The Articles of Dragon: "The City Beyond the Gate"

Though I haven't devoted many posts to the subject, Dragon magazine published quite a few adventures in its pages over the years. Most of these were, of course, for Dungeons & Dragons or its "big brother," AD&D, though there were also a handful for other RPGs, like Gamma World, Traveller, and Top Secret. I used some of them from time to time, but, if I'm honest, almost none of them made much of a lasting impression on me, hence why I've never (so far as I can recall) had much to say about them on this blog. That's not necessarily a comment on their quality, since, as I said, I remember using a few of them, but simply a statement on how little I remember them.

Perhaps the only exception to this is Robert Schroeck's "The City Beyond the Gate," which appeared in issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985). There are a number of reasons why this is the case, as I'll explain, but I suspect the most likely is the image accompanying this post (by Roger Raupp). Take a good look at it and you'll immediately understand what I mean. Yes, that's a bunch of AD&D fighters tussling with a punch of punks and Bobbies, including several in riot gear. Just what the heck is going on?

The adventure, intended for use with high-level characters, is, at base, an elaborate fetch quest, with the characters tasked to find and bring back the legendary relic, the Mace of St. Cuthbert. What sets it apart – and why I still remember this adventure at all – is a bit of cleverness on Schroeck's part. Rather than, as one might expect, state that the relic is hidden away in the treasury of some powerful villain from whom it must be rescued, he instead places it on 20th-century Earth. More specifically, he places it in a historical display within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England!

The characters still have to locate and abscond with the Mace, of course, but now they must do so while contending with the realities of the real world – or at least a RPG facsimile of it. Most obviously, they must contend with the fact that, for the most part, the real world is not a magical one, which means many of their spells and items will have limited utility. Just as importantly, their appearance – wearing armor and strange robes, not to say anything of the presence of demihumans – will raise more than a few eyebrows. To even begin to succeed in their mission, they'll need to keep a low profile or find a way to blend in with the locals, whose customs and technological society will be utterly alien to them.

It's a great set-up for an adventure and one I enjoyed greatly in my youth. Morgan Just, a character about whom I've written in the past, was among the characters who stepped through the gate into 1985 London and he did a very poor job of disguising himself to my amusement (and that of the other players). Most of the fun comes not from fighting deadly foes but from contending with the completely bizarre (to an AD&D character) nature of the real world. Nearly everything will be unfamiliar to them and even interacting with potentially helpful NPCs becomes fraught, since the characters' ability to explain who they are and what they want will raise lots of questions, not to mention opposition.

That said, the adventure is not without certain flaws, chief among them being its treatment of the "real world." As depicted in the adventure, London is something of a cartoon version of itself. For example, its encounter charts include street urchins out of Dickens, as well as beer wagons and the aforementioned punks. Tom Baker's Doctor also makes an appearance too, but I'm more than willing to forgive that, since it actually seems much more plausible than the Artful Dodger. I'm probably being unfair about this, since the spirit of the scenario is already somewhat campy and I doubt most players, even London natives, will care too much about how realistically it depicts the city.

That's why I still look back fondly on "The City Beyond the Gate." The situation it depicts has a lot of potential for great gaming. There's an overall "rollicking" quality to the thing that's charming, even with its off-kilter version of London. Plenty of fantasy stories were about people from our world crossing over into a fantasy world, but comparatively fewer are about the opposite. That alone makes the adventure unique and memorable, but I also find the overall concept to be quite compelling in its own right. I'm a big fan of the adventure, warts and all.