dark idol, so there’s that.
So the heroes get sacrificed 7 rooms into the dungeon in one of the dorkiest illustrations of human sacrifice ever created.
I love it.
Only, it turns out this was the titular Gate of Worlds. The mountain caves once were a base for aliens that had to go back to their home galaxy and it still is connected to their transmitter network.
Now the heroes are stranded on an alien world called Ras Tabor.
(Or the other side of the world, on the far-western side of Myranor, if you follow the post-2000 retcon of the whole situation.)
In any case they can’t go back through that transmitter (for…reasons…) and now they are on top of a giant tree that contains a whole lot of monsters and a village of vaguely humanoid beings.
I have to assume Werner Fuchs had the idea for a dungeon that involved climbing down via various routes, but I find this second part of the adventure tedious. It’s basically a way to throw lots of vaguely alien beings at the characters as they somehow try to get down. It might play better than it reads because he gives various routes and you don’t have to play through all of them, but altogether this takes way too long.
There are two Aventurians at the village and on the bottom of the tree. Both previously were sacrificed and now are living among the locals. Neither of them know anything concrete about a way back.
And here’s the big problem I see with this scenario: The scenario assumes the first thing the heroes would do is to try and find a way back. But I don’t think this is necessarily a given, and it’s not even a given they would assume there is a way back unless the GM tells them. What if they don’t? What if they really are into exploring this whole new world? What if none of them pick up on the spurious hints towards the second transmitter in the mountains? (because yes there is one)
None of this is touched upon as we are presented with part three of the module: an actual hexcrawl.
Now hexes are not used that much in DSA. For some reason German-speaking audiences never seem to have gotten warm with them. The first map of Aventuria was hexed, and the wilderness map in here is, but I can’t think of any other immediate example. Even the later Orkland adventure trilogy used squares instead of hexes. But B8 one actually uses them, and tries to present itself as a sandbox. Unfortunately it’s not a very good one. There are 7 encounter areas over the whole area, one of which is the transmitter, and one of which is basically “roll on random encounter table”.
I think Fuchs at this point really ran out of time and space. This should have been the focus of the module, instead it’s a tiny bit that’s tagged on at the very end. With a bit of work this could work as a weird science fantasy sandbox. Maybe even one that would allow to return to it if the characters wanted.
The module does not allow that: returning via transmitter breaks the idol and seals it. The heroes can leave without being accosted and…
Sorry? Didn’t they get sacrificed? You think your generic murderhobo isn’t gonna track down and kill all the cultists responsible? Now would be a great time to have more than 7 rooms mapped out, hmmm?
I find this module wanting. The monastery section is all too short, the climb down the tree too long, the sandbox contents are too thin. This could have been a great adventure. As it is it feels bloodless. I guess one could properly work out the sandbox, maybe use it as a backdoor into Myranor from the west. Ras Tabor is being worked out in the pages of Myranor fanzine Memoria Myrana, and some of the ideas do work: a giant jungle setting with whole kingdoms on giant trees, a few city states of the imperial magocracy cut off from the rest of the Second Imperium, the ever present threat of the realm of the skull god beyond the sea. Also some of the cult from the monastery already have settled in Ras Tabor somewhere. There’s some nice ideas in there that could make for a weird fantasy kind of setting.
But as it is? A bit of a waste.
Notes
- I do have to wonder if Orcus in this adventure is based on the DnD deity/demon. It is a generic name after all (based on an old Etruscan deity). And after all this isn’t even a proper deity, just a teleporter.
- The temple and Ras Tabor were picked up again around the 2000s, when the western continent Myranor was opened up in setting material. The novel Erde und Eis (Earth and Ice) revisited the now really abandoned monastery, and transported it’s cast to the jungle continent of Ras Tabor. Far off from where any of the other released material for Myranor would end up for decades. And then this sub-series for the DSA-series of novels died on the vine, and no sequel was ever published. In any case, Ras Tabor in canon is on the same world as Aventuria.
- This was the last published scenario of 1984. One has to wonder if they really needed to switch genres that badly just a year into the whole experiment. No further direct science fiction elements were introduced afterwards, so it seems this experiment was usuccessful. I so far only have looked at Gruppenabenteuer published in the B-line. But DSA also has a tradition of Solo adventures. I should look at those soon (specifically B5 and B7)
- This originally also was published in French, Dutch, and Italian. I should maybe also point out that it has been republished as a retro edition in 2018, as have all other modules I already looked at.
Running Tally (by quality, from best to worst):