A Lamentation of Thieves is part setting, part sourcebook with several mini-adventures to tie the whole thing together. The book is a boon for any collector of the Necromancer series as it tie several current products together and even has tie ins to upcoming products.
The book briefly details the Domain of Hawkmoon. It's enough information for the GM to fiddle around with, but it's main benefit is that there are other adventures that have taken place here. For instance, one of the locations is the Bonegarden, an upcoming adventure from Necromancer Games. Another example would be that What Evil Lurks, an excellent adventure, is in this region.
The adventures are broken up into different chapters. It starts with the chapter, Roads to Riches, this includes the introductory adventure Death At Darkstar, a murder mystery, Sculpting Fate, a bandit hunt, A Scent of Evil, a classic sewer run, and Dark Sky Rising, an aeria adventure. Other sections take the players through various locals including a primitive jungle with red water where goblins and bugbears wage war amidst the ruins of an ancient civilization. Very 'Ancient Ones' in style. The players will get to have two longer adventurers, that if played right, can be talked about for many moons to come.
The first is The Soul of Vengeance where the players must make their way through a Wax House. Perhaps it's just because I remember Vincent Price in the old horror thriller, but the author makes several attempts to capture the creepy feeling of things not quite being alive and the frozen death that wax figures capture. The next is the very cool and fairly unique idea of a penal or prison ship, the Pariah, a ship with several factions that battle about it with a master who is not all that he seems.
The adventurers range in quality and size but the whole package provides challenges for groups of various levels. The last one is for 12th level characters. GMs should read the whole book several times as there are events that can happen on the Pariah that can effect earlier events, requiring the GM to know his material. In addition, some players aren't going to be too hip on the different areas that they'll have to wonder through due to the unique challenges that such difficult terrain brings with it.
Having said that, there were some issues I had with the book. A casual look pits this 88 page book at about the right price at $18.95 (normal is 96 pages for $19.95), but it has three pages of ads and doesn't use interior covers. Next up, outside references. To fully use this book, you'd need the following books: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, Tome of Horrors, Relics and Rituals. In some cases, it's strange that some of these books were selected. For example, in terms of spell selection, the ones the rely on Relics and Rituals are often of minor or low power having no effect on the overall character. Simplify. Others like Tome of Horrors, should've really been done up in this adventure. Take the Skeleton Warrior, which is included in this book, but since it's a template, isn't for the actual encounter, despite having a reference to see the creature in the Tome of Horrors.
The layout doesn't waste a lot of space and is easy on the eyes. My only advice would be to actually use the gray skull borders by say, putting the chapter number or adventure section there so that GMs can quickly flip between events. The old two columns of text with occasional pull outs for important information works well. The maps are below average and suffer a huge problem in that there is no scale used. Second sin is that there are no grids. Now take it or leave it, but 3.0, and especially 3.5, are much easier on the GM and players when grids are used. Fortunately, the interior art is some of the best I've seen in a Necromancer Product, many pictures actually better than the cover.
In addition to the adventure, there are some neat ideas that don't always pan out. For instance, there are several new martial art styles. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, these are new feats, not at all like the martial arts we've seen in Dragon magazine and other sources where you get a benefit for following a certain progression of skills, feats and spells. It's a shame as some of the ideas are interesting but when reduced to a feat, not that innovative. Editing is fair but a few errors managed to sneak through. Most of them have already been hit up on the official errata board over at Necromancer Games website.
In the end, A Lamentation of Thieves is perfect for those players and GMs who want a not too fleshed out area with several adventurers and the potential to tie other adventurers into it. The requirement of other non-core books and lack of stats make the book a little work and the numerous NPCs, especially at the start and on board the penal ship, may not be to everyone's liking. If you want something more than a single adventure with several locations to pull it together, A Lamentation of Thieves is perfect for your needs.
