The K-Team: Best Undead Adventures?

“In 1372 DR a crack commando unit was gathered by the Church of Kelemvor. These folks promptly quested to hunt down undead threats wherever and whenever they were found. Today, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you are troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night, if you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic, if you or your family have ever seen a spook, spectre or ghost, and if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...the K-Team”.

This was the idea I threw at my players a couple of years back, basically I combine John Carpenter's Vampires with the Ghost Busters. Whenever a player or two called out sick, I'd gather whomever COULD play and we'd run a 1-shot undead-themed adventure.

I'm collecting them again, so let's hear it! What are your favorite undead themed adventures? Dungeon Magazine, Necromancer, DCC, Green Ronin, what are your favorite, spookiest storylines?

-DM Jeff

I love this idea

Filge's tower in the first adventure in the Age of Worms adventure path certainly comes to mind! The ghostbusters could be sent in by irate neighbors to quell an overly raucous dinner party.

Also, of course, they could be hired by the new owner of Tegel Manor! That would be a whole campaign, though.

Ken

I've heard good things about Dream Machine Production's Complex of Zombies.

Crypt of the Devil Lich from Goodman Games if filled with undead as well as other nasties. If you play a standard party, you'll have an easier time than the pregens do, and it's not so deadly.

Pinotage

Old School Mayfair Games - Undead. You could build a whole campaign around this one.

"The Styes" by Richard Pett is conveniently broken up into mini-adventure sites, the first of which is a raid on an undead city counselman, who lives in a suspended ship-turned-sauna to keep his decaying flesh supple.

I never ran the second half, but the first half of Greg Vaughn's "Tammeraut's Fate" is exactly what you're looking for. PCs sent to a remote island hermitage, find it ruined with signs of a struggle. They eventually find survivors - badly diseased and barely holding on - ranting about how zombies rose from the sea last night to claim all the people they could. Then the sun starts setting... It's particularly awesome because it encourages a siege mentality - the hermitage is fairly defensible, and the tools and denizens thereof can be transformed into weapons to fight back against the undead horde.

Both of the above are from Dungeon Magazine.

In Libris Mortis, there were a bunch of little sample encounter sites. Most of them were "eh", but I really liked "The Warlord's Subterfuge". The Warlord is a horrible undead menace that's been terrorizing the countryside. He's actually a brain in a jar, but uses the hulking corpse he controls to be a terrifying, disposable face to the outside.

A undead one-shot I never actually got to run (because the party was TPKed while it was still in planning) would have been based around the infamously terrible "Manos" the Hands of Fate . The party finds an inn by the roadside on a long overland journey. The bizarre caretaker takes a somewhat too-keen interest in one of the party members, and investigations prove that the whole place is the hideout for a darkness-worshipping vampire and his harem of spawn.

Pathfinder 2: The Skinsaw Murders by, again, Richard Pett, has two excellent undead-themed showcases that could prove to be good one-shots: a "bug-hunt" in a ghoul infested cornfield, and Foxglove Manor, one of the best haunted houses I've seen in D&D.

For high level groups, Dungeon Magazine can offer the Tomb of Aknar Ratella, which was pretty fun (although you'd probably want to cut both the beginning and the end and focus on the undead-filled tomb itself), the Winding Way (a monastery overrun by undead evil, with bhuta masquerading as monks) and, of course, the Spire of Long Shadows (which, when not run as part of the Age of Worms, should be toned down substantially - but it's an awesome map with lots of good unique undead).

And, of course, a pared-down, one-shotified rendition of Castle Ravenloft would be perfect.

Demiurge out.

Ravenloft (the original) just for the sheer beauty of it.

L1: Secret of Bone Hill for the nostalgia.

Lance Hawvermale and Rob Mason''s The Bonegarden, from Necromancer Games. (I also hear good things about Raise the Dead, but don't own it.) Amazing location with tons of cool stuff in it.

Empire of the Ghouls (Wolfgang Baur, Open Design) for the setting and for the conceit of it all.

Personal favorite - a single day's adventure within a campaign involving a haunted rundown cabin in the woods, a Haunting Lodge. The PCs had to figure out that the ghost inhabitant wanted his skull back out of the well in the yard.

I always liked REF5 Lords of Darkness (AD&D). It was a collection of short undead themed adventures. There was one adventure for each main type of undead: skeletons, zombies, ghosts, vampires, shadows, etc.

demiurge1138 said:

I never ran the second half, but the first half of Greg Vaughn's "Tammeraut's Fate" is exactly what you're looking for. PCs sent to a remote island hermitage, find it ruined with signs of a struggle. They eventually find survivors - badly diseased and barely holding on - ranting about how zombies rose from the sea last night to claim all the people they could. Then the sun starts setting... It's particularly awesome because it encourages a siege mentality - the hermitage is fairly defensible, and the tools and denizens thereof can be transformed into weapons to fight back against the undead horde.

Click to expand...

And you can almost hear the "A-Team" theme when you're prepping for the upcoming zombie onslaught.

Tammeraut's Fate, Dungeon #106. Greg A. Vaughan drops off the PCs at an abandoned island monastery right before the drowned ones emerge....

--Erik