The first thing I notice about the Bonegarden is that it doesn’t have recommended level listing. Why do I notice that? When I go through my adventurers, I like arranging them by level so I don’t waste time with those that are too off in terms of power levels. When you get to page 6, under preparation, you’ll note that it’s meant for 12th-14th level characters and has a paragraph or three on how to customize it for higher or lower level adventurers.
Now the Bonegarden is set in the same land as the adventure setting A Lamentation of Thieves, which has ties to What Evil Lurks. This isn’t a dungeon crawl, but rather, a large land mass with many unique properties to it that allow the GM to highly customize it. It involves a lot of NPCs and a lot of undead. The GM should read through the adventure and make some quick character notes on each major character.
First off, the Bonegarden is a big part of the history of this land. It’s a huge graveyard where bad things took place during the founding of the current land. It’s also a palce that’s under a very special lock without an easily accessed key. See, people want to be protected from the undead that tend to come back from places like graveyards so priests warded it. However, they did too good a job and now no soul gets out of the place and the undead come back every night. That’s a hugely important aspect when running this adventure as it can quickly wear on the party’s resources, fighting the same foe time after time. Anyway, the ward is one way so it’s easy to get into the Boneyard, but hard to get out.
There are a few methods provided for getting out, but really, the only method that most players are going can take advantage of is having a priest with them. A priest, due to his connection with his deity, can escape the wards around the land.
Looking to easily navigate though the adventure after reading it, I note that there’s no table of contents. There’s also no index. That’s okay. In the summary section, it breaks down the book into three chapters and notes important locations. For example, in chapter one, we have the Blood Governor, an ancient and powerful lich who, like most of the undead, is seeking escape. He has his own plans that involve a spell and a gem, the Starfire. Others like the Midnight Peddler lurk through the ruins, surviving and even profiting while the Valder Family carry on the old trade, that of being criminals.
When dealing with the NPCs, the good news is that there are those who, like the Blood Governor, will hunt down the characters. There are others like Karthne, Ristiko who have hteir own grudges and will gladly use the players for their own good, even as others like Devisha Parneux, a warrior of no small skill, tries to keep her mercenary band alive in the midst of all the death and undeath. The bad news is that without quick reference cards, the GM has a lot of bookkeeping to do and if the party joins one group or the other, may be running some rather large combat events.
Another strength is that not everything takes place in one area, and not everything the party meets is an undead fiend. No, we also have outsiders who’ve become trapped here. See, that ward prevents anything from leaving. The outsiders range from individuals like the Denizen, a Cacodaemon, a creature whose quest here has ended with it being imprisioned to Rani, a Protector, a powerful being of goodness who fights against the undead and seeks to restore the balance of power here.
These are good things. A wide open adventure with lots of opportunities for the characters to explore and fight against the terrors of the undead. Lots of factions to play against one another and numerous interesting and unique adventure locations to explore.
There’s quite a bit of bad news though. First, for new GMs, this adventure might be a problem without NPC cards to refer to. The lack of an actual adventure might intimidate some GMs too. A few flow charts with some possible events would’ve helped out here a lot. There aren’t a lot of maps either. It’s a shame as the maps are done by Jason Walton and Ed Bourelle.
No, the biggest problem is that apparently Erica Balsley, the d20 Content Editor, wasn’t paying attention. Now I’m not a huge d20 mechanic. If I see something wrong in one stat block, I start looking at other stat blocks. First thing I do is flip open my Monster Manual 3.5 version. After all, the book is supposed to be 3.5 compatible. I look under good old Special Qualities. Right there damage reduction 10/silver and magic. I won’t say every Vampire in here is wrong, but most are, listed with DR of 15/+1 or 15/magic. Next up, not all the CR’s are right. Take a vampire fighter whose 7th level. His CR should be 9 but it’s 7. How about a 5th level drow fighter? Should be 6 but listed as 5. How about a two hit die Death Dog with a +6 BAB? There are other problems I see here and there, and I recommend any GM who wants proper experience points to be doled out for appropriate challenges check all vampire listings and verify that all DRs and CRs are correct by cross checking it with the Monster Manual.
In addition to the adventure, there are new game mechanics. These take the form of new feats, spells, monsters, and magic items. Some of the feats are questionable like Bonded Weapon, where you gain more abilities with your favored weapon and gain penalties with other weapons. Well, questionable is the wrong word. If you’re going to put in new feats, I feel that they shouldn’t reinvent the wheel. How about Anything Goes Combat where you turn any improvised item into a weapon? Nothing new there.
The monster statistics look better than those in the adventure. The have initiative, broken down, AC, including touch and flat-footed, BAB/Grapple, and apparently, the correct number of feats. Little bit of wasted space with some as the old white space demon pops up on a few of them like the Headless Pawn, a construct with no details on how to create it or the different bats, which instead of being combined to save space, get their own entries (Putty and Vampire).
New magic items have information on creating them, but don’t include caster cost in gold and experience points. Some new items like Bloodlust, a two handed sword that actually becomes less powerful as it’s used due to the blood thirst being satiated, are included along with simple items like the Staff of Summoning that uses charges based on, yes, the level of spell you cast from it.
The book is average price for its size, weighting in at 128 black and white pages for $21.99. Brian LeBlanc and Mike Chaney did a fantastic job on the interior of the book. The illustration of Rani, the female bald outsider, is fantastic. However, some ability to follow description would’ve been good as Devisha is described as having black chain mail armor with spiked shoulder plates and the illustration puts her in the traditional chain mail bikini.
If the book could’ve gotten a few more elements right, it’d be a great romp. As it stands, it has too many gaming errors, needs more help for new GMs, and could do a better job of using so much new game content that it requires almost thirty pages to include it here. I don’t mind new material but it shouldn’t threaten to overwhelm the game material. There were so many references to Tome of Horrors that I thought I’d have to have that book at the table when I run this.
Reviewer's Note: After much thought, I've decided that knocking it down 2 notches is harsh for the various mechanical errors when there is much that is salvagable.
