Back when I was writing my book, I honed in on Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia as key products designed by Jennell Jaquays, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has perused those adventures (or my book). When I interviewed her, though, she said that she didn’t even consider them among her best work. Stupidly, I didn’t ask what she did consider her best. But over on Grognardia, she copped to considering The Enchanted Wood (1981) as a likely candidate. I tend to agree; if I had read it before writing my book, it would probably have been in there.
It’s rather obscure, I think, because it was designed for SPI’s not very popular DragonQuest RPG, and it came out at the end of the line’s lifetime, and has languished since in the vaults of TSR, then WotC. It would be easy enough to convert to your fantasy RPG of choice. Which speaks to the quality of the Jaquays’ work here: it’s just so damn well organized. Crisp writing, clean layout, extremely usable, maybe the best presentation of an adventure module up to that point. And all that allowed Jaquays to stuff an alarming amount of material into a 48-page package. This is less an adventure then it is a small campaign.
There are several adventure hooks that lead to the woods, which will have their own twists and turns that lead to unearthing deeper mysteries about the region. A rich history unfolded in the region before the chaotic forest rose up, and players have an opportunity to unravel it, and maybe permanently undo some terrible wrongs. In typical Jaquays fashion, there are many memorable personalities lurking here: a healing giant and his tribe of kobolds (featured on the cover by Tim Truman, who also did the lovely interiors), a vengeful undead wizard resting in his black pyramid, a hapless demon bound to an impossible task, a sort of tin woodsman, a minotaur knight riding an enraged bull…the list goes on and on. And while a couple important locations are fixed, the vast majority of encounters, sites for exploration and important events are keyed randomly, so no two explorations of the chaotic wood will be the same.
Jaquays has a killer series of RPG adventures before this, even her minor works are thoughtful and interesting on some level, but Enchanted World is special because it takes lesson learned from all that previous work, and makes something even better. A rare feast.
