Pretty Pictures I Look At

Colossus

The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga (1995) is apparently intended to be a new and fifth installment in the S-series of scenarios (begun in 1978 with Tomb of Horrors). That’s according to Shannon Appelcline, who sites the TSR Triviathon as his source. I have a strong desire to not learn anything more about a thing called the TSR Triviathon, so I am content to trust Shannon in this. [Just kidding, I bought a copy, you’ll see it here in 2027.]

Baba Yaga, of course, is a witch from Slavic and Russian folklore dating to the mid-18th century. She sometimes flies around in a gigantic mortar (using the pestle to steer) and lives in a chicken-legged house. For modern audiences, she is probably best known in her true aspect as part of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy universe, or as an incongruous nickname for the assassin John Wick. Her hut has been kicking around D&D as an artifact since Eldritch Wizardry but this is the first time she appeared in an official D&D product (though she appeared previously in Dragon Magazine, most notably in a scenario by Roger E. Moore).

The hut, of course, is bigger and weirder on the inside. It “dances” across the multiverse by plane-shifting periodically. When it arrives in player’s world, some strange things happen. A young girl begs them to bring a doll to her sister, who is imprisoned in the hut, the ghost of a fortune teller wants them to go in to find a stolen tarot card and a wizard who has information they need has disappeared, likely inside the hut. Thus enticed, the players likely go exploring. Once inside, while tending to their task, they might find an emergent story involving Baba Yaga’s attempt to capture Death. Or they might not. The witch might never cross their path! It’s an interesting set-up and while the bizarre quality of many of the rooms often beggars belief in that gonzo, old-school way, the whole thing hangs together pretty convincingly.

I have to admit, the Fred Fields cover painting for The Lost Shrine of Bundushatur (1998) doesn’t inspire much confidence. The adventurers look like college kids LARPing in hoodies and bedsheets at the university library. The ghost being both in front of the chair and behind the shelves really throws off the composition for me. The name Bundushatur is asking a lot as well. Too much? Maybe.

Anyway, this is one of the many latter-day “generic” D&D modules, indicated by the black trade dress, that were not bound to any particular campaign setting. By 1998, independent TSR was dead and Wizards of the Coast had not yet sold to Hasbro;  there was a general sense of return to an older mode of design, as in A Paladin in Hell. Lost Shrine is a little different because it actually was old, originally written in 1987. It was resurrected as a larger push to get little-seen RPGA adventures in front of a wider audience (the RPGA logo on the cover started popping up a little earlier in 1998 and would return here and there until 2E wrapped up).

As the other cover branding indicates, this is primarily a dungeoncrawl into shrine of Chaos. It’s a relatively small space, made larger-seeming in its reality subverting weirdness. The idea is to go in, find the twelve parts of the chaos key, assemble it and use it to destroy the place. Bold to assume the players aren’t in the sway of Chaos, really. There are lots of shrines to Chaos lords and goopy monsters and interesting environments (an MC Escher inspired staircase is a highlight, as is the room with 50 tiny, hostile skeletons).

With the exception of White Plume Mountain, I can’t recall another D&D adventure quite so, uh, enamored of the work of Michael Moorcock. The chaos key is his eight-pointed cross, there’s a sword meant for a champion of chaos, there’s the many chaos lords and the winged apes and other stuff that seems lifted directly from the Elric and Corum stories. I don’t mind! But it does seem somewhat incongruous since D&D already had a supply of powerful agents of Chaos and I know, deep down, none of these lot will ever be heard from again.