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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010443" data-attributes="member: 18387">Gary Gygax's NecropolisBy Gary Gygax, with additional material by Bill Webb, Scott Greene, and Clark PetersonNecromancer GamesOverviewGary Gygax's Necropolis (or simply, Necropolis) is two parts module to one part sourcebook. This is a huge hardcover book, weighing in at nearly 300 pages, with a cover painting by the well-known fantasy illustrator Keith Parkinson. The first 200 pages of the volume include a mini-campaign of linked adventures for 4-8 characters of level 10-18. This mini-campaign takes place in a unique setting, the lands of Khemit - a land very similar to ancient Egypt. The latter fourth of the book is a sourcebook for the campaign setting, with about 65 new monsters and templates, new classes and PrCs (including an ever-popular ranger variant), a pantheon of deities, new clerical domains, spells, magic items, maps, a brief rundown of the history and geography of Khemit, and so forth. The book uses a small font, and reasonably-sized margins. As a consumer with sagging bookshelves who despises books that use excessive font sizes, margins, and so forth used as "padding" to inflate page count, this is a plus in my book. The artwork is nicely done, black-and-white illustrations from multiple artists, embodying the "first-edition feel" that is Necromancer Games' motto. The book is a D20 conversion of an original module by Gary Gygax for his short-lived "Dangerous Journies" RPG that he produced shortly after his departure from TSR. I have never seen the original, so I cannot compare the faithfulness of the D20 conversion to the original. Unfortunately, since this book was produced under license from Wizards of the Coast (I assume they ended up purchasing all the DJ materials as part of their settlement with Gygax in the 1980s), relatively little of the content is designated Open.The AdventureThe adventure is intended for levels 10-18. The first chapter of the actual adventure (chapter 3) is actually a little under-challenging even as an introduction to the storyline. There is lots of roleplaying potential, and a chance to become familiar with the culture and history of Khemit. The players may have to discover who is telling the truth and who is lying, and are ultimately confronted with a rather lackluster CR-7 demonic crocodile. From a storytelling perspective, it isn't inappropriate - the enemies are just beginning to gauge the competence of these new heroes. There's a metagame reason for starting off so easily as well - it is intended to give the players a bit of false confidence for the adventure ahead, so that they will feel even more "shock and awe" when the bad guys start bringing their full forces to bear.The adventure very quickly scales up in difficulty, to the point where I feel that a party of level 10 adventurers would be hard pressed to survive even with expert play without a lot of "side adventures" created by the DM between the chapters. Shortly after the roleplaying-heavy, trivial-combat first segment, the party starts hitting encounters averaging EL-15. While level 10 adventurers could survive and contribute in these encounters, the average party level should be a few levels higher than this. I think the average party level starting Necropolis should be closer to 12 - and even that should be with a minimum of six party members. Either this, or the DM should prepare several side-adventures in advance to help the characters "level-up" between chapters. With the wealth of source material contained in the latter third of the book, the DM has quite a bit of material to draw from.Players approaching Necropolis with a "hack & slash" mentality will probably not last very long. As is typical with many of the "old school" classic adventures, parties wading in with guns blazing (er, or swords swinging) with little thought to tactics, leaving no stone unturned in their search for treasure, will soon find themselves rolling up new characters. Necropolis has a reputation for being incredibly lethal, and was billed at one point as "Tomb of Horrors" on steroids. Many of the worst traps and fights can be avoided simply by the party sticking to their mission plan, and not getting so greedy that they are poking around at everything in hopes of finding hidden treasures. Of course, parties that do that will miss some of the best treasure in the game, so there's a risk / reward factor that often amounts to little more than blind luck. Many times it requires the players to pick up on subtle hints or clues from earlier patterns or tidbits of Khemitian culture and history that they pick up during the earlier parts of the games. Your players DID take time to talk to villagers and roleplay and learn about local customs and lore, didn't they?Unfortunately, many of the hints and clues are so subtle that the solutions to puzzles or traps border on pure luck. During play, my players picked up on this and began basing nearly every action or sequence of actions on previous patterns or coincidences that they discovered. After a full chapter, they were taking copious notes and seeing obscure patterns EVERYWHERE. Most of the time, their efforts were useless and had no bearing on what would happen next. But every once in a while they'd guess it right, and avoid what I'd have considered unavoidable. It helped that they were multi-year veterans of classic modules and knew what it meant when they were going through a Gygax-written module. Another big plus for this type of adventure design is that the most powerful spells are NOT the massive-damage, massive area-effect offensive spells that some players tend to overuse. Based upon the reports I have heard and my own playtest experience, many of the most powerful spells in this adventure are actually divinations and other "utility"-type spells, as well as defensive spells like Death Ward. While some "spoiler"-style spells are prevented in some parts of the module (like plane-shifting abilities), many times they remain a viable option to get past what seems an otherwise insurmountable problem. Players may complain about the high difficulty levels and DCs of some of the thornier parts of the module, but in every case I found there was some sort of Achilles Heel (usually several) the players could exploit through cleverness and "thinking outside the box". Make no mistake - while there is plenty of high-level combat and "hack & slash" opportunities, Necropolis is a "thinking-man's dungeon." The module is rich in flavor and has a solid "feel" of ancient Egyptian mythology. The adventures are not linked too tightly, which is advantageous if you are planning on providing lots of side-quests, or (as I did) you are using the adventures separately rather than as one full campaign. There are lots of suggestions for story-based awards, including XP "penalties" which are frowned upon in 3E. There are also plenty of suggestions for adjusting the difficulty and lethality of the adventure to suit the DM's campaign. The sourcebook, while not quite worth the price of the book by itself, has proven itself to be a very useful in my own campaign even without the included adventure. The monsters are all illustrated nicely, and are mostly quality work. In playtest, they seem to be appropriately balanced for their challenge rating, and have given my players quite a run for their money. Some ProblemsThere's much good to say about this module, but I have some issues with it as well. The module is guilty of "railroading" the adventure in spots. The players are expected to play a particular way, and while the module allows for variation, it slaps them down pretty hard for such deviations. There are places where the rules and DM recommendations seem arbitrary and heavy-handed. Some consequences result in "irrevocable" death, with no explanation or justification for why death is irrevocable, or any reason why the players would expect or predict this in advance. There are also places in the adventure where the DM is told to encourage players to use metagame knowledge to figure things out... the old, "We didn't get enough XP - there HAS to be more to it than this!" trick.There are some puzzles or challenges that simply don't have enough "set-up" for the players to be adequately prepared for them, requiring the DM to either let them fail or be a little generous with hints. There are also parts of the adventure that lack sufficient rhyme or reason - really bizarre "traps" with no explanation as to who put it there, why they put it there, and how they did it. You can fall upon the default answers, "The bad guys did it - to vex adventurers and because they are EVIL - and they did it through REALLY POWERFUL MAGIC," but that gets kind of weak after a while. Dropping a PC on a giant Senet board is a cool idea; I'd just like a little more explanation behind it as a DM.Is It Worth It?The frequency of the above flaws hurt the book for me, but not as much as it would a module that is not nearly so ambitious and original (or as HUGE). In practice, I had to do a little bit of the "DM Two-Step" to keep ahead of the players and fix potential continuity problems. There were lots of spots that I originally believed to be overly difficult or arbitrary, but my players proved to be far more resourceful than I'd have expected. The module is ripe for plundering ideas and full adventures for DMs wanting to add some Egyptian flavor to their campaign. Those wishing to use the campaign in its entirety could run a game for months straight out of this book. In the end, the adventure is fun, and full of variety. There's plenty of roleplaying opportunities, some mystery, more than a little combat, and lots of traps, puzzles, and other challenges requiring more "problem-solving" skills than good dice rolls. It's a "thinking man's dungeon," rewarding players who are resourceful and creative rather than those who simply took the most munchkinny feats and prestige classes. It is a high-level adventure, which seems to be a harder find than adventures for levels 1-10. The "new monster" section has nearly as many new creatures as a small standalone D20 sourcebook. I've gotten my more than my money's worth out of Necropolis so far, and I'd love to see another Gygax / Necromancer collaboration in the future.(Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I should note am the winning author of a module contest for a Necropolis "prequel" module, coming soon as a download from Necromancer Games. However, I have no financial stake in sale of Necropolis, nor was I member of the development team of the module.)</blockquote>

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