Time for a review of another great product from Troll Lord Games.
I have no idea why the Ebay gods were so foolish as to let me acquire
The Lost City of Gaxmoor for a song. The fools! This is easily the best
D20 publication I have ever encountered.
For those who are interested,
The Lost City of Gaxmoor regularly sells for $20.95, but it is currently on sale at the Troll Lord Games website for $7.50. See this link:
http://www.trolllord.com/newsite/erde/4001.html
My review rates various categories 1-5, with 5 being the highest:
PHYSICAL PRESENCE: 5
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a perfect bound book of 136 pages. The binding is tight and there are none of the crackles one hears from a book that is destined to burst open the first time you use it. The front and back covers are four-color gloss. There is a large, single-sided map attached inside the back cover. This map's edge is perforated and it can be detached from the book. The layout is very professional, with monster and encounter information set aside from the regular text in grayscale boxes. It is printed in a readable 10-point Times Roman font.
ARTWORK: 4
The cover art, of player characters and soldiers battling humanoids, is by Jason Walton. While this piece will not win any art show awards, it nicely conveys the old-school feel of the book's subject matter. The interior artists include Jim Branch, Bryan Swartz, Dave Zenz and Chad Sergesketter. Their work includes a nice mixture of styles that, again, gives the product the feel of an old school publication. There are a few instances of pickup art or generic graphics, but most of it is really good...and there is a
lot of it. The artists all managed to do a good job visually guiding the game master through the lost city.
CONTENT: 5
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is crammed with adventure. There are encounters everywhere, including interesting situations and miniature quests within the overall story. There is also a section of new monsters and there are adventures to be had on the way to Gaxmoor and in the surrounding countryside.
This publication is credited to three writers, including Ernie Gygax and Luke Gygax "with David Moore." One assumes that David Moore was the cleanup and finishing writer for the members of gaming's first family.
The basic premise of
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a ruined city of the "Aenochian Empire," now inhabited by humanoids of all descriptions. The Aenochians closely resemble Earth's own Roman Empire, which means that the module is not too intimately tied to Troll Lord Games' Erde world setting. It could be plunked down quite convincingly in any game world where the ruins of a former empire dot the countryside...which means virtually every campaign world.
There are too many great situations in
The Lost City of Gaxmoor to describe here. Suffice to say that there are evenings upon evenings of things for an adventuring party to do, and the city of renegades is full of fun situations and locales. The authors have utilized the great variety and flexibility of the Third Edition AD&D rules. The players will never know what to expect.
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is more than just an encounter area. It is also a really good rendering of a Roman city, and it would make a good game product even if no monsters were present.
One note of caution here:
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a more sophisticated setting than just a bash-in-the-door module. Inexperienced players, or parties of poor role-players, may die a lot in this adventure.
MAPS: 5
Readers of my other reviews will remember that I have been extremely critical of the maps in other Troll Lords Games publications.
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is jammed with maps. Jammed!
The king of these maps is the detachable large-scale map inside the back cover. This is a 21" x 23" artistic rendering of the ruined city. The background is a glowing tan...like parchment. The city's main buildings are drawn in 3-D in black ink. The only drawback of this map is that it has the encounter sites numbered. These numbers should have been placed only on the smaller, duplicate map inside of the book.
Many buildings inside the city are mapped...some of them in 3-D. Despite their 3-D rendering, the maps are generally simple enough that a game master could re-draw them for the players without too much trouble. There are 25 different pages with interior maps, including a plan of the city sewers. The only things missing are maps of the city theatre and colosseum, both of which are very interesting encounter areas described in the text...possibly because they are too large for rendering in the 1/4"=5' squares that are fairly standard for Third Edition AD&D maps.
PRICE: 3 or 5
If you buy
The Lost City of Gaxmoor for $20.95, you will have a solid piece of gaming, well worth your money.
If you buy
The Lost City of Gaxmoor for the $7.50 sale price on Troll Lord Games' website, you will have stolen the best game value I have seen since Judges Guild's
Verbosh setting...and there is more to hack and slay here than Verboshians could ever imagine.
One word of caution here: The Troll Lord Games website lists
The Lost City of Gaxmoor at 80 pages and "saddle stitched." It is possible that the most recent edition of the publication has been cut down for increased profit. You should ask before ordering...but you'll still probably be a winner even if the online sale version is somewhat scaled down.
INTANGIBLES AND OTHER BULLHEADED OPINIONS: 4
At present, D20 (or OGL, 3.0 or 3.5) publications are not highly collectible. There is a lag in their collectibility based on the glut of D20 products that soaked the RPG market. If you buy this publication, it will mostly likely be because you are an active gamer who wants to purchase a highly useable adventure setting. The collectibility will come later, when people are scrambling to collect the entire Troll Lord Games RPG line.
The pair of Gygax family names on this publication tend to increase its interest.
The Lost City of Gaxmoor fits nicely into the collection of anyone interested in the Gygax contribution to gaming.
The
Lost City of Gaxmoor is a nice demonstration of the great power of the 3.0/3.5 version of AD&D. This iteration of the game requires more work and overall competency by the game master, but it also provides more varied situations and a strong element of surprise in every encounter. The players can never relax, as combat is deadly and the monsters have learned a number of player character tricks, such as levels and special abilities. Kobolds actually
can eat your baby...and get away with it.
If nothing else,
The Lost City of Gaxmoor is a highly entertaining read. It is a treasure house of good ideas. You ought to get ahold of some version of it now, while you can.
COMBINED SCORE: 26 or 28 It is
Dark Tower levels of good!
1-5 Demand your money back. (
Ironhoof Highlands)
6-10 Sucks...a lot, but someone might want it. (Mayfair
City State)
11-15 Fixable. Useful to gamers with certain interests. (
Dragonlance)
16-20 Interesting to a general audience. (
Arduin Grimoire)
21-25 Worth picking up and potentially great. (D1-3,
Verbosh)
26-29 Really good stuff. Very valuable. (G1-3,
Dark Tower)
30 Buy it now while you still can. (?)
