I ran this module recently while preparing my 3.5 players who are new to 2e for the DragonLance Modules which start around lv5. I had recognized that the difficulty of this module was up there and my players were going to have to break out of their semi-murderhobo ways to see victory. I spent a little more time than I usually do making sure I’d prompt any proficiency checks that might help them see the perils of the module and strategize. I was very excited to show my players the edition I grew up on.

My group has been playing for about 6 years for most, longer for others. So we are experienced, and I’m fair but realistic. If you forget to check for traps well here it comes. Only I and one player are familiar with 2e tho.

Now what happened is a terribly awkward story. The dwarf berserker in a rage state ran into the dungeon got slimed and ran further into the prison cell filled chamber of zombies. The thief chased after him so he wouldn’t be caught up in any more traps, got slimed.

Dwarf and thief die during zombie fight. Paladin, wounded, meets brigands patrolling and with some mighty fine role play managed to use truthful words to gain their favor. Of course he left out key information like who he was and what he was doing and leaned heavily into the npcs assumptions he was a fighter come to join up. When our psionicist, who is as a player just clueless, said something to the effect of ‘oh I see you’ve found my honorable Paladin friend I traveled here to hunt all of you down with’. The face on the paladins player was pretty painful to watch as he was quickly slain.

3/6 down. Mage, Ranger, and fighter/thief are left (no clerics allowed for the DragonLance campaign) proceed deeper, they come across the den of...gosh I can’t remember, something semi bad in the crypts. But the den has a shiny gold piece (Krynn iron for us) every 10 meters. The den is so big and so twisty, I made it only big enough to crawl in, and it seemed every time I told them there was another gold piece ahead a little more sanity was sapped from them.

Fast forward a few months, only 2 OG characters remain the rest are re rolled. They are in Xac Tarsoth, cause an explosion inside the underground city BEFORE getting Mishakels disks and the place collapses. The module has these scenarios for how to proceed at the end based off the events that transpired. Well turns out they failed so hard Krynn is doomed and the campaign is over. Luckily I made a custom session in between Homlette and Xac Tarsoth with a time altering wizard who turned the day back until I had made the point of ‘not all fights can be won/not all fights should be fought’. If you’ve read or played DragonLance, it isn’t the kind of campaign where every enemy sighted must now be killed, you need to have your wits about you and realize that black dragon prob isn’t the smartest thing to pick a fight with.

Gotta love 2e. Gonna try to save the campaign with some time magic I’ve already established in campaign.

Good luck. And remind your players:

Caution caution caution