JG 111 The Mines of Custalcon Review - Old School Role Playing

The Mines of Custalcon is an adventure from Judges Guild for Original Dungeons and Dragons. It is 52 pages long. This adventure is actually part of the Judges Guild Wilderness series. It is the first installment. It is written by Bryan Hinnen. There is a short mini adventure included with this campaign book.

The Judges Guild Wilderness campaign is a series of modules which detail and map the areas around the City State. Much of this book are hex maps from that campaign world. This series, more or less, adds to the Wilderlands campaign. Most, if not all, of the Judges Guild Dungeons and Dragons products are set in this campaign world. This installment was published in 1979.

Mines of Custalcon Link

What I like about the Mines of Custalcon

The wilderlands campaign of Judges Guild is really just an open world for the dungeon master to run a campaign in. It is pretty much the first published one. Yes….Greyhawk and Blackmoor existed before the Judges Guild one was published. But neither of those were published that early. TSR really did not understand the need to publish campaign settings or modules until they realized how popular the Judges Guild ones were becoming. And then they jumped in with both feet.

The Wilderlands setting sets up a detailed history and a whole lot of maps. There are descriptions of some interesting places in the individual hexes on those maps. But those are not detailed. That is left to the dungeon master to do. Many if the later installments in the series add detail to individual maps and hexes. Some of the later modules place themselves in specific places on these maps.

There are detailed random encounter tables and an extensive history set out. The local town has a description of all of the shops and the primary NPCs that might be met there.

The mini dungeon is three levels deep. It is fairly low level in terms of challenges.

What I do not like about the Mines of Custalcon

For the most part this is just a bunch of maps. There is a detailed village or two. And a small mini dungeon. But there is no real “adventure” here other than a couple of pages of the mini dungeon.

A lot of the Judges Guild wilderness installments are really kind of boring. So is this one. Yes….if you are going to run a campaign in this game world then you probably do want to own the products that give you the maps and overviews. But it is not exciting reading.

The mini dungeon is kind of dry. There is little in the way of magical tricks. There are a few monsters to fight and some treasures to loot. But that is about it.

Would I recommend this product to others?

If you intend to run a campaign in the Wilderness campaign then you probably would want to have this installment. If you are not going to run one there then I probably would not bother with it.

Would I use the Mines of Custalcon with my own party?

I have considered running a campaign in the Wilderness Campaign of Judges Guild. But I have always run things in my home brewed world which allows me to place just about any module in it anyway. So no. I probably won’t.

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