The Book of Lairs

by James M. Ward, Mike Breault

From rear cover "...With The Book of Lairs, TSR Inc. proudly presents the first in a series of groundbreaking AD&D accessories. This book contains over 60 fully developed adventures that can be easily inserted into any DM's campaign. These intriguing and innovative encounters are ready to play and will challenge player characters of all levels. No longer will you have to spend endless hours devising clever lairs and traps for monsters to spring on your PCs. Why make your players wait while you thumb through books and roll dice trying to scare up a random encounter? Here are ready-made adventures available instantly for almost any terrain and party level...."

Genres: Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Role Playing Games, Gaming, Games

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1986

About the author

James M. Ward (b. 1951) is an American game designer and fantasy author.

Reviews

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of mini-adventures for AD&D 1st Edition, each centered around a particular monster or category of monsters, and designed to be dropped into any campaign. Most scenarios are based around Monster Manual creatures, though there are a small number drawn from other sources. (There are also some scenarios centered around NPCs.) As you'd expect, many are variations on "go to the monster's lair and fight them", though enough twists are typically included to keep things interesting. A few are much more distinctive (such as the encounters with fey-folk, or the murder-mystery with gargoyles). The book also makes use of late-1E rules like THAC0, plus material from products like the Wilderness Survival Guide (though such products aren't strictly needed). The only notable annoyance is the book's organization - ostensibly by terrain, but that's not quite clear as you page through. (Simply going by level or alphabetical would have been easier.) All in all, though, this a very useful resource for D&D gamers of all eras. (B+)

[Juho Pohjalainen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contained my first attempts at running adventure modules written by other people. I don't think any of them went all that well, but it taught me a lot about how to focus my DMing, when to let other people do the hard work for me, and that I didn't have to spend weeks coming up with something dumb and drawing my own maps.

Several of the adventures are fairly open-ended and could hold up even if run today.