Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid

Over the holidays I had a chance to hoof it up to my mom's house. She surprised me by handing over a small cardboard box filled with most roleplaying game related things from my tween days in the early 80s.

As a grown man I am almost ashamed to admit how excited I was to get the box. The contents were mildly disappointing, heavy on coverless Dragon and stone age computing magazines. What I really wanted were my old dungeons and notes. Sadly the only things left were some random scraps in a spiral notebook, the most complete find was a first edition Gamma World base.

The best and most chuckle-producing thing I did find, though, was a single half page of a numbered key to a DIY, somewhat narcissistically-titled module, CK1: Tree Maze of the Twisted Druid, that I inflicted on my brother's and best friend's characters (and a couple of my own GM PCs) somewhere around 1981.

The matter would have just died there with that little nostalgia binge if I hadn't been tooling around the internet instead of working and found some touchingly-sweet examples of the kind of handmade modules that any number of other Gen X kids were producing at the time.

The similarities, down to the awkward attempts to replicate TSR- modules got my brain juicing on the completely stupid idea of reproducing that “dungeon” on a “more or less faithful” (cough, cough) degree and inflicting it on a stoic group of 3-7 players. A few feverish hours down, I managed to recreate a big chunk of it down to the cover and crappy hand-drawn map (I drew the line at handwriting all the interior copy)

So behold, straight from the Box from Chris's Mom's Garage (more or less)...

The Cover!

Interior Art!

A sneak peak at the Map!

(An Excerpt!)

Hooks to get your party out of their Sandbox and into the Adventure!

The party is in the hamlet of Hamlet in the Gnome Hills and the Sheriff (7th level fighter, LN) says, “bring me the head of the Twisted Druid, or I will chop off your head!” He has 5d8 hobilars in ring mail with bec de corbins and scimitars with him (40% chance of horseman's mace).

The party jumps through a red demon mouth in the Mauseluem (sic) of Terror and poof they are in the maze!

While drinking at the Prancing Pony Inn the PCs are kissed by a naked lady. Then 4d6 sailors slip knockout drugs into the beer. They steal the best item from each party member and hide them in the Maze!

The party is in the Cathedral of Elemental Naughty and a chute opens and they fall into a big cave that has the Maze in it!