The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a thick adventure module published by Troll Lord Games and written for use with
Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition. Luke and Ernie Gygax are on the cover as two of the three co-writers (Dave Moore being the third), so I expected to see the influence of their father—Gary Gygax—permeate this product. My expectations were met;
The Lost City of Gaxmoor possesses the look and feel of an adventure module from the early days of
Dungeons & Dragons. What it lacks is the familiarity with the Third Edition rules that D&D gamers expect from their adventure modules, and this flaw spoils what would’ve been a wonderful long-term dungeon crawl adventure in the vein of
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
The premise of the module is that, on the world of Erde (Troll Lord’s default setting), the City of Gaxmoor was a fortified stopover point on a long trade route that was favored by the God of Travel. When the city’s existence came into question at the fall of the empire that birthed Gaxmoor, the god removed the city from the mortal world and entrusted the secret of its return to his mortal followers. Time passed, a dark age fell upon the world and the Dark Gods surged into ascendance. The Dark Gods found the secret and used it to bring Gaxmoor back to the mortal world, hoping that it would be easy to plunder for its rumored riches. What they found was a fallen city with monster problems of its own, so the situation quickly fell into factional fighting between various groups to decide who controls the fallen city of Gaxmoor. Shortly after the city’s return is when the PCs come into the scenario.
Once again, I rounded up the D&D Iconics for this adventure. Featured are the usual stars: Tordek the Dwarf Fighter, Jozan the Human Cleric, Mialee the Elf Wizard and Lidda the Halfling Rogue. They received default stats and gear for their initial level; this is the playtest crew of characters. The playtest used one of the provided adventure hooks: Jozan’s god, Pelor, came to him in a dream and told him that a Great Evil threatened to come into the mortal world lest he and his companions journey to Gaxmoor and stop this from happening. We reset the city in Greyhawk in the Dry Steppes and went to town, literally, skipping ahead to the start point of the module. The crew rejected the recommend rule changes because they would throw off the game’s balance if applied. This is a bad sign; general use D20 modules for use with D&D must adhere strictly to the rules to ensure proper game balance. Save the house rules for the DM, folks.
The adventure begins en route to the city. There are five encounter areas, each with one encounter, outside the city proper. None of these encounters have the Encounter Level noted, so I had to calculate it on the fly. All of these encounters are overpowering for any group of PCs that average 3rd level or less, barring any incredible luck that aides the PCs or penalizes The Encounter Levels range from 4 to 6; one is intended to be friendly and act as an information drop, and another is clearly meant to get the PCs to run or avoid it. The stat blocks have errors, such as the wrong base CR for the Gaxmoor militia who were War1 (CR ½, not CR 1), and the XP suggestion for avoiding the Goblin Bear is all wrong. (A PC gets XP for overcoming a challenge, regardless of how this is done; killing things is not required.) The stat blocks don’t get much better.
The rest of the module is one big adventure site. There are several factions here, some of which are friendly to the PCs and most of which deserve the pointy end of a longsword. In this sense, The Lost City of Gaxmoor is just like the AD&D modules of old; this is not a bad thing, but it does require that the DM take the time beforehand to tie the module together so that it fits whatever designs he has for it. It’s in the execution that things fall apart, with the above-mentioned errors being one long string of annoyances that sap the fun (and the utility) out of the module for DMs, and likely for players as well. The series of tasks required to progress from the outskirts—where low-level PCs encounter things that they can handle, usually—and progress inward to the high-level encounters also fit the old school feel of AD&D’s heyday back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Players of console and PC fantasy adventure games will find this style of play familiar, for good or ill, while those into world simulation and storytelling will choke on it.
There are three layers to the city: the Outskirts, the Outer Circle and the Inner Circle. This roughly translates into low-level, mid-level and high-level encounters. The idea is that the PCs take their time, clear away the hostiles in each circle in turn so that the PCs can level up sufficiently to make their way to the next circle of encounters. This makes the adventure path one of an inward spiral around the city, taking the PCs closer and closer to the center and the conclusion. This is how it went in playtest, as it seemed to be the intended route of gameplay. The encounter areas are a mishmash of the sort that even die-hard AD&D old-timers have a hard time defending; this is another area where the execution is lacking, as there is no coherent rhyme or reason to the placement of the monsters or the traps. It feels a lot like the result of a random dungeon generator with the details penciled in after the fact. The crew got bored after penetrating the Outer Circle; I couldn’t save this one.
It's not all bad. I must point out that this module does make use of some monsters from Sword & Sorcery's Creature Collection, but they're badly used. (Again, the poor execution.) The scenario is a good one, it's just that it's badly executed; The Speaker In Dreams is a far better take on city-based adventuring, and I'd like to see a revised version of Gaxmoor done in this style instead. It's incoherent to the point where playing becomes a pointless exercise of hacking, slashing and bargaining with strategically placed NPCs that either provide information or a place to rest and replenish supplies. More time presenting a coherent scenario would've helped.
This is a disappointment for me, overall. Your mileage will vary, as usual, but I can’t say that this is for most DMs. Rather, it’s for those DMs who truly enjoy taking these jumbled messes and making something out of it for themselves. For the rest of you, stick to your Dungeon Magazine subscriptions. I hope to see better work from the Gygax boys at a later date; take a cue from Dungeon and follow that publication's lead, Troll Lord.
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