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A Fistful of Dracmas is a Living City adventure set in the Forgotten Realms. Living City is, for those of you unfamiliar with it, an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign where you make characters that can be played at game conventions across America (and even out of the country) that are offering Living City adventures. The levels required for a Living City module are flexible and depend on the strength of the players' characters. A pool of higher level characters result in harder adventures; low level result in easier adventurers.

I will be giving out all sorts of secrets away about this adventure, so those of you who want to be surprised better not read it. There really aren't any good surprises to be spoiled, but I'm not inclined to read a pile of e-mails complaining that I gave things away without giving sufficient warning.

There are bad modules and then there are bad modules. This one qualifies as one of the especially appalling ones. It is set in the city of Raven's Bluff and begins with player characters being summoned by a note to an inn of no particular importance. This note is armed with the phrase "The Cook has a cleaver." PCs are supposed to go to the inn and figure out what to do with this wondrous phrase.

It is assumed that PCs will go to the back of the inn and use the phrase to gain entrance. With no clues guiding them in this direction, the PCs who went through this adventure when I ran it knocked on the front door--never thought to bother with the back door until I suggested it--and, once there, fooled about until someone said "The cook has a cleaver." Two PCs who couldn't read stayed out front and continuously knocked on the front door. Eventually I had a NPC answer. These two PCs then showed the appearing NPC the note instead of saying the phrase. According to the module their decision to approach the inn and situation in this way is punishable by them being ousted from the adventure itself. I let it pass.

The module's story--and the quest PCs must complete--is to save two kidnap victims who were supposed to be exchanged for two spies. The two spies have been lost and PCs have the option of looking for them and making a peaceful exchange or to find the kidnap victims and wrestle them free from their captors. What an original idea that is! Why not make one of the two a princess? Oh, right, one is. Gee, a save the princess story has absolutely never been used in a fantasy adventure module.

There's little point to covering the rest of the adventure, so I won't. It's bad and doesn't do anything unexpected. Oh, and there are some clues as to where the spies went. Which are so easy to get the PCs might as well have been told them at the PCs beginning just so it they can get it over with all the quicker.

The most amazing thing about this whole adventure is that if PCs do the unexpected or deviate from the plotted out adventure in any serious way, they're punished! One punishment involves the character being put in jail for one year (real time, not game time). This is a hideous thing to do to PCs who have come up with original situations to a severely unoriginal module.

The module's prose is plagued is so dry that it's a wonder the paper it was printed on didn't up and disintegrate or spontaneously burst into flame. There are "boxed text" areas that are supposed to be read out loud, but obviously the author, David P. Santana, didn't try that after he wrote them. I gave up trying to read them and just made something up that resembled it.

Exciting and almost poetic descriptions don't abound in this module. A wonderful example: "In front [of a ship] stands a man in what appears to be silk sea togs, wielding a staff." What's a sea tog? And why does it appear to be silk togs? In fact, one player repeatedly demanded, "Is it or isn't it?" about a lot of ambiguous things found here.

The only good thing I can say about this adventure is that I'll never have to run it again. The only thing that could possibly improve this adventure is its removal from existence. That failing, at least have the RPGA bury all copies under ten feet of concrete.