Showing posts with label
Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess.
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Showing posts with label
Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess.
Show all posts
Saturday's mail call consisted of a lovely white envelop with a really fantastic surprise! The latest entry from Mark Taormino's Dark Wizard Games. The kickstarter happened June 10, 2018 & leaped ahead at a galloping pace & now I've got this fantastic envelop in hand. Mark knows how to pack his stuff right! Dark Wizard Games is a straight up OSR outfit & their adventures often fit the perfect parameters of old school campaigning while firmly being grounded in the present!
Mark Taormino has a history on delivering quality products & fun malevolent adventures. His adventures can easily be back slotted into an existing campaign without over clocking your own campaign world. I'll let him explain in this video from his successful kickstarter.
The adventure plot is one part reverse high level adventure & one part inspired insanity; "Once upon a time the kingdom of Thorin Vale was prosperous and benevolent but fell on dark times with the death of the King. A new hope was rising as his only daughter, the Princess was set to marry the King's bravest royal knight restoring the kingdom to ultimate power. However on the wedding day, the evil Dragon Maelfesto attacked the castle by surprise and swiftly took control! The serpent drove everyone out and took the princess captive in the caverns below, wickedly enchanting the palace! The groom went in with a party of rescuers to save her but never returned. Riches beyond your wildest imagination will be gained for the ones who save the fair maiden, defeat the wicked beast and return alive from the Palace of the Dragon's Princess!"
Make no mistake that this is a deadly & high level adventure with all of the right parts & pieces for a party of level 8-12 PC's with axes to grind & coin on their minds. They'll be at the mercy of some of the most dangerous NPC's & monsters that they've encountered.
"The Wedding" artwork by Brian McCranie. The Wedding of Princess Francesca and the Evil Knight she didn't want to marry. Hmmm, somebody seems more interested in the ultimate magical power the Unification Rings will bring himself and kingdom more than his bride!
Taormino's writing is concise & the module's descriptions are up to the usual Dark Wizard standards here. Dark Wizard Games always brings the old school strangeness & cleverness to the table with over-the-top monster encounters, outrageous magic, nasty NPCs, traps, puzzles. The physical book is a really solid quality with the layout being right up there with other old school modules. Palace of the Dragon Princess delivers ;
40 Pages saddle stitched, 40 Encounters, a Removeable Cover with 2 Blue Maps,1 Fortress Map and 1 Underground Map plus 2 New Monsters & 4 Pre-Generated Characters to begin play with.
So not only are there PC's ready to go at the appropriate level but their perfectly suited for the module! Not only that but they could with a bit of work be used as a rival set of adventurers if the players have their own PC's.
Since Palace of the Dragon Princess is meant for use with OSRIC or adapt to 1st Ed AD&D, 5e, DCC, Pathfinder, D20, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, & many other old school Dungeons & Dragons simulations I could see this being dragged & dropped right into Mystara. The kingdom of Thorin Vale could well be a minor kingdom in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. The puesdo European flavor of the Thorin Vale kingdom which has all of the hallmarks of this Mystara mainstay.
The evil dragon cult has lots of possibilities beyond those presented in the Palace of the Dragon Princess & could be used to represent far more ranging dangers then those simply presented in the module. The Dragon Maelfesto has motive, timing, & real reasons for turning the castle into an adventure location. They've got all of the hallmarks of a continuing threat & the DM is advised to keep the master of the cult two steps ahead of the PC's & in fact continue to use him after the adventure ends as a reoccurring villain.
The Master" artwork by Brian McCranie really brings Dragos the Dragos the evil Cleric / Magic-User cult leader to life & captures the malevolence of the NPC. He's excellently written & has lots of life beyond Palace of the Dragon Princess. There's lots of opportunity for the PC's to carve out their own place in the world of the kingdom of Thorin Vale but they're going to have a lot on their collective plates & to deal with. While tongue is firmly in cheek in Mark Taormino's Dark Wizard Games's Palace of the Dragon Princess the module never descends into stupidity & nor talks down to the dungeon master or his or her player's PC's. This is a deadly little romp of a high level module with lots of interesting NPC's, excellent artwork,nasty adventure locations, & lots of room for the PC's to make a difference in the world of Thorin Vale if they survive!
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"Once upon a time, the lakeside Kingdom of Damoros was suffering from the death of its benevolent King. All hope now lay with the Princess who was set to marry the bravest knight in the land, and their union would restore the realm. However, on the wedding day, the evil Dragon Maelfesto attacked the castle by surprise and took control! The serpent drove everyone out and took the princess captive in the caverns below, wickedly enchanting the palace never to be seen again. Riches, honor and glory will be gained for those who save the fair maiden, defeat the beast and return alive from the Palace of the Dragon’s Princess!"
Its freezing quite literally out here at Casa De Fabiaschi & Mark Taormino from Dark Wizard Games contacted me last night with my review copy of Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess. This module funded within one day on Kickstarter & its interesting to see the resulting adventure. Clocking in at forty four pages this module presents a very interesting twist or two on the usual tropes of a"rescue the princess" adventure module. But be warned that this is a high level module designed for character levels 8-12 and can be played with the OSRIC system or easily adapted to AD&D, D&D 1e to 5e, etc.
The artwork & layout are top notch & easy on the eyes. The adventure plot fits the ins & outs of the quality of what we've seen from other Taormino adventures in the past. The whole thing plays very well with others if your looking to integrate the module into an existing campaign. Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess has the look & feel of an 80's well designed gonzo adventure fest. Inter locking adventure parts that fit into a colorfully deadly whole of max carnage & OSR adventure weirdness.
But is Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess good? Yes if you need a high level & deadly adventure with a plot & actual campaign impact with a twist or two. Encounters here are deadly & the module plays for keeps. The action is twisting, dangerous, & weird. This is a module set in a smaller yet important kingdom. Think Greyhawk with a big budget action sequence built into it & I mean this in a good way. Overall I liked what I read. This isn't a module to be taken lightly & the impact of its events will be felt for a long time to come within a campaign.
The encounters move along at a very quick clip & like many of the Maximum Mayhem Dungeons tongue is firmly in cheek but its not out of alignment with the themes & tone of Palace of the Dragon’s Princess. Make no mistake this is high fantasy taking place within a Dungeons & Dragons world along with all that that implies. The creatures, monsters, races, etc. are all very well done but fit the mode typical of the module's adventure genre. While conventions are broken the ideas here are solidly Taormino with everything twisting & churning in the world of Palace of the Dragon’s Princess.
The artwork is strong b/w with the cartography being up to the standards that Dark Wizards & Maximum Mayhem have provided in the past. Could the Maximum Mayhem Dungeons modules that have been released in the past be used as an over arching campaign by the dungeon master? Yes because of two very important factors :
4 Pregenerated PC characters
40 Encounters within Palace of the Dragon’s Princess
All of these can be linked up to other Dark Wizards adventures such as Vault of The Dwarven King adventure to form a heavily influenced campaign setting.
Artwork from Vault of The Dwarven King
Overall I really liked & was impressed with Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess by Mark Taormino & Dark Wizard Games. There are somethings to keep in mind about Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess .
This is a campaign style module which means that the results are going to have very wide implications for an old school or OSR campaign. The monsters & encounters actually live up to their implications for PC's. The adventure is high level for reasons & that players should have at least three to five PC's on the back burner. The PC's are going to be a major influence on the campaign that this adventure takes place in. Connecting Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess with other OSR or old school modules isn't hard but the results after this module is completed are going to test the player's PC's later on. There's lots of interesting nods & Easter eggs within the module that the DM can exploit connect this module with other classics from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition or B/X era.
Is the Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess module worth getting? Yes I think so because of the overall playablity, repeat adventure utility, quality & ideas contained within Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #5 Palace of the Dragon’s Princess.
