The Best D&D 2e Adventures from Dungeon Magazine, Part 2
Click here for Part 1, including issues 18-38
As I continued reviewing the best D&D 2e adventures, I realized you can’t talk about Dungeon in the 1990s without mentioning its sister publication, Dragon. We might look back on late-stage 2e as a time of corporate instability and messy rules inflation (*cough* Skills & Powers), but digging through these issues reveals a more interesting story. Dragon wasn’t just fan service, it made a real contribution: Skip Williams’s Sage Advice ironed out ambiguous rules, it hosted a creative pipeline where Ed Greenwood’s columns became official canon, and was a sanctuary for campaign settings TSR had essentially abandoned. Dragon magazine is also available for free download at Archive.org.
In Issue 229 Zeb Cook gave the 2e version of the Wu Jen mage a much deeper, better 2e class overhaul than the Complete Wizard’s Handbook. Issue 150 fundamentally expanded the ecology, horror, and cosmic scale of mind flayers. Bruce Heard’s Voyage of the Princess Ark (#153-188) mapped more of Mystara month by month, which later became Champions of Mystara. For much of the 90s Dragon was the only official place to find Greyhawk support, and the Campaign Classics column kept other lines like Al-Qadim and Oriental Adventures alive. If you played Dark Sun, the Preservers/Defilers kits in #231 were excellent. What I’m saying is the adventures reviewed below were not designed in a vacuum, they existed inside a living game that Dragon helped sustain. As a bonus, the last entry is from the first Dragon Annual. Here is batch two of three:
Issue 39
The Fire Giant’s Daughter, Wolfgang Baur – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 2-4 PCs, levels 8-10
PREMISE: The adventurers follow a fire giantess across the snow to her family’s cave, where they must destroy a hidden golden geas-rune or defeat the giants in contests of wit and skill to win her freedom.
The Fire Giant’s Daughter is perfect for groups who enjoy adventures where player ingenuity actually drives the plot. Instead of kicking down a door and looting a cave, the party has to navigate a dysfunctional giant family using stealth, diplomacy, and Viking challenges like singing, drinking, wrestling, and trading riddles. There’s a bitter mother who secretly wants her daughter to escape, a hearthstone hiding a golden rune, and giants who will chase you across the tundra with flaming boulders if your escape goes wrong. Every decision changes the risks and rewards, making this adventure one that values smart play just as much as action.
Issue 40
Song of the Fens, J. Bradley Schell – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 1-3
PREMISE: The adventurers are asked by a captive innkeeper’s daughter to deliver a love letter to a mysterious marsh singer.
Song of the Fens is a great pick for groups who want their dungeon adventures to have a bit of heartbreak. The setup is hard to resist: you deliver a love letter to a marsh singer only to find out he’s a scrawny, awkward troll who can’t read. Then you have to decide how much you want to help this unusual romance. What makes the adventure work is that its funny moments are supported by solid design, including some light faction tension, environmental dangers, and the challenge of acting out a scented letter for a sensitive troll who doesn’t understand it. It’s a memorable, easy-to-run choice for groups who like creative problem-solving more than traditional dungeon crawls.
Issue 42
The Lady of the Mists, Peter Aberg – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 6-8
PREMISE: The adventurers are hired to track down the head of the secret police, following his trail to a mist-shrouded island where an ancient sorceress intends to revoke the immortality she granted him centuries ago.
The Lady of the Mists is great for groups who want their dungeon crawl to feel like a gothic tragedy. Her castle is a six-story ruin filled with ghostly scenes from an old massacre, a loyal immortal tiger, and its own horror ecosystem. The adventure is more guided than a true sandbox, but it makes its haunting story into something players can really experience, not just watch. The final showdown is not a fight, but a conversation.
The Price of Revenge, Steve Kurtz – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 3-5 PCs, levels 4-6 (Ravenloft)
PREMISE: The PCs are drawn by the Mists into the snowbound, isolated town of Ungrad in Valachan, where they must unravel the mystery of a Vistani curse and defeat a pair of vampires in disguise to escape.
The Price of Revenge is perfect for DMs who like gothic mysteries but worry about players missing important clues. The adventure starts with a classic Ravenloft twist: the Mists bring the party to a snowy mountain town where the beloved mayor and his doctor wife are nosferatu vampires. The townspeople adore them, and no one can leave until a Vistani curse is lifted. What sets this module apart is how it guides players through a series of social encounters and environmental clues so well that getting stuck is almost impossible. The open city feels free to explore, but the DM always has a clear path forward. Add in a child vampire starving in the wilderness with wolves, a fake vampire innkeeper who sleeps in a velvet coffin, and local dishes made from suspicious white fungus, and the module earns its atmosphere the honest way.
Issue 43
Jacob’s Well, Randy Maxwell – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for 1 PC, levels 2-4
PREMISE: A lone traveler seeks refuge from a winter storm at a trading post, only to become trapped inside with a rapidly maturing red slaad that begins hunting the guests.
Jacob’s Well is a tense, claustrophobic survival horror adventure designed for one-on-one play. The highlight here is the dynamic cast of NPCs: a paranoid orc chieftain who might use you as bait, guards who offer a deal that could turn into an ambush, a mage who dies in a heroic blunder, and a trader fiercely protecting his cellar. The adventure relies on player investigation and creative problem-solving instead of brute force. The slaad is the main threat, but figuring out the people is the real challenge.
King Oleg’s Dilemma, Lee Sheppard – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 1-4
PREMISE: King Oleg asks the party to act as emissaries and secure a military treaty with a neighboring dwarven stronghold while surviving gnoll attacks orchestrated by traitors from within his own court.
King Oleg’s Dilemma makes a straightforward diplomatic mission into a pursuit-and-siege adventure. The party travels through an arctic valley during long summer days, which makes the threat from chasing gnolls last even longer. Along the way they have to deal with tracking dangers and betrayal within their own group. The module is at its best when the chase reaches its climax: players must decide whether to keep running or make a stand at an old dwarven fort. If your players like holding the line and dealing with changing siege situations, this adventure is well-designed with a satisfying payoff.
Issue 44
A Hot Day in L’Trel, Ted James Thomas Zuvich – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 1-4
PREMISE: A heat wave and a massive explosion plunge the city of L’Trel into a fiery catastrophe, forcing the PCs to navigate urban chaos, rescue survivors, and eventually enlist in the army to enforce martial law against looters, rioters, and fire cultists.
A Hot Day in L’Trel is a great ride for players that want their environment to be just as lethal as the monsters. The setup is all about disaster response: an explosion during a heat wave put the PCs into a city in freefall, where the choice isn’t “accept the quest” but figure out how to survive the next hour. Rescue scenes are specific, and the city keeps generating consequences. A tiny fire elemental is setting buildings on fire out of spite; a slaver is impersonating an army officer; an old woman you dragged from a burning house is suing you for 2,000 gp. It demands significant DM tracking, but for groups wanting player agency and memorable city chaos, this adventure doesn’t hand you a mission so much as drop you into a city that won’t stop happening.
Raiders of the Chanth, Randy Maxwell – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 3-5 (Dark Sun)
PREMISE: The merchant houses of Altaruk hire a party to journey across the Sea of Silt to Big Fork Island to destroy a bandit operation that utilizes levitating platforms to raid trade caravans.
Raiders of the Chanth delivers Dark Sun brilliance for tables that love high-concept, resource-starved desert survival. The party has to cross the Sea of Silt using wind howdahs, which are floating sail platforms made from weed mesh and erdlu bone. These serve both as a way to get around and as escape vehicles during the final assault, which is the kind of elegant dual-use design that makes a good adventure feel intentional. The main draw is the villain, which I won’t spoil here. Running the psionic combat takes work from the DM, but the result is a sandbox that feels like Athas from start to finish.
Train of Events, Timothy Ide – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 6-8 PCs, levels 6-10
PREMISE: Experienced adventurers are hired by a dwarven mining company to ride a steam-powered freight train and investigate the mysterious disappearances of two previous trains along an underground railway.
Train of Events is a high-fantasy Wild West train heist designed for groups looking to swap standard dungeon crawls for action-packed set pieces. The train is way more than just a backdrop: it shapes the environment, tactics, and even serves as a trap. The adventure blends industrial fantasy with dark horror. A hidden railway switch, disguised by a wall of stone and a phantasmal force spell, sends the locomotive into an ambush set by derro savants, duergar brigands, and a lamia noble who acts as magical artillery. Along the way hazards like rust monsters on the tracks, broken couplings, and hot boxes keep the tension high before the ambush even begins. Running the big ambush scene takes DM planning, but the result is a module that really delivers on its promise.
Issue 45
An Artist’s Errand, Steve Kurtz – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 6-8 (Spelljammer)
PREMISE: A flamboyant and eccentric reigar artist named Cosette hires the party to track down her former lover, a disguised drow captain, requiring the PCs to journey across wildspace in a gnome-crewed spelljamming ship.
An Artist’s Errand is a wildspace adventure perfect for groups who love space fantasy. The transport is a gnomish ship powered by giant space hamsters, with a crew of engineers who spend more time arguing than fixing things. The drow are the serious side of the story: they are some skilled dudes who use darkboxes and light-seeing gear to keep Underdark magic alive in the void. The adventure does a good job of balancing its playful tone with real tactical challenges.
Rudwilla’s Stew, Chris Perkins – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 1-2
PREMISE: Duke Grenwald’s emissary hires the party to assist a local witch, Rudwilla, in gathering ingredients for a foul-smelling stew that serves as an annual diplomatic tribute to placate a ravenous bugbear chieftain.
Rudwilla’s Stew is a great pick for groups looking for a quirky adventure with solid mechanics. In this module, a duke’s emissary asks the party to help a witch gather ingredients for a foul-smelling stew. This stew is the only thing keeping a bugbear chieftain calm and cooperative. Players will race against the clock to find ingredients, break into an occupied keep, deal with a rival witch who turns hostile, and deliver the stew to a drunken bugbear birthday feast. When the tribal shaman secretly poisons the food to frame the party, the story shifts into a tense investigation where the group’s lives are at stake. The premise is completely absurd, but the stakes are completely real.
Prism Keep, Rich Baker – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 1-2
PREMISE: An ancient archmage’s levitating crystal castle drifts over a village, prompting adventurers to climb a rainbow bridge to free the wizard from his treacherous apprentice, Irinia, by reuniting the six colored shards of the keep’s power gem.
Prism Keep is a high-fantasy sandbox adventure for groups who want both spectacle and solid game mechanics. The module encourages creative tactics, like making fake alliances, turning a treacherous tanar’ri advisor to your side, and finding different ways in. There are plenty of memorable moments too, like a suspended pool where swimming too deep sends characters falling out of the sky. Fair warning: the castle’s alert systems require careful tracking during play. The premise is playful, but the design is impressively well done.
Issue 46
Dovedale, Ted James Thomas Zuvich – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 2-3 PCs, levels 1-3 OR 1 Elven PC 4-5
PREMISE: The Dovedale River has dried up, threatening the local farmers’ crops. Adventurers must venture into the goblin-infested dale to discover that the goblin chief, obsessed with catching a local talking fish, has kidnapped the river fairy to lower the water level.
Dovedale is a low-level gem built around a premise so good it almost sells itself: a goblin chief has drained an entire river because he has a personal vendetta against a talking trout. Players who ask questions, talk to locals, and pay attention get real traction: crucial folklore from townsfolk, animal informants willing to deal for sandwiches and trinkets, and three different ways into the goblin lair. The antagonists can be fought, bargained with, or outwitted, and the whole thing holds together without the DM having to patch anything. For groups that like their dungeons with personality and room to breathe, this one is a joy.
Goblin Fever, Randy Maxwell – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 3-5
PREMISE: The PCs arrive at a city gripped by a deadly plague, “goblin fever,” and have to navigate riotous streets, insane vigilantes, and a fire cult to gather the rare ingredients needed by an overworked wizard to create a cure.
Goblin Fever throws your party into a city that is falling apart. The plague has turned the streets into a gauntlet of vigilante mobs, a corrupt wizard holding public executions, a doomsday cult trying to burn everything, and more. Your job is to find the ingredients for a cure before the city, or your own characters, are lost. What makes this adventure great is its procedural design: modular map tiles create a shifting, burning city that changes based on player actions and where the fires spread. Not gonna lie, running this game could be a challenge for the DM, but for groups who like tough, high-stakes survival, the payoff is an intensely reactive nightmare that players will talk about long after the session ends.
Issue 47
Quelkin’s Quandary, Chris Perkins – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 3-5
PREMISE: A highly eccentric but good-aligned wizard, falsely rumored by local villagers to be an evil mastermind, begs the party to help him retake his manor from a band of greedy NPC adventurers who invaded his home to steal his spell books.
Quelkin’s Quandary flips the standard dungeon-crawl premise on its head: the “evil wizard’s tower” turns out to belong to a harmless eccentric, and the real invaders are a rival adventuring party who think they’re doing the right thing. Instead of pushing players into a big fight, the scenario rewards those who take advantage of faction rivalries, make deals with neutral mercenaries, and find creative ways around the manor’s quirky magical security. The manor has real personality thanks to its quirky décor, a hostage servant, and a sentient gossip-flagon named Gulp. If your group likes infiltration and social problem-solving more than just fighting, this adventure is great.
When the Light Goes Out, Steve Loken- Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for a 1st-level Priest PC, solo
PREMISE: A lone 1st-level priest is sent to a Viking-like island village to investigate a haunted lighthouse, discovering that an alcoholic keeper accidently caused a deadly shipwreck that spawned a poltergeist.
When the Light Goes Out is a masterful solo showcase for a single player and DM. What begins as a straightforward haunted lighthouse investigation unfurls into a tragic mystery of negligence and grief. The real spine is moral: earning a suspicious village’s trust, resisting a tomb full of cursed treasure, and ultimately deciding what to do with a truth that could destroy a man. It’s less a ghost hunt than it is a test of character, and I think it’s one of the most original low-level adventures in the magazine.
Fraggart’s Contraption, Willie Walsh – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 6 PCs, levels 1-2
PREMISE: A gnomish task force hires the party to rescue their cousin Fraggart from a half-ogre’s bandit gang. Upon finding him the heroes discover that the gnome refused to leave because he found an abandoned wizard’s laboratory and is using the bandits’ loot to build a spell-firing, tank-like contraption.
The main twist is that Fraggart doesn’t actually want to be rescued. He discovered an abandoned wizard’s lab, convinced his half-ogre captor to help fund his project, and now he’s so close to finishing it that he doesn’t care about going home. The gnome task force is hilariously incompetent — their reward potions cause symptoms like sprouting useless white feathers—and the bandit lair offers clever tactical choices, like letting loose a rust monster to handle the contraption.
The Assassin Within, Paul Culotta – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 3-5 (Al-Qadim)
PREMISE: When a lazy student lies to his tribal leaders about being unfairly failed by his professor, a fanatical holy slayer infiltrates the professor’s home using a magical tapestry to exact nightly revenge, forcing the PCs to protect the household.
For groups that love tense home-defense scenarios and outside-the-box problem-solving, this one is outstanding. The adventure shines by giving the party freedom with tactical preparation, whatever they can improvise, against a highly elusive foe who uses cobras, scorpion-hatching cacti, and vampire cacti. The encounter design is super-memorable, and the dwarven chef hiding a khopesh behind the stove is exactly the kind of detail that makes a household feel alive. Best of all, ultimate victory doesn’t require a blade — just a college professor’s grading ledger proving a lazy student lied.
Issue 48
To Bite the Moon, Lisa Smedman – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 4-7
PREMISE: A dwarven courier, crippled in an ambush, hires the party to infiltrate a gnoll lair to retrieve a stolen magical ring and sword. Complicating matters, the gnolls worship a deceptive spirit naga as their goddess, and a wild magical mishap threatens to turn the PCs into gnolls themselves.
The real magic happens when a wish spell goes wrong during the infiltration, turning the whole party into gnolls and forcing them to change their plans. Stealth isn’t an option, so now they have to greet others with blood-drawing bites, play drinking games that lower Intelligence, and act out tribal rituals to avoid blowing their cover. Meanwhile, a spirit naga is running a fear cult from a hole in the floor, demanding tribute from true believers. The adventure quickly shifts from a dungeon assault to a big social bluff, making for a unique, player-driven challenge.
The Oracle at Sumbar, Paul Culotta – Score 3.0, Strong
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 4-6 (Forgotten Realms)
PREMISE: To save an aunt’s shop from a massive gambling debt the PCs must decode a maritime log, sail to the Pirate Isles, consult an oracle, and explore an underwater grotto to recover the lost hoard of Immurk the Invincible.
If your table loves high-seas expeditions and tense faction double-crosses, The Oracle at Sumbar is a great choice. The party needs to decode a mysterious maritime log and then get passage from two disguised captains. One is a paladin hunting pirates, and the other is a pirate hunting the PCs, but the players don’t know who is who. The adventure features two great moments: a wishing well that only allows one question per lifetime and punishes anyone who speaks without making a sacrifice first, and an underwater grotto where the legendary pirate king Immurk, now a ghast, hides under the sand to ambush anyone who tries to take his treasure. The story ends with a [redacted] that nobody sees coming.
Sleeping Dragon, Bill Slavicsek – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for a provided silver dragon PC (Council of Wyrms, by the guy who designed it)
PREMISE: A silver dragon champion and his elven kindred are summoned by dreams to a mist-cloaked hill in the jungle, racing against an evil dracolich to recover an artifact hidden inside the body of a slumbering dragon ancestor.
If your table is ready to break the traditional fantasy mold, Sleeping Dragon is a magnificent high-concept ride. You’re not just delving a dungeon, you’re piloting a silver dragon PC and exploring the literal anatomical interior of a colossal, slumbering ancestor: there are chambers that are lungs, a beating heart, and ribcage caverns turned into encounter spaces. Layered over that is a race against a dracolich for an artifact, plus clan politics and jungle factions that react very differently once they realize who you really are. It’s one of those rare adventures that turns dungeon crawling completely inside out.
Note: Them Apples is a D&D adventure that only needs the Rules Cyclopedia. It’s not 2e, but is exceptional.
Issue 49
The Dark Place, Lee Sheppard – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 5-7
PREMISE: Searching for missing crewmates in a ruined coastal town, the party is hunted by a cunning, hit-and-run fiend that was summoned a century ago by a foolish wizard and trapped on the Prime Material Plane.
Its out-of-game mechanics are unique: the DM uses a real stopwatch to time the ambushes of an extra-planar stalker, giving players an Alien-style chase that keeps everyone on edge in a way random encounters just can’t. The ruins themselves tell a sad story too: there’s a mother’s ghost still packing her children’s bags, and the bones of an adventuring party that tried to escape fifty years ago but didn’t. If your group likes real psychological pressure mixed with tactical survival, this adventure is unforgettable.
North of Narborel, Perkins/Waldbauer – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 4-7
PREMISE: When ships mysteriously disappear along a coastal trade route, the PCs are hired to investigate, uncovering a pirate ring who uses a charmed dragon turtle to sink ships in a bid to buy a unique item from mind flayers.
North of Narborel is a revised version of Waldbauer’s original Can Seapoint Be Saved?, which won a Dragon Magazine design contest in 1983. The 2E conversion holds up well. The pirate network has spies in town, the journey north requires a real ship and crew, and the island base rewards players who choose stealth over a direct attack. The main threat is really memorable: a charmed dragon turtle that attacks merchant ships before pirates board to loot. The villain’s motive is the most interesting part—not just greed, but a plan to buy a spelljamming helm from mind flayers. This is a layered coastal investigation that sets a runway toward something much larger.
Castle of the Blind Sun, Culotta/Baughman – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-5 PCs, levels 10-15
PREMISE: A charlatan bard posing as a priestess has murdered a famous blind bard and stolen his extra-dimensional castle. The PCs have to find it and defeat the imposter to rescue her captured victims.
Castle of the Blind Sun is built around one of the coolest stronghold concepts in the magazine: a floating castle made for a blind bard. Everything inside reflects its original owner—furniture glued to the floor for navigation, indented tile guideposts, and a flesh golem butler named Adagio who requires visitors to sing before granting entry. The imposter who stole it has also layered their own deceptions on top of the bizarre architecture. Untangling them while navigating a stronghold designed completely around sound and touch makes for an outstanding, theme-driven adventure for high-level groups who love creative puzzle-solving.
Issue 50
The Vaka’s Curse, Ted James Thomas Zuvich – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 2-6 PCs, levels 2-7
PREMISE: During a routine sea voyage, passengers on a merchant cog are stalked by a shadow-like spirit—the ghost of an embezzling clerk who was spiked to the ship’s prow and magically turned into a wooden figurehead.
If you like claustrophobic shipboard horror and tight mysteries, The Vaka’s Curse gives an atmospheric experience. The entire adventure takes place on a 100-foot sailing cog, turning what should be a simple voyage into a tense psychological puzzle. The fear comes from the antagonist’s stealth: a shadow-spirit preys on sleeping passengers, draining their stats and aging them by years, while making them think their weakness is just seasickness or bad dreams. Players who ask the right questions and manage to access the captain’s locked records will be rewarded in the investigation. The ending is especially memorable, but I won’t spoil it here.
Back to the Beach, Willie Walsh – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 1-2
PREMISE: When royal antiquarians are chased away from newly uncovered coastal ruins by “sea monsters,” the King hires the PCs to clear the beach, only for the party to discover the monsters are a peaceful tribe upholding a legal treaty.
The “sea monsters” terrorizing the royal antiquarians are actually a tribe of [redacted] who strictly follow a century-old treaty, which gives them jurisdiction over the beach for 14 days after the winter solstice. They are not invaders, they are just commuters on their yearly migration, and they have all the paperwork to prove it. The adventure’s comic highlight is a one-way language barrier: a friendly [redacted] puts on a translation amulet by mistake, so he can understand everything the party says but can only reply with clicks and clacks. The adventure can go in a lot of directions, from combat to full diplomatic talks. If the party thinks ahead, they might even leave with a military alliance instead of just a cleared beach.
Felkovic’s Cat, Paul Culotta – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 6-9 (Ravenloft)
PREMISE: Drawn into the mists, the PCs discover a magical jade cat figurine containing the ghost of a murdered wizard. They must use the figurine—which animates and grows into a larger, more dangerous feline each night—to destroy the Darklord of Valachan.
The jade cat figurine is the engine that drives everything. Each night it animates into a more dangerous feline, demands that the party cook its kills for it, and serves as the party’s best weapon and a ticking time bomb. Either destroy the baron before night seven or the figurine turns on its owner. The baron himself is one of Ravenloft’s best darklords: originally a black panther polymorphed into a man, ruling through a werepanther police force and a rigged bridal lottery that the terrorized townsfolk have been trained to celebrate. Infiltrating the castle means navigating vampire schedules, multiple entry points, and a dog golem built specifically to counter large cats. For Ravenloft fans this is the domain at its best.
Issue 51
Ailamere’s Lair, by Steve Fetsch – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 6-9
PREMISE: A scholar hires the party to observe, document, and study an unusual, seemingly spectral dragon terrorizing a local region, rewarding them based on the information they gather rather than just killing it.
Put away the damage calculators. Ailamere’s Lair completely rewrites the dragon-hunting playbook by trading a standard kill-quest for an information-driven research sandbox. A scholar rewards the party with magical items for every research question they answer about a dragon whose breath weapon turns water into stone. This twist changes the whole experience: players can follow the dragon invisibly to study her habits, provoke her breath weapon on purpose to gather data, make tribute deals to protect local settlements, or just fight her. The adventure supports all these options equally. If your group is tired of dragon encounters that always end the same way, this one is very strong.
The Bandits of Bunglewood, Chris Perkins – Score 3.0. Good
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 1-3
PREMISE: Hired to investigate attacks by mysterious hooded bandits, the party must track down and defeat a gang of well-trained kobolds armed with military tactics and a horn of fog.
If your low-level party thinks they can breeze through classic fantasy tropes, The Bandits of Bunglewood will quickly prove them wrong. The “Seven Deadly Jekks” fight with unique combat styles, use fallen allies as decoys to draw archer fire, and blow a horn of fog to cover their retreats. The real danger is the lair itself: a cramped dirt warren designed to stop human-sized intruders, with movement and attack penalties based on height that catch overconfident parties off guard. This is a cleverly designed, tightly packed challenge for DMs who enjoy subverting expectations right from the start.
Issue 52
Spirits of the Tempest, Michael Selinker – Score 4.0, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-7 PCs, levels 9-10
PREMISE: An adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. While escorting the Duke of Milano by sea, the PCs’ ship is attacked by living storms and are cast onto a magical island. The island is controlled by an exiled sorcerer who has orchestrated the shipwreck for revenge, and trapped them in a realm where magic-users and magical items can never leave.
Spirits of the Tempest is one of those rare Dungeon adventures that lives up to its ambition. Prospero is a real threat; the island itself is a living trap, and the scenario rewards lateral thinking instead of just fighting. Players can choose to fight, negotiate, or manipulate their way to the end, and the text supports every option. The best set piece is Prospero’s Cell, an extradimensional pocket universe made up of three nested, low-gravity spheres where characters swim through the air to move around. There’s even a tabletop minigame to handle the maze spell, and it all ends with a devastating final choice. If your group loves puzzle-forward, faction-rich play with real weight, this one definitely does it.
The Hurly-Burly Brothers, Kevin Wilson – 3.0, Good
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 3-5
PREMISE: Two sadistic ogre brothers use a magical feather token to summon a roc, kidnap a PC from the road, and slowly lower their helpless victim into a ruined tower to be eaten by a giant scorpion. The rest of the party must race against the clock to reach the tower and save their friend.
The Hurly-Burly Brothers is a small, nasty rescue scenario that runs on pure momentum. We start with a kidnapped PC being lowered toward a giant scorpion, and it turns into a fast-paced, split-party race that shakes up the usual travel encounter. While the captured hero struggles against severe penalties inside a swinging net, the rest of the group has to move quickly and break into a trap-filled ogre tower before a grandfather clock mechanism dooms their friend. The ogres are memorable, the setup is cruel in a pulp-fantasy style, and the tower’s vertical design keeps everything moving.
My Lady’s Mirror, Chris Perkins – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for 4-8 PCs, levels 6-8
PREMISE: This is a companion adventure to The Lady of the Mists (Issue 42). While the Lady Avacia is away, a clumsy maid accidentally shatters her mirror of life trapping, releasing 16 of Avacia’s imprisoned ex-lovers and worst enemies. The surviving servants flee and hire the PCs to clean out the castle’s new, highly dangerous tenants before she returns.
My Lady’s Mirror turns the whole castle into a social dungeon, with a large cast of hostile, deceptive, and sometimes negotiable NPCs constantly turning the scenario in new directions. Because so many encounters can end in bargains, bluffs, surrenders or sudden reversals, the module really rewards social maneuvering as much as combat strength. It asks a lot from the DM during play, but for groups who like character-driven chaos, this one is rich.
Issue 53
Spellbook Masquerade, J. Lee Cunningham – Score 3.4, Strong
Recommended for a solo wizard PC, levels 3-5
PREMISE: During his yearly inventory sale, an elderly rare book merchant accidentally ships a tome of lich creation to the ruthless magnate of Kincaid Brewing. The solo PC must infiltrate a masquerade ball disguised as a jester, locate the tome, and swap it with an ogre cookbook before the guests unmask at midnight.
Spellbook Masquerade mixes the elegance of a high-society masquerade with the danger of a stealth heist. Playing as a lone infiltrator in a jester’s costume, you have to juggle polite dancing downstairs while feeling the urgency to sneak upstairs and swap books before midnight. Every choice matters: if you cut the bells off your costume, you can move more quietly but the hostess might notice. Any wandering NPC could cause trouble or help you. The module is full of dark, surreal details, like a dining room with mummified corpses posed at the table and a strange encounter with an albino ape in a pink gown. DMs need to be ready to keep the tension high by tracking the timeline closely, but if they do, this is one of the most memorable solo adventures Dungeon has.
Steelheart, Paul Culotta – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 5-6 PCs, levels 7-9 (Forgotten Realms)
PREMISE: When a young steel dragon’s parents are murdered after infiltrating the Cult of the Dragon, she assumes the form of a 12-year-old girl and hires the PCs to avenge her family. Together they track the killers through the swamps of Vaasa and sabotage a massive alliance between the Cult and the Zhentarim.
Steelheart is a faction-driven revenge story with one of the best quest-giver twists in the magazine’s run. Instead of the usual dungeon crawl, the adventure sets up a diplomatic standoff between the Cult and the Zhentarim. Rather than charging in headfirst, the players get a clear set of sabotage tools like ventriloquism, illusion, precision spell placement and more, to systematically fracture the negotiations and ignite a multi-sided battle royale. That said, this is a fairly linear march through Vaasa, and DMs should know that the sabotage sequence, while supported with examples, asks the DM to evaluate player schemes on the fly against no fixed resolution procedure. It’s a linear road trip that earns its destination, but getting there smoothly takes an engaged DM.
Issue 54
Dark Thane Macbeth, Michael Selinker – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-7 PCs, levels 9-10
PREMISE: The PCs enter a civil war between gray and dark elves, navigating prophecies and undead shadows to overthrow a tyrannical drow thane and restore peace to Birnam Wood.
Dark Thane Macbeth is the second Shakespeare adaptation by Michael Selinker, and it might be even better. Prophecy, a civil war between gray and dark elves, a “not of woman born” combat immunity, and an army of ancient warriors disguised as trees all work as real game mechanics. The drow thanes change through three different stages based on Lady Macbeth’s situation, so what could have been a series of boss fights becomes a real political negotiation. Dunsinane is reimagined as an upside-down ziggurat hanging from a web-filled cavern ceiling, which is a memorable image. For high-level groups looking for a game with lots of factions and a literary feel, this adventure is just terrific.
Note: for those playing D&D BECMI rules, Redcap’s Rampage by Chris Perkins is an exceptional adventure
Issue 55
Umbra, Chris Perkins – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 6-9 (Planescape)
PREMISE: The PCs are hired by a yagnoloth in Sigil to abduct an alu-fiend child from a heavily fortified Harmonium tower and deliver her to an abandoned cathedral, fulfilling an ancient prophecy and sparking a custody battle between her parents.
Umbra transforms a standard extraction job into a volatile custody battle over a child. The infiltration of Durkayle’s Harmonium stronghold rewards player patience, but the real strength is what happens after: the succubus mother, the law-obsessed father, and a yagnoloth, all with agendas the PCs can exploit or get caught between. The magic-dead cathedral strips away spell-based solutions completely, forcing tactical creativity at exactly the moment the pressure peaks. From the wind-powered Screaming Tower to the stone priestesses reverting to flesh, it’s packed with procedural clockwork, and is one of the best Planescape adventures.
Tulips of the Silver Moon, Steven Loken – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 5-7
PREMISE: The PCs are hired by a master horticulturist to investigate the destruction of his estate and recover three incredibly valuable “Tulips of the Silver Moon” bulbs from a paranoid, deformed rival and his band of thieves.
Tulips of the Silver Moon is a high-stakes investigation with a strange premise: horticultural espionage in a principality obsessed with flowers, where tulip-breeding rivalries can lead to arson and murder. The web of clues is tougher than it seems at first. If players miss the clever false trail left by a halfling in boots of varied tracks, they can still follow village rumors or check Johann’s list of suspects without losing their way. The adventure ends with a tense break-in at a paranoid noble’s estate, complete with a hedgemaze full of carnivorous plants and other unusual dangers. It’s a surprisingly solid adventure built around a wonderfully silly MacGuffin.
Issue 56
Briocht, Willie Walsh – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for 4-5 PCs, levels 10-12
PREMISE: The PCs must retrieve a magical helm of invulnerability from a secluded wizard’s cottage, only to discover the wizard has been slain by an old green dragon who has taken over his extra-dimensional mansion.
Briocht hides a high-level dragon-lair infiltration inside a petty Celtic gift-giving feud. The adventure begins with a rivalry between chieftains over a magically rigged helm. The story really comes alive when the investigation leads to sneaking into a huge extra-dimensional mansion, now home to a green dragon who uses a ring of polymorph self to impersonate the dead wizard. The lair challenges the party with surreal dangers like toxic retch plants and a glass bridge hanging over the Plane of Air, making careful exploration more rewarding than brute force.
The Bigger They Are…, Steve Johnson – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 5-8 PCs, levels 2-4
PREMISE: The PCs become hopelessly lost in a dense forest and stumble upon the mushroom lair of a cruel quickling who uses tricks, traps, and shrinking dust to rob and capture travelers.
When the party gets hopelessly lost, they end up in Angwarnggaxx’s mushroom lair, where the module’s best twist happens: instead of just being defeated, the characters are hit with dust of diminution, shrunk to a quarter of their size, and kept as hostages in a tiny mushroom parlor. The escape options are well thought out, with special mechanical checks, a real bargain with a permanent cost, and a gluttonous pet rat named Skwee who might help if you have food to offer. It’s a compact, creative, and surprisingly complete adventure for its size.
Grave Circumstances, Bill Slavicsek – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 3-6 PCs, levels 5-7 (Dark Sun)
PREMISE: The PCs set out to explore the lost city-states of the north but are intercepted by a powerful bandit lord who forces them to hunt down a renegade defiler seeking godlike power in the ruins of Troll Grave Chasm.
Grave Circumstances has three set pieces that really feel like they belong in Athas, not just reworked from somewhere else. There’s a screaming undead merchant shouting “Feed me!” into the desert night, a Green Age spellbook whose spells are the banisters, and a patchwork troll with a kill condition: burn every piece and make sure nothing is lost to the mud. This rule can quickly turn disastrous if anyone forgets it. The descent into Troll Grave Chasm is well structured, and the sinking library works smoothly. While the story’s forced setup and Talid’s manipulative tactics hold it back from a higher rating, the great set pieces make it worth playing.
Issue 57
The Rose of Jumlat, Jeroen Grasdyk – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 3+ PCs, levels 3-7 (Al-Qadim)
PREMISE: The PCs are hired as caravan guards to transport a supposedly cursed jewel across the desert to Gana, but must deal with a sniveling thief, desert monsters, and a revenge-obsessed Sea Mage who ambushes the caravan.
The Rose of Jumlat opens up where most caravan adventures stay closed. The node-based structure, several lair entrances, and a hidden stream route through an underground crocodile passage give it real movement. The bait-and-switch Rose works as a strong hook, too, and the kada, a creature made of pure hatred that communicates and fights with dry sand, is the adventure’s best idea. The Door of Poisonous Waters is the kind of challenge that makes infiltration satisfying. A visible premise lock and a forced clue keep it at Strong, but it’s a confident one.
The Murder of Maury Miller, Cameron Widen – Score 3.6, Exceptional
Recommended for 3-6 PCs or level 1, introductory adventure
PREMISE: The PCs investigate a series of arsons in a sleepy farming hamlet, discovering the culprit is a walking scarecrow possessed by the ghost of a murdered miller desperately trying to expose a corrupt tax collector.
The Murder of Maury Miller offers a new take on low-level mysteries, swapping tomb-raiding for arson, gossip, and local corruption. Its central idea is a great one: the terrifying scarecrow at the heart of the story is actually the victim, pushing for the truth to come out. The adventure also helps the investigation move forward, letting players choose to seek justice through the king or take matters into their own hands at the tax collector’s manor. It’s creepy, grounded, and unusually usable; it’s a smart scenario with real personality.
Issue 58
Challenge of Champions, Johnathan Richards – Score 3.8, Exceptional
Recommended for 1-4 PCs, of ANY level
PREMISE: Stripped of their own gear and spells, the PCs must complete a sequence of ten puzzle-based scenarios in an Adventurers’ Guild contest to win a lifetime membership and a trophy.
If you want to see how smart your players really are, Challenge of Champions is a great choice. Without their usual gear and spells, parties face a ten-room gauntlet and have to use odd props set up in advance. They might grow a fire snake into a bridge over hot coals, hide in a portable hole to sneak past a chained bear, or solve an anagram to open a vault. What makes this more than just a gimmick is that the DM is told the printed “school solution” is not the only right answer. For a 1994 adventure that’s a surprisingly modern piece of design theory — level-agnostic, stat-agnostic, and built to reward ingenuity over optimization.
Issue 59
The Mother’s Curse, John Guzzeta – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 3-5 PCs, levels 3-5
PREMISE: The PCs must investigate the mysterious illness of a pregnant woman in a swamp-bordered town and rescue her unborn child from a greenhag who has secretly swapped it with her own.
The Mother’s Curse is a gritty, atmospheric mystery with a chilling premise: a hag swaps an unborn child for her own larva. Solving the case takes real detective work, and the most memorable mechanic is building a compass using a needle wrapped in the mother’s hair, holy water, and seawater. This makes tracking feel hands-on and unique. However, the adventure can feel overloaded with subsystems. You have to manage a collapsing bell-hoist, a crypt door that locks after 30 minutes, and a four-hour ritual chant, all of which require careful, round-by-round tracking. It’s a brilliant idea, but be prepared for a some work behind the scenes.
Voyage of the Crimpshrine, Tony Ross – Score 3.2, Strong
Recommended for 4-6 PCs, levels 3-5 (Mystara)
PREMISE: The PCs must survive the sinking of a massive gnomish riverboat, lead the survivors across a dangerous moor to civilization, and return to the submerged wreckage to salvage lost treasures from aquatic scavengers.
Voyage of the Crimpshrine opens like a disaster movie, with a sinking gnomish riverboat that forces the party to choose between saving their gear or rescuing passengers. The moor trek follows, stalked nightly by a werewolf picking off survivors one by one. The best part is the underwater salvage finale: it features a zero-visibility wreck governed by acoustic stealth, light-betrayal mechanics, and underwater combat rules that neutralize slashing weapons. Multiple points of entry and a choice between rescuing a sorceress’s spellbook or chasing the chief’s hoard make this a tense, tactically rich evening built on environmental design instead of raw encounter count.
BONUS: Dragon Annual #1
Wyrmsmere, Chris Perkins – Score 3.0, Good
Recommended for 4+ PCs, levels 4-7
PREMISE: The PCs are hired by a disguised silver/cloud dragon to retrieve three stolen potions of green dragon control from an NPC adventuring party that has been charmed by a dark naga in a remote lake fortress.
Wyrmsmere stands out thanks to its group of charmed rival adventurers, each with their own tactics; outsmarting a halfling thief with a wand of wonder is especially fun. Players also get real choices about how to approach the keep and what to do with the captives. The main story is strong, but there’s a problem at the edges: the text assumes the party won’t go after the green dragon directly and doesn’t offer any content if they try.
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