Tomb of Horutep

By Stephen J. Grodzocki
Self-Published
Low Fantasy Gaming
Level … 4?

This is the free example adventure for the “$1 Adventure Frameworks” series. It’s a Patreon series that offers adventures for $1 each. They are meant to be 6-8 pages each, short, one night and side-trek adventures. The example product, Tomb of Horus, suffers some from repetitive and uninspiring text. It also brings some references to the in-house system it was written for, Low Fantasy Gaming, that don’t translate easily in to other game systems.

There’s only ten rooms in this adventure, laid out in a kind of loop with a couple of side rooms. With no hook, rumors, or wanderers, it’s really focused on its core deliverable: a $1 adventure. This isn’t really a problem, except, for the repetition. One room has bronze guardian statues that animate and chase you out. Another room has two stone staues that animate and chase you out. One room has two mummies in it that animate and chase you out. The boss monster room is a mummy that animates. It’s not that any of these are bad, in and of themselves, but the repetition, in such a small space, doesn’t feel like theming. It’s more like oh, look, another room with animating statues. *yawn*” nd let me be clear, I’m not making these comments as a DM but rather as a player. There are few things worse than boring slog fight after boring slog fight of the same monster type, room after room.

It’s not that all of the rooms are bad. Most are pretty straightforward but a couple have something actual interesting going on. There’s a great room is a bridge over a chasm and full of various molds. Then also there’s the first statue room. Big bronze statues, up on pedestals, flanking a door, animating and attacking if someone tries to pass through. It’s one of the better bits of imagery in the adventure; very reminiscent of a certain stop-motion iron golem. Further, they stop attacking if you make an offering in the urns … the very urns the party probably looked through before attempting to exit the room. The lack of imagery in the writing is one of the major flaws here. Everything comes across as a bit generic and lifeless. In the entry room “Six ceramic urns, of faded red colouration, are placed along the walls. They contain pairs of severed hands preserved in embalming fluid.” That’s ok, but is mostly fact based. It doesn’t really do much to inspire the DM or make them want to run the room. The best writing paints a vivid picture in the DM’s head, without a lot of words, that the DM’s own imagination then fill in to complete the picture for the party. Otherwise, what are you paying your dollar for?

The adventure is written for the Low Fantasy Gaming system. This appears to be a fairly typical d20 type system with a couple of tweaks. The issue with this adventure is how those particular are handled within the pages. The treasure is written as “1 Lair treasure” or “2 Valuables”, with references to the LFG pages. “Roll on the DDM table” is something frequently mentioned, as are referencing attributes like “Boss Monster” and “Undead” … with all the usual qualities. There’s always some swagging when converting between adventure types, but this one seems to go out of it’s way to show off some system attributes rather than using those attributes to enhance the adventure.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/260603/Adventure-Framework-01-Tomb-of-Horutep?1892600