U4 – Curse of the Khan

This is a Castles & Crusades adventure however it can be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

Curse of the Khan is a 13 level mega-dungeon that is divided in to three separate but interlinked mini-adventures. The levels are a bit small and they have several problems, most notably with the maps, however it’s trying very hard to be a classic dungeoncrawl.

The Great Khan was a horrific warlord in ages long past who’s conquests even took him to other planes. Eventually, while he was on the verge of ascending to godhood, a group of his trusted advisors betrayed him … or, attempted to. He overcame their treachery and entombed them in the dungeons under a castle. He then ascended to become a demigod. In the present day, the local ruler of a certain castle is said to have gone mad. The players are sent to investigate …

This is a fairly large module. It has 70 pages and describes 13 dungeon levels. These are broken up in to three sub-adventures. Temple of the Khan has four levels. Tombs of Khubla Khan has five levels. The Dungeon of the Khan has four levels. These three adventures are connected to each other, or rather the dungeon levels are connected to each other, however the ties are pretty tenious. Really just a throwaway line or two. Each of them has a distinctive feel that is separate from the others. Because of this they each tend to have separate strengths and weaknesses. And I could be wrong about the weaknesses. Because of the length of the dungeon the party is going to encounter areas that feel different, and I suspect that is a good thing in an adventure this size. They all do have one weakness in common: the maps. Dear lord the maps suck. It’s not immediately clear which map goes with level so you end up hunting for the right map. The maps are keyed strangely, with rooms 9-5, 10-5, and 11-5 being on the ninth level of the dungeon, or the fifth level of the second adventure. The doors on many of the maps are hard to identify. It’s also hard to see where one corridor meets another. That’s an absurd thing to have to complain about. Does the corridor connect to the room or not? That should be a simple question and is a pretty fundamental purpose of a frigging map. There’s no key and special features seem to be left off of the room descriptions. For example, the first few levels have doors every (5 feet? 10 feet? There’s no scale provided.) A feature like this is something that deserves to be mentioned in the text, at least in passing. Some appear to be full doors, and some appear to be false doors. Or is that a printing error? We’ll never know …  Stairs don’t line up … the list goes on and on. I usually don’t complain about stuff like this except when things are egregious, and it is in this case. You’re going to have to put in more than a few hours pouring over the maps just to figure out what’s going on and then annotating the map to get some use out of it. That’s not a game breaker, but it is frustrating.

The first four levels might be the upper levels of a castle and perhaps the basement. Essentially, the local ruler has gone mad and the players are sent in by another rules to investigate and stop his depredations. There’s a few tossed off comments that he may have been turning his servants in to the undead. Ouch.There are wandering monster tables provided, although they are not very interesting. I like my wanderers to have a purpose provided for wandering, and these don’t. There are some factions present and some decent opportunities for roleplaying if the party doesn’t hack down everything and everyone in sight. The traps here are nice, a good variety of classic traps and new things, and some that transport the players between levels. I LOVE this sort of thing. Multiple ways between levels, or even skipping them, really freaks the party out when it happens in a trap. There are also a few new items that have some history behind them and some non-typical effects. Again, I love this sort of thing; it adds personalization to a game world and gives the players something else to both worry about and to gloat over. There are a series of rooms present which the players will almost certainly have to come back to once they explore further in this section. I like this a lot. Providing barriers that the party can’t overcome, and then later giving them that opportunity gives them a feeling of both accomplishment and that their exploration is meaningful. There are not a lot of things to poke & prod, which is a shame; I do love statues and pools of water. A certain … blandness, sees to be present, either in the dungeon or more likely in the writing. This is the stronger of the three sections though.

The second section is reached by a small corridor in the chamber of the boss fight of the first section. This is the Tomb of Khubla Khan and is full of guardians he’s placed here to protect his tomb. I’m usually not too big on that sort of set up, they almost always feel forced. This one feels less forced than usual. The idea is that the great Khan has forced some of his minions, the ones who betrayed him, to serve as his tombs guardians. There’s really three sections to this. The first level has a couple of factions duking it out for eternity. The party can join a side and hopefully win the day. Factions are nice since they provide role-play opportunities with NPC’s in the dungeon and also give the sense that there’s life and history beyond the actions of the PC party. The middle three sections deal with the betrayers. As usual, they all hate each other so once again we have some factions.  There’s also another group of folks down in this section which the party can interact with. In fact, this section has more NPC’s/factions for the party to interact with then I’ve seen in a long time. That’s one of it’s strengths. There is a section with riddles, which I pretty universally LOATHE. The final level is the tomb proper. This is a symmetrical map/puzzle-thing affair. In the end, the PC’s get gimped and transported off to the third section.

The last section is going to piss the party off. It’s starts off with the party waking up, after their adventure in the tomb. They have been stripped of their equipment! Very few players will then sit up and say ‘Oh Boy! A challenge!’ One the whining ends … you can be nice to them. The module suggests that they start fully rested with HP and spells recovered, and that the casters be allowed to select spells without material components. It further suggests that clerics can manufacturer a crude holy symbol, etc. Look, either gimp the party or don’t, but pick a path. Anyway, most normal gear is quickly regained and it’s off to explore the prison planet of the Khan. There’s been a prisoner escape, so there are multiple factions running around the place. It feels a lot like the second section, but without the BS riddle puzzles.

While the bulk of the new magic items are in the first adventure section, all of them get a decent smattering of new monsters. I like this sort of thing since it provides new challenges for the party to overcome. They don’t know what to expect and so have to decide to nuke it from orbit or go light. That’s a very good tension to have in your players. The entire adventure feels a little flat, and is hard to get in to because of the map issues. I also wish the maps were bigger and more complex, but you can’t get everything out of life.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/88995/Castles–Crusades-U4-Curse-of-the-Khan?affiliate_id=1892600