I am deeply conflicted on MotBM, and have spent a LOT of time thinking about it. There is probably a big ass blog post inside me that I'll never publish (too much of a heat score).
I bought it as soon as it came out and loved reading it. Wowee!! Not a single orc or goblin! No rats and copper pieces! Joy!!! What's not to love?
Running it for my players, though, was a bit of a boondoggle. While I don't ask for a pre-written story or anything like that in a module, I think MotBM is an interesting example of the opposite - the characters and locations have only the most tenuous connections to one another. The thing doesn't really "hang together," as the Dude would say. My players were wandering the maze, experiencing these disconnected vignettes that they couldn't put into a coherent shape or structure. The chorus was uniformly "this doesn't make sense!"
I am not the best DM on earth, but I never got that response running my own stuff.
There was a pretty savage critique of it on this short-lived blog (I don't know if the guy had a grudge against Zak or what, but his posts are all about MotBM or other Z drama). I don't agree with everything the author says by any means! But he does make a few very good points:
Maze of the Blue Medusa is a 300+ room megadungeon module written by Zak Sabbath and Patrick Stuart, both acclaimed writers within the small, small world of tabletop roleplaying games. The book, wh…
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I got the idea in my head to "redeem" this module over the winter. I kept only the parts I like (gardens, wedding & gallery), reskinned some of the monsters & NPCs, created a new backstory and transplanted the whole thing into a wizard's lost mansion. It all makes sense, and I am in the process of filling in my own original rooms around the existing by-the-book ones.
I don't want to release it on my blog or even talk about it because people get real frantic when Z's name comes up, but I'll let you guys know how it goes down with my group.
