Tegel Manor

By Bob Bledsaw

Judges Guild

D&D, no level given

Premise: Help a cowardly paladin clear his haunted ancestral home.

What do we get here?

 Over 44 pages we get a manor with over 240(?) rooms split over multiple levels.

 Usability/formatting

 There is a tone of variety and a lot of content in this fun house dungeon. Unfortunately I do not think quantity equates to quality here.

Not enough thought has been put into making things work together coherently. To many monsters appear to be randomly included and so many of the creepy elements of the haunted house just go nowhere. Where there is interactivity there are a couple of gems but for the most part a lot of dead ends.

Basically you hack through room after room for treasure and while some of the treasure is interesting, deck of many things hello, again it does not have much rhyme or reason for its placement.

 

 The writing is beyond terse, this is a bring your own descriptions party. When it comes to the NPCs the minimal style works better, giving you a good idea of the inhabitants of Tegel village without a high word count. You do have to get used to the terminology used as well as the Judges Guild is using alternate terms to avoid a TSR law suit in places.

 When you finally get to the dungeon below the manor that is slightly better done, only just though.

Portability

   Sticking a haunted manor down in your setting should not be hard. 

Recommendation

 What this really needs is a much slimmed down and more cohesive manor section. There is a good adventure in here somewhere however in 2023 no one wants to slog through all those rooms in the manor. 

If you want to find the original version you'll have to hunt for it.