The Vault of Larin Karr

[Messageboard Golem]

Hunt for a Legendary Treasure! Deep beneath a peaceful valley lies the vault of the legendary drow adventurer Larin Karr. Rumor has it Larin Karr has gone, but his vast treasure acquired from years of plundering hordes in the Underdark still remains. Can you find and loot the impenetrable vault?

The Vault of Larin Karr details Quail Valley, its residents and monsters, and the twisting tunnels of the Underdark that stretch beneath it. The Vault of Larin Karr takes PCs from 4th to 9th level, during which time they fight dragons, find a missing statue for a band of renegade elves, save the village of Pembrose from scheming hobgoblins, and explore the Underdark and its many dungeons - including the legendary Vault itself! Contains new monsters and magic items!

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Vault of Larin Karr
Written by W.D. B. Kenower
Published by Necromancer Games
112 b & w pages
$15.95

The Vault of Larin Karr isn’t so much an adventure as it is a mini-campaign setting. The characters, for a variety of reasons, wind up in the Quail Valley, home to three separate villages, witches, and more encounters than you can shake a stick at. Of course there’s also the little matter of the actual Vault of Larin Karr itself. The benefit of having so much material at the GMs fingertips is obvious in that it prevents the players from getting bored of just one location or one area and provides lots of encounters of different types that the players can partake in. If they get bored in Pembrose, they can go to Twain, and if they get bored there, Bostwick. They can explore ruins of villages and forts, and of course, forest and caves.

The strengths of the module are numerous for an experienced GM. First off, it’s not laid out in any liner fashion so you can mix and match how events happen. GMs will have to walk a fine line though between letting the players do, as they will and not herding them. Because the module is meant for 4th-9th level characters, certain events and encounters will go over better with party members of lower level, rather than higher level.

In this case, I’m not just talking about things being too powerful for the party. For example, while there are a few dragons within the module who can indeed wipe out a low level party, a party that manages to get up to 9th level shouldn’t’ be battling orcs, goblins, and kobolds while a group of 4th level characters would still find some challenge in it and be sore pressed when battling the leaders of these organizations. As far as battling creatures too powerful for them, I agree with the author that the setting is more vibrant and living when it’s not obvious that the party is only going to encounter creatures suitable for their level.

Another strength of the adventure is events don’t just happen in a void. There are numerous side events happening at almost all times that the party can involve themselves in that provides the GM further fuel for adventuring fire. For example, if the party battles the gnoll ranger Graylock and discovers his plot to blackmail Mayor Wycheck, do they believe him and if so, what do they do about it? Their actions can have enormous effect on the local politics of these lands. One of the more interesting aspects is that one of the early ties to get the players started, retaking a keep inhabited by hobgoblins, may lead them to use it as a base at the behest of the local noble of the land. Will the players stay after all the events are played out here? Probably not but it does provide the party with a base of operations in the meanwhile. After wandering through the Valley long enough to encounter all the major plotlines in the area, they’ll want to move on.

The module provides an excellent mix of wilderness and NPC encounters before the characters actually get to the Vault itself. Just as interesting as the overhead encounters that the party can investigate though, are the numerous links and lairs to the underdark within. This is one of the things I didn’t like, so many entrances to the underdark. There are oven ten of them within the module so it strains the credibility of the underdark being such a dangerous place if there are so many ways to wander around it. The good news though is that even here, events don’t happen in a vacuum. The hobgoblins of the keep seek allies with the orcs. The red dragon seeks to keep the ogres away from it’s treasure, while one of the ogres doesn’t care for his comrades and seeks help in dealing with them.

Even when the events aren’t directly related, chances are there are effects from something happening in one of the villages or even in the woods. For example, if one of the party members is charmed by one of the witches, the other witch won’t want her killed as they’re relatives, but rather, seek to get the party member back with a minimal of bloodshed. Another example is provided in showing how one of the gems the party needs has made it’s way from point A to point D after going through several hands.

One of the things I was most pleased with in the Vault is that it’s not filled with death traps. While there are a few traps, it also has puzzles, monsters, and of course, the occasional cursed item. Players who are bound and determined to search through every nock and cranny may well find more than they expected as there are several things hidden from common observation including the true vault itself.

Lastly, another strength of the module is that the NPCs are versatile and can be augmented and used in latter encounters. As a matter of fact, one of the greatest NPCs doesn’t even make his presence directly felt in this module as Larin Karr, a rogue-wizard, is indeed still alive, adventuring and gaining more power. How do you think Karr will feel about having his home looted? I’d imagine, not too good. He’d probably want revenge. What’s worse for the players is that this dark elf is one of the most formidable creatures they’ll ever fight, in this module or any other.

On a couple of fronts, Necromancer Games has made some headway in what I’ll call my complaint department. There is only one page of advertisement in this module, not a staggering 4 or 5 pages. The price is low, especially for over a hundred pages. Bad news is that there still needs to be some work on the layout with chapter endings and amount of white space left at the end. Editing is fairly good but a few gaffs do show up in the text that require some rereading. Game mechanics seem sound. The art, despite all being done by Brian LeBlanc, ranges from fair to good. My favorite pieces including his take on Larin Karr, and the gnoll ranger, Graylock with his companion, Sheeda, the dire lion.

A personal complaint of mine is that I’m tired of villages. Nothing personal against Necromancer or any other company, but it’s getting to the point where I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an adventure that features a well detailed village and some menace that the players must overcome in order to save it. Makes me want to write an ‘evil’ module where the party plays the orcs, hobgoblins and bugbears coming down the mountain to put an end to these pesky frontier towns once and for all.

The Vault of Larin Karr is vast in its scope and provides the players with numerous opportunities to rise from the obscure depths to challenge dragons. Now if only they could get out of the village…

 

[2WS-Steve]

Hola Joe,

First things first; if you write a module where the players play orcs, hobgoblins, and gnolls trashing a small frontier town I'll buy it!

My other note was that it doesn't really seem fair to knock a 16 dollar 112 page book for having white space at the end of chapters. I got out my copy of The Getaway by Jim Thompson and it has at least half a page of white space at the end of each chapter! A great, albeit twisted, book by the way; it's film noir meets Nietzsche on a bad day.

I can understand the content to price concern but shouldn't that be measured by word count and not white space? After all, typical $16 books have between 64 and 80 pages. By knocking Necromancer for the space at the end of the chapters you imply that they ought to just squish the thing down into 96 pages, or, even worse, cut material so they can fit it into 96 pages but not have any white space at the end of a chapter.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Are you talking about this, "Bad news is that there still needs to be some work on the layout with chapter endings and amount of white space left at the end." I didn't think I bashed 'em too much for that, just noted it because I don't like it. Nothing to do with page count really just looks ugly.

It is a great buy and I guess I, or the person who does N, should go in and adjust the page numbers too so that people who see the top realize that it's not 96 pages.

Now if only they could get out of the frontier...

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Being a review of The Vault of Larin Karr by W.D.B. Kenower, a 112 page perfect bound softback book priced at $US 15.95.

Note: There are minor spoilers only within this review. This is not a playtest review.

The Vault of Larin Karr is something of a departure stylistically for the "First Edition Feel" company Necromancer Games. Instead of being a classic dungeon crawl, it is a "mini-campaign", including several villages, numerous wilderness encounter areas, which in turn are connected to an Underdark cave system. The theory behind the adventure is that players can pick and choose what leads to follow up, what quests to go on, and the DM has many NPCs and plot hooks available to dangle before the players. But does it work?

First, a rundown on the technical qualities: the book uses space well, using the layout and font typical of Necromancer Games stuff. The maps are all well done, with the right amount of room detail present, and relatively few errors. Of the 112 pages, about 6 are introduction, 56 detail Quail valley, including communities and encounter areas, 40 deal with the Underdark and the eponymous Vault, and the remainder are devoted to monster stats (collected at the end) and-brilliantly-excellent sample maps of various sizes of underdark passages and caves for random encounters. There are few spelling errors throughout, and most of the technical errors are easily corrected (e.g., a reference to area J1 that should actually be G1). The artwork is all uniformly good, and matches fairly well with the text in appropriate encounters.

The surface world material is excellent, with three well-detailed communities replete with interesting NPCs. For example, there are two rogues from out of town in one who are laying low, but will soon start a series of burglaries throughout the valley. Or there's the innkeeper who dearly wants someone to investigate a mysterious door in his basement. Or there's the self-important bard who has much information to offer, if the PCs can stomach his self-aggrandizing stories. In addition, many of the PCs have ties to one another, be it by blood, friendship, or enmity-having Tinker the gnome as a friend in Pembrose will complicate dealings with Tina the witch in Bostwick due to the bad blood between them.

Then there are the wilderness encounters. These include a keep overrun by hobgoblins, a group of angry elves with a grudge against the dwellers of the valley, a canny gnoll ranger, and a very tough and nasty dragon. Many of these encounters can be approached from multiple angles-for example, the elves can be talked to and bargained with, or simply attacked. Most of the encounters are fairly small in scope. The dragon's lair is no more than a couple of connected caves, the witch Sascha lives in a simple hut, and the like; a few, however, are more elaborate, such as the aforementioned hobgoblins.

Then we come to the Underdark realm. Great pains have been taken to put numerous access points to this labyrinth throughout the valley, so PCs exploring one surface encounter may discover one adit, travel beneath the earth, and come out at another encounter area. Much like the aboveground material, there are many small to mid-sized encounters in the Underdark, culminating in the deathtrap maze of Larin Karr, which PCs probably won't gain access to for some time.

I would also like to mention the encounter tables, particularly for the Underdark, which are nothing short of brilliant. Mr. Kenower did not restrict them to straight monster encounters; in fact, about 60 percent of all encounters rolled are other things-natural hazards, the body of a fallen denizen of the passageways, a strange call heard in the distance, cryptic scribings on the walls. And the monster listings include short, one or two-line descriptions to aid the DM in running them. This is outstanding work, and I hope they serve as a model to future d20 products on how to create exciting random encounters.

Overall, I would have to say that The Vault of Larin Karr is one of the very best products Necromancer Games-or d20 publishers overall-have designed for Third Edition D&D. The adventure is flexible, easy to add or remove material from, dynamic (with multiple events occurring simultaneously throughout the valley as the DM wishes), and challenging. Most importantly, it completely avoids the "guide the players by the nose" syndrome, and allows THEM to shape their campaign. I look forward with great interest to see what future works Mr. Kenower will be doing for d20.