Quest For The Heartstone

by Michael L. Gray

The king is dead!And the queen is in trouble. She has chosen you to find the fabled heartstone, which is buried somewhere deep in the Mountains of Ice. Is the gem in the hands of the corrupt Master Thief? Has he harnessed its power for its own vile purposes? Or does it lie unguarded in the frozen ranges to the north, which teem with horrible creatures? This is your kind of quest! Quest for the Heartstone is a combined wilderness/dungeon adventure designed to be compatible with the ADVANCED DandD 5e Action Toys from LJN Toys, Ltd. and the ADVANCED DandD 5e Fantasy Adventure Figures from TSR, Inc. The adventure also includes complete maps, new monsters, and players' illustrations. Will the heartstone be the key to peace in the kingdom? By her majesty's request...it's up to you to find out!

Genres: Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

32 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may just be the most under-rated adventure TSR ever put out. Clearly the author was told he had to write an adventure to market the LJN toy line. While some of the monsters used are from that toy line, the entire roster of NPCs have stats in the center but do not actually appear in the module. Instead, what this module has is an amazing trap-laden three dimensional mountain with a river running through it put to all sorts of evocative uses. This is pretty much as good as it gets for a dungeon crawl. The only thing keeping this adventure from 5 stars is the relatively tame rescue-the-macguffin plot and an opening linear wilderness trek. But other than that, it had me at ‘tripwire’ ...

[Taddow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering that this adventure seems to have been mainly put together to encourage the sale of TSR toy figurines that came out in the 1980s when the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was a popular thing it is actually quite good. They quest is one of high fantasy with mythical beasts to fight, powerful adversaries, a fabled treasure and a great dungeon filled with traps and interesting encounters and tries to provide a logical reason for the variety of creatures co-existing together. The whole set seems to be well thought out. I intend to convert this module and run it as a 5th ed. Adventure. The final bonus is there are stats for my favorite villain from the cartoon- Warduke.

[Louis Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This module is an interesting one; it is written like it should be an AD&D module, but uses the Expert D&D system. It was clearly designed to be used with miniatures and repeatedly refers to "LJN Toys", but it still contains a very sophisticated dungeon crawl. The adventure probably has a high difficulty factor but would be interesting for players who enjoy challenging dungeons (which aren't all the way to being unfair). It does fall victim to the "fight your double" encounter which honestly doesn't seem like a lot of fun. On the plus side it takes AD&D monsters like the Dragonne, Roper, and Hook Horror and uses them in the Expert D&D game. Overall an interesting module that might be worth converting to a newer system.