The Lost Arrows of Aristemis

The Lost Arrows of Aristemis

This one was just meant to be another Dungeon Crawl Classic to go on the collection. It was nearly the last one that I bought and I was not planning on using anything else for my campaign. I didn’t even read it until a few weeks later and that was mostly because I was bored. Upon reading it I was surprised by how well it was going to fit into my campaign. One of the hidden twists, if one would call it that, was even one that I had been planning so I used the module for the reveal. It is rare that a module would fit so easily into an ongoing campaign that was not designed for it.

The Lost Arrows of Artemis is number forty one in the long line of Dungeon Crawl Classics. It is one of the third edition ones. It is written by Smaugdragon which is either an alias or the child of very odd parents. The module is sixty four pages but almost half of that are new monster stats. There is more on the monsters a little later on in this review. The art is pretty good and the maps are excellent like most in the Dungeon Crawl Classic line. This module does not have any of the neat player hand outs that so many in the product line do have. I almost consider that one of the staples of the series and would really like to see that in all of them.

The monsters that I spoke of before are used with permission thanks to the good old OGL. There are creatures here from the Tome of Horrors, the Tome of Horrors 2, Minions: Fearsome Foes, and Pale Designs. It was one of the main reasons to have such books publishes with plenty of open content. It was not done as often as I think it could have so I am going to give this module high mark for doing so. It is a great example of how the OGL is hugely beneficial to modules.

Spoilers to follow

The Lost Arrows of Aristemis is a simple dungeon crawl. There is a good amount of things going on but not enough to become complex. It is a module about slavers and evil races. But also about getting these lost arrows. The arrow plot seemed a little weak and unneeded. If the group is the good guys and heroes they will explore this place and kill all the slavers to rescue the slaves. The arrows seem to be another reason to get people to do that. There is a bunch of magical arrows that the god Aristemis sent to the world and they are now found through out this place. There are many ways to get the player characters involved in the module some are better then others but it is some good options.

The plot of the module deals with slavers. There are a wide range of creatures in here and while if I listed them they would seem random the writer did a pretty good job of having them make sense for the most part. The variety of monsters and the use of very common ones along with some very rarely used ones gives a good mixture of enemies to deal with. The first creatures involved should be the goblins. One nice thing done is that the goblins are assuming the player characters are there to buy slaves. This opens the beginning of the module to some fun role playing possibilities if the player characters want to go that route. Of course the age old solution of just slaughtering everything in sight should work well, too. But there is more to it then that. There is a nice encounter with a dragon that is an illusion by a potential ally that has been trying to rescue slaves mostly children. There are some nice non combat options to encounters in the module and that is a good way to make it into a more memorable adventure and also a good one.

The twist I talked about in the beginning of the review is that there is Drow involved. It is not really a twist as it is not like there are hints or reasons to suspect something else. It just is not something expected I guess is the best phrase. I know not everyone likes the Drow. It is only in the module once and it is easy to replace it with something else if one doe not wish to use the Drow in the adventures. While it is okay to remove the Drow it is not okay to replace the Flailsnail. This is a classic creature from the inspired days of first edition Dungeon and Dragons and it is clearly one of the most under used creatures in the game. The Flailsnail is a deeply misunderstood beast and with luck we will be blessed one day with a Ecology of the Flailsnail or a Behind the Monsters dedicated to this fine creature.

The module has four different areas and there are over fifty encounters with monsters and traps in here so it can take a bit of time to get through it all. It is designed for characters of levels one through three with information on how to scale things down for weak parties and how to increase the challenge for stronger groups. The module is a mix of the unusual and the mundane. It is a good module to borrow ideas from as there are quite a few areas that area bit different from the normal.

The Lost Arrows of Aristemis is a pretty good module for low level characters. It offers some good encounters and packs a lot into the dungeon crawl. The module does reprint a lot of monsters from other sources and that can be a plus for people wanting a few more monsters and not having them elsewhere. It is another good addition to the Dungeon Crawl Classic line.