Summary: Under Siege! Stop an undead army from taking the castle.
Adventure for levels 9-11. The theme is that the PC's interupt an undead assault on a paladin base. It's a "Dungeon Crawl Classic", which means 1st Edition feel, 3.5e rules. That means heavy on the combat, light on the "long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPC's who aren't meant to be killed".
Good points:
- Interesting, different plot. Defend against an assault by an army of undead and blackguards. Think "Army of Darkness" (bring your own Bruce Campbell), "Fort Apache", or "Gunga Din", any plot where the PC's are outnumbered and outgunned, but have to fight it out, or die to the last man. Usually in D&D, some long dead PC's got the glory for that in the ruined dungeon we explore ages later, but now it's the PC's turn to have the epitaph: "Go tell the Spartans, you who pass by, we obeyed their orders, and are dead." Yeah, PC Thermopylae, baby!![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
- Not a lot of different types of monsters for the DM to remember the rules on, but it appears to keep it moving along and not get repetitive. The excitement relies more on the plot than on lots of obscure rules and weird monsters. It's an adventure, not a crunch delivery system. It doesn't need any new rules or extra books, unlike some OGL products.
- "No weird campaign settings". Solid, sensible background info. Enough to understand what's happening and why, but not so much that it messes with an existing campaign. For example, the paladins here worship the god of valor -- they give you one, if you don't have one, but Heironeous or Tyr or whoever would work fine. In my own Greyhawk campaign, this will be probably be a temple of Heironeous or an outpost of the Knights of the Watch, with the enemies being ancient servants of Hextor or Iggwilv, revived by baddies working for Iuz or Ket. Fits great for a campaign with a war in it, like mine, but that's not at all necessary.
On the other hand points:
- The castle/cloister is not the best design for defense. You'd think paladins would have better military architects, with a more compact, sturdier design with fewer points of entry and multiple layers of defense -- and an escape tunnel and stuff. I'm a real castle buff though, so many folks may think it's fine. And making your own map is easy enough. This place is neither a simple motte-and-bailey castle, nor a complex super castle like Caernarvon . . . but a D&D dungeon map castle.
- PC's arrive when the fight has been going on for some time. They don't get to direct the defense, but just arrive when it's in "the final throes". Of course, a DM could rewrite that. I think the main reason Goodman Games chose to do it that way is "brevity is the soul of wit". I think it'd be fun to do a Stalingrad, room-by-room defense, but that'd probably lead to a lot of repetition, and PC deaths.
- To get really psyched, your party should probably have a paladin, or some reason to fight to the death to save paladins. Might not work for every party.
Overall, this is close to what I'd have written for my own campaign, if I had the time, so I'm psyched and I really want to use it. I buy a lot of adventures, but for most, I'm like "ehh"; this one is way more than "ehh" for me -- nearly perfect, to me, but tastes vary.
Adventure for levels 9-11. The theme is that the PC's interupt an undead assault on a paladin base. It's a "Dungeon Crawl Classic", which means 1st Edition feel, 3.5e rules. That means heavy on the combat, light on the "long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPC's who aren't meant to be killed".
Good points:
- Interesting, different plot. Defend against an assault by an army of undead and blackguards. Think "Army of Darkness" (bring your own Bruce Campbell), "Fort Apache", or "Gunga Din", any plot where the PC's are outnumbered and outgunned, but have to fight it out, or die to the last man. Usually in D&D, some long dead PC's got the glory for that in the ruined dungeon we explore ages later, but now it's the PC's turn to have the epitaph: "Go tell the Spartans, you who pass by, we obeyed their orders, and are dead." Yeah, PC Thermopylae, baby!
- Not a lot of different types of monsters for the DM to remember the rules on, but it appears to keep it moving along and not get repetitive. The excitement relies more on the plot than on lots of obscure rules and weird monsters. It's an adventure, not a crunch delivery system. It doesn't need any new rules or extra books, unlike some OGL products.
- "No weird campaign settings". Solid, sensible background info. Enough to understand what's happening and why, but not so much that it messes with an existing campaign. For example, the paladins here worship the god of valor -- they give you one, if you don't have one, but Heironeous or Tyr or whoever would work fine. In my own Greyhawk campaign, this will be probably be a temple of Heironeous or an outpost of the Knights of the Watch, with the enemies being ancient servants of Hextor or Iggwilv, revived by baddies working for Iuz or Ket. Fits great for a campaign with a war in it, like mine, but that's not at all necessary.
On the other hand points:
- The castle/cloister is not the best design for defense. You'd think paladins would have better military architects, with a more compact, sturdier design with fewer points of entry and multiple layers of defense -- and an escape tunnel and stuff. I'm a real castle buff though, so many folks may think it's fine. And making your own map is easy enough. This place is neither a simple motte-and-bailey castle, nor a complex super castle like Caernarvon . . . but a D&D dungeon map castle.
- PC's arrive when the fight has been going on for some time. They don't get to direct the defense, but just arrive when it's in "the final throes". Of course, a DM could rewrite that. I think the main reason Goodman Games chose to do it that way is "brevity is the soul of wit". I think it'd be fun to do a Stalingrad, room-by-room defense, but that'd probably lead to a lot of repetition, and PC deaths.
- To get really psyched, your party should probably have a paladin, or some reason to fight to the death to save paladins. Might not work for every party.
Overall, this is close to what I'd have written for my own campaign, if I had the time, so I'm psyched and I really want to use it. I buy a lot of adventures, but for most, I'm like "ehh"; this one is way more than "ehh" for me -- nearly perfect, to me, but tastes vary.
