Pyramid Review
The Apocalypse Stone
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Written by Jason Carl & Chris Pramas
96 pages, $16.95
"Don't destroy the earth in your first book. You might need it later."
--Douglas AdamsThe Apocalypse Stone is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure designed for powerful characters (4-6 characters levels 15 and above are recommended). Adapting this adventure for lower levels is theoretically possible but would not be easy. More importantly, reduced power wouldn't fit with the epic scope of the story line. Adapting it to higher levels probably won't be necessary.
This adventure could probably work as a stand-alone adventure, provided the players were given suitably powerful characters, but would work best as part of a seriously long-running (years at least) campaign. In fact, as written, The Apocalypse Stone is intended to be the final adventure of such a campaign -— and the game world is not likely to survive the experience!
I will remain intentionally vague about the details of the bigger picture of this adventure as the potential enjoyment of this adventure depends heavily upon the DM keeping his/her players in the dark as to what's really going on. If you run this one correctly your players won't be disappointed. They may very well end up seriously ticked off, but not disappointed.
TAS begins with a very well conceived introduction and setup, despite the fact that the writers do use the deplorable phrase "You're all . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 2, 2000
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