Rod of Seven Parts

THE ROD OF SEVEN PARTS by Skip Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The forces of Chaos threaten to overrun the world and only three intrepid heroes can stop them by searching out the seven fragments of the Rod of Law, travel to limbo, and slay Miska the Wolf-Spider. Can the three players controlling the heroes put aside their teenage bickering to actually employ teamwork and finish this mega-module before their Dungeon Master quits playing Dungeons and Dragons out of frustration?

Okay, so the summary doesn't match what's on the back of the box but it's how it all went down for our group. This was the capstone of my teenage Dungeons and Dragons experience, before the group fragmented and decided chasing girls and getting liquored up was more fun that nerding it up in the basement slaying monsters.

It was pretty tough from what I remember. The bard nearly got killed in the first adventure after a one ton block of stone fell on him, the fighter and the psionicist both nearly died from poison by wolf-spiders on a lot of occasions, and lots of shit got killed.

The plot isn't all that complicated. The forces of Law recruit the characters to gather the seven fragments of the Rod of Law, piece it back together, go to limbo (as I recall), and kill Miska the Wolf-Spider. It was a long and brutal adventure. The plot was pretty loose, actually. Apart from reading the adventure, all the DM had to do was place the fragments in whatever world he played in, Oerth if he was hardcore, and point the PCs on their way.

If I remember right, this set of linked adventures took close to a year for us to get through. By the end, all of the characters were level 15 or above, had more treasure than they could ever spend, and didn't have much more they could accomplish.

We played a few times after this but couldn't recapture the old magic. Still, they were memorable times.

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