Revenge of the Rat King

Revenge of the Rat King

Revenge of the Rat King is the twenty seventh module in the famed line of Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games. It is more importantly the sequel to the first module of the line, Idylls of the Rat King. The modules must be pretty popular as Goodman Games combined them with a little extra material and released it for first edition Dungeon and Dragons at Gen Con 2008. I have ran these modules and they were a lot of fun so I wanted to get a review of them and hopefully people can take advantage of the great Goodman Games sale going on right now. Of course if one is reading this in 2009 the modules will no longer be for sale except in the used and secondary markets.

Revenge of the Rat King is a module written by Harley Stroh. It is a soft bound book like most in the line and it is written for third edition D&D. The art is pretty good and is all black and white. There are four player handouts in the module as well all very well done and a signature part of the line. The adventure is for character of levels four through six.

There are spoilers that follow so please do not read if you might play through this module. Just know it is very good and is a lot of fun.

The module is basically in three parts. The module assumes that the player characters have gone through the first module. This is all about revenge for what happened in that module so the events do not make sense if there is no reason for the revenge to happen. The party is told about some slavers in the city they are in and they of course go after the slavers. The module starts out as a typical dungeon crawl. There are some nasty traps and encounters with slavers as expected. The group has to navigate an underground river and that is a lot of fun with some potential skill checks in swimming and balance and other things PCs are not always doing. However, it ends in a trap. The group is attacked almost two dozen were rats. They are not meant to win this battle but to get captured. This can be a sticking point for some players and players do not always like this type of encounter.

The second part deals with the player characters escaping from being captured and then moving through the sewer and caves until they find their equipment. I like that the adventure does not have the equipment next door to where they are captured. Once again the player characters will have to navigate part of the underground river. There are a few weapons and things along they way they might find and make use out of but this is not an easy part of the adventure. And their items are not in a room that is easy to find. If they fail to find the secret door they could very well fail to get their equipment back. It is a good amount of risk in this adventure.

The third part is the group gaining access and then fighting the latest Rat King, a wererat as they all have been from the same cursed family. On the way there the player characters do have to cross a bridge that has a nasty troll guardian and if they are not careful the PCs could end up in the river and then basically have to go through much of part two all over again. The final battle is not very tough and it does leave it open so the Rat King can escape and bother the player characters even more. I choose to not do that as this was a secondary plot thread in my campaign and it was good to see it come to an end.

The module has a good theme going for it but does have two small sections that do not fit. They are for lack of a better phrase bonus areas. They are not easy to get to and it is very possible the PCs will not even think of exploring there. In my game the PCs never did. The parts have plots involved with them that have nothing to do with anything else in the module. The module has plenty of length without them so I can not think of any good reason that they were included in the module. That is a minor complaint though as they can easily be ignored like what happened in my own game.

Revenge of the Rat King is a good sequel and another fun Dungeon Crawl Classic module. For the most part everything follows the same theme and there are few monsters and encounters that seem like they were placed in here for no real reason. It is a solid module and one I suggest people get during the current Goodman Games sale.