Lara’s Tower is a Judges Guild adventure for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. It was written by Kevin Nunn and was published in 1981. It is sixteen pages long including the covers and maps. This adventure is a multi-leveled tower filled with bad guys for the adventurers to confront.
A former evil high priestess has turned a new leaf. She is now a good priestess and wishes to mend her former ways. She once lead evil hordes of raiders. And these raiders still inhabit her former tower and home. She wishes that these evil beings be destroyed and asks for help from the adventurers. She offers the party 100,000 gold pieces to clear the tower for her.
The adventure is designed for parties of no more than 30 combined levels of experience. The adventurers must return with the key to the tower to fulfill the conditions of the quest.
Lara’s Tower was written for Pacific-Con 1980.
What I like about Lara’s Tower
It is an old school adventure for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. It is fairly short by Judges Guild Standards in that it is only sixteen total pages including maps and covers. The actual length of the adventure key is only four pages. Not a huge amount of treasure or magic passes hands in this adventure. Which is a good thing. Too many adventures of this type give away the farm. This one does not.
The adventure does offer some modified monsters. Most of the creatures are hobgoblins and orcs but this story offers shamans and witch doctors which were not really specifically covered in the 1st Edition Monster Manual. Certainly none of these ideas are totally new or unheard of.
What I do not like about Lara’s Tower
This adventure is kind of a straight line. There is a tower. Fight your way to the top and find the key along the way. Or fly up to the top and fight your way down. Most of the rooms are combat encounters with creatures lower in level than the adventurers but attrition may take a toll. The creatures are mostly orcs and hobgoblins with a few griffons.
The thing I said earlier about treasure….well the reward itself is a bit too much. One hundred thousand gold pieces given to characters of this level is probably a bit much. This is especially true given the difficulty of the creatures in the tower. This much gold would probably level them all up at least once if you are following the 1 gold piece = 1 experience point rules from the 1st Edition DMG.
Without the reward there is not much motivation for good aligned parties to help. Lara was once evil. Now she claims to be good. Perhaps she is. But so what? Why help her? In fact…given that she is high level (presumably) then why does she need help at all?
Would I recommend this adventure?
While I think the adventure could have used some work I think it could be modified by the Dungeon Master and used with success. I do not generally like recommending adventures that require work for the DM but this would require minimal changes. Specifically the reward should be cut substantially.
Would I run this adventure with my own group?
If I needed an adventure for characters of this level I might. But there are many other adventures for this level range which are better. So I probably would not.
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” In fact…given that she is high level (presumably) then why does she need help at all?”
Presumably she WAS high level. But voluntary alignment change in 1e had serious penalties, especially for clerics. She lost at least two and as many as 4 levels (depending on changes in the law-chaos axis). She could easily be the same level as the party now, or even less.
I suppose that could be true. I kind of got the impression she was still far above the level of the adventurers though. Not sure it ever really says in the module.