Customer Reviews

Dwellers of the Forbidden City (AD&D Fantasy Roleplaying, Module I1)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

David Cook's classic is a masterpiece in evocative design - you get a wonderful "pulp" jungle adventure against the dreaded Yuan-Ti; but most of all, this open-ended module is designed to encourage you to develop the Forbidden City for many months of adventure. This adventure includes some of the nastiest encounters ever devised for D&D - my players still cringe, a decade later, when I remind them about crossing that rickety suspension bridge over the 200' ravine, while being pelted by boulders... a wonderful, highly playable piece of nostalgia, not to be missed.

I was always drawn to this module, mostly because of the city map. I finally got a chance to use it in a 3.5 Jungle-based campaign and it rocked. Of course I completely changed some things around but kept some of the really cool parts. One of the reviewers mentioned the rope bridge. I kept it in and killed one of the characters with it. The friendly/greedy singing xorn was fun too. Then of course there was the naked gnome... oh wait that wasn't part of the original adventure (long story).

I bought this module way back when i'd been DMing all the 'B' and 'X' modules for my group. I think it was probably the worst AD&D module i'd bought (from TSR that is, there are some shockers out there in the 'open gaming licence' world). Basically it's a jungle adventure, with a dungeon. Not too different from X1 the isle of dread. I just thought the module was sloppy. With a lot of effort and thinking the DM could make something out of it, but definitely not for straight up playing. It just consists of numbered encounters and a mediocre map. One of the few that I would not recommend. Sorry.