(TFT) Dwarven Mines --> D&D Axe of the Dwarvish Lords --> A review

["rsmith" <rsmith@lightspeed.ca>]

Hi Everyone,
	I bought "The Axe of the Dwarvish Lords" by
Skip Williams on Ebay and a review follows.


	This supplement gives full details of a very
small dwarven hold in a small mountain.  A medium 
powered artifact the Fierce Axe was made by the 
first king of the dwarves along with a series of
other artifacts.  Generations later the dwarves had 
a civil war and the last king of the clan was laid
to rest in this small community.  Eventually the
dwarves moved out, goblins moved in, and the 
scene was set.

	This supplement gives you a lot more bang for
your buck than the Harn supplement I reviewed a 
couple weeks ago.  It costs $27.00 (us) retail and
it is 192 pages long in fairly small font.  In
in addition there is a 6 page map supplement (and
map key) included in the back of the book.

	Several monster descriptions are repeated in
the book, presumably to reduce the amount of page
flipping on the GM's part.

	There are 10 areas (levels) in the mine, most
shown in the map section, but with 4 smaller areas
having maps in the book proper.


	The adventure starts with the players getting
wrapped up in a feud between two dwarvish clans in
a small city.  Investigation shows that some 
hidden 3rd party is using magic to stir up the 
dwarves, and has unleashed the Abomination of 
Diirinka, a dwarf hating demon that appeared during
the civil war.  This is the first indication that
the Fierce Axe may have been disturbed.

	The players have to deal with a goblin 
invasion, but soon head dungeon ward to confront
the people stirring up the dwarves.


	This is basically a D&D dungeon crawl, but it
is a dungeon crawl done with enthusiasm, energy and
creativity.  The major opponents are goblins, but 
these goblins have the home turf advantage and have
made a host of interesting obstacles and traps to
make parties of adventurers welcome.  However human
allies and adventuring parties have been hired by
the bad guys, so clever players can try to finesse
their way past many fights by passing themselves 
off as mercs.

	The supplement has a serious case of magical
'industrial disease'.  The players better have two 
or three magic users to run the technology or they 
are pretty much hosed.  (I don't consider this a
particular fault of the supplement, it is endemic
to D&D products.  This supplement does a better job
than most in assuming NPC's understand magic as
well as PC's and use it intelligently.)

	
	There are numerous mysteries for the players
to solve, and the background is interesting and 
(in places) devious.  The various tribes of goblins
compete and at times it is possible to use this
disunity against them.


	As you have probably noticed, I like this 
work.  It does not give the feel of adventuring in
Moria, (it is a very small dwarven fastness) but
it does not pretend to be anything BUT a small
dwarven home / fort.  (Kiraz on the other hand
tried to pass itself off as the most glorious city
of the dwarven race with a 7,000 year history.)

	Having bought the thing, I am actually 
tempted to adapt it to TFT and run it for my players.


	Final grades of various supplements:
	------------------------------------
B-	Moria - ICE
	Mile wide but only inch deep.  Too much work
left to GM.  Non-Tolkien like 'hell' introduced to
pad supplement.  Several clever ideas. Author was
clueless about geology.

C	Harn: Kiraz the lost City - Columbia Games
	Small and expensive.  A couple clever ideas 
but some dumb mistakes as well.

B+	Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. Hasbro/WotC/TSR
	D&D dungeon crawl, but a good one.  A nice
number of clever ideas, no major stupidities.  Too
small to be a good model for Moria type adventures.
		 

	Rick
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"