REVIEW: Crypt of the Lilac High Priest (McKinney, 2017)

[strangebrew]

Crypt of the Lilac High Priest (Dungeon Module 1)
by Geoffrey McKinney

Crypt of the Lilac High Priest is a 16-page AD&D module for a party of 1st level characters. It is available for purchase ($9.99) via Lulu. I was provided a complimentary copy by the author for the purposes of this review.

In a hurry? Jump down to the Conclusion.

The Cover
The module is a saddle-stitched paperback, with a cover design that is an obvious reference to the first wave of TSR adventures. Its lurid mauve color and Luigi Castellani’s monochrome subterranean illustration reminds me especially of the D-series. The image is an old-school style depiction of an adventuring party fighting a beholder. The elf archer in particular is reminiscent of the one from Jim Roslof’s cover of Keep on the Borderlands (a nice touch). It’s a good piece of art and well printed, with the glossy paper giving the black lines and various shades of purple an almost embossed feeling. Some people don’t like it when modules try to ape the old TSR style, but I’m personally a total sucker for it. I’m also a fan of the title - I requested this specific module review based on the name alone.

Under the picture is a short description of the module, explicitly mentioning that it’s meant for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game. I dig that. No girl thingyfooting around, saying it’s written for use with the “world’s most popular/oldest/original role-playing game,” but rather an upfront approach bordering on “This is for AD&D, so sue me.” (Please don’t sue him.) There is also a line of text placing the picture within the context of the adventure.

The back cover is a numbered hex map of the area around the dungeon, which is detailed in McKinney’s wilderness module “Worm Wars of the Dwarven Ice Kings.” The map image is clear, and the hex numbers are legible. Some place names are partially blanked out; McKinney posted online somewhere alluding to how this map is an expansion of another very famous one. (“So I’m packing my bags for the M_____y Mountains...”)

The Interior
The text is black and white with no art, and two dungeons maps at the centerfold (one per page). The two-column formatting is generally pretty clear but very simple. I think a careful use of some more formatting (capitalization, italics, lines) might have made the text pop a little more. As it stands, it looks more like a word processor document than a published work. Interior art would have been nice, especially since there are many evocative scenes in the dungeon (more on that later), but I imagine it all comes down to cost. I’m guessing McKinney has priced the module as low as he is willing while still making a few bucks. Would interior art be worth a few more dollars? Probably. Worth five or more dollars? Probably not. The plain layout might be a flaw, but it’s not a fatal one.

The Adventure
The module begins with a bit of the legend of Dahlver-Nar, a cleric so evil that, upon his death, his teeth lingered on as evil artifacts similar to the Eye and Hand (and infamous Head) of Vecna. (The Teeth of Dahlver-Nar, along with Vecna’s Eye and Hand, were first introduced in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.) This module is the first part of a series where characters adventure in the world detailed by McKinney’s wilderness module line, collecting the teeth to keep them from the forces of Chaos. Though the adventure takes place within this larger product line, it could be easily placed in any campaign.

After that bit of history, we have a brief but sufficiently plausible introduction explaining how the characters are involved in all this, and then a brief but sufficiently atmospheric description of the dungeon entrance and interiors (walls, ceilings, caverns, etc.). The background and introductory information takes up a little less than a page and a half (which is fine with me), then it’s on to the dungeon key.

The tone of the adventure could be described as “Weird AD&D.” It is more traditionally AD&D than, say, Carcosa, and you could throw this into a typical campaign without it being too jarring. On the other hand, I could see it being used for a Carcosa game as well. It inhabits a kind of liminal space, being at once both quite Gygaxian and quite Weird.

I don’t want to discuss the contents of the dungeon itself too much for obvious reasons. There are over 30 rooms spread over two levels. Each room has something to offer, either an encounter, a trap, a special effect, or just a otherworldly little detail. I personally would have liked a few empty rooms with no funny business. Maybe not the ratio proposed by D&D/AD&D (where a sizable portion of the rooms are empty), but a well-placed bare room can weird out players as much as a room with creepy stuff on the walls. There’s a good balance between combat and non-combat encounters. The room descriptions have a lot interesting details, but not too much detail. The only thing worse than a longwinded room description is a longwinded product review (*ahem*). They average about half- to a whole-column in length, with the shortest entry being a single sentence and the longest being about a page (two columns).

The room contents are generally very good with many interesting ideas. There is a room that is probably inspired by a famous room in In Search of the Unknown, but it is unique and atmospheric enough to stand on its own. There are whiffs of the evil temple in the Caves of Chaos throughout. Atmospheric is actually a good way to describe many of the locations. There are quite a few, to use B/X jargon, “Special” rooms. No monster or trap, but just something surprising or memorable. There are also a lot of great little details. I was originally puzzled at the listing of armor of various makes and sizes as treasure in one lair, until I realized it was basically a tally of former victims. The eye tyrant encounter depicted on the cover is another highlight, especially in terms of how it fits into other encounters in the dungeon. There’s a clever transition from the first level of the dungeon to the second level, and some potential opportunities with different factions and groups. There’s a glaive, a ranseur, and a guisarme-voulge, in case you forget which game you’re playing. The treasures have natural, uneven coin totals (no “100 silver pieces,” a pet peeve of mine) and some interesting non-coin, non-gem treasure items.

The maps are pretty good, black and white in a TSR module style. They’re perhaps a bit linear (the first level more so), but there are several unconventional features which make up for it.

The module has a definite and satisfying conclusion, if the characters make it that far.

Conclusion
Geoffrey McKinney is probably one of the more well-known authors in the old school D&D scene and has a reputation for offbeat, creative, and surreal ideas. I was familiar with some of his stuff - the original Carcosa supplement and a few adventures from the Psychedelic Fantasies line he curated. I was interested in this new line of wilderness and dungeon adventures, so when he solicited reviews I threw my hat in.

I generally don’t enjoy sitting down and reading modules from cover to cover, but I liked reading this one. The cover is eye-catching. The introduction is brief and to the point, with just the right amount of information. The plain and simple interior of the book belies the colorful descriptions and encounters. There really is a lot of cool stuff in there. There are enough combat encounters to be exciting, but not too many to make it a killer dungeon. All in all, it’s a solid module with great ideas. I think the $9.99 price is right on target given the balance of simple layout and rich content.

If you’re expecting high production values (like I understand McKinney’s Lamentations of the Flame Princess books possess), then you might be disappointed by the spartan presentation, as this line is more similar in design to his original Carcosa booklet (though full-sized, not digest). If you’re looking for an adventure that’s easy to read, has a pleasantly strange vibe, and is full of playing potential, then you’ll enjoy this one. If you’re an established fan of McKinney’s work, then you’ll definitely enjoy it, because the descriptions and encounters ooze his trademark weirdness.

If you have any questions about the module, feel free to ask.

Also check out the author's product announcement and fox roe's review HERE.

[strangebrew]

Hah! Second paragraph: "girl thingyfooting" should be "p***yfooting."

[Vile Traveller]

I like most of what I've read of geoffrey's, on the strength of that and this review I might have to lay out for this one. My only wish is that he'd do some B/X or Holmes stuff for a change. I know it's a doddle to convert (actually I don't bother, the players'll never know), but still.

Girl thingyfooting sounds way better. I'm going to use that from now on. Ahrrr!*

*It's 19 September, guys!

[foxroe]

Avast! I would say 'tis already 95% compatible wit' Holmes. 'tis a bloody good introductory adventure t' 'ave in yer arsenal that ain't th' usual "Goblins/giant rats/bandits be attackin' Ole Man Wilson's farm!".

[strangebrew]

Aye, Vile, ye best pick one up. She be a fine module!

[Melan]

My review:

Crypt of the Lilac High Priest (2017)
by Geoffrey McKinney
Self-published

Geoffrey McKinney and his products are not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast. I know this because it says so right on the cover of this module, the latest in a series of several old school modules which do their darnedest to look like something TSR might have done in its heydays. This one is a mono-era knockoff with David Sutherland knockoff cover art, although it doesn’t quite go all the way with the trade dress fetishism – which becomes clear once you look inside and notice the homemade production values (unruly two-column text without even mono-era TSR’s concessions to modern deviltry like “layout”, “accessibility”, or “page numbers”). This is not always a good thing, but the module is as honest about its homespun simplicity as its sources of inspiration.

What you get inside is a two-level dungeon which keeps the cover’s promise by presenting a no-nonsense, meat-and-potatoes dungeon adventure inspired by the likes of the Giants/Drow series. It is actually even more specific in its influences: it combines the “cavern rooms” inhabited by creepies and crawlies you find in G1 and D1, and the various weird evil temples you find through the series, and builds a full 35-room dungeon out of them for beginning characters. If you liked those rooms, you will probably find this module agreeable. The premise revolves around obtaining one of the teeth of Dahlver-Nar, here the prophet of the worm cult, an unpleasant society of purple worm-worshippers. Dahlver-Nar had enough magical teeth to fill a 16-module series (of which this is the first part), or it can be used as a one-off – it should work as well alone as in a series.

The encounters put a high emphasis on monster lairs (a combination of cave dwellers and intruders who have come here following their agendas) with general oddities and magical enigmas, and the remains of a temple complex constructed within the cavern system, but apparently being reclaimed by it (there is a river running right through the cultists’ abandoned temple). The overall style has the sense of exotic oddness the author has been known for, without Carcosa’s gruesomeness or the generic blandness of Dungeon of the Unknown. This module has a fairly good balance of the different sensibilities it draws on – the familiarity of mediaeval knights and wizards in conical hats combined with odd-coloured otherworlds set in underground caverns. The worm cult’s traces in the dungeon complex are likewise a mixture of the mundane and the alien. There is even a beholder encounter (spoiler: it is right on the cover) which will surely encourage panicky guessing among seasoned players – is the GM using a gas spore or a real beholder, and can we afford to test it? – although I believe it does the wrong thing in the end.

Sometimes, things feel randomly generated without being sufficiently thought through afterwards (a hard to find piece of treasure is talked up as a beautiful historical rarity, and then valued at 95 gp), and sometimes, this randomness feels justified as a weird underearth thing (a place where the characters can experiment with a cavern of varicoloured magical nodules, each producing a different magical effect). The dungeon’s layout is tricky at first glance due to all the twisting and turning corridors, but it is more linear than you would expect, and there is altogether less content than you could fit in here if the text was a bit more leanly written, and the maps had more stuff going on – minor things, but you notice them.

Then there is that layout again, and I say this as someone who is usually satisfied with simple two-column text. Most encounters are presented as ungodly long blocks of text without breaks, bolded text or highlighting that would help sort out the information and draw the GM’s eyes to the important details. Important information is sometimes presented out of the logical order (e.g. room 10, where the probability of an important encounter occurring is given dead last), or thrown into the middle of a wall of text. Monster statistics are usually embedded into the flowing text… ironically, I swear there is an instance where they are omitted altogether, but I am not finding it. This is not good, and Tomb of the Sea Kings, another module wearing its love for mono-era TSR on its sleeve shows that it can be done while keeping that iconic look. However, the maps are fine, legible and mostly unambiguous: they do their job and don’t get in the way.

Crypt of the Lilac High Priest, as stated before, is a fundamentally honest take on mono era AD&D with a light weird touch. It is not a real standout, but “better than average” describes it suitably. When OSRIC opened the gates before small-press old school adventures, this is about what I was expecting (and sadly, wasn’t getting) as the standard. If the forthcoming parts of the series solve the layout and presentation issues, they will be a solid addition to a GM’s module library.
No playtesters were listed for this adventure. Geoffrey McKinney and his products are not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast. Wizards of the Coast and their products are not affiliated with Geoffrey McKinney.

Rating: *** / *****