Contents:
- Instruction Sheet
- Trouble Below (16-page(?) adventure module)
- Palace of Dread (16-page(?) adventure module)
- Cardstock miniatures
- Cardstock tiles
- Maps
- 2 Dice (d6 and d10)
This boardgame-like boxed set is meant to be used with the "Dungeons & Dragons Game". Players are pitted against the Goblin King and his three armies during his bid to conquer Thunder Rift in a series of three short adventure modules.
Product History
The Goblin's Lair (1992), by Graeme Davis, is the second adventure pack for The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game (1991). It was published in June 1992.
About the Cover. Like the other adventure packs, this one features reused cover art, this time from OP1: Tales of the Outer Planes. It's a particularly inappropriate piece of art because it depicts githyanki … who the editors must have thought looked sort of like goblins!
Origins: Another Black Box. The Goblin's Lair (1992), like its predecessor, The Dragon's Den (1992), is meant to match the black-boxed New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game (1991). Once more you get a box in the same size (this time with gray sides), and you get board-game-like components such as battle mats and stand-up cardstock figures.
Adventure Tropes. Like most of the "beginner" products produced for the black box D&D game, this one features very simple dungeon crawl adventures, dumping the characters straight into the dungeon and staying there. The only distinguishing feature about these dungeons is that one of them is quite large.
Board Game Tropes. The Goblin's Lair also has rules for a simple board game that can be played with its components. This one is more complex than the board game rules in The Dragon's Den, including stats for both attacks and defenses, as well as spells.
Exploring Thunder Rift. The Goblin's Lair is the first of the adventure packs set in the Thunder Rift, which is better known for its line of short 16-page adventures. However, the three adventures are somewhat superficially placed in the Rift: two of them near Kleine (one in the Burning Hills) and the third near Hearth-Home.
Monsters of Note. As the title of this adventure suggests, it's all about the goblins. So how do you make goblins interesting, particularly as characters level up? You include a random assortment of other monsters, you introduce more powerful goblins like wolf riders or shamans, and you supplement with higher level humanoids like hobgoblins and bugbears.
About the Creators. Davis is a British designer, who did much of his early work for Games Workshop, including the Enemy Within (1986-1988) and Doomstones (1990) campaigns. By the early '90s, he was also writing for White Wolf and produced two TSR releases: The Goblin's Lair and HR3: Celts Campaign Sourcebook (1992).
About the Product Historian
The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.
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