I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City

Title: I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City

Price: $4.99 (PDF), $14.99 (Softcover)

Publisher/Year: TSR, 1981

ISBN: 0935696334

Author(s): David Cook

System: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 

Character levels: 4-7

DriveThruRPG Link

Rating: 3/5

Though parts of what would become Dwellers of the Forbidden City were used in the official AD&D tournament at Origins 1980, module I1 doesn't include a scoring sheet and referees are halfheartedly encouraged to design their own if they choose to use it in a tournament fashion. The module also conspicuously lacks the tournament "vibe" of other early modules, lacking both a precise, straightforward goal or a high density of combat/trap encounters intended to test the mettle of the players, instead opting for a more open-ended, exploratory style. In that respect, I1 might be an exemplar of the "Electrum Age" that marked a shift in the style and content of adventures from the earlier Golden Age, a shift some cheer and others decry.

Ostensibly, Dwellers of the Forbidden City is about the characters, in the employ of merchant leaders, seeking to put an end to raids on caravans passing through a remote jungle locale. However, once pointed in the right direction, the characters soon discover that there's more going on in the jungle than mere caravan raids, as they stumble across the mysterious Forbidden City, a lost city that recalls Robert E. Howard's Conan yarns -- no surprise given David Cook has admitted that the City was inspired by "Red Nails." Though getting to the Forbidden City is an adventure in itself, with multiple means to enter it and lots of potential allies and enemies along the way, it is within the City (a version of whose map is reproduced below, thanks to Lord Kilgore) that the real adventure begins.

As can see from the map, the Forbidden City is large and located within a canyon and thus isolated from the rest of the jungle. It is a world unto itself, one that operates according to the whims of its inhabitants, chief of whom are the yuan-ti snake men, who make their debut appearance in this module. In my younger days, I used this module innumerable times with several different groups of people, including some I barely knew. What's interesting is how similar the experience was right up until the point where the characters enter the Forbidden City. From that point on, nearly every group did something different, with quite a few completing forgetting their original mission and focusing instead on exploring the Forbidden City and its strange inhabitants.

Dwellers of the Forbidden City is only 28 pages long, so it's necessarily brief when it comes to describing its titular locale. Yet, that never bothered me. Indeed, I think it's probably one of the great strengths of the module and the reason I was able to use it so often: it was easy to make and remake the City to suit my present needs, whatever they were. My personal preference for modules these days are ones that fire my imagination; they give me the bare bones details I need to get started but they don't weigh me down with extraneous details that either get in the way or easily forget in the heat of play. Far from needing, in the words of James Wyatt, "more detail, more fleshed-out quests, and another hundred pages or so," module I1 is almost exactly the right length. Anything more than what it includes would, I think, have lessened its spartan appeal for me.

Re-reading Dwellers of the Forbidden City in preparation for this post brought back a lot of memories, all happy ones. I could recount many tales of adventures past, but those in the Forbidden City are among the most vibrant nearly 30 years after the fact. I remember well when Morgan Just and his stalwart companions braved this place, doing battle with the yuan-ti, the tasloi, and the bullywugs united under King Groak. I remember too my expansions of the City, using the adventure seeds Cook includes at the end -- the under-city warrens filled with ghouls and demons, the vampire orchid-men, the Black Brotherhood, and time travel to the days when the City was at its decadent height. This was a module I literally played to pieces; my original copy of the booklet fell apart from so much use and its maps were smudged and stains from similar service. With the possible exception of The Isle of Dread -- another David Cook module -- I'm hard pressed to think of a module that more powerfully engaged my imagination and showed me what a powerful game D&D could be.

TTRPG Ideas - House Rules

At the time of writing, TTRPG's have been apart of my life for 42 years. I have been on both sides of the table; DM/GM/Storyteller and player. As such, I have been exposed to quite a number of different games and there are rules from several that I like to include across my other games when I am in the hot seat of hosting.

Here are a few of my personal house rules that I use in my games:

Character Creation- This is specific to D&D or other games with similar mechanics.

• Max hit points @ 1st level. 
• For attributes, 4d6 throw out the lowest. Re-roll 1's a single time per roll. (i.e. First roll is 4, 6, 1, 1. Player would re-roll the 2 1's a single time and then take the best result.)
• Max starting gold. I know this is a less common thing these days, but in older editions of D&D, you had to roll for your starting gold.
• Random common magical items. I have a growing list of various common magical items that I will give to the party at level 1.
• Merits & Flaws. This helps to add some flavor to every character. This is taken from the classic World of Darkness by White Wolf.

Game rules-

• No computers/tablets/phones at the table unless specifically used for game.
• XP logs. This is something I took from my time in the LARP community. This is to ensure everyone tracks when they earn XP, how much and when they level up or what the XP was spent on.
• Full HP when characters level up instead of rolling for additional HP.
• When rolling against a specific difficulty, the roll must exceed the difficulty and ties go to the defender. (i.e. Attack roll against an AC of 15 must roll at least a 16 to count as a hit. If there is a contested roll against 2 players or a player and an NPC, the attacking player must roll higher than the defending player.)
• Nat 20's - For double damage, the player rolls once and adds the full value of what would have been their first roll. (i.e. Player crits with a long sword [D&D 5.5E]. That player rolls their 1d8 for damage and then adds 8 + their additional damage modifiers.)

There is a great article written by Sly Flourish on House Rules from Various RPG's that I enjoyed reading.

Something else that I prefer... probably because I'm more of an old-school role player... physical dice over digital dice. When travelling (I do quite a bit of roleplaying while on the road), physical dice may not be an option and would be an exception to this rule.

There's a great video by Ginny Di about death of a PC. I really like the idea of incorporating this concept into my next game.

I recently saw a video about improved healing without the need for rolling. I wish I would have saved it to reference here.

Please share your favorite house rules in the comments section below. I'd love to see what other rules are popular in your games.

DDA1 Arena Of Thyatis

Title: DDA1 Arena Of Thyatis

Price: $4.99 (PDF)

Publisher/Year: TSR, 1990

ISBN: 0880388390

Author(s): John Nephew

System: Dungeons & Dragons 

Character levels: 2-3

DriveThruRPG Link

Rating: 3/5

DDA1 Arena of Thyatis is a module that introduces players to the capital city in a way that fits the city - through intrigue and politics. The module itself is well-written and well-organized. However, there are a couple of places where the "DM should allow the characters to explore and 'make it up'". The thing is, I buy modules so I don't have to do that. I'd prefer being given a set script which I can then change as I want. But overall the module is decent enough. This module also leads into DDA2 Legions of Thyatis.

What changes would I make to this module? Well - as a DM I scripted up the "open" parts of the module so that I could just guide the players through. I just want to make it as easy on myself as possible - that's all. Also, it is easy to expand or edit the dungeon area and make that into quite a long adventure if you want. I didn't do that myself, as I spent my DM juice on scripting the open parts of the module, but the option is there. However, since this leads into a follow-up module, I didn't find it necessary to change anything too much - simply because I didn't want to affect the playability of the follow-up. This is a very interesting module, one with a lot of role-playing and intrigue if the characters are into that.

CM6 Where Chaos Reigns

Title: CM6 Where Chaos Reigns

Price: $4.99 (PDF)

Publisher/Year: TSR, 1985

ISBN: 0880382430

Author(s): Graeme Morris

System: Dungeons & Dragons 

Character levels: 17-19

DriveThruRPG Link

Rating: 3/5

CM6 Where Chaos Reigns I find to be an incredibly interesting module. Instead of a big adventure - it is actually 5 mini adventures that all tie in together for one overall massive important mission. The characters travel through space and time to another world to prevent the destruction of the normal evolutionary process. And believe me when I say that a couple of these mini adventures are actually full adventures in their own right - or can be easily expanded to be such! Now, as you know I don't necessarily enjoy modules that are more "open-ended". This one is definitely more open-ended than I typically like. But wow - there is a lot to do - a lot to fight - and this module should last the characters quite a few sessions if the DM is willing to really develop this thing. So how did I (or how could I have) run this module? Hey - I'm glad you asked! With five different mini adventures - let's break it down.

The first mini-adventure of the module tasks the characters with saving the young budding races of elves and men from a chaotic race of creatures led by foreign strangers. The characters must protect the races from destruction, and then go to the enemy stronghold and eradicate the threat there, freeing slaves, and basically establishing the elf and human races. The opponents are tough - and the characters should emerge victorious. There are plenty of enemy combatants to vanquish - and if they want, the characters can take the battle to the marauding forces - I always like that. Pre-planned hit-and-run tactics are always enjoyable for me.

The second mini-adventure has the characters helping the dwarves emerge from underground for the first time. Without the aid of the characters - they may never emerge and develop as a major race. There are a few somewhat tough sea encounters in this 2nd mini-adventure. But hey - why not develop this into a full-blown adventure all on its own? Let the characters battle through pirates and go island hopping to find their ultimate destination! Plenty of potential similar to the Odyssey or the Voyage of the Dawn Treader!

In the third mini-adventure, the characters have to save the races of this alternate world from certain destruction by a human army led by some strange foreigners bent on total annihilation. Yet - instead of the characters waiting for the invading armies to come - I have them go harry the invading armies - oh man I love hit-and-run tactics! There is an overabundance of fighting - and when you unleash high-level characters in the middle of an army camp of low-level opponents - there are just unbelievable amounts of carnage and chaos! The characters should always make sure to have a pre-planned escape route laid out. Hit the powerful creatures - hit the hoards of battle fodder - whatever they want to do. Hit them hard and escape - to hit them hard again later. Of course, the invaders will attempt to alter their tactics to account for the characters - but the characters should be well prepared. And when the characters take out the leaders - oh man talk about an ineffective army! And then if you like have the characters attack or even invade the source of the invading armies - you know - if you as the DM want to prepare for that! More hit-and-run tactics - more carnage.

In the fourth mini-adventure, the characters have to save a bunch of high-level mages. This one is not one I enjoy that much. It is pretty quick and there is some detective work and actual role-playing involved and the characters have to make sure not to kill the wrong people - all that kind of stuff that for me slows adventures down. But I know - there are plenty of people out there that like that kind of stuff. Anyway, I usually just get through this one as quickly as possible.

The fifth and final mini-adventure! A change of focus of this adventure. It is not just to destroy the object of the adventure, it is also to eradicate all enemy forces! The characters can create a lot of problems through pure destruction and death - and that is what I task my players with. destroy the enemy! There is plenty of that going on in this adventure - and I have the characters once again using hit-and-run tactics and engaging in a war of attrition and destruction. Over time the enemy technologies are disabled by the characters until the characters achieve their victory! One thing necessary for this is to keep track of the number of enemies. There are also a couple of pretty epic battles as the enemy forces organize to take out these deadly invading PCs. Ultimately - the characters will prevail and this diabolical enemy will be utterly destroyed! Just good clean family fun!!

C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness

Title: C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness

Price: $4.99 (PDF), $6.99 (Softcover)

Publisher/Year: TSR, 1980

ISBN: 0935696245

Author(s): Allen Hammack

System: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 

Character levels: 5-7

DriveThruRPG Link

Rating: 2.5/5

The adventure is basically a dungeon crawl, penetrating a ruined fortress seeking a McGuffin desired by an NPC. The tournament setup is that the PCs are coerced into the adventure - four prisoners from the Duke's prisons, and a monk indentured to the Duke as payment of taxes. Oddly, they come unequipped, but get 25,000 GP to buy normal equipment and select magic items from the Duke's treasury. I wouldn't want to try that with an inexperienced or rusty game group, because buying equipment (especially mundane gear) is always time-consuming. Selecting magical gear is pretty fun, though. I remember doing it myself with these lists, and it's a lot of competing trade-offs between powerful but costly items that limit your overall choices and cheaper items that might just not get the job done. Still, "here is 25,000 GP worth of gear you can take from my treasury" seems a really contrived way of putting the item choice into the player's hands.

On to the adventure itself. It is basically a big puzzle made up of puzzles. It's a find-the-keys puzzle with nested puzzles. Enter the dungeon, find the key, find the door, back off, try again until you get all the keys. Then complete the one-path-only way to the McGuffin.

The puzzles are pretty cool - they reward general caution, player skill, character abilities, and knowing when to take bold action. You can't easily get through them all with cautious 10' pole pokes and refusing to do anything dangerous, just as you can't easily get through them all with bold action and straight combat. And that's without even touching the scoring bonuses the tournament players would get for choosing the right course of action for each puzzle. Some of them are player-facing (player skill resolved), most are at least equally character-facing (resolved by character abilities, if correctly applied.) Add on top of that a time limit in the tournament and it must have been pretty tense, choosing between boldness and caution in turns.

Some of the puzzles require combat - for the tournament, monsters all do specific (sub-average) damage. There is an interesting range of monsters in there, but they're clearly chosen for a mix of thematic appropriateness and level of challenge.

The non-tournament additions are just more encounters embedded in previously empty rooms, or additional monsters or traps stuck into the more puzzle-like encounter areas in the Ghost Tower. Some of them are probably appropriate for a regular campaign, others seem like they'd just make the encounter more complex (and bloody) for little real gain.

I mentioned scoring. The scoring is individual and team, with a winning team and winning individuals being given prizes. Scoring is for loot, damage given, minus damage received, plus all sorts of bonuses for handling specific encounters and even for making observations about the environment.

Some nice bits:

• Lots of blown-up maps of special rooms you can show to players (and smaller ones for the GM).
• Pictures of the "keys" so you don't have to explain them without a visual aid.
• An umber hulk illustrated by Jeff Dee and one illustrated by Erol Otus.

Overall, I was quite impressed with this one. It seems like a killer dungeon with a poison cookie for a prize, but looking at it from my perspective now, I feel a bit differently. It's a real challenge adventure, with a dangerous prize you probably wouldn't want to keep (unlike, say, some of the weaponry from S2 White Plume Mountain.) Like S2, it puts more emphasis on using your head than your weapons, but you need both. Also like S2, it will find a way to fit a trick or puzzle in even if you need to suspend your disbelief a bit to swallow it being there.

A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade

Title: A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade

Price: $5.99 (PDF)

Publisher/Year: TSR, 1981

ISBN: 0935696261

Author(s): Harold Johnson, Tom Moldvay

System: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 

Character levels: 4-7

DriveThruRPG Link

Rating: 3/5

A2 is the second in the Slavers series of adventures for AD&D. Like the rest of the series, it was originally a tournament adventure. Also like A1, it seems to have been two rounds - one above ground, one below.

It takes place in and under a stockaded keep. The setup is that the group found that this fortress is a front and a way station for slavers, not just, er, innocent caravans of evil humanoids going through a dangerous land. The group is tasked with finding out what's going on there, and to find out the next step on the path that leads to the nefarious slave lords.

Once again, an escaped slave gives you a way in - a slave climbed out of the gatehouse's second floor via a rope of rags, and as the escape wasn't detected the rag is still there. The lack of aggressive patrolling (or cleaning, or housekeeping of any kind) is blamed on the humanoids being pretty lax about security. Either way, done by the tournament, you get right up into an abandoned section of the gatehouse and then need to work your way into the keep proper. The tournament basically bypasses one of the big problems with a fortress - it's not meant to let you access the interior easily.

From there, the party has to deal with a number of monsters, lots of guards, the usual traps and set-pieces that this series features prominently. Like A1, you get a lot of excellent traps and very tactically interesting set-piece battles. One thing I forgot to mention in my review of A1 is that they give zoomed in tactical maps of those set-piece battles, so you can see exactly how the various combatants are arrayed from the start (and, possibly, show to the players to make it even more clear.) The foes use the terrain and special weapons and combined-arms tactics well. None of the big fights are solvable with just a single fireball and some good damage rolls. A few come with pre-determined starts and unavoidable NPC actions, though, which can be annoying. But not all of them, and tactically clever players versus tactically clever foes using their surroundings to give them home field advantage can't help but be fun.

The traps as equally good, and make sense in a fortress - they're generally manned traps, or ones you can see being a minor annoyance to the occupants but a major problem for unprepared attackers even if they're careful and wary. Traps backed by troops is the norm here.

The evil leaders in the adventure are given just enough development to make them stand out and interesting. Markessa, the mad scientist-wizard (and yes, there is an owlbear nearby - it's the zeppelin and monocle of magic-using mad scientists), a blind swordsman, disguised monsters, named weapons (even if non-magical) - there is a lot of flavor here. The leaders are also described in a special section up at the front of the module, too, making it easy to know who you'll need to deal with if the adventurers make repeated delves. The strategy of the fort to repeated attacks is also covered, as is what they'll do with you if you surrender (my advice is - don't.) It is sadly lacking an overall roster and notes about reinforcements, something that would be extremely valuable to a GM trying to actually deal with multiple delves without a lot of prep time in between to figure out who is left and where they go.

The expanded, non-tournament version is much more lethal. In the tournament foes won't pursue and an alerted fortress merely triggers a few (admittedly nasty) traps, and the fortress is reduced to a narrow path of set encounters. In the expanded version, there are more guards, more encounter areas, wandering monsters (including strong patrols), and pursuit will be active. So there are more enemies, more places to deal with, and they are more alert and more active. Not only that, but a few minor encounters in tournament play (like an haunted section of the fortress) are expanded to be full, and quite dangerous, encounters.

In short, the fortress is bigger (more areas to explore), had more active occupants, and what is there is often more directly lethal and complex.

There are some very cool encounters, too - a madman, slaves, the "caveling" cast-offs of Markessa, and more like that. There are some ways to bypass the traps (since the occupants might need an easier way around), and some chances to avoid combat. A few folks will live an let live, if you do so first. Others will actually ally with you, including some (at first) seemingly unlikely ones.

It all makes sense together, and it's a very cohesive fortress with a lot going on in it.

But generally, a group of 9 3rd/3rd-6th level tournament adventurers can handle the tournament portion, but no way that same group will handle the expanded fortress.

CBCS Services - My Final Experience

Early March 2026, I decided to send off my latest copy of Swamp Thing #37 to CBCS comics to get graded as this is an important key issue in my collection. I have been using CBCS services for years, and they have twice even supported my non-profit, Comic Book Covers 4 Cancer. I have always been appreciative of their service and support for each order I have placed. While there were some comics that I submitted that I'm not sure I agree with the grade they received, those were few and far between.

For me, I greatly appreciated the fact that they authenticated un-witnessed autographs. When they ran promotions on discounted fees for authentication, I would ways take advantage of the opportunity. I have a decent sized collection of autographed comics that I would like to preserve. It's not just about getting a higher value for the comic for me. Not currently at least. I know that these will eventually be passed on when I shuffle off this mortal coil, and I would like to have the person who will be receiving my collection get a fair benefit from it since they do not collect comic books themselves.

On March 17, 2026, I received an email stating that my comic had been received for grading.

I then received a follow-up stating that my comic had progressed on to the pressing stage.

Then on March 24, 2026, CBCS publicly announced that they were ending their grading services effective April 17, 2026.

At this time, based on the announcement, I felt like my order was still going to progress through their system normally. I was not about to start to worry about it since I had placed my trust in this company so many times before. I remained patient... for the time being.

In May 2026, I started to ask about progress of my order. This was the first response received on May 19, 2026.

Then, on May 22, 2026, I received the following email.

This was concerning because I had already been informed that my comic had already gone through the pressing stage. Based on this email, I opted for them to continue the grading process without the pressing. I figured that perhaps the previous email had been an error and I accepted that. In July, I submitted another request for a status update. This is the response I received on July 5, 2026.

After this response, I followed up to try and get some better information because of a trip I had planned for the end of July. I didn't want them to ship my comic back to me when I was not going to be available to receive it since they require a signature upon delivery. I was tole they still had no ETA, but if I received word while I was away that the package was shipping that I should contact FedEx to have them hold the package. Unfortunately, I was also going to be out of the country without internet service, so this made me nervous. Fortunately, it was not shipped while I was away.

Then, on August 25, 2026, I receive the following email.

This was very upsetting since I had previously been informed that my comic had progressed through the various stages and should have been pressed and graded. A little over a week after I received this email, I confirmed that I did receive a refund and that my comic would be returned within 5-10 business days from September 2, 2026.

On September 29, 2026, I got my comic back. There was obviously nothing done to it at all. No pressing and no grading. I am so disappointed on how this last interaction with CBCS Comics went.