Rappan Athuk: The Dungeon of Graves

[Rockrattled]

Before you try and write me off as an old time war gaming hack and slasher, I'll admit it. I like killing things and so do my players. This module is my kind of, "You know what? I just want to kill stuff tonight, who's with me!!!"

The author's don't hide it and thank God they don't even try to defend it. "Here it is fella's, now go roll play!"

I read through it twice, and threw it into my campaign as a side adventure. You know, for when the new players were there, the ones who haven't quite got the blood lust out of their veins. And after two or three sessions we weren't doing anything else but marching right back in! They loved it! Even when they would die once or twice an evening! Who would have thought it, right after they'd get squzzed, they'd run to create another character to throw into the meat grinder Rappan Athuk!

I have the second module and my players know there's more to come, but they haven't managed to survive long enough to get there! I love when they truly, truly, talk about whether or not they should go any deeper. "Dude that barbarian nearly killed us in two rounds! We went down and that sign says beware of purple worms! I'm no idiot. I say we play it safe and plunder that the Tomb of Sarek. It has to be safer than going any deeper into this hell hole!"

Ahh, if they only knew...

Take my advice. I'm having a blast and if your players want to go on a rampage, try out this module.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

As a primary warning to all those who wish to purchase this module, I must state that this is pure dungeon crawling three part module. If you are looking to challenge your players in exciting combat similar to the Tomb of Horrors then this is what you are looking for.
I based my review completely on the assumption that this module is not for deep role-playing and is a dungeon crawl. This dungeon is made for a six party members of starting average level 4 and takes the players as far as about level 9 when you finish this part of the series. The difficulty of this module on a scale of 10 is 9. The dungeon has several levels and sub-levels and this part of the series starts off from ground level 0 to level 4. My primary warning to the DM in charge is to not underestimate this module as it looks moderately hard but little additional details raise the difficulty tremendously. As an example, the dungeon utilizes a small poison trap knowing the person in the front of the group will be a rogue checking for traps. As the rogue fails, he gets hit with a poison that reduces dexterity, the most critical statistic for the rogue.
What is the dungeon? The dungeon is composed of caverns, mazes, tunnels, compounds and natural caves that suddenly existed beneath a graveyard near a forest. The graveyard came to be after a historical battle and chase of evil priests and their forces. All attempts to rid the world of them failed and no one is sure what is going there. The module has rumors of ways to connect the module to your campaign. What secretly lies beneath there is a cult of Orcus, the Demon Prince. The cult spreads deep and the dungeon goes far into the underground but this part only goes so far. Part II of the series shows more possible links of the dungeon to different modules that a DM can use to link the dungeon to other modules. There is a couple of monsters, such as Undead Ooze, that are part of the Creature Collection I of Sword and Sorcery, but the module lists everything needed about those creatures so the book is not required for the game. Necromancer Games provides further product support from their website and gives a web enhancement to provide maps of the areas around the dungeon with encounters that can occur on the way to the graveyard.
Finally, if you get the module and run it, you will take a long time to get through it as it is more packed than normal modules. My players took 36 hrs of game time to get through the ground level. This is a definite spotlight in the modules for dungeon crawling.

 

[Psion]

After actually having played this a few times, I have upgraded this adventure to a 3. The maps and some stats are a problem, but if you can get past that, it actually plays pretty well.