tenfootpole.org

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

This product describe the free half of a city under siege by rampaging hordes. As such it is an adventuring locale, rather than an adventure. A city under siege is an interesting setting, however the modules supporting cast lack the depth I’d like to see in a product like this.

Duke Doofus had finally decided to reunite a large section of divided kingdoms and gather his troops to sally forth and put the petty princes to the sword. Off he went with his forces in to nearby lands. And his own were then promptly invaded by rampaging humanoids. He hurried back to find a good portion of his lands in ruin and his capitol city half under humanoid control: everything on the east bank of the river belonged to the invaders. He bolstered his troops on the western half of the city and set out to make things right. Thus the product focuses on a city caught in a single moment of time. The returning army has stopped the invaders on the eastern shore and the Duke is is now maneuvering to start reclaiming his lands. Meanwhile, the western half of the city is in a state of half-siege while the eastern half is overrun. This product describes the western half the next in the series describes the captured east.

This sort of product has to thrive on the environment it creates. A city is just a collection of people & places and the product needs to brings them life in order to be a good one. This module provides some background on the Duke, Duchess, the Sheriff, and a few of the Duchesses bodyguards and hangers-on. It also touches on the court mage, the thieves guild leaders, and a spy. That’s not much to work with in a lively city game. We get a brief description of a few locales outside of the city, and then a run down of the various quarters within the free portion of the city. This typically involves a paragraph or so for each of the seven or eight locations/businesses that are described in each of the sections. This really isn’t much, although it does focus on inns, smiths, and garrison locations, as those are likely to be of interest to the players. Most of these locations involve some little hook or another: smugglers, people looking the other way, and so on. Prices are inflated everywhere, when you can get what you want. Refugees are everywhere, the thieves guild is running a racket with the upper crust of society, and no one knows what the mage is up to. Two small adventures are located in the back. One is a kidnapping that is typical of many city adventures. Lots of intrigue involvement with the upper classes. The second is a straight forward raid across the river with a group of allied barbarians in order to destroy siege equipment. The second is interesting because it uses the C&C mass combat rules.

This is a difficult type of product, in terms of detail and scoping it. It captures a moment in time, so too much detail and and it will be wasted as the siege of the city is lifted or succeeds. Too little detail and the city doesn’t really feel like a city; Colorful characters is what a city thrives on. This product probably provides enough information to run the city in this moment of time. I wish there had been a few more details on the refugees and so on, however it the scope is limited to the cross-river raids, the kidnapping, and a couple of a major plot lines detailed in the book then things will probably come out ok. I do appreciate TLG giving us something different, a city under siege, and also providing a way to work in mass-combat rules. Both of those concepts are generally few & far between in the gaming world. It’s going to take some major fleshing out and work by the DM to add the detail I generally like to see in a city.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/56225/Castles–Crusades-DB4-Dro-Mandras?affiliate_id=1892600

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

This is a continuation of module DB2 and adds three more levels on to that dungeon. The maps are very linear and the chambers tend to be a bit bland and crawling with creatures. Each level has a different theme: gargoyles, bugbears, and serpent-men.

This product adds three more levels on to the Crater of Umeshti dungeon , first seen in module DM2 – Crater of Umeshti. You may want to go back and reread that review to get the backstory on the Crater, and how the party came to be on the fourth level. The maps for this product are one again very linear. It’s really just a wide circle of hallways/rooms that surround the central pit of the crater. There are a few side passages here and there and an occasional interesting detail, such as a robe bridge across the crater on level five or stairway from level three to level four, however for the most part this is a linear crawl. Each level will be dealt with in turn and then the next will be explored. This is really a shame. This level has more openings on to the central pit than others, however the party is probably not high enough level yet to fly or have other means of hopping between openings. The concept of the dungeon is a good one however the cramped feelings of the maps and their linear design really work to prevent any meaningful explorative play. A true three-dimensional dungeon complex would be a nice thing to see. The maps are STILL too small, just one-third of one column. I’d love to see these as downloadable on the website; my eyes get fatigued just thinking about them.

Level the fourth is home to a large group of gargoyles. This levels has about 15 keyed locations and every room, save one or two, has a creature in it; invariably hostile. There are a few vermin to break up the gargoyles, and tomb complex with a few undead in it. The tomb has a puzzle to two to work out, including how to get in. This provides a nice change of pace the from “See Gargoyle. Kill Gargoyle” routine encountered in most of the chambers. There’s also a group of trapped adventurers that the party can rescue. It’s pretty lame that they have a wand of undetectable alignment. Yeah, I know, otherwise they’d get slaughtered right from the get go, probably. I just hate that kind of stuff. It’s a kind of forced economy and gimping the party. I’d rather see the other party have more complex motives and there be a better reason for the PC’s to cooperate. It’s too easy to just say they are scum slavers and have magic that conceals their intentions. Divination magic gets the short end of things from most groups; I like to see it pay off.

The fifth level is full bugbear and ogre outlaws. This level is another straight-forward 16 keyed location hack-fest. Every room but one has a monster encounter in it. There is a small trapped area and a fountain that can be repaired for a boon, however for the most part it’s just a really linear hack. There’s a rope-bridge across the central pit shaft which may end up as an exciting encounter. I suspect it was written to be that way. There’s also a foundry and a prison where the party may gain some allies. They are not very interesting as presented and will need some work to beef up their personalities.

The sixth level is one of the more interesting. It’s also very linear however only about half the chambers have creatures in them. Those are the Thune, a new monster race of extra-planer jerk-faces. They have a strong culture and lots of abilities. Kind of like a cross between the Drow (abilities), Yuan-ti (bloodlines) and Mind Flayers (planer, culture, evil.) There are a few new magic items to be encountered here. They are very interesting and provide some nice new effects. There is also a lot of strange stuff for the party to poke & prod. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really do anything, positive or negative, if the party interacts with it, making it just window dressing. Window dressing is good however a nice opportunity was lost in not presenting effects. There’s a section of rooms underwater in this area, and there is a little more than a column of rules inserted just before that section that explains underwater effects and how the parties abilities will interact with their underwater environment. Movement, temperature, spells, drowning, invisibility, being swept away, etc. This level is all too short.

This module, when taken with module DB2, appear to be attempting a mega-dungeon. There are a few problems with that. The maps are not big enough or interesting enough to truly get an exportation feel. The small cramped maps feel even smaller because of the lack of empty rooms; every room has something to slay. The limited mobility between levels and small level maps mean that there’s not really an opportunity for factions. There are some one-liner comments here and there in the text about hiring the party, however these are usually overshadowed by the “attacks immediately” type verbiage that is quite liberal. This limits factions. IN addition, the lack of a coordinated response to invaders, and “they use ambush tactics” is not addressing the issue, means more work for the DM ahead of time to work out who’s coming to who’s aid and when. The lack of exploration elements, empty rooms, traps, weird scenes and things to play with, makes the crawl a little one-dimensional.

You coulda been somebody kid. You coulda been a contender.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/28484/Castles–Crusades-DB3-Deeper-Darkness?affiliate_id=1892600

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

This is a three-level dungeon, further levels are show in the next module in the series, that is a kobold hack-fest. It’s rather one-dimensional, in a semi-interesting location, and expands in to a undead filled lower level.

From time to time I like to offer advice to to the rulers of fantasy kingdoms and I’d like to take this opportunity to do that once again. Time and time again we see proud and storied civilizations destroyed by the gods. It’s time to learn from history kids: spread the love around a bit. If your civilization is at the height of it’s power then don’t go around breaking some young gods heart. It’s not going to end well. I t never does.

This adventure revolves around the Create of Umeshti. In days long past it was a shining city, until a giant rock was dropped on it by some jealous gods. Lunar based mass drivers: Effective and Green! A bit later some dwarves tunneled in and mined all the special iron. When the ore ran out they left and … other creatures moved in. Seriously? How many times have we seen this? Someone needs to start riding those little bearded boogers about this type of behavior. It’s like libertarians on midwest coal plants: yeah, it’s not hurting anyone right now, but what happens later when the frigging Balrog moves in? How many mountaintops have the dwarves removed in order to get at that precious ore? Do they clean up later? On nooooooo, of course not, there’s no funds left for that after they get slaughtered.

In this case we have a multi-level dungeon centered around a great crater in the earth. This product presents the exterior of the crater as well as the first three levels. The next module in the series appears to expand the crater with more levels. The primary tunnels in the levels were created by the dwarves before they left the complex, with some expansion by the current residents. The exterior of the crater is inhabited by kobolds; there are “dozens of caves” where they hide out and harass the party, and provide warning to the first level of the crater. The first two levels are full of kobolds as well.

The maps are relatively simple. There’s a central pit/shaft surrounded by worked dwarven tunnels and chambers. On the first two levels there are also some supplemental tunnels, kobold sized, that link some of the chambers. Access between the various levels is by an indestructible dwarven lift basket system. Generally access between two levels is on one side of the pit and access to the next level is on the other side, requiring that at least half the level be explored to get to the next level. I don’t usually complain or note layout unless there’s something very troubling. There is in this. The maps are presented as TINY. They take up about 1/3 of one column on a page. My tired old eyes need to bring the book up very close and squint to get the detail. Uncool. The basic layout is linear, in a circle around the central pit.

The first two levels are crawling with kobolds. Just about every room has some and it’s very probable that the PC’s will be attacked from the moment they get in the basket and descend. There are not really many tricks/traps, just one or two. The most interesting is a “don’t desecrate my temple” type of encounter. The best way to describe this is a as a relatively realistic monster lair. A couple of vermin, but mostly just kobolds, with a few traps and without any weird elements. The third level is the home to a necromancer. The map layout is mostly the same, a linear map in a circle shape. Again, mostly just a hack-fest with undead and tougher than normal kobolds. There are no really interesting elements.

It looks like this module is trying to be a megadungeon. Multiple levels, increasing difficulty between levels, and a page or so on how to restock the dungeon between adventurer forays all contribute to that feeling. It’s a little too crowded for my megadungeon tastes, and needs some more interesting maps so we get more of an exploration feel and less of a hack-fest feel. I don’t have a problem with a group slaughtering kobolds, however I would have preferred to see some additional notes on how the kobolds would respond. There’s a just a few brief sentences and they don’t really cover a coordinated response by the kobolds.

If I were to run this, and I may as a Meetup game, I would probably run it it in one of two ways. Given that there are nearly 100 kobolds on the first level, and they mostly have 2 HP each, I may run it as a dark comical adventure. DEX checks for slipping on entrails, buckets of blood from slaughtered kobolds EVERYWHERE, kobold eyes hanging off of swords, just a really ridiculous amount of gore, with the implicit, but not explicit, moral implications for the PC’s. The other way would be to make the kobolds some pretty heavy hit & run snipers with their missile weapons, making raids on the party and never staying anywhere to fight toe to toe. It would lend itself nicely to the first style of play, and maybe not so well to the second, just because of the sheer numbers of kobolds involved. Although, the chaos of a running battle, PC’s splitting up, and so on, would be very interesting to see as well.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/24507/Castles–Crusades-DB2-Crater-of-Umeshti?affiliate_id=1892600

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

This is a home-base setting with a couple of small plot seeds that have been expanded in to a few lair type encounters. The home base is well done however the plot seed encounters feel like tack-ons.

I really have absolutely no idea how to describe this product. This is my fifth rewrite, and I’m going with i, no matter the length. This module describes a small region of land. The local humanoids are in an uprising, led by a fearsome warlord searching for something called The Century of Skulls.  A local large town is under siege and half of it has already fallen. The region described is just beyond the town. This make the land, already wild and borderlandish, rotten with marauding humanoids, mercenaries, outlaws, and other unsavory types.

The home base is meant to be Dirty Bowdie’s Roadhouse. It’s about 35 miles away from the city under siege and is a small palisade with an inn, stable, and blacksmith. It’s houses all sorts of unsavory characters as they pass through and has a bad reputation in civilized lands. It has half a dozen or so colorful characters that reside there and run the place, as well as some more normal bar help. The NPC’s that are described are very well done. They come across as real people, with all their petty problems and issues. The roadhouse has a nice little section on food, drink, and entertainment, with six or so bar games being described, as well as bards, etc. It’s a pretty solid write-up of a roadhouse. It has a grittier feel then most fantasy inns and would probably make a fine base for the characters to come back to time and time again between forays in to the wild. It’s less weird and less bizarre than I generally like, but is a solid effort.

If the module had stopped there, or perhaps included a hex crawl aspect then this would be a great product. Instead we get a short little write-up of about five small adventuring sites that the party can stumble over. There are some old barrows carved in to a cave. I generally like barrows, but this one left me uninspired. Just some undead, a couple of bandits, and a potential opportunity to be branded grave robbers. There’s a small druidic circle with a couple of hill giants nearby. Megaliths and old tress are present, but neither are really presented as being very interesting. There’s a small bandit camp. It’s interesting because of the large pyramid of severed heads nearby, but otherwise is not particularly well done. Likewise the swamp hag and a tribe of crude humans. Every once in awhile there’s a flash of something interesting: the pyramid of heads, or the hag making her fences from human bones, The Century of Skulls, but for the most part it’s some pretty uninspiring writing. As it turns out, that’s not what I’m looking for. The regional map has no scale and the wandering monster chart is not very interesting. I like my wandered to be doing something while wandering about; hunting, looking for someone, etc. That’s the case for a few of these, but most are just presented as simply an entry on a table.

The roadhouse feels like an average write-up from one of the Citybook supplements. Well done but not stellar. The tack-ons lack the flavor I’m looking for in a supplement. Perhaps all will make more sense when I reach the next in this series?

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/15804/Castles–Crusades-DB1-Haunted-Highland?affiliate_id=1892600

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

This adventure attempts to handle a difficult encounter type: large battles. It presents several battles of increasing numbers and odds culminating with a large battle on a lightly defended outpost. There are some brief new mechanics presented to handle the mass combats. It is, essentially, a complete railroad in order to get to the battles.

The last module in this series, I2, had the characters adventuring around a small hill fort/tower that was in the process of being reclaimed by a local goblin warlord. The parties hijinks at the site have given the warlord the pretext he needs to launch an invasion of his human neighbors to the north. He’s in a tenuous position though, and needs success for his longer-term internal plans to come to fruition. Essentially, he’s showing his peers he a tough guy that can deliver, and they should throw in with him. He’s likely to succeed. The political climate is interesting. The other local human rulers in the region are not happy with the victim kingdom, with at least one throwing his support behind the goblins. This is not your typical fantasy worldview …

The players need to be in the goblin kingdom, near the border, and fleeing/traveling towards the north. There are several small encounters that are supposed to build up the tension. FIrst some scouts and trackers are sighted in the distance, following the party. Then some cavalry show up and harass the party; first a lone figure and then a group. The goal is to get the party moving and up the tension. There are a few wandering monsters encounters available from a nicely done table. These are mostly animal encounters, and one small fey encounter. They generally just provide some flavor and false excitement for the group, although they may harass a straggler; they actually act like real animals afraid of humans.

The party eventually reaches the border of the goblin kingdoms, a small river with a ford. And an ambush. The party is going to face about 35 goblins who have a well developed sense of tactics. This is probably going to be a rough fight for the party. Cut off in an exposed area of difficult terrain and facing an enemy with lots of missile weapons … I hope the wizard is fifth level …

That should be a huge battle for the party, and a rough one at that. Making it out of it alive should feel like a decent accomplishment. They can travel north to a small settlement, really just a palisade with a small tower and a longhouse. They can rest and recover here and interact with the frontiersmen villagers. A few of the notables are described however they are not really much more than the standard fantasy tropes and are not very interesting. It feels  a lot like a cross between the village from The 13th Warrior and Rourke’s Drift. After the party has been there awhile and bonded a bit then the goblin army shows up. This should result in a nice ‘Oh Crap!’ moment. There are about 25 combatants in the settlement, with another dozen or so non-combatants. The enemy numbers over 400 infantry, with about 50 fantasy cavalry. And they use good tactics. There’s a small opportunity to role-play with the enemy, however the bulk of this is going to be combat oriented over a single day. It’s going to be a surprise, so the casters will have whatever is at hand. About that 5th level wizard …

This is going to be rough. There are going to be assaults using primitive ladders & rams, archers, flaming arrows and oil flasks, spider cavalry coming over the walls, and villagers blaming the party. A breakout is a possibility, however all of the villagers are not going to flee, and it’s going to be a pretty desperate affair. There are some morale rules that will come in to play once around 120 goblins are killed (!) and there are some rules for massed fights; essentially breaking combats in to groups of 5 and using averages for to-hit roles and dividing up damage with no remainders.

All of the modules in this series have had the opportunity for large massed battles however the centerpiece of this module is the assault on the walled settlement. If the party has played those earlier adventures or are very smart then they may have a chance to survive without DM fudging. Fudging is a big no-no in my book so … This is going to be a very rough encounter, both to run and to play in. The players will certainly remember it for a long time to come, both if they survive and if they die. There’s a very real possibility, indeed likelihood, for a total TPK. As a mini campaign arc this would be a great finale. Either the characters will go on to great things or they will die, hopefully heorically. In fact, there’s a nice little subsection on parting scenes to help deal with character death.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/50740/Castles–Crusades-I3-Dogs-of-War-Felsentheim?affiliate_id=1892600

This is an adventure for Castles & Crusades, although it can be used with any pre-4E version of D&D.

This is a short wilderness based adventure with some strong opportunity for role-playing and culminating in a mini dungeoncrawl and site-based adventure. It has good wandering tables and factions. The dungeon is small with an uninteresting map but it built well.

This module is a continuation from module I1, although several hooks are presented to get the characters involved if it’s being used as a standalone. The most straight-forward hook is the sam as the continuation from I1: rescue a hostage being by humanoid bandits. There are several other hooks presented as well, and they tend to be a diverse lot: map the valley, find the bandits, investigate some ruins, etc. What’s nice about these hook is that they differ quite a bit from the core adventure of rescuing the hostage. This allows the party to stumble upon the core scenario, and the sub-plots, and then decide for themselves what they are going to do about it. Right some wrongs? Ignore it? Turn a tidy profit? In fact, I’d say this is one of the strong sandbox type adventures I’ve seen in the last few months. Most products railroad you. There is clearly a right way to play the module. This one does not; it simply presents an area with some things going on and provides a couple of hooks based on the setup to get the players involved in the action. That’s good design.

I1 had some serious issues with organization and verbosity. This product is almost completely different in that respect. I text is certainly not terse, however the extreme exposition that was in I1 is not present. In addition things are organized much better, although there does seem to be a certain style of presentation from this publisher that I have trouble with. The various section headings are not clear to me; or rather, I expect one thing when I see a section heading I get something completely different. Either it jumps ahead  when I think it should be providing more detail or it provides more detail when I think I’m reaching a major new section. That was a major issues for in I1 as well, and while it’s still present in this product it’s impact is not as great. There’s also a combined two page glossary and regional history at the end. Thank Pelor! I1 was hard to get in to because of the slavic/germanic proper names used. They add a LOT of character however you really need to pay attention to not get lost. The glossary helps a lot, and is not so brief to be useless or so long as to be boring. I really liked the regional history put in the end as well. It sort of frames the material as supplemental; I don’t have to slog through it to get to the core of the adventure but it’s there if I’m a n0Ob to the series or want more flavor. Well done.

The adventure starts with an overland portion. We get wandering monsters charts for two different type of region. These charts are expanded by the individual encounter listings for them, which spread out over three pages for each of the two charts. The various encounters range from animals, weird things, and humanoids. What’s interesting is that the vast majority of what the party encounters is NOT looking for a fight. The animals may be looking for an easy meal from a lone figure, or may be simple woodland animals who run off. The humanoids are treated as real living entities with their own goals rather than just an XP total with a sword. Most of the wandering monsters have at least one paragraph of text associated with them, and several have a column, that describes what they are doing and how they will react, etc. This sort of wandering chart has popped up in other modules form this publisher and I liked it then also. I like it when wandering monsters have a purpose in life, however I do tend to favor terse text over verbose, so I would have been happy with a “hunting rats” or “looking for straggler to pick off”, or “generally not in the mood to fight.” next to each encounter. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. 🙂

There are really only two fixed encounters in the wilderness. The first is a set of humanoid assassins who are camped out waiting for an opportunity to conduct a hit and finish their job. As such they are not immediately hostile to the party and there should be an opportunity for some interactions to occur and perhaps a deal or two to be struck. It’s really just a set up for the second encounter. The second encounter is with a small hill tower being occupied by goblins, with a small dungeon below it, some bandits visiting, prisoners locked up, and a coupe of other groups present as well. By my count that’s SEVEN different factions running around this small area. They all have their own agendas and trying to get something different done. Their agendas don’t necessarily conflict, but they are not exactly the same either. It reminds me of the set ups that designers usually try to put in their cities/ You know, the ones where they try to set up different factions and generally fail? Well this one doesn’t fail. Despite there being a great number of groups in the area their motivations are clear and presented well and easy to keep track of. We know why they are in the area, what they want, and how they are likely to react to certain  events. This is a perfect place to drop a group of troublemakers like the party.

As mentioned, a small hill tower is the site of the core adventure. The ruined tower is surrounded by a small palisade at it’s crown and, unknown to most of the factions, has a small dungeon underneath. There’s a group of humanoids in the “fort” which control it, another two sets of visiting bandit humanoid groups, the group of assassins nearby who want at the other group of humanoids hiding in the hidden dungeon, a pragmatic humanoid merchant, and the prisoners the PC’s are probably after. WHat’s great is that no group is immediately hostile to the party OR friendly to the party, not even the prisoners, for their own justified reasons. This gives the party a tremendous amount  of freedom to accomplish their objectives, whatever they may be.

The dungeon under the compound is unknown to most of the factions. The layout is pretty simple, a hub & spoke design where the party enters at the hub. The design, while not overly complex, is interesting and should provide ample opportunities for exploration. There are several environmental based traps that fit in well with the dungeons design and history. There are a few vermin about, and a couple of undead. The dungeon has a nice feel to it and several weird elements, including some interesting new non0-standard magic items. Most of the rooms don’t contain monster encounters, there is some unguarded treasure, and the entire place has a nice naturalistic feel to it while still retaining some classic fantasy elements and a few doses of the weird. There’s no wandering monsters for the dungeon, and the map is simple, however the designer was really on the right track here. It would make a great single-session dungeoncrawl, even though there’s only 30 or so keyed encounters.

What’s NOT present that was in I1 are the area and regional map. You’ll have these if you also have the I1 module, however it would have been nice to see something in this product also, especially since the sandbox like element is so strong. It has to be hard on the publisher; figuring out which information to repeat and which information to leave out. I do not envy them their task. This is a great little product that presents an adventuring site at a moment in time. What the party does with it is up to them.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/50739/Castles–Crusades-I2-Under-Dark–Mistry-Ground-Dzeebagd?affiliate_id=1892600

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

This is a brief story based adventure with significant role-playing opportunities in an interesting setting. It’s marred by an overly verbose style of presentation that is not organized very well.

The basics of the adventure are pretty simple. The party is with a merchant caravan and someone is captured during a raid. The party gives chase and attempts to free the captive. That’s a pretty basic and classic adventure set up, especially for beginning characters. What’s interesting here is the setting. The tech level, artwork, and proper names all give a very Germanic dark forest type of feeling to the adventure. That’s then combined with a seemingly rich humanoid kingdom & humanoid relations atmosphere. For example, the areas the party starts out in has a very germanic feel to it and it borders a nearby goblin kingdom. But rather than being savage humanoids they are presented as having a rich and sophisticated culture, at least that’ what’s implied, with trade & social interactions with their neighbors. That’s certainly a refreshing change of pace from the typical “See goblin. Kill goblin” mentality that is usually present in products. We also get to see other groups of humanoids interacting with each other and with humans. This is presented in a non-traditional way also. What we see is various bands of creatures, some of which are composed of integrated creatures, joining together to accomplish some common tasks. Thus we have a band of orcs, goblins, and evil humans who work with a pirate who are combining with a band of goblins and another mixed band of humanoid creatures in order to …. well they each have their own various goals. This differs significantly from the simpering slave relationships we usually get to see when two groups of humanoids come together: orcs with goblin slaves and so on. I found these sorts of relationships intriguing; perhaps this world has a significantly more lawful bent than most. This sort of thing is explored in several areas in the adventure. I don’t usually like humanoids in my adventures. I want my humanoids to have alien cultures ala Jorune, rather then just a ‘weaker than normal human with a sword’ or ‘tougher than normal human with a sword.’ The saving grace in this adventure is the different flavors the various humanoids have, as well as the tendency toward the implied culture in the background. This is getting closer to the ‘alien cultures’ type personality that I’m looking for. Not quite, but far better than normal, and the author should be applauded for it.

The party joins up with a couple of trader wagons going south, who also have two other passengers. There’s a multi-day trip through the wilderness, prior to reaching a small tower outpost, The Vakhund. The wilderness adventure is supposed to be dull & dreary, with a few ‘wagon gets stuck in the mud’ encounters as well as a wandering monster table. The wandering table is very well done. There are 12 possible encounters, the vast majority of which are with animals who act like animals; attacking lone figures and running away a lot. There are two humanoid encounters on the chart however both are personalized enough to be memorable. The tower has some nice roleplaying opportunities to interact with the militia while the trader heads south alone in to the Goblin Kingdom to do some sensitive work, returning in about a week to continue the trek.

This is where things start to fall apart in the adventure. Prior to this there has been a great deal of verbose exposition about the various characters encounters, their motivations, how they react, and the various places the PC encounter. We now get in to a GREAT deal of this, both for the folks traveling with the party and for the humanoid raiding party that is about to assault the tower. There is really a lot of detail, much of which is repeated. Unfortunately the detail is not very well organized and the extreme density of language makes things even more confusing. Making thing even more confusing are the great variety of unfamiliar names: Urk, Jzunad, Gratva, Magdole,  Zjerd, etc. The large number of NPC’s & ‘named humanoids’ and their unfamiliar names seems to have been a recognized issues; the module claims that there is a download available on the TLG website that has a summary of the names, motivations, etc. Unfortunately I was unable to find it, as were a couple of others on the tLG forums.

There comes a highly detailed programmed attack on the tower in which several of the major NPC’s are supposed to die, and several others are supposed to live. And therein lies the fault of all story based adventures. This is the hook for the adventure. If certain things don’t happen then it’s going to be very difficult for the DM to get to the rest of the plot. That can usually only be accomplished by the strictest railroading … but that doesn’t happen in this product; the party is given a great deal of freedom. The DM is going to have to quick on his feet in order to accomplish his main goal: the capture of a certain member of the group. All of that backstory and motivation and everything else has to take a backseat to that one objective because without it there is no adventure. What follows, hopefully, is a chase through the forest to recover the captive. Just like in TLG module S1. And in TLG module C1. It seems that chase scenes are mandatory in the first module in a series.

What follows are a few encounters that can be divided in to ‘scenery’ and ‘role-playing.’ The scenery encounters are the party stumbling upon strange little vignettes; scenes in which something strange of interesting is going that the party can explore a bit and which may provide a bit of information … probably not useful information however they do a very good job of building up the world around the party and helping to expand the atmosphere of the adventure. I enjoyed them a lot. The role-playing scenes come in the form of a roadway encounter with some clueless bandits and a goblin trading post. Hopefully the party handles themselves well enough in both situations that they can continue the adventure by gleaning a few bits of information abut the destination of the group they are chasing.

This leads to the party encountering an evil settlement. Maybe it’s just really really neutral, but I doubt it. It’s a small humanoid settlement just larger than a trading post based around a goblin holy site. As such this involves a mini Vault of Drow type setting; the inhabitants are not immediately hostile to the party and there’s a chance to wander about, learn more, and try not to get killed. The party will get to interact with several different groups, none of which really involve the humanoids initiating combat. What probably happens is that the party sees some prisoners, learns where more are being held, and initiates some kind of rescue attempt. As such this is a VERY good little open-ended part of the adventure. There’s an encampment, it’s not immediately hostile, you have some goals to accomplish … Get Cracking! I can’t say enough positive things about this type of set up. It really gives the PC’s the opportunity to role-play, explore, be creative, and hatch some overly-complicated schemes … which is what D&D should be about.

It’s a story based adventure that features humanoids … I should be guaranteed to not like it. I do like it, quite a bit. It’s a nice little set up and and has a kind of slow burn type of pacing. Trying to run it as written could be problematic. The DM is going to have to do serious thinking about the tower assault and how he’s going to accomplish his goal of getting a certain prisoner. The rest of the adventure depends on that one crucial hook. In addition, the DM is going to have to put in some serious work to plot out the various names and motivations so he can keep everything straight when he is running the thing. That’s really a non-trivial task that is going to take several readings  of the module with some copious note taking.

This is available on DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/20445/Castles–Crusades-I1-Into-the-Unknown-Vakhund?affiliate_id=1892600

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

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.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/3269/Castles–Crusades-U3-Fingers-of-the-Forsaken-Hand?affiliate_id=1892600

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

This is a basic low-level adventure that is well done with several evocative locations and a pretty decent setup. Most of the booklet consists of the write write-up of a local halfling village with a small little adventure set within it. It would be a great introductory game for a story-based campaign.

I have a confession to make. I love whimsy and the fantastic. Flower fields full of pixie dragons, craggily wizard towers in full sunshine, and misty fey grottos. However there’s another part of me that loves adventures with the the simple folk, farmers, the salt of the land, you know … morons. I love a good village full of dirt farmers and their simple ways. Mud, filth, and morons. These guys provide AMPLE adventure hooks of every variety.

This time around we have a little halfling village In it is a local guy who’s adventurer cousin recently passed away. With visions of greatness and a desire to be a big man he takes his inheritance and builds a great halfling hall where he wines & dines the locals to raise his stature in the community. Only … when he was building his hall he found an old barrow underneath it. Being a cheapskate at heart he decided to utilize it to build his hobbit-hole cheaper. He wasn’t too curious during the construction, and soon had a fine house. He liked to entertain, and during one of his parties, with most of the village notables present, an slight accident occurred. It seems one one the items he inherited had some special powers, and it caused all of the bodies in the unexplored portion of his barrow to animate. During his party. Massacring everyone present. When the reeve went in the next day to investigate, along with a few of his men, he didn’t come back out. The insular halflings are now in a bit of a panic. When the party shows up they quickly relate what they know, which is next to nothing, and implore them to investigate.

The module is about 24 pages long and over half is taken up with the description of the halfling village and it’s surrounding areas. There are several notable characters and almost everyone has either a strong personality hook or some brief but interesting backstory. As such this would probably make a decent home base for the party in their future adventurers. I really enjoy these sorts of interesting little village write-ups. Sometimes I wish I had a small booklet of them so I could whip them out at will when the party stumbles upon one or I’m in need of one. Its no where near the quality of People of Pembrooketonshire, but that supplement is so over the top that few could match it. There are a few businesses in the village, and some outlying farmsteads that are described.

The adventure proper is a short little affair. The halfling hall has about eight keyed encounters, mostly with the undead. Underneath is a short little linear dungeon with 12 keyed encounters. There’s a nice little rumor table provided, with some false leads, town gossip, and some true rumors. A few of the residents also know a little more, so a party that spends some time poking around ahead of time should get a few helpful clues. There’s a nice little wandering table with some local residents and some undead prowling about. The upper hall is full of the reanimated bodies of the revelers and a few other creatures reanimated. The hall has some little room descriptions and an interesting encounter or two that should thrown even an experienced party for a loop, especially the first one. The idea of halfling villager zombies is also quite interesting and should provide some fun opportunities. The path to the lower barrow should be easy enough for a party to find if they poke about a bit.

The lower barrow is mostly a linear affair. There are a few traps that are well done and should lead to a few ‘gotcha’ moments. Most of the encounters are not forced at all. A careful party that explores along should be able to recover a decent amount of loot and avoid quite a few combat encounters. It’s a nice little barrow with a couple of things for the party to poke & prod and few nice descriptive elements however it mostly lack the more interesting room descriptions found in the upper hall, with a few notable exceptions. Those mostly pertain to the new monsters found. There’s a couple of creepy encounters with a bone pile and pile of dismembered hands. Those should keep the party on their toes. Further, things are set up so the more interesting monster encounters are the ones the party will probably encounter and the other areas have more mundane ‘book’ encounters.

There’s another small adventure area tacked on to the end. It does feel like a tack-on, and is just a small building populated by kobolds. I generally don’t like humanoids, they tend to be overused and are usually just sword-fodder. Human bandits almost always are a better choice. Keep the mundane as mundane and the fantastic will be all the more fantastic, and terrifying.

This is available at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/3783/Castles–Crusades-U1-Shadows-of-the-Halfling-Hall?affiliate_id=1892600