White Dwarf #34

by Paul Vernon, Ian Livingstone (editor)

Issue #34 of White Dwarf Magazine featuring the AD&D adventure "Troubles At Embertrees"

75 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1982

Reviews

[Marko · Rating 3 out of 5]

The article “A Guide to Dungeon Mastering - Part I: Setting up Adventures” and the adventure “Troubles at Embertrees” were the best parts. Otherwise the magazine didn’t really have anything interesting for me.

(The adventure is only 5 pages long, but the text is extremely tiny - I actually had to use a magnifying glass to be able to read it - and the pages are just crammed with information. There is a LOT of stuff in those 5 pages.)

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

The AD&D adventure "Trouble at Embertrees" is both the main attraction and the majority of the word count of this issue, though not the majority of the page count because of the super-small print size used for it. This adventure is the culmination of Paul Vernon's articles on medieval town creation for a fantasy setting which had been published in previous issues of White Dwarf. Here he shows off what can be accomplished by following his guidelines, in much the same way as Tolkien follows his essay on fantasy literature with the short story Leaf By Niggle. Trouble At Embertrees is a great intrigue adventure, the poor village is beset by dark forces and the players must unravel the numerous mysteries, which eventually leads them to a hidden temple in a nearby valley. Even the origin of the village and its main livelihood turns out to be based on acts of unspeakable evil (I won't spoil it). The main downside to the adventure is that due to the incredible detail involved, it takes a very experienced and very well prepped DM to do this adventure justice. Embertrees is the first part of a larger adventure called Starstone which was sold separately and is now incredibly rare. Some people consider Starstone to be the greatest adventure ever written, and for most of us, Trouble At Embertrees is the closest we will ever come to it.

Another article of note in the magazine was the one on DMing tips. Some of the new magic items were interesting; I didn't particularly find any of the new monsters useful. I didn't read the Traveller article as I don't play that system.