Game
11
Tournament
Adventure C3
The Lost Tower of Castanamir
(1984)
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by Ken Rolston |
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Editor: |
Marlene Weigel |
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Graphic Designer: |
Elizabeth Riedel |
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Illustrator: |
Jeff Easley |
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Cartography: |
Diesel |
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The Realm Review:
A unique dungeon
crawl, this adventure leaves practically any band of PCs with a proper
appreciation for an arch-mage's superior intelligence. A dungeon that requires
memory, thought, and a good deal of swordplay, Castanamir's tower will leave
you happy to see sunlight when it finally lets you go.
Realm Rating: 4.5/5
...Download Game11 at the Magic
Mirror...
Read the Adventurer's Journal
Collected reviews on Game 11:
Hi Folks,
I'm playing a
lot this week, aren't I? :)
game11.zip The
Lost Tower of Castanamir
A fun little
module that must have been very frustrating for players of p&p games. I
really think Ray does a great job of bringing the design to life. I have quite
a few questions that could be answered by the dm. They are not important to the
adventure but I'm hoping the answers were contained in the paper version, so
Ray can answer them for me. What was unusual about the crow? Who was the mage
in the egg? What did the poor servants die of? Were the creatures trapped after
trying to loot the place? What really happened to Castanamir? I had a major
problem with one of the hacked items when I transferred to Horror on the Hill.
An item for mages, I'm sorry I can't remember which one, turned into a cursed
dragonslayer that gave the character a -101 armor class. I was able to remove
the curse and drop the item. The item worked in this adventure, so I'm only
slightly affecting the errors score.
Plot Matter: 9 Artwork: 9 Hacks: 9 Text: 9
Events: 9 Originality: 9 Errors: 8 Difficulty: 5
Total Rating: 89% Mycroft Rating: 9
Susan
The Lost Tower
of Castanamir was quite a different design than Keep. While in Keep you fight
several hundred humanoids, the Lost Tower features far fewer enemies. I
considered this a good thing, a change of pace between designs. The game has
many strange areas to explore, and the tower itself is quite strange.
I enjoyed this
design a lot, though it became frustrating when I couldn't figure out where to
go. The entrance to the second floor was hard enough to find, and getting off
that floor took me forever. Actually, I cheated at the end by reading the
adventurers' journals on the Realm home page. While playing, I had hoped to be
able to get the fourty gems to pay off Castanamir's servant; I only managed
thirty-three, including my haul from Keep. But I liked how the creature would
identify my items, and I found it's knowledge useful in determining my NPC
companion's identity. The design would have been more fun if I didn't have to
keep pressing return each time I changed rooms, or when I approached the
servant's fountain. To move across that room would take 10 or so 'enter'
presses each time! I would have liked it better if the first three or so text
statements were 'do only once.' I appreciated that Castanamir's bookcase events
stopped firing once I took the books.
