This is a Castles & Crusades adventure, however it can can be easily adapted to pre-4E versions of D&D.
This is a ‘proving ground’ for initiates of a cult. As such it is a ‘Running the Gauntlet’ type dungeoncrawl on what is relatively linear maps, each having a themed area. It has several ‘gimp the party’ type rules and contains a non-naturalistic distribution of monsters. It feels like a tournament module in which the scoring was left out. It feels too arbitrary for my tastes.
In ages past there was a peace movement among the some of the more powerful wizards, generals, and like of the world. They had a vision of a mountain and of a primordial struggle having taken place there. This convinced them they would find the answer to war at that location and so they travelled there and built a great complex, along with a proving ground for new initiates. Alas, they were tricked. Having released the demon that tricked them they sealed it up again and died, leaving their proving ground laying around. Now rumors of great wealth bring our intrepid adventurers to the site.
The adventure comes in four parts. There’s a small alpine village that can act as a sort of base for the party. Then there’s a short overland adventure to get to the the complex, then there’s the assault on five linear dungeons to get the keys required to open and face the final area. The introduction is short, just a half page or so, which I really appreciate. Keep it short and let me fill in the rest. The village is really only about 2.5 pages in length, with just a few businesses described. The people the party is likely to interact with, innkeeper, shop owner, sheriff, etc, are described and have some decent personality to them. There are a couple of sub-plots that are mentioned that can be use to strengthen the ties in to the village and in to the adventure. I like these sorts of things, they help bring the adventure to life … especially if you’re an unimaginative git like myself. A smart party will ask around and pick up some clues … but there’s really not much to learn.
The journey through the wilderness will take a couple of days. There’s a short wandering table presented, about half normalish animals and about half humanoids. A little motivation for the creatures would have been appreciated, and perhaps a little more character as well. I generally don’t like humanoids, and i don’t like therm here on he wandering table either; they are too vanilla. I’d prefer to see bandits, or at least to have them DOING something besides wandering about attacking random hikers. There are also five set locations within the journey, only a portion of which the party is likely to encounter, depending on their route. The first is a nice little foreshadowing piece that a smart party will see as a warning about the second encounter. I like this sort of thing since it tends to freak the party out and get them paranoid. The second is a small humanoid encampment. This one has way more flavor than most. The last few are some environmental and role-playing encounters before the party hits the main cult compound. They don’t really stand out, except for for the fact the cults complex is hard to reach.
The village wasn’t too bad, and the overland journey as actually pretty nice. Now that the dungeon has been reached things start to go downhill rapidly. First there’s no extra-dimensional travel allowed. No teleports, passwalls, dimension doors, etc. Uncool. There’s some bogus explanation offered as to why, in order to keep the big bad from leaving, but that’s just a weak justification for the real reason: gimping the party. You see, the goal of the adventure is force the PC’s to go through a series of linear dungeons and the associated guardians, finally reaching a key chamber. If they do this five different times then they get to open a new area, that is huge and has no map provided, and fight the big bad guy. If you could teleport then you would just bypass ass the nonsense and grab the keys to fight the bad guy. Yeah you! Gold Star for being creative! But wait, no, the designer has decided there’s only one way to play this adventure: slogging through rooms. And thus, no extra-dimensional travel because of some BS excuse. Some might say this is just an excuse to obfuscate a poor set up or level design … After all, is the adventure really targeted at the levels mentioned if the adventure locale can’t handle the powers of characters of that level?
Alright, so there are five separate ‘proving ground’ areas, each centered around a different color and elemental theme. Red is fire, black is death, blue is water, white is cold, and green is plants. The monsters in each section are themed and there is some sub-dungeon wide environmental impact as well. The red section is really hot. The white section is really cold and windy. The green section has spores which can kill you. You get the ideal. I don’t really have an opinion on this kind of stuff. Actually, I do, I find it mildly distasteful. I’m not sure I can articulate why. Maybe I’m wrong. The five dungeons have some traps in them , which are mostly well done. Not over the top and tending towards the non-fantastic. Tending. There are a decent number of Glyphs of Warding floating around. I’m not a fan of glyphs, I like pits and falling blocks, both of which are present, but I don’t really dislike them either. There’s a riddle. I hate riddles. I think they are generally stooopid, especially when a sphinx teleports in to give it. It’s probably ok at this level of play, since there’s some decent augery-like powers available to the party. But I still generally hate them. The monsters in the dungeons don’t really make sense to me. It’s like they are just waiting around for the party to show up and kill them. Any notion of ecology is out of place here. Yeah, I know, it’s magic. There’s a time and place to pull that deus ex stuff. Don’t want the big bad to be able to teleport out? Deus Ex’ing the demons ability is better than gimping the party. Want winter wolves to live in a sealed off dungeon? THEN PICK A DIFFERENT MONSTER! Just make one up. That’s how you Deus Ex that, not by just ignoring the fact that the hydra is a living creature. On a similar note, there’s a djinni that’s been trapped awhile and wants out. Does he ask nicely? No, he’s a jerk. Guess what Mr. Jerkface, time to meet my my vorpal sword! Perhaps there’s a life lesson in there somewhere … Anyway, the dungeons are pretty straight-forward. Enter elemental themed room. Meet elemental themed monster. Hack it. Maybe solve a puzzle. Repeat. I didn’t really find much interesting. The final level is just described, not mapped, even though the big bad guy lives down there. There are only two new monsters, one of which is the big bad guy.
I don’t tend to enjoy these types of dungeons, and I didn’t enjoy this one. These sorts of things have their place in tournament play however for general use I find that they really don’t meet I’m looking for at all.
This is available at DriveThru.