The Lost City of Barakus

Plunge into the forgotten city of Barakus where only the bold survive! Explore cavernous dungeons, intrigue with wary soldiers and battle horrors from the edge of time. Barakus is an Epic introductory location-based adventure for character levels 1-5, revised for the 3.5 system. This huge adventure provides months of gaming material. The book details a complete city, the wilderness surrounding it, and a huge, 5-level dungeon. Dozens of minor quests and puzzles are used to distract and entertain adventurers while the main storyline builds to a crescendo.

This adventure and sourcebook contains over 30 highly detailed side quests that take place in the wilderness and city, and the dungeon itself contains over 200 numbered encounter areas. Players can attempt to stop the city beggars from being sold as slaves, face bandits in the wilderness, expose the corruption of a noble family, and destroy an ancient evil that caused the downfall of the lost civilization. Written by industry renowned authors WDB Kenower and Bill Webb, this adventure is the perfect way to begin a new campaign, or to continue an existing one.

Review for Lost City of Barakus
Hardbound, stitched, $34.95 By Necromancer Games, Published by Troll Lords, 208 pages, large font (12 or 14)

First impressions; It is expensive, it has a large font, it is black and white, and it has a pull out map in the back.

After reading through it twice, I think:

It is worth it to me.

Why? It is a Campaign starter for first level characters up to 6th levels, and beyond if you build upon what is in here. It gives you a city to start from called Endhome.
This city is a major trading city that sits on/near a river with easy access to the ocean, or you can just put it on the mouth of a river that dumps into an ocean, like New Orleans in the US.
Major NPC's are identified and fleshed out. Including town leaders as well as encounter NPC's. The city itself is well detailed, but they intentionally leave plenty for the individual DM to tailor.

It then goes on to detail a nice nearby dungeon crawl with plenty of background and depth to the history and going ons of the Lost City of Barakus. It even has a reasonably original creation history which cannot be resolved until the characters are about 20th level, or the DM gives them a LOT of help. There is a lot of depth to this module, lots of little pieces of info given to spark your imagination and give you an affinity for the adventures contained. This isn't just one adventure. There are numerous adventures, fleshed out for you, that are base in or around Endhome, BArakus, and even both. Plus numerous notes on how to continue using this beyond what is written.

Other Pro's:

I like the fact it is hardback, unlike my favorite softback modules this one will last, which is a necessity if you decide to use it as a core piece for a new campaign.
I even like the fact that the font is larger than normal, my eyes never felt strained. I would have thought the larger font was an attempt at fluff, but I read on some thread that because of publishing issues the page count would have been the same irregardless of the font size. If that was true, then I am glad they went with the larger font instead of more ads.
I also like the level of detail. It is just right to get you going, with plenty left for the DM to add their own material. I see this as becoming a major fixture in my future games.

Some con's:
No table of contents. A book this big really should have one.
Maps are not easy to follow with location marks. The numbers are even hard to pick out on the map because of the coloration, plus the numbers do not go in a sytematic order, ie left to right, top to bottom. There may be a pattern to it, but I haven't discerned what it is yet.


Final thoughts:

It is a good module/campaign starter with multiple adventures aimed at making the setting come alive and giving a variety of challenges. This is not a "typical" dungeon crawl. It is a nice merger of a city and a dungeon, showing how by merging them together, they become far better. So much going on in this book you definitely want to read it a couple of times before you use it.

I did not take a "hard" look at how balanced the encounters are, but nothing stood out as being unbalanced for a party of four. The treasure is not extravagant and there are three key pieces of magic with solid creation histories that are integral to "solving" the great mystery of Barakus, at or around 20th level. However, they are not so powerful that you wouldn't let them find them at 5th level.

I strongly recommend you read the introduction and follow the authors advice to maximize your use of this "resource". I should also note there are 38 pages of monster and NPC write-ups at the back of the book. The new monsters are: Fear Guard, Ghoul Lord, Gribbon, Imposters, Mist Demon, and Statue Guardian. These only take up 4 or 5 pages. The rest are the monster and NPC write-ups for the adventure encounters and townsfolk. Very useable in any adventure/game.

For errata go to the messageboards, not the home page, of necromancergames, and look for the forum on Lost City. It is the first thread in it. Downloads have been promised by the author and they sound very good, but they haven't appeared yet. In the forums you may see some campaign journals and you will definitely see many useful discussions about the product and how to use it.

My scores:

Adventure quality/content: 5, because I couldn't think of better ways to do what they have done.
Editing: 3.5, numerous spelling errors, but not so many as to become irritating or distracting. Ie not nearly as bad as the 1st print run of 3.0. No table of contents.
Presentation: 4.0, The binding definitely seems to be a strong and stitched type. The maps are nicely done, but overly grey. Plus the numbers are somewhat difficult to find/use. I know some people will be put off by the fact that there aren't any grids, but I am not one of them.

Overall: 4.33 I am glad I bought it, and I highly recommend it.

The Lost City of Barakus by Necromancer Games is an epic campaign module designed to take characters from level 1 to about level 5. The flavour of the module is very old-school, with reminiscences of the old B-series modules like The Hobgoblin King, retaining the simplicity of 1e D&D without the crudity. There isn't much that is exotic or contrived in the adventure. Most of the challenges involve quite ordinary monsters and traps, but many are still memorable.

I'll say it up straight: The Lost City of Barakus is the best adventure I have ever played. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I like epic dungeon crawls. But there is a lot more to LCoB than that. It is abounding with side quests and contains an entire city setting, replete with interesting NPCs and opportunities for adventure, both in the city and in the surrounding area, over and above the main dungeon, emulating other Necromancer Game products like The Crucible of Freya and Vault of Larin Karr, both of which derive their main strength from the wealth of encounter areas, making them more of mini-campaign settings than just adventure modules.

This means that there is very little railroading in the module. It supplies the DM with a number of possible hooks, but mainly LCoB is very site-oriented. This leaves the DM with a lot of freedom to subtly or not so subtly nudge the players towards certain areas as well as the option for the characters to go out and explore on their own. This calls for a certain amount of caution, though, as the encounter areas are of varying difficulty, and while the most difficult (one or two too difficult for characters of the appropriate level to tackle at all) have ample warning, many others could turn out lethal for a low-level party.

During my play of Barakus so far, we have had no less than five near TPKs (Total Party Kill, a not entirely infrequent occurence in the Necromancer Games-style gaming), mostly because the party got cocky and not cautious enough. I felt that the encounters were well balanced if quite challenging.

The very wealth of encounters points to the main weakness of LCoB, though. If standard experience points awards are used, the characters will quickly outgrow the adventure. The authors recommend cutting experience back by 50% (or even more), which I have found to work well if you like a gritty, low-level campaign. If this is not to your liking, you will have to either skip most of the encounters outside the dungeon proper or modify the lower levels quite heavily. While this could be done, I feel that in that case you risk paying for a lot of material that will never see any use. Of course the city setting and the wilderness encounters could be used separately, but that would be missing the charm of the clever interrelatedness of the different sites.

Thus, while LCoB will not appeal to everyone, if you don't mind cutting back experience radically, it is full of excellent material and will provide many many hours of intense fun.



I'll proceed to some specifics. The module is a hardback, 212 pages for the price of $34.95, which I would estimate as about average. The binding is good, the layout is nice and the maps (of which there is a large fold-out map of the city, as well as a number of smaller maps) are simply delectable, both clear and full of little details to spark your imagination. All the maps are available as a free download from the Necromancer Games website, which is also a good place to go for errata and advice about how to run the module, as well as some gossip about adventures and misadventures in and around Barakus. There isn't a lot of interior art, and what is there is decent but not outstanding.

The content roughly breaks down into five sections. After a short introduction there follows a section on the city Endhome (45 pages), a section on the wilderness (45 pages), a description of the main dungeon (80 pages) and a section with statistics for monsters and named characters, including a number of new monsters. I'll treat of each in turn.

First, the introduction. The adventure is not campaign-specific and can easily be dropped into any campaign. It features ratmen from the Sword & Sorcery product Creature Collection, but these can be replaced if the DM so prefers (there are stats for them but no full description). The authors also advise DMs to reduce Xp as discussed above. There are also some hooks to get the party going. Personally, I prefer a little more heavy-handed treatment to get the party started (at the start of a new campaign, which is what Barakus works best as, the adventurer's motivations tend to be a little hazy), but the DM can easily supply additional hooks.

The Endhome section contains a list of important locations, as well as some major NPCs (including a party of evil adventurers that make for an excellent nemesis of the characters), but a lot of it is left for the DM to flesh out. The local religions are some sort of homebrew but can easily be replaced with whatever mythology the DM uses, especially the official pantheon. There are several short adventures located in Endhome, which take up about half of this section, and which also contains some interesting NPCs.

The Wilderness section details about twenty different locations, many of which would make good materials for a short session, as well some possible allies and base camps to aid the adventurers in their quest. Both the city and wilderness sections also contain encounter tables with some interesting twists to them.

The dungeon itself, the lost city of Barakus, contains the remains of a lost civilisation. It is crawling with monsters, of course, and to solve the main plot the characters will have to collect a series of items spread out over the dungeon. This plot device is a bit hackneyed, but it is also classic. As there isn't much of an over-arching plot, being a strongly site-based adventure, this serves to motivate the characters to continue their exploration. The size of the dungeon may seem daunting, but the encounters are varied and offer ample opportunities for role-playing. It is a dynamic place, but because the monsters are split up in many little communities, the DM won't be forced to rework the entire dungeon after each raid by the PCs.

The adventure contains six new monsters (as well as a few new minor magic items), with a CR from ½ to 6. All of them have an old-school flavour, and they are not very interesting, although a few of them could give the adventurers some nasty surprises. Then follows a set of stats for all the monsters of the book, as well as all named characters in alphabetical order (sometimes a little confusing in the cases when characters have both a first and last name). There are a number of small errors in the monster stats, which have been addressed in the errata. I found it very useful not to have to use the MM for every encounter, but the errors were numerous enough to be annoying. Ruleswise it is written for the 3.5 edition.

To sum up:

Strong points:
Generic campaign setting, detailed enough to be useful.
Size: takes characters easily from level 1 to 5. No supplementary materials necessary.
Many side quests open for great flexibility.
Well written and eminently playable, even for inexperienced DMs.
Varied challenges, many opportunities for role-playing as well as hack'n'slash.
Good binding.
Great maps.
Great product support as well as an active community at the Necromancer Games forums.

Weak points:
Requires custom experience system. This is a huge problem in my mind, as it forces a major rules change. But for those willing to make the change, it works fine.
A little light in plot. This is really a matter of taste.
Price: not unreasonable, but could be a bit high if you are not going to use all of it.
Numerous small errors in editing.

In sum, if you like the "first edition feel" that is the hallmark of Necromancer Games, and you don't mind cutting down experience, you should definitely get this module, and prepare yourself for a great experience. This is definitely a 5.

The Lost City of Barakus is part adventure and part campaign setting. It’s almost a perfect fit for a new GM looking for the pure 1st edition feel in that while there is an long term goal, the GM can run numerous encounters as pure dungeon crawls and still have some surprises left at the end for his players.

Some of the things the adventure does right include using named or quest items to give the material flavor. In this case, we’ve got oodles of background information and ideas are presented on how to use it. The ideas are perhaps a little on the minimalist side but they cover several options and allow the GM to highly customize the material. Some of the material goes beyond hack and slash, but then falls back on the players as heroes and awards characters experience points not on overcoming challenges, but in doing the right thing and meeting story awards.

As a sourcebook, the book includes a nice fold out map of the city of Endhome and its nearby environment. It’s a nice map with over twenty numbered locations detailed in the book proper. The bad news is that it’s a brief description of place that the characters are likely to wind up in as typical adventurers. In addition, there are no internal maps in the city. What does a typical inn of the city look like? What are typical prices in this area? Not noted here, but as this isn’t a full setting sourcebook, I can overlook that. The nice thing though, is that they’ve added several adventurers for the characters in the city proper.

Now I’m probably one of the few GMs who feels that we have too many village adventurers and not enough city ones. The adventurers here aren’t going to break the mold, as they include dealing with the aristocratic undead and cleaning the sewers beneath the city, but they do allow a new GM to see how events can be tied into the city and provide dungeon crawling action without entering the wilderness. One thing that makes the city feel ‘fake’ to me is the low levels of almost everything and everyone in the area. It’s great for low level characters to get a feel of things, but seems a little strange in the long run as the characters gain in levels.

And speaking of levels, as the characters move through the nearby environments, areas numbered A through U, the party faces some tough choices. These include deciding if they want to accept the challenge at that time. For instance, there is actually a red dragon in the area. As written, the party has no chance against the dragon Bezzalt.

And to me, that’s good. If party members are always under the illusion that they will always face equal opposition, then things can quickly become formula. Third edition helps break down some of those barriers by allowing humanoids to take levels and gain in power just as a character so that the players never know when they’re facing an ‘orc’ or if they’re facing Kulz’ad, the Man Eater.

About the only part the adventure fails to move beyond being a simple adventure, is at the end. Nothing is provided on continuing adventures in the area or going over what happens to the nearby lands if the party loses the ‘big’ battle. Some more NPCs in the city itself and more options in Barakus, like what the drow will do if the mad lich Devron escapes, would help augment the module’s utility beyond it’s boundaries.

One thing that would’ve helped flesh these areas out is more information on the non-player characters that inhabit them. Take Gilda Waynetrop for example. A low level half-elf druid with wolf companions with only a few words of background and personality. Where’s the boxed text to read aloud when the player’s encounter here? Where’s the personality of the wolves? Once again, it’s acceptable because its such a large adventure that something’s got to give.

In terms of the Lost City of Barakus itself, there are several reasons the party may wind up adventuring there. One thing that stands out in my mind in this adventure, is that there are several areas that the party should move on to another level, gain an item that’s needed, and then come back. Now to be honest, I haven’t run the whole thing yet so I don’t know how it’s going to work in play, but once again, it makes sense that even if the character’s can survive everything on a certain level, there is no guarantee that they will be able to overcome all of the obstacles or take all the treasures without gaining other items on different levels.

New monsters and referenced monsters are placed in an appendix for ease of reference. Normally, I like this as it allows the module to save space. However, because the adventure is so big, it actually works against itself here, as you have to flip to the back of the book several times. How could that be overcome? Well, there are some problems with the whole layout of the book. This is like the big print version of the adventure. If the publisher could’ve used a normal sized font and kept the adventure at the same price, they could’ve had a separate booklet with all the game stats in it, or they could’ve put the game stats in each area as appropriate.

The NPCs are also slotted in the appendix. Thankfully they are broken down by section or chapter because unfortunately, while there are three pages of ads, there is no index. The fold out map came out with no problem. I was highly thankful to the d20 gods for that. I have many horror stories about maps that have failed to come out properly. To make up for that, the d20 gods put a pox on the book itself as several pages weren’t cut and I had to break out the straight razor to get them apart.

The cover is a great piece by Brom. However, it suffers from the lone character syndrome. Where’s the action? Where’s the movement? Where’s the pacing? Covers like this came out when Freeport’s first module was launched, also a Brom piece I believe. Internal art is provided by long term Necromancer artists Brian LeBlanc, Tyler Walpole and Veronica Jones. Cartography is by Ed Bourelle, giving the maps a nice organic feel that still has some utility to it. I won’t say the book is light on art, but art in the new monsters section would’ve went a long way in giving those creatures a personality. The internal material does have a nice feel though. I particularly like the illustration of the Stone of Madness with three stone guardians wielding two-handed swords beating back an adventuring group or the full-page illustration of a seven-headed hydra fighting off another group.

For any GM looking for a new 1st level campaign setting that can fit into almost any standard d20 fantasy setting, The Lost City of Barakus, while expensive and in need of compacting itself, is an excellent starting place not only due to it’s use of city adventurers, but because it has wilderness and dungeon crawl quests to satisfy any 1st edition feel.