XL1: Quest for the Heartstone

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

XL1: Quest for the Heartstone was a brazen cash grab by TSR to tie in with the Warduke^TM and other action-figures. Michael BayGray sullied his résumé with this one, in 1984.

You get your party, who are the Good Guy series of trademarked TSR toys, to fight monsters ineptly scattered around a wilderness and a (haphazard) dungeon, to earn treasure. The monsters are also toys. Among these is a HD 12 version of the infamous roper - which, you'll note, neither Tom Moldvay nor Frank Mentzer had wanted for the Expert Set at any level.

Graham Staplehurst's review for White Dwarf March 1985 remains a model takedown of this bullshit. Someone should post the whole of it here but in the meantime, you can go to Wikipedia's excerpts.

Thank Saint Cuthbert, there never was an XL2. XL1's protagonists do wash up in the Known World's Ierendi for X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield - where they are pompous asses played for comic-relief. That was the best Dobson could do since he was stuck with this stinker as canon.