{"id":10355,"date":"2026-04-04T07:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T11:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10355"},"modified":"2026-03-12T14:15:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T18:15:39","slug":"tomb-of-the-dundel-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10355","title":{"rendered":"Tomb of The Dundel Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Heidi Gygax Garland, Erik Garland, Adapted by Bill Silvey
GAXLAND
1e
Levels 5-7<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The mission: A local elder dwarf has commissioned you to find the long abandoned underground tomb of the legendary Dundel Chief, R?ta V?kara. As no dwarven folk are allowed beyond the South Gate of the city of S\u00f8rholde, you have been entrusted to retrieve a long lost and priceless document that your benefactor maintains would free the dwarven folk from their obligation to maintain the city of S\u00f8rholde and reinstate the great dwarven mines of the Dundel once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 64 page adventure presents what is essentially a linear tomb with around forty rooms. Very long winded, lots of read-aloud, and no real interactivity beyond traps and combat. It is quite the amateurish effort for $35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m gong to start by saying something nice. \u201cThieves\u2019 Tools can always be improvised with items from the adventuring packs (i.e. a hammer and piton) but the improvised tools and lock will be destroyed in the process.\u201d I like this kind of framing about thieves tools. I think the natural assumption is thieves tools are lockpics and other delicate instruments. I don\u2019t really like thieves as written in most (all?) systems and this aligns with my view of crowbars and sledgehammers being standard dungeon equipment. One day maybe I\u2019ll work up a thief class in which their find\/remove abilities are just rerolls, given anyone can find\/remove a traps, open doors, etc. Anyway, thieves tools being higher quality crowbars and sledgehammers make sense to me, lasting more than one attempt, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Otherwise, man, this thing is rough. Lots of read-aloud, mounds of paddings, a mostly linear dungeon and low-powered opponents. I shall assume the best of intentions and these are just enthusiastic amateurs who wrote for, say, 5e, and had Bill localize it to 1e. But that localize was just not done well at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adventure starts off in medias res with the parties wagon train being attacked by five skeletons. Yes, five skeletons. At levels five through seven. This is a recurring problem with the adventure. Very low level enemies, in small quantities, in general, but skeletons in particular. Oh, but these are special skeletons! They have TWO HD!!!!! Level five is an auto-turn and level seven is an auto destroy. So, yes, please, put in five skeletons. Or some giant rats. Yeah, sure, something like a hundred or a thousand skeletons, rats, stirge, et, can become an obstacle for the party, A hazard or environmental feature if not a straight up combat. When you finally make it to the last room of the dungeon you face off against the titular undead Dundel chief himself! Who I\u2019m pretty sure is a 2HD skeleton. The read-aloud says he rises to attack. And that other skeletons nearby rise to attack. And it gives us stats for a 2HD skeleton right there. And no stats for the chieftain. Was there supposed to be stats for the big bad? Did they all fuck this up? Both writers credited? Both editors credited? The conversion person credited? The two proofreaders credited? Or is he supposed to be a 2HD skeleton? I wonder if anyone cared?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It engages in LONG, like, REALLY LONG sections of read-aloud. For everything. Once again, no one wants long read-aloud. Nobody cares about it. The DM doesn\u2019t. The players HATE it. That\u2019s when the phones come out. If you don\u2019t run a shitty shitty game then people will be engaged and the phones will NOT come out. More than two or three sentences of read-aloud, SHORT sentences, is all you can get away with. If half your page is read-aloud text, as it is here in a not uncommon occurrence, then you are CLEARLY FAILING. In many pages there is far FAR less DM text on a page then there is read-aloud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second person read-aloud. Don\u2019t do that. Don\u2019t make assumptions about the party. They are all 50\u2019 tall and incorporeal in my game, so your shitty long second-person read-aloud doesn\u2019t fucking apply. This also applies to that shtity in medias res opening. You\u2019re part of a caravan, a wagon train, to the tomb. Earthquakes! Skeleton attacks! \u201cUh, we flew there.\u201d Uh huh. Unspeakable Oath did an CoC adventure that started with the lights out in the players actual game space, then the DM flicked them on and one of them spat out a piece of hotdog. (His tongue, as it turns out.) THAT was a fucking in medias res fucking openening! For a one shot. If you are not the Unspeakable Oath and doing a one shot then maybe think twice before doing this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You are on your way to the tomb of the dundel chief. Some dwarves hired you. They want you to go find a deed in it that gives them the right to open a mine and they are not allowed in\/through the gateway city. A piece of paper. The dwarves think that a piece of paper is what they need. To coopt a quote, who, exactly, is going to enforce the judiciaries decision? Jesus gonna come down and smite the city elders for not obeying the piece of paper? Emperor Whatits, that maybe both the city and the dwarves pay homage to (If that were the case?) WHo does he like best? Is he trying to curry favor with one or the other party? But, sure, whatever. That\u2019s a dwarf probem, I guess, YOUVE got a piece of paper that lets you go explore the tomb. That doesn\u2019t belong to the dwarves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strangely, the dundel people, who still exist and are all around, are ok with you plundering and robbing and desecrating the tomb of their greatest chief. \u201cThe Dundel people will be friendly and will answer questions if able.\u201d Like, in ALL ways. Sure thing man, plunder away! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
DM text is quite poor. \u2018Wait, we just started and we already have earthquakes and are under attack by the undead? Let\u2019s go back a few days for a bit of a flashback.\u201d Wonderful. Conversational. \u201cIf gear is left in the tunnel above or a rope is left hanging into the chamber it will be untouched when the time comes to return to the surface.\u201d Is the sun still burning when we return? Is the air outside still breathable when we return? Room names are that cringe stuff that turns punny sometimes like \u201cEncounter 3F: What\u2019s Down Here?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mechanics wise get things like a column of text to describe a pit trap. A simple pit trap with a clowning lid. A column of text. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn\u2019t it, how you used to get away with just drawing an X on the map and saying nothing about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe slabs are extremely heavy and cannot be moved or damaged in any meaningful way.\u201d Uh huh. How about \u201cThe padlock cannot be broken, but it may be picked\u201d I think, perhaps, you underestimate my players. One of my proudest moments as a father is when my kids, knowing there was a basement to a house but not being able to find a way in, pulled out their tools and started to work on the wood floor. And those were first level tweens. I think my aging level seven wizard can find a way through, if not the bevy of magic items the level five through sevens carry. It\u2019s fucking absurd. Half the fucking spell lists in 1e are devoted to shit like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One room takes three pages to describe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dungeon is linear. You come down in to a room with eight doors, one open. You explore that section of the dungeon and at the end of it you can then go explore the next section of the dungeon and so on. IE: linear. Of those eight sections, about halfway through the text, you get an interlude that describes the nomad camp outside the dungeon that you camp in. Seriously. Like, after room twenty, here’s a description of the nomad camp outside, and then it starts in on room 21. No, this was not an editing or layout error. It was intentional. Because just sticking rando shit in the middle of other rando shit is CLEARLY the best way to organize things. That\u2019s my, in my own dictionary, the letters M are placed between the letters Q and D. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quantum rooms? IE: the dreaded if\/then padding? Check. \u201cIf the party explores to the North, they will find the walkway leads to a section of bridge that crosses to a door. If they continue North, they find a dead end and the source of the fast- moving stream, emerging through a heavy iron grate from the darkness beyond.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dumb ass interactivity\/? Check. \u201cThe answer to the riddle is: Eye. As soon as the answer is spoken \u2026\u201d No sphynx there. Just a room. Yu\u2019re just saying the answer out loud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The final insult may be the hyperlink included at the end for downloadable content. It\u2019s broken. Doesn\u2019t work. As in it takes you a page on their website that says \u201cNo page found.\u201d I went digging elsewhere on their website for the content. It\u2019s not present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s linear, stuffed with excessive read-aloud, DM notes that are excessive in some places and lacking in other place, to the point I\u2019m questioning if there was a layout\/edit error that removed information that was supposed to be present. It is essentially traps and combat with a lot of irrelevant combat encounters and a few 7 HD dudes here and there. This is not a strong showing. For $35.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is only three pages with none of the dungeon. A good preview should show a potential buyer what to expect, and the core encounters are a part of that. Still, you get a look at the read-aloud on a couple of the lighter pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/446899\/tomb-of-the-dundel-chief-1e-special-edition?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Heidi Gygax Garland, Erik Garland, Adapted by Bill SilveyGAXLAND1eLevels 5-7 The mission: A local elder dwarf has commissioned you to find the long abandoned underground tomb of the legendary Dundel Chief, R?ta V?kara. As no dwarven folk are allowed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/446899.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10356,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10355\/revisions\/10356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}