The early 2000s were not a great time for D&D adventure modules. Not many were even published compared to the volume of splatty rule supplements WotC was pumping out every month. Only a few left any kind of lasting impression on me. Of those which did, this is by far the most notable.
That’s not to say The Standing Stone isn’t a product of its era. It is. There is boxed text. There is terrible information design. Most of the book is embarrassingly divided into “scenes.” The implied setting is blandly kitchen-sink. There are sections which bloviate on about nothing at all. There are names like “Ashardalon,” and “Saithnar.” Underneath all that malarkey, though, is a fairly robust location-based adventure that I’d be happy to run even today.
The remote thorp of Ossington is built within a circle of Stonehenge-style standing stones. The people of the town are nearly dead from starvation because the elves of the nearby forest have turned murderous. The poor villagers are being picked off with arrows from a distance. They cannot defend themselves. To make matters worse: a ghostly knight appears to attack anyone caught outside the circle of stones. Ossington can’t go for help, or even plant their fields. The town is about to go extinct from famine.
If the players dig deeper, they may discover that the original townsfolk have actually been murdered and replaced. The starving peasants are minions to an evil wizard (named Dyson, of all things). The elves refuse to parley only because the wizard has already perpetrated a massacre against them under flag of truce. The ghost knight is actually a paladin who died trying to prevent that massacre, and notably only attacks the wizard’s minions, or those who aid them.
It’s a good premise, with some sincerely memorable characters, twists, and locales to back it up. For example, there’s the self-effacing bard who is actually a Vrock in disguise; and I love how the replacement villagers are all animals who’ve been given human form by magic. They still exhibit little animal characteristics, and seem to obey the wizard only because they don’t want to be turned back into woodland creatures.
Rateliff also includes a lot of great little details to establish the setting. There’s a skeleton slumped over a plow in a fallow field which the players pass on their way into town. That’s an image that sticks in my head. There’s also the various eerie items the townsfolk hide or burn when they discover strangers are approaching.
Perhaps the greatest appeal to me is how down to earth the module feels. It’s an adventure for 7th level characters using 3rd edition rules, but the most fantastical elements are the remnants of forgotten history. A red horse carved into a hill, a great barrow to the north, the titular standing stones. These are all the sorts of things that have existed in the real world, and been given mystical importance by locals who’ve forgotten how they got there.
If you took out the casual mentions of dragons and halflings–none of which are integral to the adventure–you could easily believe this module was published by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Heck, even the wizard’s tower is a modest 3 story shack.
Despite the whole thing being described as a series of “scenes,” the challenges in Standing Stone are open ended enough for the players to approach and resolve them a dozen different ways. For example, that ghost knight who attacks people? The referee is provided with the basic rules that govern his behavior, and specifically instructed in how to telegraph those rules to players. He’s less a character than he is a force of nature, but it’s made clear that players are just as free to become his allies as they are to destroy him or run from him. Moreover, the area is seeded with clues that may eventually lead players to discovering his corpse, which could be used to destroy him, put him to rest, or ignored to keep him bound to his ghostly quest. No matter what your players do about the ghostly horseman, the adventure works just as well.
In fact there are no forced combat encounters in the module. There are combats which will be very difficult to avoid, but clear reasons are always given for why that is. For example, as mentioned above, the elves have already suffered one massacre while treating beneath a white flag. The referee is frequently reminded that the elves are unwilling to parley because of this, but also makes a point of outlining some stuff the party could do to change their mind.
I think my favorite non-combat encounter is within the great barrow, which is a trap-filled, wight-infested maze. The party will eventually encounter the long-dead warlord for whom the barrow was raised. Despite being an undead monstrosity, the book actually includes more advice for how to run him as a social encounter than as a combat encounter.
The Standing Stone’s greatest flaw isn’t so much a matter of what is written, as it is the way it is written. If you replaced the cumbersome “scene” structure with a simple timeline of events; nixed all the boxed text and the tired bits of fantasy faff; and tightened up some of the less focused writing, I’d go so far as to call it a great adventure.
If the book wasn’t owned by Hasbro, I’d be tempted to contact Mr. Rateliff and ask permission to rewrite and refine it for the OSR. I betcha I could even con Dyson into doing some pro bono cartography since he gets name dropped as an evil wizard. Alas, the machinations of capitalism make that possibility unlikely in the extreme. None the less, I’d recommend checking it out if you’ve got a folder full of pirated 3rd edition PDFs sitting on your hard drive somewhere.
The post is over now, but I have a bit of bookkeeping I want to communicate to regular readers. I’m currently going into the busy season at my day job, which often means working between 50-60 hours a week. It tends to kick my ass pretty hard, and leave me too exhausted to do much of anything at all.
In the past, I’ve pushed myself to make sure Papers & Pencils continued to be awesome every week no matter what. However, this year I have quite a bit fewer posts in my buffer than normal. Add to that the fact that I no longer have any obligation to my Patreon supporters, and the fact that this season is shaping up to be more difficult even than normal, and, well…I’m just not going to kill myself for this blog.
As it stands right now, I fully intend to keep up the weekly update schedule, but I’m significantly lowering my standards for what constitutes a worthy post. Don’t be surprised if you see a few 300-word posts in the coming months. Worst case scenario, I’m not going to be too upset at myself if I miss a week here or there. Worse things have happened.
That’s it for now. My busy season ends in November, so things should hopefully move back to normal around then. Thank you all for reading. <3
