Instead of talking about all my hardtrance megamixes and crap like that that interests nobody at all but me, I thought it high time that I deconstructed another Paizo module and interested at least one or two other people after all.
D1 is not a series designation (this is the second such module with a D1 designation)—what it means is that it's a Dungeon-based adventure for 1st level characters. Why am I deconstructing dungeon adventures if I don't even like them? Sigh. I dunno. I picked this one because I wanted to go through the Darkmoon Vale adventures and I thought this was one. By the time I figured it out it wasn't, I was already running with it, and besides it's relatively short. I figured I'd go ahead and finish.
The PCs are cast here as the participants in some little local town ceremony to go light a lantern with the everburning flame on the tomb of the town's founder (and his rival; the two killed each other in a bit of dramatic local history.) Something's gone wrong, though—the tomb's been broken into and the bad guy in the story has somehow been reanimated. For some reason, these guys weren't buried in a normal grave or even above ground mausoleum; no, they're buried in some kind of tunnel complex. Sigh. I mean, really—I didn't expect anything else, but doesn't any other D&D player besides me find that kind of thing tiresome and boring after a while?
To make the whole thing even sillier, apparently there's a tradition of townsfolk creating very D&D like (yet mostly illusory) hazards for the PCs to face. Although these poor folks were killed by the reanimated undead, that didn't happen before some of their handiwork was put into place, so the PCs are meant to deal with that too.
INTRODUCTION
While I'm all for starting PCs being introduced into the game somewhat organically, this strikes me as realistic yet unorganic. Giving the PCs time to interact one on one with the DM, who represents their mentor and/or family is a bit twee. And then showing up in the town square where they get to know each other (because, yeah—people who live in a very small town in the wilderness don't already know each other or anything. This is what happens when your adventure is written by metro people who understand absolutely nothing about rural life at all.) The ceremony is meant to be roleplayed as well, even though it's a bit pretentious and tedious. There's also this hoaky thing where each PC only gets a portion of the trail map and they're supposed to use it to work together or something. Again; are we suggesting that rural small town dwellers don't know the immediate vicinity of their town very well? Sigh. Maybe they think that 40 miles by foot is really far?
PART 1: JOURNEY TO THE CRYPT
The town wizard (because of course there is one) sets up an ambush of illusory orcs first. This is meant to give the PCs something to do (I guess) that isn't actually dangerous. The adventure text continues trying to play up the fact that going hiking for a few miles and setting up camp is dangerous. There's also supposed to be some roleplaying around setting up camp and cooking a stew together if everyone contributes portions of their rations or something like that. I mean, I've been camping plenty, and sure—that is actually an important part of the routine. But it's maybe a bit... pedestrian for a D&D game. Then again, maybe not. The hobbits' trek across the Shire early on in
Fellowship of the Ring talks about these kinds of details. But certainly, it's a different kind of D&D game than what I expect most people play to worry about finding firewood, good flat spots to set up your tent, and how to make the best stew you can out of backpacking rations. An attack by hungry wolves early in the night does actually add something that's more D&D-like to the mix, though.
Seriously; the adventure talks about where to refill your canteens too. I've said before that if you have a hobby or particular interest, you have to be very
careful about integrating it too much into your game, because most likely your players don't care about it as much as you do. Anyway...
The body of one of the bandits who raided the tomb is floating in the lake where the PCs fill up their water, and their old camp (abandoned months ago) can be found too, especially if you have any rangers or druids or whatever in your group. This is merely meant to be information that you can use later to piece together what happened. The PCs start to approach their destination later in the second day and have to navigate a steep, slippery, overgrown and muddy portion of the trail in a cold rain on the way there, which gives them the potential opportunity to lose their footing and hurt themselves a bit before arriving. When they arrive, they find the door ajar, dead horses and a few dead bodies of townsfolk who, again, we're given no indication that the PCs actually know personally.
PART 2: THE UPPER LEVEL
Here the PCs do a bit of dungeon exploration. There's a survivor of the townsfolk who's been hiding in a room nearby for two or three days (?!) and a few other minor hazards. Of course, by "hiding" I mean that he's
in that room, but the PCs can hear him wailing. There's also two dead bodies here and for the second time, the PCs find blunted arrows (arguably the most useless bit of D&D gear that I've ever seen) and a few more days worth of rations. There are also six standard skeletons here.
There's some blunted pit traps (seriously; with pillows at the bottom) a giant beetle eating the bodies and hoping to lay some eggs in them, a campfire that mysteriously has been burning for two days and creates a smoke hazard, a shadow (who's actually the reincarnated spirit of one of the townsfolk—serves him right for setting up these dumb traps, I guess) a few more traps and puzzles, a minor wood golem to fight, some random treasure left by the townsfolk (it's not really random; what it is depends on the PCs character classes), and finally some "bloody skeletons"—a slightly more advanced version of skeleton that heals itself slowly.
PART 3: THE LOWER LEVEL
For mysterious reasons, when the crypt was robbed a few months ago, a wave of necromantic energy was unleashed which raised all of the corpses buried here and cracked the walls, causing many of the rooms to flood with water. At least the lame villager traps are over with at this point, but this level is where there's some real danger too. There's giant frogs here for some reason too (because there's water, I guess, and because wild animals aren't hesitant about living alongside undead?), there's some kind of fungus that emits an electrical charge if touched, more skeletons hiding under the water to attack people wading across, plague zombies (I know) who are what's left of the bandits who robbed the tomb and didn't get out alive, some more traps and hazards, magical and otherwise, bat swarms, etc. Finally, you face the "boss" skeleton and his minions; the rival of the town's founder, and can converse with the spirit of the founder himself afterwards (as well as rescue the damsel in distress; the last surviving townsfolk person, and sister of the survivor mentioned above).
CONCLUSION
The PCs go back home, and the party that was meant to be thrown for them takes on a melancholy turn given that a number of villagers were killed as part of this stupid tradition. There's a few open-ended hooks: the bandits, it turns out, are some kind of cultists, there's a Pathfinder blowing through town who offers the PCs a chance to investigate on his dime, and the ghost of the towns' founder describes a hoard of treasure that they can unlock if they find the three parts of the key, which are all amulets that they used to wear (his rival had one too, but it was taken by the bandits. The third is—supposedly—with some elf lady somewhere.)
APPENDIX: THE TOWN OF KASSEN
While the adventure itself is competent, if you like that kind of adventure, the little appendix may be more useful as some details on a good little village in the middle of nowhere that could serve as a starting location. While there's little here that's unexpected or unique, it's nicely done. It also has a number of potential "mentor" figures spelled out (once for each standard character class, in fact) which is another nice touch, even if you use the characters for something else. There's a few other characters thrown in too which provide for some rivalries and local politics (of sorts).
Like I said, the module isn't really anything special, but it's competent enough in the style that it tries to be; a somewhat twee roleplaying and method acting dungeon crawl. That may seem an odd melange of things for a module to be, but I think that actually that style of play is relatively common, especially in the Pathfinder player population.
Anything I want to grab from this? Probably not. Zombies that have a plague attack is pretty obvious, and I can do that without any particular work. The bloody bones skeletons are kinda cool—undead that keep on coming even after you've killed them aren't a bad idea, but again; I hardly need to create a new statline to add one special ability to an existing monster. I'd actually greatly prefer to have that kind of thing added to a wight rather than to a mere skeleton anyway, if I'm going to do anything with it.
