Mines of Medgorod
Adventures in third edition Dungeons and Dragons have really become commonplace. There was a rush of them when the system first came out, and now they have been reduced to a slow trickle it seems. There has been a few good ones that really stand out, but most of them seem to be bland and without much substance. Unfortunately, the Mines of Medgorod is not one that will stand out for most people.
The Mines of Medgorod is the first product of Mystique Enterprises. It is a pdf adventure designed for a group of four to eight first through third level characters. The pdf comes in a zip file that is under a meg in size and the pdf itself is a bit over a meg in size. The book is thirty four pages in length and is reasonable priced at a bit under five dollars. There are no bookmarks in the product, just a simple table of contents to help one locate things in it.
The art in it is pretty average with a single piece that I think is just horrible. The cover has an anime feel to it and is in full color. The cartography is pretty good. The maps are simple but easy to read. They are in color though, so printing them out can be troublesome for some. There is a border around each page but other then that and the color maps there really is not anything that will eat up ink when printing.
The module itself is pretty simplistic and basic. That is not necessarily a bad thing. The basic premise is a group of adventures needs to investigate a mine where some miners were attacked. It sounds like a basic straight forward dungeon crawl and that is what it is. It is written for low level characters but it also has the feel of a module that is written inexperienced gamers as well. For instance in the blocks of text that are supposed to be said out loud there are PC actions that are directed and feelings that are given to the PCs. I’ve found that that can help the inexperienced player but most experienced players really do not like to be told what their character is going to do or how he is going to feel. This is a weakness that goes through the whole module. The read aloud texts are a bit too detailed and seem more like the telling of a story instead of allowing the PCs to hear the details and then react as they would.
There are some spoilers from here on out, though there really is not much to spoil; the plot is not that complex. The miners were attacked and many killed by a new race of creature called the Karlek. It is the picture of them that I really am not a fan of. They are a subterranean race without much that really sets them apart from any of the other subterranean creatures. When new creatures are presented there should be a reason for it, and if another creature works in its place no need making a new creature. Kobolds or Orcs would have worked just as well. The Karlek are nicely described, they do have some weapons made out of bone and stone with stats presented here. And their society is defined.
The module does have seven pregenerated characters. They have three fighters, a ranger, a rogue, a cleric of a new god described in here, and a sorcerer. Each is given a little background. Each is human in race and all three fighters have the feats of weapon focus and power attack. It would have been nice to see some combat differences of these fighters since they choose to write up three of them.
This is not a particular good module. It is an introduction to their world, so it might work as a good starting point for that. But as modules go there are many better ones.
