The Rod of Seven Parts (Advanced Dungeons \u0026 Dragons: Tomes Adventure) by Skip Williams

The Rod of Seven Parts (Advanced Dungeons \u0026 Dragons: Tomes Adventure) Reviews

• 
  Dan Schwent

  The forces of Chaos threaten to overrun the world and only three intrepid heroes can stop them by searching out the seven fragments of the Rod of Law, travel to limbo, and slay Miska the Wolf-Spider. Can the three players controlling the heroes put aside their teenage bickering to actually employ teamwork and finish this mega-module before their Dungeon Master quits playing Dungeons and Dragons out of frustration?
  
  Okay, so the summary doesn't match what's on the back of the box but it's how it all went down for our group. This was the capstone of my teenage Dungeons and Dragons experience, before the group fragmented and decided chasing girls and getting liquored up was more fun that nerding it up in the basement slaying monsters.
  
  It was pretty tough from what I remember. The bard nearly got killed in the first adventure after a one ton block of stone fell on him, the fighter and the psionicist both nearly died from poison by wolf-spiders on a lot of occasions, and lots of shit got killed.
  
  The plot isn't all that complicated. The forces of Law recruit the characters to gather the seven fragments of the Rod of Law, piece it back together, go to limbo (as I recall), and kill Miska the Wolf-Spider. It was a long and brutal adventure. The plot was pretty loose, actually. Apart from reading the adventure, all the DM had to do was place the fragments in whatever world he played in, Oerth if he was hardcore, and point the PCs on their way.
  
  If I remember right, this set of linked adventures took close to a year for us to get through. By the end, all of the characters were level 15 or above, had more treasure than they could ever spend, and didn't have much more they could accomplish.
  
  We played a few times after this but couldn't recapture the old magic. Still, they were memorable times.
• 
  Tony Calder

  This is one of the large box set adventures from AD&D 2nd edition and it contains the quest to seek out The Rod of seven Parts, one of the iconic artefacts from the D&D game. It is sufficiently iconic that I am somewhat surprised that there hasn't been any official version of the item in 5th edition.
  
  In the original edition, it is quite a complex adventure, as well as potentially very deadly. There is more scope for role-playing than is usually found in adventures of the period, which is attributable to the larger format. Being broken into several distinct stories, as this adventure allows, presents the players with a fairly wide variety of challenges.
  
  Converting the adventure to 5th edition, as I have been doing as my group plays through it, has presented a number of difficulties. Not only are there a number of new demons created just for this adventure (so they need to be created in 5e) but there a number of creatures featured in this adventure which are far more powerful in 5e that they were in 2nd ed this leads to extra work to maintain the balance and avoid overwhelming the party. There are a number of encounters which could potentially cause a TPK for a party of 9th and 10th level PCs (multiple djinni and efreeti, a pit fiend, a goristo). Not to mention the climax of the adventure, which is a probable combat with a demon lord - this is a deadly encounter for a group that is likely to be 11th or 12th level. As can be seen, a lot of extra work is required on the part of the DM.
  
  The artwork, as is to be expected from TSR products, is excellent.