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Basic #B3
Palace of the Silver Princess
Hace aún poco tiempo, el valle era verde y los animales vivían libres en los dorados campos. La princesa de plata, gobernaba este apacible y próspero país, y su pueblo vivía seguro y feliz. Hasta que un día llegó de los cielos un guerrero montado en un dragón blanco, y en el transcurso de la noche siguiente, el pequeño reino fue devastado.
Hoy solo queda de él ruinas y rumores, y las leyendas que se conservan, hablan de un fabuloso tesoro todavía enterrado en algún lugar, en el corazón del palacio de la princesa de plata.
Este módulo, diseñado para ser utilizado con el juego básico de DUNGEONS & DRAGONS está especialmente dirigido a los jugadores y dms principiantes. En él encontrarás mapas del pala- Ocio y sus subterráneos, notas sobre el contexto del escenario, nuevos monstruos y aventura pre- liminar especial dirigida a los jugadores y dms inexpertos.
Hoy solo queda de él ruinas y rumores, y las leyendas que se conservan, hablan de un fabuloso tesoro todavía enterrado en algún lugar, en el corazón del palacio de la princesa de plata.
Este módulo, diseñado para ser utilizado con el juego básico de DUNGEONS & DRAGONS está especialmente dirigido a los jugadores y dms principiantes. En él encontrarás mapas del pala- Ocio y sus subterráneos, notas sobre el contexto del escenario, nuevos monstruos y aventura pre- liminar especial dirigida a los jugadores y dms inexpertos.
32 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 17, 2020
My son came back from a week of day camp with Dungeons and Dragons in the afternoons, and he was all fired up to play the game at home. But my wife was unwilling to spend the $whatever on a beginner set or book. So I said "let me solve both those problems" and went into the basement into a special carefully-packed box and took out a few things.
After some time with the Moldvay Basic book creating a few nostalgia-soaked characters I literally cracked this adventure open after 30+ years and right to it immediately. And let me tell you: it is still a disaster to leap right in without reading thoroughly first. The things you forget that you knew.
The module has a special place in my heart (right next to all the fat nodules) because it was the first one my mother had bought for me after the boxed set, and unlike B2 The Keep on the Borderlands it actually seemed to have a understandable 'thing' going on. There's a backstory, a specific problem to be solved, and an encapsulation without the complexity of a town or wilderness. Go in there, wander around, stumble on MacGuffins and a suitably large volume of hints, and do the thing. You even have these nice boxes full of words that you can just read aloud, instead of having to read it in your head, Cuisinart it, and then talk.
Did anyone actually get to the endgame? No, not so much. I was eleven, thanks. We/they would wander around and cause trouble until the rain stopped or it was time for the TV show or something.
So what does it feel like some 30+ years later? Well...
Well first I have to compliment my wife, who was roped into the experience by the resident 9 year old and was told that things were going to be complicated but she WAS NOT ALLOWED TO BE BORED. She was a really good sport about it, having absolutely no idea what was going on, and only fell asleep once. Due to my dulcet reading voice, she says. I am contractually obligated to believe her.
The entire module has a cursed fairyland or Ravenloft or Sleeping Beauty vibe. The monarch is imprisoned and cursed, and the curse has sickened the land and affected the population. The affliction isn't consistently dreamlike and weird, though: some inhabitants are petrified, some have been driven insane, monsters and evil cultists have set up shop elsewhere and are in the midst of their nefarious plot.
The fairyland image is reinforced by the palace not making any sort of sense logistically. The portcullis opens to a dungeon level that is half cavernous, but also has a library and music room and fancy baths all sort of jumbled together. There's no separation of servant space from royalty and guest areas, and no main thoroughfares to get places. You have an abattoir with meat storage literally next to a fancy music room. Each room has its own thing going on, so some have cursed activities as a result of the main evil foozle, some have the original purposes that have gone wrong due to the disaster (and what good-aligned kingdom will chain up white apes as guard creatures?), and some rooms have been overtaken by the usual dungeon-dwelling menaces. But it never leans into the fairyland imagery. It's just sort of there. It could have been a dark-mirror twisted version of ordinary life or the events leading to the disaster. It could be an invasion of fairyland logic where even the map is mutable. But, you know, twelve year olds. Probably best not.
I had forgotten how tough these could be. It advises, in small print somewhere, 6-10 characters in the level range. Not so much for two level one characters, with one player unobtrusively snoozing on the couch. We got to the one room with five zombies--hey they're all two hit dice, how nice--and some active Dungeon Master Plan B had to occur. And then the adventure finally came to a close in the Pink Pedestal room with the insanity-causing pendant surrounded by two reliable "DO NOT TOUCH" warnings that somehow flew over his head. By that time we'd been at it for several hours of no-electronics time and I was feeling pretty good and pretty worn out. He was on the verge of calculating his 10% experience bonus, too. I had forgotten how much this game had made math skills a real part of my life.
It was sort of fun to watch him in action. The first thing he wanted to do in the green slime room? Touch the stuff. This is the boy who is physically repulsed by cooked onion and runs out of the room screaming "BUG! BUG!". I had to step out of my role as neutral arbiter and ask why on Earth he would ever want to rub himself with the mystery dungeon goop. Fortunately he did pick up on clues that maybe he should _examine_ the lever and perhaps _listen_ at doors before kicking them in. Also, long poles are your disaster-avoiding friends that mean you don't have to be in hugging distance of the spitting cobra. A spitting cobra that wasn't going to actually spit as long as I had something to do with it.
The entire first part is a "programmed adventure" that works as a choose-your-own-adventure, which is really good for dipping your feet into and setting expectations and showing some range of options (throw food at rat to make it go away and SEARCH FOR TRAPS ALL THE TIME, PLEASE) but when you try to run it raw then you're faced with map numbers that can't be aligned with the reams of connected boxed text and if-then-goto connections.
The "programmed adventure" start--that level of basic instruction--is hard to reconcile with the later aspects of the adventure. There are illusion traps with 'nope not actually dead' clauses, an insanity amulet that affects player agency and no advice on how to handle that, the doppelganger body-snatcher gag, thieves who will almost certainly betray/rob you, a medusa, and freaking level-draining undead. Unless your 9 year old is resilient or has plenty of redshirt characters to not become emotionally invested in, those save-or-die situations are going to really hurt. And the final trick of the module is all the treasure you've been pulling out is property of the palace: the Silver Princess will not thank you for looting the place. Surprise!
Does it matter? No, not really. The plan never survives the game table. Especially for 9 year olds, or eleven for myself. It's all perfectly gameable as long as you ignore later pangs of fridge logic about the only way to reach the second floor being a single out-of-the way trapdoor. I don't consider it particularly inspiring or extensible like B4 The Lost City or replayable and just-damn-useful like B2. The evocative interior art isn't packaged to allow players to see it easily. If Dashiell Hammett had written the backstory/read-aloud he would have gotten a third of the way before having a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. There are plenty of noted escapes for novice or past-sell-by-date Dungeon Masters by dragging in the mystically helpful "Protectors" of the land whom the players would most certainly not remember from the opening crawl text. There are three separate ways to actually destroy the foozle and foil the foozle-bringer if by some miracle you reach that point.
This, at the end, is a fancy place to murderhobo without especial moral qualm. And a way for a 40+ father to exercise some acting/mental chops and see how he stacks up against a much earlier self. An earlier self that did himself no later favors by deciding to color in the interior art with really cheap magic markers.
After some time with the Moldvay Basic book creating a few nostalgia-soaked characters I literally cracked this adventure open after 30+ years and right to it immediately. And let me tell you: it is still a disaster to leap right in without reading thoroughly first. The things you forget that you knew.
The module has a special place in my heart (right next to all the fat nodules) because it was the first one my mother had bought for me after the boxed set, and unlike B2 The Keep on the Borderlands it actually seemed to have a understandable 'thing' going on. There's a backstory, a specific problem to be solved, and an encapsulation without the complexity of a town or wilderness. Go in there, wander around, stumble on MacGuffins and a suitably large volume of hints, and do the thing. You even have these nice boxes full of words that you can just read aloud, instead of having to read it in your head, Cuisinart it, and then talk.
Did anyone actually get to the endgame? No, not so much. I was eleven, thanks. We/they would wander around and cause trouble until the rain stopped or it was time for the TV show or something.
So what does it feel like some 30+ years later? Well...
Well first I have to compliment my wife, who was roped into the experience by the resident 9 year old and was told that things were going to be complicated but she WAS NOT ALLOWED TO BE BORED. She was a really good sport about it, having absolutely no idea what was going on, and only fell asleep once. Due to my dulcet reading voice, she says. I am contractually obligated to believe her.
The entire module has a cursed fairyland or Ravenloft or Sleeping Beauty vibe. The monarch is imprisoned and cursed, and the curse has sickened the land and affected the population. The affliction isn't consistently dreamlike and weird, though: some inhabitants are petrified, some have been driven insane, monsters and evil cultists have set up shop elsewhere and are in the midst of their nefarious plot.
The fairyland image is reinforced by the palace not making any sort of sense logistically. The portcullis opens to a dungeon level that is half cavernous, but also has a library and music room and fancy baths all sort of jumbled together. There's no separation of servant space from royalty and guest areas, and no main thoroughfares to get places. You have an abattoir with meat storage literally next to a fancy music room. Each room has its own thing going on, so some have cursed activities as a result of the main evil foozle, some have the original purposes that have gone wrong due to the disaster (and what good-aligned kingdom will chain up white apes as guard creatures?), and some rooms have been overtaken by the usual dungeon-dwelling menaces. But it never leans into the fairyland imagery. It's just sort of there. It could have been a dark-mirror twisted version of ordinary life or the events leading to the disaster. It could be an invasion of fairyland logic where even the map is mutable. But, you know, twelve year olds. Probably best not.
I had forgotten how tough these could be. It advises, in small print somewhere, 6-10 characters in the level range. Not so much for two level one characters, with one player unobtrusively snoozing on the couch. We got to the one room with five zombies--hey they're all two hit dice, how nice--and some active Dungeon Master Plan B had to occur. And then the adventure finally came to a close in the Pink Pedestal room with the insanity-causing pendant surrounded by two reliable "DO NOT TOUCH" warnings that somehow flew over his head. By that time we'd been at it for several hours of no-electronics time and I was feeling pretty good and pretty worn out. He was on the verge of calculating his 10% experience bonus, too. I had forgotten how much this game had made math skills a real part of my life.
It was sort of fun to watch him in action. The first thing he wanted to do in the green slime room? Touch the stuff. This is the boy who is physically repulsed by cooked onion and runs out of the room screaming "BUG! BUG!". I had to step out of my role as neutral arbiter and ask why on Earth he would ever want to rub himself with the mystery dungeon goop. Fortunately he did pick up on clues that maybe he should _examine_ the lever and perhaps _listen_ at doors before kicking them in. Also, long poles are your disaster-avoiding friends that mean you don't have to be in hugging distance of the spitting cobra. A spitting cobra that wasn't going to actually spit as long as I had something to do with it.
The entire first part is a "programmed adventure" that works as a choose-your-own-adventure, which is really good for dipping your feet into and setting expectations and showing some range of options (throw food at rat to make it go away and SEARCH FOR TRAPS ALL THE TIME, PLEASE) but when you try to run it raw then you're faced with map numbers that can't be aligned with the reams of connected boxed text and if-then-goto connections.
The "programmed adventure" start--that level of basic instruction--is hard to reconcile with the later aspects of the adventure. There are illusion traps with 'nope not actually dead' clauses, an insanity amulet that affects player agency and no advice on how to handle that, the doppelganger body-snatcher gag, thieves who will almost certainly betray/rob you, a medusa, and freaking level-draining undead. Unless your 9 year old is resilient or has plenty of redshirt characters to not become emotionally invested in, those save-or-die situations are going to really hurt. And the final trick of the module is all the treasure you've been pulling out is property of the palace: the Silver Princess will not thank you for looting the place. Surprise!
Does it matter? No, not really. The plan never survives the game table. Especially for 9 year olds, or eleven for myself. It's all perfectly gameable as long as you ignore later pangs of fridge logic about the only way to reach the second floor being a single out-of-the way trapdoor. I don't consider it particularly inspiring or extensible like B4 The Lost City or replayable and just-damn-useful like B2. The evocative interior art isn't packaged to allow players to see it easily. If Dashiell Hammett had written the backstory/read-aloud he would have gotten a third of the way before having a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. There are plenty of noted escapes for novice or past-sell-by-date Dungeon Masters by dragging in the mystically helpful "Protectors" of the land whom the players would most certainly not remember from the opening crawl text. There are three separate ways to actually destroy the foozle and foil the foozle-bringer if by some miracle you reach that point.
This, at the end, is a fancy place to murderhobo without especial moral qualm. And a way for a 40+ father to exercise some acting/mental chops and see how he stacks up against a much earlier self. An earlier self that did himself no later favors by deciding to color in the interior art with really cheap magic markers.
October 12, 2010
They should put a picture of this module in the dictionary next to "flawed gem". There's a lot of great adventure hooks in here just begging to be fleshed out. It's a crime that the Moldvay version of B3 left out the fantastic area map and the plot regarding the evil Lady D'hmis.
June 21, 2023
I played this adventure many years ago as part of a campaign and remember not feeling very impressed with it, especially after being given the premise of an ancient kingdom that fell to ruin that was ruled by a princess who possessed a magnificent ruby of wonderous size and value. There was a mysterious dragon rider mentioned who was hinted as possibly being the cause of the kingdom's downfall. None of this fairy-tale story played out much in the actual adventure and now, after having read the adventure in its entirety, I am even more disappointed because whereas I thought, perhaps my group just failed to explore the proper places or missed some secret doors, I now see that only a little of what was mentioned in the set-up was even in the adventure. With "a lot" of work, a Dungeon Master could use the gazetteer of the surrounding area and the history of the Palace of the Silver Princess to make a decent adventure.
July 22, 2014
The first D&D adventure with a plot
17 November 2012
This was probably one the first Dungeons & Dragons modules that I got that actually had a plot. The two earlier basic modules seemed to be designed to have the dungeon master create a plot around the module, where as in this one the plot was incorporated into the module. The main difference in adding a plot to the module probably gave the module more of a limited use, whereas with the two previous modules you could have reused them again and again, with different stories each time.
The adventure involves a kingdom that has been frozen in time, however the source of this time freeze is a palace located in the middle of the kingdom and surprisingly you are able to actually get to this palace without having to step through the red glow. As it turns out an evil wizard and a white dragon hold this palace and the kingdom captive and the heroes must infiltrate the palace, defeat the wizard, and reverse the effects of this curse.
One of the things that I initially liked about this module was that the first part of the adventure, namely the gate house, was run like a choose your own adventure book, though this was initially designed to assist the dungeon master and the players understand how to play a Dungeon & Dragons game. Obviously a lot has changed since then as we can generally point to the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and their multitude of clones as an indication of how such a game should run. Obviously we also have computer games a well, and the style and complexity of these games have constantly changed and expended.
I find the concept of the valley frozen in time interesting. It seems to be an affront to progress and this is something that many people in this world wish we could do. We tend to find this phenomena out in the rural regions of even our most industrialised nations, but this is not surprising since cities tend to be the field from which most ideas arise due to the close proximity of many people which cause ideas to be shared a lot easier. However, life does tend to be of a slower pace out in the country, and people out there tend to fear change much more than they do in the city.
Then there is the idea of the status-quo, namely that the rich have become addicted to the lifestyle that they live and are reluctant to let it go. Luxuries are more than just luxuries but become necessities. As such many of them would wish to 'freeze-time' so as to prevent any untoward event change the position that they are in. It is funny that when you have people doing all of the house work for you you suddenly become incapable of performing housework yourself. In fact, it can be quite dangerous in that despite living in a meticulously clean house, people who don't know how to do housework quickly become used to living in a pig sty.
Well, this has nothing to do with the module, but then it probably has more to do with the idea of freezing time, and that is the idea that sort of spurred me off on this tangent. Fortunately Goodreads does allow us to go off on these tangents when writing commentaries on books, particularly since I don't really like the idea of writing reviews.
17 November 2012
This was probably one the first Dungeons & Dragons modules that I got that actually had a plot. The two earlier basic modules seemed to be designed to have the dungeon master create a plot around the module, where as in this one the plot was incorporated into the module. The main difference in adding a plot to the module probably gave the module more of a limited use, whereas with the two previous modules you could have reused them again and again, with different stories each time.
The adventure involves a kingdom that has been frozen in time, however the source of this time freeze is a palace located in the middle of the kingdom and surprisingly you are able to actually get to this palace without having to step through the red glow. As it turns out an evil wizard and a white dragon hold this palace and the kingdom captive and the heroes must infiltrate the palace, defeat the wizard, and reverse the effects of this curse.
One of the things that I initially liked about this module was that the first part of the adventure, namely the gate house, was run like a choose your own adventure book, though this was initially designed to assist the dungeon master and the players understand how to play a Dungeon & Dragons game. Obviously a lot has changed since then as we can generally point to the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks and their multitude of clones as an indication of how such a game should run. Obviously we also have computer games a well, and the style and complexity of these games have constantly changed and expended.
I find the concept of the valley frozen in time interesting. It seems to be an affront to progress and this is something that many people in this world wish we could do. We tend to find this phenomena out in the rural regions of even our most industrialised nations, but this is not surprising since cities tend to be the field from which most ideas arise due to the close proximity of many people which cause ideas to be shared a lot easier. However, life does tend to be of a slower pace out in the country, and people out there tend to fear change much more than they do in the city.
Then there is the idea of the status-quo, namely that the rich have become addicted to the lifestyle that they live and are reluctant to let it go. Luxuries are more than just luxuries but become necessities. As such many of them would wish to 'freeze-time' so as to prevent any untoward event change the position that they are in. It is funny that when you have people doing all of the house work for you you suddenly become incapable of performing housework yourself. In fact, it can be quite dangerous in that despite living in a meticulously clean house, people who don't know how to do housework quickly become used to living in a pig sty.
Well, this has nothing to do with the module, but then it probably has more to do with the idea of freezing time, and that is the idea that sort of spurred me off on this tangent. Fortunately Goodreads does allow us to go off on these tangents when writing commentaries on books, particularly since I don't really like the idea of writing reviews.
March 6, 2026
Not sure how to write a review of a D&D module but I just found these are on here, so I'm logging the ones I've been playing solo with my good AI companion Gemini filling in the dots. Obviously we're providing the colour and the interactions that make things great so what can I comment on? Well, this is a big module, the ground floor alone took a long time to traverse but maybe contained the less interesting stuff ... however the fairytale mythology gets pieced together as you explore and I rather liked the whole red glow, palace trapped in time premise. The upper floor has a lot of fun very old school encounters, untrustworthy NPCs, ghosts and there was a troll in there we handled and felt big. Sadly the conclusion was a little anti-climactic.
Presentation is excellent and that's half the battle with a module like this. Overall a really fun and focussed adventure for low level characters
Presentation is excellent and that's half the battle with a module like this. Overall a really fun and focussed adventure for low level characters
June 20, 2021
Read the Orange cover version by Jean Wells as well as skimmed the revision done by Moldvay (Green cover). Though they kept many of the same elements, there are some interesting differences too, at least interesting if you're a TSR mega-nerd. I prefer ubues (and Erol Otus).
September 15, 2021
Tried to run this module multiple times, but there was never enough interest to get very far. Probably because it was detached from the “real” Known World where the players cared about what was happening.
March 28, 2024
This module is a bit of a fairy tale. It's not really to my taste, but the fundamental concept and encounters are sound. I think it would make a pretty enjoyable adventure. Better the the A series for sure.
July 22, 2017
Another basic module that was not very interesting. It was like they gave up after the first two.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews