Red Arrow, Black Shield

Expert #X10

by Michael S. Dobson

A cloud of dust forms over the horizon as a titanic army of evil threatens the entire civilized world! The Master of the Desert Nomads and his legions are back, and they're deadlier than ever! Riding out of the Sind Desert, they form the greatest threat that you have ever faced. You must persuade powerful rulers to join your cause, stave off threats to the alliance, and lead your armies to victory! This adventure contains a full-color map of the D&D Expert Set game world, 200 counters, and a special expansion of the War Machine mass combat rules that allows you to fight the entire war as a strategic wargame! Major battles and engagements can be fought using the BATTLESYSTEM Fantasy Combat Supplement for incredible tabletop action. Never-before-published information on all the nations of the Expert Set game world provides background and detail that will enrich your campaign.

Genres: Dungeons and Dragons

48 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1986

About the author

Michael Singer Dobson is an American author who writes on Business (particularly office politics and project management). He also has written Alternate History novels (relating to WWII) and Role-playing game adventures (D&D, Indiana Jones, and Buck Rogers XXVC).

Reviews

[Mindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the Standard Adventure Details:

1. Party member gets pickpocketed in at the very start on a city street.
2. Items like sword +1, +3 vs. Undead in a hoard of a tough undead lair that would've been useful for the fight and not after.
3. EVERYTHING fails to garner information about a magical item in the game that needs to be assembled by the party. Only trial by error... because the main NPC giving them clues won't tell them even though he knows.
4. Street urchin singles out the party and then more beggars mob them... then more and more.

I also liked the Non-Standard Things included:

1. Rabies is listed as a disease with symptoms appearing in 4 hours and kills in 48 hours
2. Innkeeper named "Zeb" (I'm guessing as in David "Zeb" Cook, a prominent writer of D&D works and also mentioned at the end). The dwarf King Under the Mountain is named Everest.
3. The party goes through elven lands to find a tomb in "the densest part of the forest" in a flying ship, but later says the party doesn't arrive from above.

I disliked:

1. Two of the pages include flow charts that made no sense to my smol brain.
2. The PCs are actually MEANT to win and the book is almost forgiving to them. It even mentions at one point The Master will raise them from the dead if they all die and they'll get a chance to win. TSR disagrees in other writings. EVERYONE knows DMs should definitely kill off players that "get too powerful."
3. The party is assumed to be susceptible to ESP, poisoning and assassins sneaking into their rooms when in hostile territory, but none of the important NPCs are.
4. The group of drunk giants in the enemy city that singles out "tough" looking people like the pcs to fight with. Bullies only target physically weaker people.

I liked it overall, but not by much.

[Pádraic]

Less interested in this for its specific 'war machine' and 'battlesystem' rules for arbitrating large-scale combat, and more for just ideas on how that feels, from the perspective of a small group of adventurers caught up in it. And there's a decent sense of that here, as the party goes on diplomatic missions to build an alliance of nations against the great evil horde that is advancing across the land. The scope is impressive from the get-go, with hundreds if not thousands of soldiers in play at any given time.

It's also all pretty non-specific, with the alliance points mechanic and the general structure being easily adaptable to any campaign setting. If you want to increase the scale of your campaign up to full war, this isn't a bad resource--though for lower-level players I'd recommend Red Hand of Doom instead.

[Joe B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the War Machine rules and played out the clash between the Duke and the Baron with one of my players.