Retrospective: Quagmire!

Like The Forest Oracle, Quagmire! is an almost universally disliked module from the early Silver Age of Dungeons & Dragons – and justifiably so in my opinion. By almost any standard I can think of, this is not a good module and I find it difficult to muster anything more than the feeblest defense of it. Nevertheless, for all its manifest flaws, I have a strange fondness for it. Therefore, it is not the intention of this post to change anyone's opinion of Quagmire!, but rather to explain the sources of my weird affection for it.

Originally published in 1984 and written by Merle M. Rasmussen, best known as the designer of Top Secret, Quagmire! is designated module X6, indicating that it was intended to support the D&D Expert Set. This fact undoubtedly explains a small part of my affection for the module, since the Expert Set, too, occupies a special place in my heart. The module's premise is that the player characters, while near a seacoast, find a bottle inside of which is a plea written on a piece of parchment. The plea was written by someone who calls himself Molariah, King of the Swamp and Ruler of the city of Quagmire. The king explains that the city, once a center of trade and commerce, languishes under a triple threat of rising waters, plague, and a blockade by their covetous neighbors. He offers a rich reward to anyone who can aid him and his people within six months of his having written the plea, which is how long he reckons the city can hold out. Unfortunately, the plea is not dated, so there is no way of knowing whether it is already out of date by the time the PCs find it. 

The characters can, of course, check around the local ports for rumors about Quagmire (who names their city such a thing?) and will find some evidence to support what the King of the Swamp wrote. The adventure then assumes they set out westward toward the Serpent Peninsula where the city supposedly lies in order to render what aid they can. Even by the standards of D&D modules from the time period, this is a flimsy basis for an adventure, but I like it all the same. A big part of it is that the module adds to the map of the "Known World" setting introduced in the The Isle of Dread and previously expanded in Master of the Desert Nomads. I'm a sucker for maps of any kind, but especially setting maps. Likewise, as I've noted before, I was intrigued by the "Known World," so its expansion here no doubt elevates it in my estimation.

The bulk of Quagmire! is simply a hexcrawl through "the Wild Lands" of the Serpent Peninsula and the surrounding area. Rasmussen directs the referee to the rules for wilderness travel and exploration in the Expert Set, but also provides more than two dozen unique random encounters to spice up the characters' trek through the region. This is in addition to a similar number of encounters tied to a specific location and six new monsters. I appreciate what Rasmussen is trying to do here, even if his reach somewhat exceeds his grasp. For example, many the unique encounters are rather dull, consisting of herds of mundane animals or even inclement weather. My guess is that they were meant to be evocative of the locale – a hot, humid, swampy peninsula – but the execution regularly falls flat.

The same must be said about the centerpiece of the whole module, the city of Quagmire. That's a shame, because the idea behind the city (and its two sister cities) is delightfully fantastical. Quagmire is housed within a giant spiraled seashell consisting of thirteen levels and nearly 60 keyed locations. However, the location is simply too small for its purpose. Quagmire is supposed to be an important trading port in the region, filled with riches and exotic goods, a place well known across the Known World. Instead, it comes across as a very tiny place that, even before its current travails, could not have housed more than a couple of hundred people at most. Now, it's even more pathetic, with only about 40 survivors left.

Yet, for all of that, there's a peculiar majesty to the place nonetheless – or at least it seemed so to me when I first read the module almost four decades ago. In my mind's eye, Quagmire is a much more impressive and indeed magical place, befitting a giant, inhabited seashell rising up out of the sand. Ultimately, I suspect that's why I retain a fondness for module X6: it inspired me. As written, there's no question that Quagmire! is underwhelming. However, I rarely use modules wholly as written, preferring to use them as starting points for my own imagination – a map here, an encounter there, etc., to which I added my own ideas to those provided by the designer. 

Viewed from that perspective, Quagmire! is far from being in contention for the worst module ever published for Dungeons & Dragons. A better summation, I think, is that it fails to live up to its potential. All of the ingredients for a solid hexcrawl adventure are there, along with a central location that's perfect for pulp fantasy. For whatever reason – a failure to follow through, editorial meddling on the part of TSR – Rasmussen was unable to stick the landing. That leaves me wondering what might have been and whether the cool adventure I've had in my head since 1984 was ever really a possibility.