Customer Reviews

Gnomes--One Hundred, Dragons--Zero

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

 

 

I liked this adventure. It was set up in a most unique way (as a choose-your-own-adventure style book). This allowed the use of the adventure either in a group or solo, you can either use the AD&D rules or a simplified version reprinted here, therefor, this could be an intro to AD&D (As long as you have the dice). All in all good, showing a great scope: Humor, adventure, drama, and even a bit of horror.

For those who enjoy solo game books, this is an outstanding entry into the field. Where most solo modules run around 400 paragraphs, this book is more than 1200. It's an excellent game, and if you're willing to devote the time can take as much as four hours to play through. Mount Nevermind is marvellously detailed and fun to explore.

It's also a very forgiving game; there are numerous artifacts and pieces of equipment which protect from bad die rolls, from mistakes, and from other horrible things.

Kudos must also be given for the artwork; Each room is lovingly and exhaustively detailed, and each illustration applies directly to the text. All in all, excellent work and good value for the money.

However, the work does have a couple of notable flaws which detract from the enjoyment:

A) Missing references and bad references. Most egregious is that the 'you win' section in the final battle points to the wrong paragraph. The correct paragraph is actually 92K; it took me quite a bit of searching to find it. There are also references that lead nowhere. One example requires the user to turn to paragraph 120, when there is no paragraph 120. Paragraphs go from approx. 119L to 120A-E, none of which have anything to do with the succeeding paragraph.

Finally, there are also paragraphs which say 'now go back to the page you turned from' -- hope you kept a bookmark! Otherwise it may take awhile to hunt your place again.

B) More playtesting was required. There are a number of easily exploitable flaws in the rules which break the game. For example, if you combine a device which says 'roll the die and experience a good effect from the Beneficial table if even; if odd, from the Malevolent table. You may do this as often as you like.') with another artifact which says 'suffer no ill effects in the NEXT CHAMBER ONLY. Just continue as if it didn't happen' -- you combine these two effects, and you can literally run the entire Beneficial table as often as you like in an infinite loop until your character has infinite HP, never misses, auto-kills all enemies, cannot possibly suffer an ill effect from a die roll, etc. Pun-pun himself would be hard put to beat this character if you keep it up long enough.

Combined with this is the fact that the rules are sometimes confusing; They even give me (at 38) pause from time to time, and was endlessly frustrating at 16.

C) A somewhat minor point is that the game sometimes seems only tangentially related to the Dragonlance setting it is ostensibly set in; For example, it is possible to find an use an Egyptian artifact, but Dragonlance takes place on the planet Krynn; there is no 'Egypt' in its history. There is certainly no way a common baker's apprentice could recognize an Egyptian artifact. Likewise, a dragon's hoard is of gold, which the game makes out to be valuable. However, in the Dragonlance setting, gold does not have the value it has in the real world -- the currency metal is steel. There are also ray guns and submarines and bazookas and a host of other artifacts which don't typically exist in a fantasy world. If
you can overlook these factors and enjoy the boyish fun of the module, you can have an enjoyable experience. But if fidelity to the campaign setting is a priority, you may find
that these elements grate.

All in all, a creditable effort with much to recommend it. There are some flaws, as above, but they are not enough to spoil the game's enjoyment, at least not for me.