And the bandits in room 23 would search for a safer hideout near easier marks. In any natural underground, the creatures would wander away for a meal. Palace shows a dungeon designed before anyone worried about making things plausible.Įven though the dungeon’s background presents it as a tomb for a queen-turned-vampire, it features assorted monsters waiting in rooms to be killed. In the early days of the game, when players raided dungeons for treasure and the experience points it brought, this qualified as an unprecedented dose of plot.Ħ. For surely the Vampire Queen lies deep within the forbidding mountains, protected by her subjects, vengeful with hate for all truly living things and constantly thirsting for human blood on which to feed.” Neither the king nor his people have hope left that a hero or group of heroes will come to rid them of the Vampire Queen. The king wanders his royal palace, so empty now without his only child. The vampire queen has abducted the king’s only daughter. In addition to launching the standalone adventure, Palace gives D&D players their first shot at rescuing the princess. The page tells of a beloved queen, slain by a vampire, and entombed on the dwarvish island of Baylor. Most of the adventure’s text comes in a 1-page background.
Palace came as a collection of loose 8½ by 11 pages tucked into a black folder with a copyright notice taped inside the cover.Īdding to the low-budget feel, TSR fixed missing pages in some kits by adding Xerox-streaked duplicates from the office machine.ĥ. In February 1976, Strategic Review announced the Character Archaic, a set of character sheets for D&D and Empire of the Petal Throne.Ĥ. TSR Hobbies distributed Palace because they found success reselling blank character sheets from the same authors. Anyone with enough imagination to play D&D could create similar content as quickly as they could type.ģ. Each room appears as a row on a table with a monster quantity, a list of hit points, and a line describing the room’s contents. The key to Palace makes dungeon creation seem trivial, so you can see Gary’s point.
D&D co-creator Gary Gygax thought no one would buy published dungeons, because dungeon masters could easily create their own. So Palace of the Vampire Queen rates as the first standalone D&D adventure in print.Ģ. The magazine including a dungeon called F’Chelrak’s Tomb.
As Palace reached print in June 1976, Jennell Jaquays published Dungeoneer issue 1. Supplement II Blackmoor (1975) includes Temple of the Frog, but that location plays as a Chainmailscenario rather than a dungeon. Palace of the Vampire Queen may count as the first Dungeons & Dragons adventure module published, but only after a few disqualifications.īook 3 of the original D&D game devoted two pages to a dungeon level, but the sample falls short of a complete dungeon. Before Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft came Palace of the Vampire Queen, a dungeon written by California gamers Pete and Judy Kerestan and distributed by TSR Hobbies.ġ.
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