A press copy of The Amulet of Shavaka was provided for the purposes of this review.
Designed by: Phil Beckwith Published by: P.B. Publishing
One theme I find lacking in the official Fifth Edition campaign books is a proper Arabian Nights adventure. I want mysterious deserts, dangerous tombs, exotic rituals, and forbidden threats.
“The Amulet of Shavaka” is a self-contained one-shot dungeon that touches upon many of these themes. The 16-page adventure tasks the PCs with exploring a Mummy’s undead-filled tomb at the edge of a desert. It’s designed for a party of level 2 PCs (with adjustments for 1-3) with an estimated play time of 4-6 hours.
The story hook is as basic as they come. A character named Elel seeks out the PCs based on the stories he’s heard (though they’re level 2, how many famed stories can there be?). He’s been sent to retrieve an amulet from the Tomb of Shavaka and knows the location, but doesn’t want to go inside for reasons that will soon become clear. Continue reading “DMs Guild Review: The Amulet of Shavaka”
A press copy of Minotaur’s Betrayal was provided for the purposes of this review.
Designed by: JVC Perry and Phil Beckwith Published by: P.B. Publishing
I was generally disappointed with the first adventure in P.B. Publishing’s Minotaur Trilogy. It was a short, single mini-dungeon that didn’t do much with the intriguing minotaur premise. The next adventure in the Minotaur Trilogy, “Minotaur’s Betrayal,” does a better job utilizing the honorable warrior race while also offering a huge dungeon complex as you and your minotaur buddies take the fight directly to a massive orc stronghold.
“Minotaur’s Betrayal” is a combat-heavy adventure featuring a mega-dungeon full of orcs, designed for a party of 6th level for 3-5 hours. That estimated play time is completely bananas, as the dungeon crawl alone would take my group at least two or three multi-hour sessions to get through.
NOTE: This adventure makes extensive use of Volo’s Guide to Monsters in regards to Orc statblocks and information.
As part two of a trilogy, “Minotaur’s Betrayal” picks up after you’ve earned the minotaurs’ trust in the first adventure, “Minotaur’s Bargain.” You don’t need to play that adventure at all, however, and there are notes for skipping a few sections in the beginning in Chapter 1. If you do run “Minotaur’s Bargain” first it would help flush out the Minotaur race, and give the later death of their leader and titular betrayal a lot more meaning – though as I mentioned in my review that first adventure is very light on role-playing.
As a reward for making it through the arena in “Minotaur’s Bargain,” your party is given six Minotaur Veterans. These are slightly beefier CR 4 minotaurs, including one named Minotaur Veteran called Perseus with max HP. Your goal is to return to the town that sent you, in order to help stage a defense against a large orc raiding party, as detailed in Chapter 2.
While travelling there are two scripted encounters where orc forces harry the party, specifically trying to kill Perseus and the minotaurs, first mounted on Aurochs during the day, then on Giant Bats during a stealthy ambush at night. This helps drive home the orcs as a powerful, relentless foe and nicely foreshadows later events.
The orcs are the primary threat throughout the adventure, and while the story does some cool things with them, it also somewhat limits the focus of the Minotaurs, save for a single scenario about halfway through.
The orc attack on the town is actually a diversion, as they show up with only about a dozen forces lead by a sadistic, custom-built Troll NPC named Fleshrend (CR 6). It’s here you can start if you just want to jump in with this adventure first.
This is a big combat encounter including the PCs, Minotaur allies, town militia, and orc invaders. As a DM this would absolutely overwhelm me and my party, but thankfully it’s designed to end in Round 4, when the attackers see the signal (smoke in the distance) and retreat. The party can alter the climactic encounter at the end of the adventure if they manage to defeat Fleshrend or any of the forces here, however.
The smoke is coming from the Minotaur campsite. Turns out the attack on the town was to distract the PCs and Perseus’ crew. A Minotaur traitor named Theron staged a coup by allying with the nearby orcs. He stole an orcish relic – the Banner of Grummsh, guarded by the Minotaurs, and in exchange they helped him storm the camp and murder the Minotaur leader, Astarte.
Now we’re talking! I love this surprise attack that pulls the rug out from our heroes. The Minotaurs race back to their camp and the PCs should follow (incurring 2 levels of exhaustion – ouch!). The PCs and Minotaurs can either directly confront Theron and his cronies or sneak inside to gather information.
Story-wise this is by far the most interesting section of the adventure, but it’s also shockingly the most limited, spelled out in only two pages. There’s a solid description of the tortured and slain Astarte (I would totally leave her clinging to life to deliver some awesome final death lines) but limited notes on how to role-play Theron, and nothing on how to treat a non-combat or non-stealth approach.
The PCs need to learn that Theron paid the orcs with the Banner of Grummsh, a powerful custom-built Wondrous Item that ties into orcish lore in some neat ways (wait I thought this trilogy was all about Minotaurs?). The Banner was hidden away by Astarte and handed over to the orcs. The Minotaurs demand vengeance on the orcs and task the PCs with retrieving the Banner from the nearby stronghold in Varg-Kala, the mega-dungeon complex that takes up all of Chapter 3 and a solid two-thirds of the adventure.
Varg-Kala is awesome. It’s a sprawling network of connected caves, with a central chamber that’s over 200 feet across, and an underground (er, more underground) sewer system – 14 total areas. There are three optional side entrances you can employ if your characters carefully search (or if you just want them to enter a certain way) as well as a proper main entrance guarded by a ruined tower.
Varg-Kala feels like an actual living dungeon, with most orcs living their daily lives around their huts, shrines, fighting pit, pig pen, rookery, and nursery.
There are several fun events the PCs can stumble into, including a Gollum-like figure living in the sewers, several potential allies-as-prisoners, and the final confrontation with the orc War Chief – and possibly Fleshrend if he survived the battle in Chapter 2. There are mountains of tasty loot to be found that would be the envy of any dragon hoard, while the prisoners let the PCs feel like heroes instead of bloodthirsty treasure-hunters (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).
By the end the PCs (and minotaur allies) should have crushed the orcs, retrieved the Banner of Grummsh and put Perseus in charge of what’s left of the minotaur camp. “Minotaur’s Betrayal” is a solid adventure that includes a little bit of everything. I love a meaty dungeon crawl, though much of the minotaur flavoring will come from your interactions with the PCs via Perseus. Keeping he and his horned buddies alive in the dungeon could prove quite challenging but hopefully remain an enjoyable side objective.
Part three of The Minotaur Trilogy (coming early next year) teases that both warrior races will have to come together to fight a new Abyssal threat that’s unleashed from the Banner’s usage, which sounds like an appropriately epic climax to the series. I’m looking forward to it!
Pros:
Varg-Kala is a huge, impressive dungeon with multiple entrances, neat NPC interactions, and tons of encounters and treasures.
Uses all the orc information in Volo’s Guide to Monsters to create a fully believable orc society.
Minotaur ally NPCs are a great addition, and notes for using them in the final dungeon are solid (they don’t exactly like stealth, for example).
Notes for adjusting every single encounter for 5th, 7th, and 8th level parties.
Cons:
Though there’s some neat story moments with the titular betrayal, the adventure does far more with exploring orc culture and society than the actual minotaurs.
Perseus can (and should) be a major NPC ally to the party, but he’s barely given any notes on role-playing or personality.
The most story-intensive scene of the adventure (confronting Theron) is given the least amount of attention.
Only the small Ruined Tower map is given color, and there’s no map at all for the town siege.
The Verdict: With significant story beats culminating in a massive dungeon crawl, Minotaur’s Betrayal is a much improved sequel by enlisting an exciting orcs versus Minotaurs theme.
A press copy of Minotaur’s Betrayal was provided for the purposes of this review.
A press copy of Mini-Dungeons #1: Caves was provided for the purposes of this review.
Designed by: Phil Beckwith and Chris Bissette Published by: P.B. Publishing
A mini-dungeon fills the gap between a one or two-room single encounter cave and a sprawling dungeon that contains a dozen or more areas. The 3-in-1 mini-dungeon compilation, “Mini-Dungeons #1: Caves,” contains three such in-between dungeons of about half a dozen rooms each, co-designed by Chris Bissette of Loot the Room and Phil Beckwith of P.B. Publishing.
“Mini-Dungeons #1: Caves” includes a short, overarching narrative to tie all three previously released dungeons together, should you want to add them all at once. This pseudo-campaign adds a single NPC captive orc who motivates the PCs to travel from the first dungeon to the second, while their overall goal is to reach the third dungeon, along with some random encounters on the way.
It’s a weak thread as these dungeons were not initially designed to have anything to do with each other. Otherwise you can drop thesm anywhere you’d like your players to encounter a self-contained, combat-heavy side quest.
I’ll go over each dungeon separately but in general the first dungeon is designed for a level 2-5 party (Tier 1), while the other two are higher level and range from level 5 to 8 (Tier 2). Each one is designed as a one-shot with play times of only a few hours, though in my experience any combat-heavy scenarios always take significantly longer to play.
Mini-Dungeon 1: Lizardfolk Tunnels
If you have read my review of “Struggle in Three Horn Valley” you may recognize the Lizardfolk Tunnels, as it’s included as one of the possible encounters in that adventure. It ends up as the weakest dungeon here, which is more a testament to how great the other two dungeons are.
The story hook presents the PCs with a woman whose husband has been recently murdered by lizardfolk. Her two children have been dragged off to the nearby caves. She is having a remarkably awful day, but hopefully the stalwart PCs can salvage some of it.
The Lizardfolk Tunnels are a standard cave dungeon with not much going for it. It features, you guessed it, lizardfolk. Near the entrance the PCs can rescue one of the kids from a sacrificial altar, then proceed room-to-room battling lizards until they reach the arena at the bottom. There they find the other captive kid and a lizard king boss fight.
It’s not a horrible design but there’s nothing particularly memorable about it, nor are there any notable traps, secrets, or environmental hazards. An overhang with a giant eagle nest has potential interest, but the PCs aren’t meant to actually interact with it at all.
The map itself is drawn in an isometric or cut-away style. While I do like this art style it’s not usable in virtual tabletops like Roll20, forcing me to rebuild a top-down battle map.
Mini-Dungeon 2: The Cavern of One-Eye
A cave filled with orcs isn’t usually the most compelling dungeon design, but The Cavern of One-Eye does some really fun things in its design, including poisonous rooms, multiple secret paths and ledges, an alarm system, and rescuing a potential cyclops ally!
The inciting story hook is almost the exact same as the Lizardfolk Tunnels. The PCs meet a bedraggled merchant outside the caves. His caravan has been ransacked, his goods stolen, and his body guard taken captive. Into the caves we go!
The orc-filled caves present some fun challenges and silly role-playing opportunities right from the beginning. Two-headed Ettins can always be a lot of fun for a DM to role-play, and one can be found at the entrance (arguing with itself, naturally) with another deeper towards the back.
The PCs should notice a goblin on a ledge next to an alarm system that’s strung throughout the caves. The PCs have a chance to catch the goblin unawares and prevent a horde of orcs from descending upon them.
The cave has a central path that branches off into multiple rooms, giving the party several choices on how to tackle the dungeon. They won’t be able to miss the poisonous, disease-filled sick room with an orc Hand of Yurtus. The Cavern of One-Eye effectively uses the additional orc statblocks from Volo’s Guide to Monsters. If you don’t own that supplement sourcebook it wouldn’t be difficult to simply design your own orc variants.
The first two side rooms contain secret passageways that lead deeper into the cave complex, letting the PCs scout ahead, spy on foes, and plan their next moves. I love this design as it gives as many options as possible to a well-organized party.
The final room reveals the fun twist – the merchant’s bodyguard is a god damn cyclops! The party can calm him down and free him, resulting in a really fun, powerful ally in the final battle.
The final boss orc is actually asleep in the back, which may make the final battle a bit too easy depending on how cautious your players are. But it’s also a neat chance to reward a more stealthy and planned approach.
The map itself looks great, with a top-down design I can easily slot into Roll20. It’s also a very roomy cave, which makes sense given it is a home to ettins, and that orcs were able to drag a captured cyclops inside. Big thumbs up to making an otherwise standard orc cave a lot of fun.
Mini-Dungeon 3: The Lair of Frostingbite
The third mini-dungeon is a combination mine shaft and white dragon lair, which is pretty damn cool. Though it’s a bit trickier to drop anywhere in a campaign as it requires a snowy mountainous region on the outside.
The story hook is a little different and slightly less heroic. The local town’s shepard pleads with the heroes to investigate his missing livestock. The PCs follow the tracks that lead into an old abandoned mine shaft in the mountains.
The mine shaft is a fantastic idea for a mini-dungeon. After an initial corridor of pit traps and ambushing kobolds, the party comes across two mine carts that lead into darkness, high above a sprawling cavern.
Special rules are given for operating and running the mine craft ride: the party and kobolds roll for initiative, and the cart travels 50 feet to the east on Initiative roll 20. Every round or so the DM (or a player) rolls a d4 to consult what terrible hazard occurs, from hitting stalactites to possibly getting knocked out of the cart by a flurry of bats.
About halfway along the ride the north track splits off into a dead end that careens into darkness. The PCs have to quickly pull a lever as they speed by or risk a memorable 60-ft crash into the depths!
I love this gauntlet of challenges and skill checks, and using nearby kobold archers as more of a trap hazard rather than a standard fight. If (hopefully when!) anyone falls into the pit below they’re swarmed by quaggoths in the dark.
When they reach the end the PCs find the remains of the farmer’s livestock, which is being fed to the young white dragon by the sycophantic kobolds. Then they have to ascend mine shafts while the kobolds hurl offal at them, ha! I love that all these hazards and challenges make the otherwise forgettable kobold a complete pain in the ass for the PCs to deal with.
One last hazard remains: walking along a narrow icy path to the dragon’s lair. There’s a lot of potential falling damage as any PC who fails the saving throw slides back to the front.
The final room provides a climactic boss battle against the young white dragon. I love that the adventure includes tips for running the white dragon Frostingbite, right down to her round-to-round actions. She uses her flight to flit in and out of the cavern to get surprise advantage on her attacks, which is not something I would have otherwise considered.
Like the Cavern of One-Eye, The Lair of Frostingbite is designed in a functional top-down grid style, though for some reason it lacks a gridless version of the map. But I love the use of numerous traps, hazards, and elevation in creating a challenging little journey to battle a dragon.
Pros:
The Cavern of One-Eye and The Lair of Frostingbite are fantastic, well-designed mini-dungeons with usable maps.
The Cavern of One-Eye: The secret passages and captured cyclops ally give PCs lots of fun choices to make, rewarding stealth and tactics.
The Lair of Frostingbite: The mine shaft presents a unique round-by-round challenge filled with skill checks, saving throws, and memorable danger.
Each hostile encounter includes notes on adjusting the difficulty for three different level ranges in an easy-to-read sidebar.
Fantastic monster art throughout the adventure.
Cons:
The Lizardfolk Tunnels is a fairly boring, standard room-to-room cave design.
The Lizardfolk Tunnels map is isometric, and not usable in virtual tabletops like Roll20.
The overarching narrative that links all three dungeons is weak at best, mostly just adding a series of random encounters between dungeons.
The Verdict: The first cave dungeon is standard at best but the other two are well-designed mini-dungeons that provide plenty of fun challenges.
A press copy of Mini-Dungeons #1: Caves was provided for the purposes of this review.
A press copy of Minotaur’s Bargain was provided for the purposes of this review.
Designed by: JVC Perry and Phil Beckwith Published by: P.B. Publishing
Minotaurs are usually depicted as just another monster, one that happens to be found in mazes and labyrinths thanks to Greek Mythology. Fantasy author Richard A. Knaak transformed the horned humanoids into a rich culture within the Dragonlance universe, one that I gobbled up back in high school and college.
“Minotaur’s Bargain” runs with that same concept of Minotaurs as a tribal warrior culture, not unlike the orcs of Warcraft. It’s a neat idea but the adventure somewhat squanders potential role-playing interactions in favor of a standard deathtrap dungeon.
The adventure is a mini-dungeon crawl designed for a party of 5th level characters, with a suggested play time of 3-4 hours. It’s relatively tiny compared to P.B. Publishing’s other material, running at only 12 pages not including maps and statblocks.
The adventure hook has your player characters arriving at a Minotaur settlement to seek a potential alliance. The Minotaurs only respect strength, however, and no matter how negotiations go, the PCs are thrown into the arena.
The PCs have a chance to role-play with the powerful Minotaur leader, but the result is the same regardless. Given the title of the adventure and the fantastic Foreward by Knaak himself, I was expecting a much more story-heavy adventure. Instead after that initial confrontation, the PCs are dropped into a dungeon full of fairly standard traps.
The arena is divided up into four separate challenge rooms that must be overcome before the fifth and final challenge (a big boss fight) opens up. It feels very video game-y, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
In the initial room the PCs are told to bring only one item with them – including clothing, armor, or arcane foci! Most PCs are going to balk at this, and there are rules and notes for anyone who wants to try and smuggle in more items (um, where exactly are they hiding them??). I’m always leery of taking away power or agency from my players. Stripping them of beloved loot makes everything in the dungeon much deadlier than normal.
A potential Minotaur ally named Partheos can be found at the entrance. I enjoy when the DM gets to add an ally to the party, often serving as an organic way of imparting information or narration to the players. But Partheos is written as more of a brief font of information for the challenges ahead. He is young and cowardly which could have some interesting repercussions, though the notes on roleplaying him are minimal.
The four challenge rooms can be tackled in any order. There’s a decent variety here but nothing particularly awe-inspiring. It probably doesn’t help that I’m still pawing through the insanity of deathtrap dungeon design that is the Tomb of the Nine Gods from “Tomb of Annihilation.”
Areas contain the standard array of dungeon traps, including ground spikes, spinning scythes, pressure plates with wall darts, and a 60 ft pool with a Darkness spell. The goal in each room is to simply pull a lever. I don’t see why any spellcaster with the Mage Hand cantrip and/or 3rd level spells like Fly, Alter Self, and Gaseous Form couldn’t complete most rooms without breaking a sweat.
There’s not a lot of combat. The spike trap room can potentially include some random beasts, while the scythe/wall dart room has a unique orc variant called a Gladiator. The final battle is against a crazy powerful CR 8 Minotaur boss with legendary actions!
The most interesting feature the dungeon offers is in integrating the arena crowd. You’re not in some underground tomb – you’re in a gauntlet-style arena with a cheering (or jeering) crowd all around you. If the PCs perform honorable deeds or heroic actions (or roll a crit), the crowd will cheer, resulting in either Inspiration, or throwing out useful items like a Potion of Healing.
On the flip side if the heroes act cowardly or the crowd notices their smuggled items, the fickle crowd will hurl rocks at them, making attack rolls and dealing damage. This is a great feature that really drives home the fact that the PCs are proving themselves in an arena instead of crawling through just another dungeon.
Since the PCs are supposed to prove themselves, the outcome can vary depending on their actions. Even if they fail and wipe (that last boss fight looks scary considering the PCs are near-naked and probably quite wounded) they could be revived and exonerated for a job well done, completing the mission and securing the Minotaurs’ help.
The adventure includes a full map of the arena, with seven separate room images and one big dungeon map that connects them. The pictures look really great in an isometric style, but unfortunately that style isn’t really usable in a virtual tabletop like Roll20. You could still use the pictures as handouts, but you’d have to rebuild the dungeon. Thankfully it’s not very big or complex.
For a one-shot deathtrap dungeon “Minotaur’s Bargain” is serviceable, offering some interesting challenges and a neat feature with the arena crowd. But it’s quite short, and doesn’t fully utilize the Minotaurs themselves (there’s not even a maze!). The adventure is designed as part one of a trilogy of adventures on the DMs Guild, and I’m hoping the others do a better job of exploring Minotaurs from a more interesting role-playing and political perspective.
Pros:
The arena crowd is a neat feature with well-integrated mechanics.
Particularly amazing art on the cover and throughout the adventure. The isometric maps are also lovely.
Spiffy Foreward by fantasy author and Minotaur scribe Richard A. Knaak.
Cons:
Role-playing is limited to the very beginning, and the PCs are thrown into the arena regardless.
Challenge difficulty feels artificially enhanced due to stripping the PCs.
The traps and levers seem particularly susceptible to PC spellcasters.
Isometric maps aren’t really compatible with virtual tabletops like Roll20.
The Verdict: Minotaur’s Bargain offers some neat features in its deathtrap dungeon but fails to utilize minotaurs in a meaningful way.
A press copy of Minotaur’s Bargain was provided for the purposes of this review.
A press copy of Struggle in Three Horn Valley was provided for the purposes of this review.
Designed by: Phil Beckwith Published by: P.B. Publishing
Dinosaurs and D&D are all the rage right now thanks to “Tomb of Annihilation,” the current ongoing story-line and campaign adventure for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition. “Struggle in Three Horn Valley” provides even more lost island dino goodness, beginning with a shipwreck and ending in a full-blown Dino-Riders war zone.
“Struggle in Three Horn Valley” is a lost island adventure designed for a party of 3rd to 4th level characters. It’s about 40 pages long with a suggested play time of six hours. It’s set on an uncharted island called Selu, home to tribal warriors, dinosaurs, lizardfolk, and pirates. Continue reading “DMs Guild Review: Struggle in Three Horn Valley”
A press copy of Something Smells Fishy was provided for the purposes of this review.
Designed by: Phil Beckwith Published by: P.B. Publishing
“Something Smells Fishy” is a murder mystery adventure designed for players of 2nd – 4th level. It takes place in and around the small fishing town of Lartan near Waterdeep, though you could drop it into any coastal town, and concerns a missing shipment of fish that soon becomes deadly.
It’s 30 pages long, with a suggested runtime of 8 hours, and provides DM and player maps of both the town of Lartan and a mini cave-dungeon that represents the action-packed climax.
The story is divided up into four parts, which are supposed to take place over the course of two days. It’s heavily railroaded and designed to give players both clues and misdirection regarding a case of missing shipments of fish, the town’s primary export.
The DM will need to become familiar with several important NPCs, whom the PCs are designed to confront and interrogate at multiple times throughout the story. It’s a very role-playing heavy adventure with a simple but fun mystery plot and easy-to-run enemies and locations, making it a nice low-level, light combat adventure. Continue reading “DMs Guild Review: Something Smells Fishy”
A one-shot Halloween adventure in a spooky haunted mansion with secret passages, ghostly visions, and deadly swimming pools.
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It’s bonus D&D week! In a nod to Halloween I temporarily took over the DM reigns to host an extra horror-themed one-shot adventure this week, using our pre-built characters from previous one-shots.
Welcome to the “The Haunt!”
I used a one-shot adventure from the DM’s Guild called “The Haunt,” by P.B. Publishing. I built the entire two-story mansion from scratch in Roll20, and also needed to make several adjustments for both time and difficulty.
While I wanted a horror one-shot to be challenging, the original adventure was written for a party of 4th-5th level, whereas the PCs we were using were only going to be 3rd level.
Our cast (all 3rd level):
Gramosk, half-orc barbarian
Falafel, half-elf bard
Filkur, gnome druid
Scarlet O’Fair, human paladin
Zinli, gnome rogue
Furthermore I needed to run the whole thing in a single evening, which for us is ideally around three hours. We skipped some fights and a few rooms and still took an additional 40 minutes but we got it all in and had a great time. Continue reading “D&D 5E “The Haunt” Recap”
One theme I find lacking in the official Fifth Edition campaign books is a proper Arabian Nights adventure. I want mysterious deserts, dangerous tombs, exotic rituals, and forbidden threats.
