1 Castle Zagyg: Class Options & Skills for Yggsburgh AUTHOR GARY GYGAX Art by Peter “20 Dollar” Bradley Cover Design & Layout, Interior Art, Logos and Logo Designs. ZAGYG: UPPER WORKS, CASTLE ZAGYG: YGGSBURGH. Gygax’s Legendarium. Was a blog originally created to archive some of Gary Gygax’s articles and writings.

This is a review of Castle Zagyg: the Upper Works by Gary Gygax, a boxed adventure module detailing the upper levels of his Castle Greyhawk dungeon. The publication is by Troll Lord Games and should be arriving in game shops in the near future, although it is possible to order directly from their website.

The adventure is designed for the Castles & Crusades game, and is very compatible with earlier iterations of D&D (oD&D, 1st & 2nd edition in particular). Overall, the boxed set consists of the following: • Book 1: The Mouths of Madness - 44 pages, revised from the earlier release in the East Mark Gazetteer, detailing the caves around the base of the 'moat' around the castle. • Book 2: Ruins of the Castle Precincts - 48 pages, detailing the walls, towers, gatehouses and other buildings that stand on the surface over the dungeon. • Book 3: East Wall Towers - 20 pages, detailing the two massive towers that flank the ruined castle. • Book 4: Castle Fortress - 44 pages, detailing the actual fortress level itself. • Book 5: Store Rooms - 44 pages, detailing the first real dungeon level of the Castle, along with new monsters, magic and NPCs. • Maps & Illustration booklet - 36 pages, B&W illustrations and maps.

About half the booklet is maps, the rest illustrations of encounters • B&W Poster Map (28 cm x 42 cm) of the Mouths of Madness/Store Rooms • B&W Poster Map (28 cm x 42 cm) of the Castle Precincts/Towers/Fortress • Colour Poster Map (28 cm x 42 cm) of the wilderness around the castle. Book 1: The Mouths of Madness For many older D&D gamers, their first experiences with the D&D game was through a module included in the Basic D&D set entitled The Keep on the Borderlands.

Gygax returned to that adventure to gain inspiration for this part of the adventure. Instead of the 'Caves of Chaos', you have the 'Mouths of Madness'. Each cave section contains a different tribe of humanoids, with some caves having access to the castle dungeons proper. File Content Conversion In Sap Pi At Receivers. A description of the wilderness around the castle is also included.

'The Mouths of Madness' was previously published in a preview product, 'The Eastmark Gazetteer', and I've been using as the basis of one of my 4e campaign for the past few months. There are nineteen different cave systems detailed, with the total number of encounter areas being 61. Kobolds, Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Bugbears - pretty much every humanoid monster from original D&D can be found in these caves, living in discrete tribes. You also have a few unusual monsters turning up as well, just if you thought everything would be predictable. The main impression I receive from this section of the adventure is one of mundanity.

It's not that such is bad; it's just that it isn't full of extravagant, fantastical encounters. The rivalries between the tribes are petty and utterly believable, and the descriptive passages of what each lair contains evoke misery and cruelness. There's a sense of reality to the encounters that isn't always achieved in D&D adventures.

Gygax included plenty of notes for characterising the tribes. The goblins have prisoners, the bugbears are forward scouts for the rest of their tribe, and the hobgoblins are losing a war with the gnolls. A DM who wants more than just one battle after another has plenty of material to work with.

I don't always appreciate the old-school form of Gygax's encounters: requiring the party to search for 30 minutes to find the treasure in some encounters rewards an overly slow and picky style of adventuring. However, with encounters like 'Charlie' the Ogre, who invites them in for tea and jam, but is lacking the jam, there is the potential for some great adventures. Random encounter tables are included for the caves and wilderness. And the set-piece wilderness encounters draw a lot from old fairy-tale and mythical lore: the ogre who has kidnapped many children and forces them to work as slaves is a case in point. 12 Strand Dna Activation Symptoms more. However, these are a distraction from the main part of the work: the ruins of the castle.

Gygax notes in his preface to the work that this isn't exactly the 'original' Castle Greyhawk, but rather a distillation of all the versions he'd used in the past. He has described it as the 'best' version of the work, being also in a form that your regular DM could use it (rather than the original, brief, handscribbled notes which were often used as the basis for improvising encounters). Book 2: Ruins of the Castle Precincts Above the caves, the exterior portion of Castle Zagyg awaits. This section was mainly ignored by the original Castle Greyhawk players in preference to the dungeons, as a note from James Ward indicates. What you have here are three sections of a walled castle: the cobbled (lower) courtyard, the grassy (middle) courtyard, and then the inner (garden) courtyard. Finally, the fortress stands at the back of all of these and is detailed in Book 4. Book 2 concentrates on the walls and outbuildings of the castle.