Master Dungeons M1:Dragora's Dungeon

Dragora’s Dungeon is the first in a new series from Goodman Games. Like every adventure they’ve started for 4e, this one too is for 1st level characters. Instead of a “simple” Dungeon Crawl Classic, the GM is provided with a base of operations and a wide amount of material to integrate into his campaign. This requires a bit more work than simply reading the adventure and making the minimal preparations that a standard dungeon crawl requires. At $12.99 for a 48 page black and white adventure, the book is priced to own.

The book differs in several ways than the DCC line. First off, the cover is a Clyde Caldwell classic. Not my style mind you as the female “warrior” looks stiff and the dragon looks like he’s been blue screened into the picture. She has weight, the rest of the painting doesn’t seem to. Might be the massive contract between the color and intensity of her being the up front piece but it just looks off.

The interior art is handled by Britt Martin. Not a ton of illustration but those that are present, are well done. Perhaps the best in the line. The bad news for some is that it’s not in the style of the old DCC and doesn’t have that old “charm”. The thing that actually annoys me isn’t the style. I find it superior.

Rather, it’s the placement of some of the art. For example, we’ve got a picture of something that looks like a wyvern on page 35. That might be one of the big enemies, who follows on a latter page, but doesn’t look anything like the one of the cover. How about a quarter page devoted to a rat when there’s no rat on either page or the immediate pages before or after? It’s a solid illustration of a rat but what the hell is it doing there? The interior illustration of Dragora has black hair while the cover is blonde.

Game mechanic wise, it’s basically 4e. Now it’s now under the official license and there may be some confusion with the terminology, but I was playing with Mayfair’s Role Aids line with it’s own unique terminology for years so for those who don’t get it… well, post your questions and I’ll see if I can help.

The interior maps look familiar to me. Looking at the cartography, it’s Ed Bourelle. For those who don’t know, Ed has his own line of material from Skeleton Key Games and has worked with many, if not all of the big names. My only regret about the maps is that we don’t get any big ole maps to play with like we did in Sellswords of Punjar.

In terms of placement, since the bulk of the adventure takes place in an isolated, indeed, magically hidden lost city, the adventure should be useful for any campaign setting or home brew.

The adventure is somewhat simple in principle. The players come under attack and through the machinations of the GM, hunt down their attackers who happen to belong to an ancient and lost race. That ancient race of monster men, of near gorilla men, have fallen under the sway of Dragora or rather, the warrior woman’s lover, a green dragon who these Zain-Kin, see as the reincarnation of Tiamat.

There are several areas to explore and numerous characters to encounter. The part where the book falls short is in presenting enough of that information to a GM to be more than a series of encounters. To be fair, the book does note that this is not a starter adventure for a starter GM. It’s for a GM who is willing to plunge his hands deep into the entrails of the adventure not only in terms of reading the whole thing before hand (Unlike some DCC’s for example), customizing the reactions and encounters, working with the methodologies the players take, and moving the “script” forward. The thing is that this script isn’t limited to a “mere” dungeon.

The drawback though is that while this method is fully valid and greatly useful, the book doesn’t provide enough assistance doing so. For example, the players, while exploring the lair of their attackers, the Zain-Kin, will probably have interactions with one of the three factions here. The three factions have different motivations and default reactions to the players. The lack of several named NPCs and their personal motivations, makes the adventure a little too freeform in my opinion. There are some suggested actions and a lot of the “adventure” actually takes the form of what happens if the characters follow that suggestion.

I don’t know exactly what would make the adventure fuller. Eliminating the replication of the cover on the interior and replacing it with a flow chart of possible events? Putting in some more NPCs for interaction purposes? Putting in some more overall options that could happen? Putting in some more high level details so that the adventure has utility past the first few levels? Something’s missing but it’s nothing that a GM whose comfortable winging things or knows his group is going to have a problem with.

One of the nice bonuses though, is that the new race, the Zain-Kin, are written up with several stat blocks. This allows the GM to have some flexibility when using them in the adventure so that the players aren’t always encountering the exact same force but more importantly, one of those write ups is for use as a player.

If you don’t like standard dungeon crawls and have been looking for something that has a lot of customibility to it, Dragor’a Dungeon is for you.