Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009688" data-attributes="member: 18387">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.</blockquote>

Verification