The Wizard’s Tomb

By Vincent Howard
Second Thought Games
Generic/Universal
Levels 7-9

The players have come into possession of a magical circlet. Its powers are tied to a long-dead Wizard, who calls to the possessor of the circlet from Beyond. A search for the Wizard’s hidden resting place is in order! Will the party sever the circlet’s link, or cement it? The Wizard’s Tomb is a stand-alone adventure for 4-6 players of 7th-9th level. A detailed history of the Wizard, the magic circlet, his tomb, as well as full descriptions for 20 traps and the guardian who maintains them is included.

This is Yet Another Tomb of Horrors Knock-off. Wizard’s tomb. Full of traps. Lengthy read-aloud. Long room descriptions. It’s got a little bit of nice up-front, but that’s all. Do you want another Tomb of Horrors? To go with the 6,000 that already exist? Great. This is one. Enjoy.

The room keys start on page seven, so there’s a lengthy preamble. Most of it is interesting and unneeded backstory. There is a nice little half a page section on sage/research results. I like this kind of thing, for a prepared group it makes a lot of sense to find out all you can. There’s another column or so on an artifact, presumed to already be in the parties possession, which is the hook for the adventure. It had an evil presence and now you feel compelled to go to a place, the tomb.

The map is pretty simple and linear and FULL of hallway traps. In fact, there are twenty different types of hallway presented over two pages. I am NOT the biggest fan of hallway traps. As soon as a hallway trap triggers the game slows to a grind. As soon as you spring a door trap then the game grinds to a halt. I’ll accept the Indian Jones Idol trap, IE, a trick that everyone recognizes, but most traps suck. The best way I’ve found is to give hints in your descriptions, like dead bodies, charred walls, and so on, and let the players take it from there. Random traps in random hallways do nothing. There are seventeen hallway traps in this adventure, in addition to a few other types.

The read aloud is LONG. It has to be in these torture-porn things in order to describe the trapped/puzzle room fully to the party. But NO ONE listens to long read-aloud. It’s boring. The DM room descriptions then round out the entire keyed room to about a full column.
All for abstracted treasure. “The evil wizard’s treasure, as determined by the GM …” ug! So, a mummy a wizard, and a bunch of traps.

There’s just almost nothing to this adventure.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/182581/The-Wizards-Tomb?affiliate_id=1892600