Another childhood dream crushed

Yes, I realize this has nothing to do with Psionics (clearly I have a powerful block against writing about that topic… could it be Psionic control?!?) but I was recently able to snag a long out of print 1st ed. AD&D module- Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure.

See also "Story, Never-ending"

I’ve always wanted to read this adventure- it was set explicity in the World of Greyhawk, was by Gygax (a shared credit with Rob Kurtz), and if WG4’s quality was any indication (yes, I do love the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, but more on that later) this one should really be great.  Here’s the back blurb:

Four great and powerful heroes travel in search of adventure. Led by Mordenkainen, wizard without peer, they have come to mysterious Maure Castle, a forlorn and foreboding place, source of wonderment and awesome adventure, following a strange and terrible story. [Hah! Ed.]

For, somewhere deep beneath Maure Castle, from whence no person has returned alive, there stand two massive iron doors – doors without latch, lock, or handle – the Unopenable Doors.

And if the doors are opened, what then? Such potent evil, such terror lies beyond, that even the bravest adventurers may quail before the ultimate test!

Mordenkainen’s Fantastic Adventure is a challenging adventure for high-level play. Four original characters from Gary Gygax’ famous Greyhawk capmpaign are included for your use.

Can you meet the challenge? Can you survive what lies beyond…the Unopenable Doors?

Perhaps it was the intervening decades, but what I’ve imagined laying beyond those doors was infinitely better than what I found; a thoroughly bland trap-encounter-trap dungeon.  Nonsensical puzzles?  Check.  A random mismash of connecting corridors of various styles and sizes?  Check.  Is it squeezed into a single sheet of graph paper?  You betcha!  No concession to any sort of logic?  Oh yeah, in spades.

So, first we have the “unopenable doors”.  How do you get past them?  Well Mordenkainen has an artifact.  Do you?  If not, that’s too bad.  Hope you know passwall.  The first room encountered is a trap that causes you to drop your gear into pits that destroy them automatically, which I’m sure is a lark to your players who’s been carefully shepherding their characters to 9th level and beyond.  Soon after you’ve got an iron golem that can only be hurt by another item in the room.  That’s fair- and fun.

I could easly bitch and moan about the whole thing, bit by bit, and was doing so for much longer than above, but I deleted a goodly chunk.  Needless to say what you have are three really out of date levels, containing a haphazard bunch of monsters (gnolls??  why are these poor bastards here?  How do they get the “random scrap of meat” if they’re behind the “unopenable door”?) random treasure (if you don’t want characters to root around endlessly, stop hiding valuable stuff in table legs), and a less than compelling group of villains, all thrown together in what might have been fun thirty years ago, but left me more than cold.  Eli is never a good name for a villain.

The only accurate bit of the title is the inclusion of Mordenkainen, otherwise this is not a fantastic adventure.

Thank you for bearing with my sullen disappointment.