S8 Warren of the Withered Worm Review

Warren of the Withered Worm is an adventure module written for 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons by RC Pinnel. It will be available for free download at Dragonsfoot later this week.

Warren of the Withered Worm is about dragons. RC Pinnel takes the 1st edition dragon a little further than what the Monster Manual provides. He extends the table of dragon ages by two to create a new, stronger, type of dragon called the immortal. This dragon age has more hit dice, more breath weapons, greater intelligence and more spell casting power.

This adventure is a huge maze of caverns ruled by a single immortal red dragon. She is a powerful creature and this adventure requires powerful adventurers to succeed. The module suggests characters of 10-14th level of experience. This is a pretty powerful dragon. It will take characters of those levels to defeat her. Some of the other creatures in her caverns are also pretty dangerous.

One of those other creatures in the caverns is a new monster called a Blast Spore. Blast spores are a cousin to the Gas Spore. Only when they are struck they do far more damage than their cousins. And there are other possible negative effects to those who are unfortunate enough to be close when this occurs.

Things that I liked about this adventure

There are a number of points that I enjoyed about reading this adventure. The first thing I will say is that the initial background information and setup is short. One thing that often irritates me about reading adventures for the first time is having to read six pages of background information and history which neither I nor my players are going to care much about. This adventure keeps that stuff to about a page.

It is a fairly high level adventure. There is always a shortage of those for 1st edition. This one is for 10th to 14th level. My own group is in that level range right now which makes this adventure especially interesting to me.

This adventure is about a dragon lair. There are not many published adventures specifically about dragon lairs. I wrote one myself and did a bit of research on others of the same kind. There are plenty of modules that have dragons in them. There are just not that many that are solely about the lair of a dragon.

Warren of the Withered Worm offers a new monster. That is always a plus. It also offers an updated version of the dragon. Which is also nice. It also offers an extension of the age table from the Monster Manual which is a bonus to dungeon masters who might like to design other dragons stronger than those available in the Monster Manual.

It provides pregenerated characters. This makes it easy to use for a one shot if a DM does not which to include it in their campaign but still wants to play it.

It is a short adventure. It is only about ten pages long. The format is clean and easy to read. There is no boxed test to read but the area descriptions are not extremely long. One can easily describe the rooms to the players from the first few lines of each area description.

Did I mention that it is free? Everything on Dragonsfoot is free to download. It is the best free source for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons adventures out there.

Things that I did not particularly like

While I like having a new monster the Blast Spore is kind of a gotcha trap type of monster. It does an enormous amount of damage as well as doing two other negative effects to the adventurers encountering them. While I realize that characters of 10th to 14th level would hardly be affected by a normal gas spore exploding nearby the amount of damage these blast spores do is 18-108 plus two other negative effects on top. That seems a bit like overkill to me. I know my players would think so.

One of the premises of this adventure is that a gas spore queen has made an agreement with the dragon to have these things populate the caverns for defense. I do not see how this could be possible. Gas spores are non intelligent as per the Monster Manual. I can certainly see such creatures being present in the caves and perhaps left alone by the inhabitants but I do not see them as capable of intelligent action or making agreements. Perhaps there could be one intelligent queen but that would not make her other gas spores intelligent enough to avoid harming the guardians of the caves.

One other issue involving the gas spores and blast spores is this. Since there are no beholders in this adventure it is likely that the first time the players encounter one of these in the caverns they are likely to believe all of the others that they encounter will be the same or similar.

In one treasure area the writer places the ancient artifact “The Wand of Orcus.” He suggests that you might substitute some other item which has benefits and drawbacks. I personally would never drop an artifact like that in a treasure hoard…..not even an Immortal Dragon….. unless the adventure itself was specifically about finding this relic. A relic like that deserves much more in my opinion.

The map for the adventure is fine….except….there are no exit tunnels. There is one way in and one way out. An intelligent dragon of this sort is going to have a way to escape. While she does have many places in the caverns to retreat to it seems unlikely that she would not have a tunnel or two to the surface in case she needed to flee entirely. A dragon does not make it to the age that she is without having taken precautions of this sort.

Would I recommend Warren of the Withered Worm ?

Of course. It is free. Did I mention that before a few times? Why not download it and read it? You can always modify it to your tastes. The writer of the adventure even suggests that you do in several places.

Would I run the adventure with my own group?

In a word….maybe. The adventure is in the level range of my own players characters. So I will definitely consider it. I would probably modify the map as mentioned to give the dragon options for escape. I would remove the Wand of Orcus. I might adjust the damage of the Blast Spores. And I would probably remove or change a few of the magic items given (duplicative with my own campaign).

Link to download the adventure (for free)