TSR, $2.00, ISBN 0-88038-023-3
Sci-fi, 1983

You’re Kyiki, a human by the looks of it, and you’re on a routine field trip with your token diverse alien buddies and tutors when your ship malfunctions and the crew orders everyone to cram into the rescue pods. You’re supposed to be visiting some planets, and now you’re getting one indeed, as the ship is taking a nose-dive onto the planet Volturnus.

Right off the bat, you have the choice of leaving without your teacher – naughty, naughty – or look for Jac and evacuate together. Like the title Villains of Volturnus would suggest, you will soon find that the planet has its shares of meanies. Will you get home in one piece?

This one doesn’t feel like a full-fledged campaign as much as it is a series of short, sputtering mini-adventures strung together. Regardless of your choices during each play, you will find that you will eventually come across the same mini-adventures, only in different sequences. In other ways, things are cut and pasted, then rearranged here and there, to give you the impression that there are many different options and choices here, when in truth, it’s just you going through a small handful of boring little excursions. There is no sense of danger or fear that should be present, given that you are a kid lost in an uncharted planet. Rather, you’ll be traipsing through la-la land, in what could be summed up as Baby’s First Sci-Fi.

Like most other entries in this series, bad endings come with assurances that there, there, don’t you worry little kid, the adults will come soon to solve everything. Even the good endings have this tone – while this may make sense considering that your character is just a kid, it does further reduce this entire campaign to what amounts to a stroll in a park.

Villains of Volturnus isn’t the most exciting thing ever, but it sure is very forgettable.