Emirikol Was Framed! SPOILERS!

[Raven_Crowking]

Later on, when I get to my "Everyone Else" blog post on this one, I'll probably have more to say. Right now, it is a level 4 adventure, and the highest level PCs in my group are level 3. That said, it's got to be tough on Michael Curtis, having done this adventure, and not having any real buzz about it.

From the start, Emirikol Was Framed! was hampered by one of the factors that, I suspect, Goodman Games thought would sell it - its relationship to an iconic illustration in the 1e DMG. Note please that I am not implying that this was intended, but one might well imagine photocopying that page and using it as a player hand-out during the first part of scenario.

I'm going to give as few spoilers as I can, but I just wanted to let people know that this is a fine adventure, with a really cool location to explore. It includes some very nice encounters, not all of which are combat-oriented (although some of the combat ones are tough!) and some of which may have long-lasting effects on the PCs. Area 4-1, I am looking at you!

The module culminates is a battle with many participants, and which has some simple mechanics for resolution. Do you remember the advice that monsters play by different rules? Well, sometimes battles do as well....especially when opposing forces meet. What the PCs do is significant; everything else depends upon a few rolls. This allows for a truly climactic final encounter that seems awfully "Appendix N" to me.

The bar for modules in the DCC line is very high. The bar for 3pp is very high. If Joseph Goodman approves, as far as I am concerned, it is worth picking up. In the case of Emirikol Was Framed! the adventure is solid, and looks to be a ton of fun. Setting it in the same city as The 13th Skull, and using the same characters, would allow a really excellent continuity and lend force to why the PCs are favoured to investigate Emirikol's tower, beyond the reasons given in the opening encounter. I would go so far as to make the serving wench, Leila Sill, appear just prior to the events in The 13th Skull. That a pterodactyl appears in both adventures is also a nice bit of continuity if this is done.

This adventure thrusts the PCs in the middle of an ages-old rivalry between two wizards, Emirikol and Leotah, with all that this means in the Appendix N/DCC tradition. That the PCs are pawns in this rivalry hurts the adventure not a whit - what they decide to do in the final scenes may determine how it plays out. And, if they decide to just scram as fast as possible, the judge is given ample means to determine what happens quickly. Emirikol and Leotah have been playing this game for centuries, and what appears to be the death of one or both might not be the end in either case....the judge is left with a long-standing plotline to make use of, or resolve, however he sees fit.

I am still uncertain if the flying gorillas are supposed to be a reference to Gardiner Fox, Michael Moorcock, The Wizard of Oz, or a combination of all three. It doesn't really matter, though - they are the least of the PCs' worries!

One recommendation: Photocopy the map, and use coloured pencils to indicate the relations between various areas. There is some seriously non-Euclidean geometry going on in here!

Other than that, this is more woo hoo! in mood than, say, Doom of the Savage Kings, but that is not a knock against it. It is a very good kind of woo hoo!, in keeping with the adventures of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Kothar, Philip Jose Farmer, or various Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lin Carter heroes. Me, I can take or leave Lin Carter from a literary standpoint, and I absolutely despise the fact that he "finished" and published some Robert E. Howard material giving himself top billing (although that might have been the publisher rather than him), but I don't deny that Lin Carter had some really good ideas that absolutely shine in DCC adventures.

So, that's my capsule review. If you gather from this that I like Michael Curtis' work, and enjoyed reading (if not yet playing) his adventure, you gather correctly. I have no doubt that my players are really going to like this one.

[dark cauliflower]

cool review. Not sure why having the cover being inspired by a DM1 illustration turns people off? I've read this elsewhere, just seems like a DCC cover to me.

DCC rulez.