The Elephant Graveyard

[Edward Wehrenberg]

Just got through reading through Elephant Graveyard during lunch (it's an old one from like issue 15 or so), and it sure looks awesome!

Has anybody here played it? Does it play as well as it reads?

Also - has anybody converted it to 3.5?

[Greg A. Vaughan]

I ran that adventure many, many moons ago. And it has always been one of my favorites...along with David Howery's whole Dark Continent series (The Leopard Men and the Land of Men with Tails).

It ran very well as I recall, very story-like (one event to the next and so on). It seemed to slow down a little in the actual temple but alot of the old problems with stale combat in 1e have been fixed with the more detailed rules in 3e, so I think it would still work well. If anyone has a 3.5 update of it, I'd like to see it.

It was issue #15 by the way. Leopard Men is issue #22, and The land of Men With Tails is issue #56.

[Steve Greer]

I remember this one. It was very cool. There was a pic with a big guy with an elephant head and he had a huge club, I think. In the temple, right? Just the art alone hooked me. Alas, I never got to run my group through it back then. It had the feel of an old Conan saga comic issue, which I really loved back in the day. Still do. Who am I kidding?

[Greg A. Vaughan]

It was very much like an old Conan comic book.

There's an NPC in it named Drake who became an NPC in my players' party and eventually a full PC. When that camaign finally ended in 2001 or 2002, Drake was still a party member at about 15th or 16th level (they went up a lot slower back then). Good times.

[James Jacobs]

I remember running that adventure for some friends back in high school and had a blast! I particularly remember the sequence where the tough party of stone-cold heroes were chased up trees when a rogue hippopotomus barrreled into their camp; they did nothing but watch as it crushed their tents and gear, too afraid to mess with it.

We didn't finish the adventure, on account of it ending in a TPK. Something to do with a greater basilisk... Still, great fun!

If you're out there reading these boards, David: Thanks for the awesome adventure!

[Edward Wehrenberg]

Yep, looks like a great time. I can't wait to run it. It'll take some tweaks but converting it shouldn't be too hard.

James Jacobs wrote:

I remember running that adventure for some friends back in high school and had a blast! I particularly remember the sequence where the tough party of stone-cold heroes were chased up trees when a rogue hippopotomus barrreled into their camp; they did nothing but watch as it crushed their tents and gear, too afraid to mess with it.

We didn't finish the adventure, on account of it ending in a TPK. Something to do with a greater basilisk... Still, great fun!

If you're out there reading these boards, David: Thanks for the awesome adventure!

[Dave Howery]

If you're out there reading these boards, David: Thanks for the awesome adventure!

You're welcome :) This was an adventure that I had a lot of fun developing, and I ran a couple of the local groups through it in the process. Just to tell you how old I am, I submitted this to TSR back in the days before there was a Dungeon (as a module idea), and it got shunted over to Roger Moore as the magazine was just starting up. It used to be a lot longer (and a lot more unfocused... I tightened it up a lot for the magazine), and incorporated a little of what later became "The Leopard Men"...

[Fake Healer]

Hey James, maybe a request to update it and throw it in Dungeon is in order. I love the older module updates (loved Isle of Dread!). Sounds like this would be a winner, especially if the original author was to do it!

FH

[James Jacobs]

While we don't want to update and reprint any old adventures from Dungeon in the magazine, we are certainly looking at doing compilation products along the lines of Shackled City and the Dragon Compendium.

However... a proposal for a new adventure that ties into the older three adventures would certainly catch my attention...

[Black Dougal]

What I really liked about the Graveyard, as a player anyway, was that the treasure was cool and generous. My 6th lvl fighter was quite jazzed to find an intelligent +4 defender during the adventure...I don't believe he found a better in the rest of his career.

[Rob Bastard]

Never played these adventures, but I enjoyed reading them. I especially liked a later article in Dragon (I think) which expanded the area, placing it in the Amedio Jungle, IIRC.

[Nicolas Logue]

Rob Bastard wrote:

Never played these adventures, but I enjoyed reading them. I especially liked a later article in Dragon (I think) which expanded the area, placing it in the Amedio Jungle, IIRC.

These sound so awesome! Anyone know where a young whippersnapper like me could get their grubby little hands on these issues?

[Koldoon]

Nicolas Logue wrote:

These sound so awesome! Anyone know where a young whippersnapper like me could get their grubby little hands on these issues?

*GASP* You mean you don't have them??!

Actually, to be honest, while I have all the issues, I haven't read most of them. We had an unwritten rule in the house only to read the adventures if you were going to run them, and my brother was the DM during most of that era. As a result I've read precious few of those issues.

On the other hand, following up on old adventures from Dungeon might give me some interesting query ideas. hmm. Now all I have to do is figure out where my husband hid all the older issues of Dungeon. :/

- Ashavan

[Hurmferd]

I just recently ran my players through this as a sidequest for my Shackled City campaign (in the Amedio Jungle in Greyhawk). They loved the challenge and adventure, and never want to go back into that jungle...

The author's directions for jungle encounters, illness, etc. helped me make the jungle more of a living, breathing setting--excellent advice. The evil party and the cannibal encounters were great fun. The valley itself was very unique and picturesque, thus very memorable. And, of course, the final encounter was an excellent climax.

About the only things that I changed (to make it more playable, and survivable) were:

- Poisons were reduced to negatives against Con and Str, not immediate death;
- I reduced the numbers of skeletons and zombies in the temple and spread them out into other areas, since otherwise they were all squished inside a couple of rooms;
- I had to develop v3.5 editions of the Staff of Striking, and Daggers of Throwing, and one or two other treasures. Not a problem, but interesting.

Job.

[Dave Howery]

Nicolas Logue wrote:

Rob Bastard wrote:

Never played these adventures, but I enjoyed reading them. I especially liked a later article in Dragon (I think) which expanded the area, placing it in the Amedio Jungle, IIRC.

Hmm... I did write one article for Dragon about African-type adventures in general... it wasn't really set in Greyhawk (this was during the bad ol' "Greyhawk is out, FR is in" days) or any other specific world, and presented a generic African continent. That said, when I developed all those African adventures for Dungeon, I originally did have them all set in Hepmonaland, only because my campaign was set in Greyhawk. I always thought one neat idea would have been to make a 'supermodule' out of "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" and all the jungle adventures from Dungeon....

For those of you who really like this type of adventures, see if you can find a copy of "Nyambe: African Adventures" from Atlas Games, written by Chris Dolunt. It's a very good setting. And, you'll find my name in there as a contributing author... I developed a few of the monsters in the book...

[Capn Frank]

Dave Howery wrote:

For those of you who really like this type of adventures, see if you can find a copy of "Nyambe: African Adventures" from Atlas Games, written by Chris Dolunt. It's a very good setting. And, you'll find my name in there as a contributing author... I developed a few of the monsters in the book...

Speaking of Nyambe...

If any of you live near a Half Price Books they sometimes get in Publisher's Overstock in addition to what people bring in to sell. In two of the store in Milwaukee this last weekend I have found Nyambe for $9.98 and two of the other books for $5.98 each. I haven't started reading them yet but they look very nice.

Cap'n Frank

[Greg A. Vaughan]

Dave Howery wrote:

I always thought one neat idea would have been to make a 'supermodule' out of "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" and all the jungle adventures from Dungeon....

Amzingly enough that is what I did. Dwellers has pretty much always been my favorite of the old modules (that city map was awesome) so actually on two occasions (once in jr. high and once in college) I ran campaigns connecting Graveyard, Dwellers, and Leopard Men. The college campaign lasted until well after and continued using the NPC Drake from your adventure. My very, very old Greyhawk Gazzetteer map still has Fort Thunder and the Tiger River inked down in the corner just SE of the Pelisso Swamp. I also included Gorbalin from John Nephew's "The Shrine of Ilsidahur" from issue #10 on the map and used that in the older campaign. In the newer campaign I made use of the Scarlet Brotherhood source book and ran a couple side treks with it as well. I think they were called "Rogue" and "Journey to Center-of-the-World".

Anyway, it's great to hear from you, Dave. Those jungle adventures have long been my favorite setting (sort of an Indiana Jones fetish I guess). That's neat about it getting submitted to TSR back at the origins of Dungeon. I'm just sad I never had the opportunity to use "Land of the Men With Tails" in either of those campaigns. I'd love to see a revisit by you.

[Dave Howery]

Greg> sounds like your campaign ran a lot like mine. I set up Fort Thunder as a trading post of the Lordship of the Isles, and treated Hepmonaland as Africa (I pretty much ignored the whole Olman/Aztec thing). I started out with 'Dwellers' and just kept going from there. The players liked the African flavoring a lot (although they got kinda irked at not being able to wear heavy armor and constantly being sick). My campaign ended before the whole Greyhawk Wars thing, so I never had to deal with that....

[Greg A. Vaughan]

Dave Howery wrote:

Greg> sounds like your campaign ran a lot like mine. I set up Fort Thunder as a trading post of the Lordship of the Isles, and treated Hepmonaland as Africa (I pretty much ignored the whole Olman/Aztec thing).

Ditto, here. I always envisioned Hepmonaland as an anology Africa and Amedio to Central and South America. In fact, I didn't even know about the Olman connection to Hepmonaland until the Scarlet Brotherhood came out.

I have a question since you too seem to have had a distinct Greyhawk bias. In Elephant's Graveyard, where did you picture the Armec civilization as emerging from? My best guess would have been that they were a Flan tribe from the Rovers of the Barrens area, but I really had no idea. It just said they came from a colder land up north in the adventure. Did you have anything in mind? What was the explanation in your campaign?

Once again, thanks for the great adventures. Thanks to you, I have had characters choosing Kanakre and Ngoto as languages for years so they could navigate through the headhunter and cannibal lands. Those were awesome campaigns.

[Dave Howery]

I had them as a mixed Suel/Oeridian group that got driven into the wilderness by the Suel and Olmecs.... basically, because they were fairly decent, and the others weren't...

[christian mazel]

Nicolas Logue wrote:

Rob Bastard wrote:

Never played these adventures, but I enjoyed reading them. I especially liked a later article in Dragon (I think) which expanded the area, placing it in the Amedio Jungle, IIRC.

These sound so awesome! Anyone know where a young whippersnapper like me could get their grubby little hands on these issues?

You can buy old issues on this site but some are no more in stock.

Unlucky; #15 is unavailable.....

[Ian Hewitt]

christian mazel wrote:

Nicolas Logue wrote:

Rob Bastard wrote:

Never played these adventures, but I enjoyed reading them. I especially liked a later article in Dragon (I think) which expanded the area, placing it in the Amedio Jungle, IIRC.

These sound so awesome! Anyone know where a young whippersnapper like me could get their grubby little hands on these issues?

You can buy old issues on this site but some are no more in stock.

Unlucky; #15 is unavailable.....

But you might try the hitpointe.com I have found them useful in tracking down back issues that were unavailable here.

Cheers
Llowellen

[Dave Howery]

on the general subject on finding back issues of Dungeon, I read somewhere once that it is actually easier to find old copies of #1 than it is to find #'s 2-20, due to the fact that they printed up a huge quantity of #1.... not sure if this is true anymore...

[Eric Boyd]

Dave Howery wrote:

on the general subject on finding back issues of Dungeon, I read somewhere once that it is actually easier to find old copies of #1 than it is to find #'s 2-20, due to the fact that they printed up a huge quantity of #1.... not sure if this is true anymore...

I think the real scarcity is issues #2 through #6.

--Eric

[Dave Howery]

cool... I have all those issues :)
Actually, at one point I had every issue from 1-100, but frequent moves caused me to lose most of them... down to the first 20 issues or so... my once huge stack of 1E/2E D&D stuff dwindled away too, down to just a couple of shelves now...

[ericthecleric]

I've collected Dungeon since issue #1, but in the early days it was really difficult to find some of the early issues. When issue 4 came out, I bought something else instead (can't remember what), and I've never seen it since. I only managed to acquire copies of 5 and 6 in the late 90's, in the 2nd-hand part of a RPG shop; I was soooo pleased to find them then.

[Pop'N'Fresh]

Wow! I never saw these adventures before, as I tend to focus more on the newer issues, but these adventures look perfect for my Conan d20 campaign!

Good find guys!

[Llowellen]

These message boards just keep getting better and better with authors from bygone days showing up... Dave when was your last Dungeon adventure published? You mentioned that you had done some work on the Nyambe line (which is incredible stuff by the way) so I am assuming that you are still in the business. Are you at all tempted by James' hint to write a sequel to your older adventures? Or even to write something new?

It sounds like you have a ready and waiting fan base...

Cheers
Llowellen

[Qstor]

What issue is the Lepoard men in? I got Nyambe a few weeks ago. I was thinking of running the new Atlas games Northern Crown d20 game.

Mike

[Dave Howery]

These message boards just keep getting better and better with authors from bygone days showing up... Dave when was your last Dungeon adventure published? You mentioned that you had done some work on the Nyambe line (which is incredible stuff by the way) so I am assuming that you are still in the business. Are you at all tempted by James' hint to write a sequel to your older adventures? Or even to write something new?

My last adventure was way back in #56. No, I'm not really up to writing any more... for one thing, I have no practical knowledge of 3E, much less 3.5E, as I haven't been in a gaming group since the days of 2E. Also, being out of a gaming group pretty much sinks your inspiration... no ideas being thrown out and bounced off other people, no coming up with new adventure ideas every week, etc. My work on Nyambe was limited to some of the monsters, which were ones I'd developed for my campaign way back when and updated to 3E (I do have the books, and can piece together the info... I've just never actually played a campaign under those rules). That said, it's be neat if some of the current authors undertook to do some Dark Continent adventures....