JG 118 Sword of Hope Review

Sword of Hope is an adventure from Judges Guild written for use with Original Dungeons and Dragons. It is written by Dave Emigh and was published in 1980. It is thirty six pages from cover to cover. This adventure was written to be the sequel to the adventure Tower of Ulission.

Unfortunately, I could not get a copy of Tower of Ulission to read, before reviewing this adventure. So it is entirely possible that my lack of understanding of this module may have a great deal to do with that.

This adventure requires the adventurers to solve a number of riddles in order to reach the conclusion. These riddles involve the sword wars of over a thousand years ago. In order to complete this mission the adventurers will have to visit two very dangerous places while avoiding a confrontation with the ultimate villain. In order to avoid the early confrontation they will have to leave their magic items behind and take only those provided. These items have certain protections on them to prevent them from being noticed. These items are special. Some are even intelligent.

What I like about Sword of Hope

I love a lot of the hold Judges Guild adventures. So I expected to love this one too. I was mistaken. It is, however, short. Thirty six pages is not long for a Judges Guild adventure. And much of this one is spent on the background. really only about 20 pages are the details of the two dungeons.

There are tons of riddles and poems here. That adds a bit of flavor to the place.

There are a few magical tricks which are always interesting to me. I am always looking to add to my collection.

What I do not like about Sword of Hope

Without reading the preceding adventure I needed a little background. But there is far too much of it in this adventure. The first ten pages are pretty much the set up for the next twenty five. That is a lot. And it is kind of boring too. To make matters worse there is more background later in the module and player read only text as well. That being said there is almost one half of the module devoted to background.

Most of the combat here is the same two or three creatures over and over again. In fact the writer tells you up front what each of these three types of bad guys are and then just says ok two of these and one of those in each of the room descriptions.

This is set up so that the adventurers really cannot back out or retire from the dungeons. If they do they will find that the rooms behind them have been filled with more bad guys. This is not necessarily bad but it might well lead to a total party kill if the adventurers use too many resources too early.

The riddles and poems here are long and nearly impossible to understand or solve. Without solving them the players will ultimately fail in the quest.

Some of the tricks and traps are just gotcha things. They are not really fair and are lethal. For example in one place there is a room in which the adventurers walk by a symbol of death. They all must save or die. There is a cryptic warning somewhere else in the dungeon about this room but still….

In another area it is really hot. The players must save versus the heat or lose one half of their hit points immediately. Even if they save they lose one quarter of them. I do not really like that kind of thing.

Would I recommend this adventure to others?

Overall…..this was not one of Judges Guild’s more impressive efforts. I would not recommend this one. Granted. I have not read the preceding module. And that might well change my opinion. Perhaps I would understand more about the entire adventure if I did. If I can get a copy I may revisit this review at a later time.

Would I run Sword of Hope with my own players?

Probably not. I did not especially like the repetitive nature of the encounters. I do not think my players would either.

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