Simon Collins
Explorer
Beware! This review contains major spoilers.
This is the second booster adventure by AEG. It is designed for four to six characters of level 6-8. It costs $2.49.
Production and Presentation: This module is 16 pages but each page is only ½ the width of an A4 page. The front (soft)cover features poor colour artwork, the back cover features an introduction for the players to the adventure. There is no internal artwork though the central pages contain a basic and poor quality map of the Temple of Azrael, but sufficient to run the adventure. The final page and the inside back cover contains OGL bumpf. The inside front cover is the beginning of the adventure.
The Story: A recent earthquake has opened up a connection between an abandoned temple, dedicated to a god of Undead, and the city sewer system. When sewer workers are brutally murdered, the PCs investigate and find hordes of undead occupying the sewer, an underground lake beneath the sewer and the temple itself – the undead are being created by the altar, powered by the head priest committing suicide on it when the temple fell. The PCs must defeat the undead and consecrate the altar.
The High Points: A short passage at the beginning gives advice on scaling the adventure – always useful. The temple’s corruption causes healing spells to be severely weakened – magical light spells, spells that specifically target evil or undead creatures and turning undead all automatically fail. This is a nasty surprise for the PCs – good idea. The linking of undead and the sewer system lends a nice unhealthy atmosphere. There is a nice twist on the ‘you find a +1 sword’ where the PCs may finish off the enchantment of a nearly-completed magical sword left behind by a wizard when the temple was abandoned.
The Low Points: Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of undead and this _is_ a temple of undead, but sometimes this adventure seems as though the author made a list of undead and then allocated them rooms on a map. We have ghouls in room 1, ghouls and a ghast in room 2, zombies in room 3, a gargantuan undead snake in room 4, more zombies in room 5, wights in room 6, more ghouls in room 8, skeletons in room 12, more skeletons and zombies in room 13, more wights in room 14, wights and skeletons in room 16 and a spectre in the final room 17 – you get the picture. There is a lot of treasure in this adventure, which also seems somewhat randomly placed – it seemed too much treasure to me.
Conclusion: A couple of nice ideas in what is essentially an undead slaughter fest. I can’t give this more than an average rating.
This is the second booster adventure by AEG. It is designed for four to six characters of level 6-8. It costs $2.49.
Production and Presentation: This module is 16 pages but each page is only ½ the width of an A4 page. The front (soft)cover features poor colour artwork, the back cover features an introduction for the players to the adventure. There is no internal artwork though the central pages contain a basic and poor quality map of the Temple of Azrael, but sufficient to run the adventure. The final page and the inside back cover contains OGL bumpf. The inside front cover is the beginning of the adventure.
The Story: A recent earthquake has opened up a connection between an abandoned temple, dedicated to a god of Undead, and the city sewer system. When sewer workers are brutally murdered, the PCs investigate and find hordes of undead occupying the sewer, an underground lake beneath the sewer and the temple itself – the undead are being created by the altar, powered by the head priest committing suicide on it when the temple fell. The PCs must defeat the undead and consecrate the altar.
The High Points: A short passage at the beginning gives advice on scaling the adventure – always useful. The temple’s corruption causes healing spells to be severely weakened – magical light spells, spells that specifically target evil or undead creatures and turning undead all automatically fail. This is a nasty surprise for the PCs – good idea. The linking of undead and the sewer system lends a nice unhealthy atmosphere. There is a nice twist on the ‘you find a +1 sword’ where the PCs may finish off the enchantment of a nearly-completed magical sword left behind by a wizard when the temple was abandoned.
The Low Points: Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of undead and this _is_ a temple of undead, but sometimes this adventure seems as though the author made a list of undead and then allocated them rooms on a map. We have ghouls in room 1, ghouls and a ghast in room 2, zombies in room 3, a gargantuan undead snake in room 4, more zombies in room 5, wights in room 6, more ghouls in room 8, skeletons in room 12, more skeletons and zombies in room 13, more wights in room 14, wights and skeletons in room 16 and a spectre in the final room 17 – you get the picture. There is a lot of treasure in this adventure, which also seems somewhat randomly placed – it seemed too much treasure to me.
Conclusion: A couple of nice ideas in what is essentially an undead slaughter fest. I can’t give this more than an average rating.
