The Isle of Darksmoke

by Larry DiTillio, Michael Whelan

This book is a game master's scenario adventure for use with the Tunnels & Trolls game system. You will need the zTunnels & Trolls rules, paper, pencils, some six-sided dice, and a few friends in order to play this game...inside this book are 14 Cardboard Heroes designed for you to use for characters and personalties found in this adventure.

55 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Blakely Berger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This adventure does a lot of things that you don’t see in D&D that are common in T&T. Some of it is due to T&T not having sourcebooks for monsters or magic items, so the designer has to invent everything. A strict conversion to D&D would result in unexpected twists. Even a loose conversion would be interesting. But there are also some really aggravating things that are seen in most T&T supplements, like DM handholding and designer fiat.

This 56-page book is only part one of the dungeon. Part two was never released. Flying Buffalo could have easily fit the full dungeon into the book without any extra pages. I’m guessing they wanted two long books so they could charge $10 each in 1984, which would be 3 times that much today. The module uses 30 pages to describe roughly 22 rooms. Seven pages are used to describe a strange town with quirky NPCs, most of whom are morons because they drink cursed ale at the local tavern (which will turn the PCs into idiots too!).

The reason the room descriptions are so long is that the designer gives the DM instructions for every contingency. For example, the description of a suspension bridge takes up 2 ½ pages! There are paragraphs describing crossing the bridge, when it collapses, the things in the water, fighting underwater, and characters trying to help their comrades. Some of this is because it’s a rules-light system, so we have water rules and falling rules in the module. But we don’t need a full paragraph about how much weight the bridge can handle. It can hold 3 humans wearing plate. I can take it from there. It describes the creak of the bridge and how far out you can go before it collapses. Every mechanic gets an example. We get rulings for grabbing onto the bridge, being stunned by the fall, being heavily armored, swimming, climbing out, dragging an unconscious friend, being attacked, fighting underwater, jumping in to save allies, even trying to poison water monsters (the poison is diluted, and the PC could poison himself if he has wounds). A suspension bridge is not that uncommon. What is the point of a rules-light system if you aren’t going to trust the DM to make logical rulings?

One thing I like about this is that most of the monsters don’t have to be fought. The adventure is for low-level characters who can’t possibly kill all these monsters. A gnome with a flute creates an illusory warrior and a lion with metal teeth. If you are polite and offer the gnome 50 gp, you can pass. An enchanted warrior can be disenchanted. A nasty-looking mage tells the party they have they have to sacrifice one member of the group to a giant worm. They have 30 seconds (real time) to attack the mage before he protects himself with an invisible wall, and then they have 2 minutes (real time) to choose a victim to chain to the altar.

My favorite is the elderly dragon with dulled senses. He has a monster rating of 250, which would be about 30 HD. It would be impossible for a low-level party to kill him, plus he has dragon-man guards in the next room who will run in to help him. But he will be friendly to someone who can speak Dragon or to a charismatic female. With the right tactics, the dragon might come closer to hear the PCs better, which gives a rogue a good chance to steal diamond crowns from the hoard. You could try to steal some of his gold while he’s sleeping, but he’s surrounded by piles of skeletons that will come crashing down if bumped. Try talking your way out of that!

There are problems here that exist in most T&T adventures. They aren’t intrinsic to the system, but you usually find them. The designer assumes that the players will act like a group of monkeys throwing dice at each other across the table. There is an appendix called “Offending Darksmoke,” which is designed to help the GM keep control of his/her players. “One powerful player running amok can destroy the enjoyment of the game for everyone. Any time the characters take an action that offends the mighty warrior-wizard Darksmoke, he will teleport something into their vicinity to punish the offense.” I don’t mind the concept of a wizard getting angry if someone rips down his artwork, but I do mind the idea of punishing players for misbehaving. The adventure instructs the DM to be an antagonist instead of a referee.

This is full of designer fiat, which becomes DM fiat. Things will kill the PCs no matter what they do. Forget about creative solutions because they don’t work. If a PC with heavy armor falls off the suspension bridge, “he or she will drown, period!” There is a forest that can only be crossed by hiring someone from the town to help. If it is entered without a guide, “they travel only three turns before the GM tells them their way is totally blocked and they can make no further headway.” The italics is in the book. I feel like it’s yelling at me. The PCs have to do things the way the designer wants them to be done. PERIOD! Was this done so the Swirling Forest would only take up one page? Why does the designer want the party to hire a guide so badly? What about a small forest map with a wandering monsters table instead of whatever this is?

Is it worth running? If you play T&T, you have to run it. You can only play Dungeon of the Bear so many times before you want something else, and there’s not a lot out there. I think I would have fun running it for D&D if I did a very loose conversion. The module as written would last a couple of sessions, but I could use something else for the unwritten lower level and something for the forest.