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The Lost City of Barakus
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<blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2011335" data-attributes="member: 18387"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>To sum up:</p><p></p><p>Strong points:</p><p>Generic campaign setting, detailed enough to be useful.</p><p>Size: takes characters easily from level 1 to 5. No supplementary materials necessary.</p><p>Many side quests open for great flexibility.</p><p>Well written and eminently playable, even for inexperienced DMs.</p><p>Varied challenges, many opportunities for role-playing as well as hack'n'slash.</p><p>Good binding.</p><p>Great maps.</p><p>Great product support as well as an active community at the Necromancer Games forums.</p><p></p><p>Weak points:</p><p>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.</p><p>A little light in plot. This is really a matter of taste.</p><p>Price: not unreasonable, but could be a bit high if you are not going to use all of it.</p><p>Numerous small errors in editing.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Messageboard Golem, post: 2011335, member: 18387"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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