Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
The Lost City of Barakus
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011449" data-attributes="member: 1129"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="JoeGKushner, post: 2011449, member: 1129"] 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. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
The Lost City of Barakus
Top