Queen of the Demonweb Pits

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Linked Modules
Queen of the Demonweb Pits

Code	Q1
Rules Required	1st Ed AD&D
Character Levels	10-14
Campaign Setting	Generic AD&D
Authors	David Sutherland with Gary Gygax
First Published
G1 G2 G3 D1 D2 D3 Q1

Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1) is an adventure module for Dungeons & Dragons.

Queen of the Demonweb Pits was the seventh in a massive series of adventures starting, innocuously enough, with persistent raiding by local hill giants and propelling the players from there on an odyssey into the darkest depths of the earth. At the end of the preceding installment (Vault of the Drow), the characters find an astral gate leading to the Abyssal realm of Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders, goddess of the drow elves, and architect of the sinister plot that impelled our heroes to lay waste to a veritable horde of hill giants, frost giants, fire giants, kuo-toa and drow on the way. Of course, the characters press on, as they must, into the heart of Lolth's Demonweb Pits.

Q1 was the first module that offered a glimpse into the Abyss: a place that is home to demons in D&D, in which time and space stretch and twist in bizarre ways, in which portals allow additional sojourns into entirely different worlds, and so on. It was that last aspect which made Queen of the Demonweb Pits an unusually open-ended adventure, as each "portal" led to a potentially massive area, from which the enterprising Dungeon Master could, if he chose, launch an entirely new campaign. Of course, at the very end, there is the final confrontation with Lolth, who is an exceptionally difficult challenge. The strange time and space bending effects gave the Abyss the otherworldly feel that it deserved, and the effect of the entire series was a feeling of playing in a massive world of which the players could only see a small part.

A great deal of the module's vision of the Abyss was incorporated into the Manual of the Planes and later into the Planescape campaign setting.

Queen of the Demonweb Pits was later republished as part of the Queen of the Spiders supermodule (coded GDQ1-7), containing the entire saga.

[edit] Critical reception

Q1 was and remains very controversial for fans of First Edition AD&D. Unlike the six modules that lead to it, Queen of the Demonweb Pits was not authored by Gary Gygax, the creator of the game and genre. Instead, Gygax determined that the dungeon he designed for Q1 was too similar to the ones he planned to use in Module T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil. When David Sutherland displayed a dungeon map he had created based upon a placemat design, Gygax suggested that it be used for Q1. Sutherland would go on to write the majority of the adventure. Many fans believe that the module, the climax of six prior adventures, each more difficult than the last, was too lighthearted and whimsical, especially when compared to its immediate predecessor, Vault of the Drow. Others were puzzled by the relative lack of demons or drow in the adventure, and were put off by the odd use of a massive steam-driven "Spider Ship" that serves as Lolth's base. Several fan-created "alternative endings" to the GDQ series have been posted on the Internet.

Queen of the Spiders was ranked the single greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time by Dungeon magazine in 2004, on the 30th anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons game.