Thursday, January 15, 2015

The Pay What You Want Adventure 'The Forsaken Burial Vaults' By Jeremy Reaban For Your Old School Campaigns



Grab It Right
HERE

This is a very well balanced old school dungeon that requires a bit of thought on the part of the party. Why is is it on the Swords and Stitchery side of the blog? Well there elements here that place it squirly on the more solid part of an urban adventure with little effort this module could be place into a more modern or Lovecrafian or Poe style setting.
Jeremy Reaban has released the second module in his HS series.
 According to the author : 
My second attempt at making a module. This time a bit longer, 25 rooms, and for character levels 7th to 10th. I ran it with 7th, but that's using 1e rules and with pretty good gear (comparable to the stuff in GDQ).The intro places it right into his 'H' line of adventures and it hearkens back to the look and feel of other old school modules and this was done on purpose. 

As I didn't have any suitable color cover art, I took a B&W Dore illustration and colored it to look somewhat like the monochrome modules. I think it looks pretty neat.
And it does indeed look pretty neat and tidy, this module has everything you need for an evening's entertainment with your players. 
Everything here is keyed for this to be a dungeon near a city or urban environment. The PC's are going to be thrust right into the heart of this dungeon's darkness and there's an element of the weird about the whole affair.
According to the introduction :
 
This is a follow-up to my first module, HS1 – The
Lost Shrine of Sirona, which was essentially a
simple hack and slash dungeon. This is a bit more of
a traditional dungeon where the players will have to
use common sense, choosing when to fight and
when not to.
It should be placed close, but not too close to a large
town or small city. I've tried to keep it as culturally
neutral as possible so as to be placed anywhere.
I use some open content from the Teriatic Tome, so
you may wish to peruse that for more details on
those monsters herein. Other monsters are
converted from an OGL book, Into the Black.
Thankfully both are 100% open content text wise, so
I can both quote and refer to them.
Make no mistake the encounters here showcase lots of old favorites and some new monsters in completely different approaches and yet there's plenty of room for that ever nice DYI aspect of the dungeon. I really love the balance that the author/designer has kept. Make no mistake that this is a mid level dungeon and the stakes here are as deadly as ever. 
A quick note about the maps here, they're really nicely done and the presentation is concise, non cluttered, and easy to see across the table. Seriously this is a very nice way to present your maps. Nevermind all of the wonderful artwork and such. Give me and my players maps we can see as well as use. Very important design feature and believe you me one that's appreciated.
The contents of 'Forsaken Burial Vaults' can be used with both a regular D&D setting, a pulp style adventure encounter, or even a nasty horror setting if done right. This really comes down to the DM's style,something that is a result of the author's intent. This approach is something that I've come to appreciate during my time running and reading these adventures. The fact that details while there can and should be shunted by the DM using the adventure. Even though this is only a fourteen page adventure, there is more then enough meat on the bone to hang the backdrop of your campaign onto this module.
This is an old school module that I would get, modify for your campaign, and run the heck out of with your PC's. All in all I was pretty damn happy to have run across this module on the interwebs today. Grab your copy, throw the author a few shekels, and go play! 

2 comments:

  1. Damn man. I think you are responsible for most of the modules I've grabbed lately!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've got more ways to add to your arsenal of adventures and more modules coming up David! More coming,Cheers pal.

    ReplyDelete

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